helping out a lot of people besides just our members.

What insights can you share for meeting planners who are considering bringing their meetings to other countries? Persistence. You just have to stay the course. The course of international planning is never the same. So, what you think is going to be the right course today will be something totally different tomorrow in a different country. And whatever you’re working on, you know it’s going to take longer than what you think it should take. Be persistent. Be patient. Take risks.

integration. I’m very proud of that. I’ve seen our membership grow there, which is really, really good. You know, I’ve been to such fun,

interesting destinations — Nigeria, Abuja. There’s big oil in Africa. It’s not the safest place. People — hearts of gold — but you’re talking about a continent with billions of people and some gov- ernments that don’t support the people. Those are the kind of things that pull at my heartstrings. We’ve been very instrumental

in trying to take our conferences to destinations where there’s poverty or where there’s a need. “Energy poverty” is sort of a buzzword for us. We’re always having a session on that and trying to get more people to have electricity, more people to have heat. Energy makes the world go round. You don’t think about it, but if you don’t have heating and you don’t have lights, you can’t read and you can’t move around. You can’t cook. Everybody needs it. So our organization is always sort of pushing that. I’m trying to take our conferences to destinations — par- ticularly Latin America — that need that developed. It’s been really nice to see that. I know when we’ve come into town, our economic impact on the destination is significant. So, we’re

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The biggest reward out of global meet- ing planning is to see your hard work come to unfold in a grand meeting where you’ve got delegates from over 90 countries all in one room communicat- ing and learning together.

How do you do your research for all the different cultures you experience in your meeting destinations? There’s a great book that I live by, Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands. I’m on my third version of that, I think. I obviously do online research with the State Depart- ment. They have good reports on safety concerns, what to be aware of in various destinations. The first place I reach out to is the convention bureau. It’s called something different in every country — the national tourism organization, the convention board, the ministry of travel. You have to find that source, because they’re a wealth of information on the destination that you’re going to. I think it’s kind of neat, too, because

when you tap into those people in new or young markets — I’m doing a lot more for them than actually they are for me in the sense of helping develop their market. I’m doing that with Anta- lya, Turkey. Their convention market is very small. However, their tourism market is very big. That kind of creates

a nifty little, you know — you help me, I’ll help you, and let’s help develop your market, because you’re sitting very rich in the ability to sell the meetings mar- ket to people if you just know a little bit more about how to do it.

If there was just one takeaway you could distill from all of your travels, what might it be? The older I get, the more I realize things take time. And that it’s actually the patience that is the reward at the end of the day. You know, when you do business with most people from Asia, they’re very accustomed to not talking business for the first two meetings. They’re serious about this. They get together for a meal and you’re talking family and they want to get to know you before talking about working together. That’s not our mindset in the U.S. Our mindset is, we have a business lunch; here’s my agenda, and maybe I’ll get to eat while I’m doing it. I think that I have brought that [international] mentality more into my domestic business. I was in Antalya two weeks ago with

the director of the convention bureau. He wanted to take us on a little sort of city tour and we ended up back at his house, where his wife and his son were in the room. We had Turkish tea. We had coffee cake that his son of eight had made. His son played the piano for a half-hour — beautiful. This was part of the process. It’s “We want to get to know you, not just do business with you. We want a friendship. We want a relationship.” Of course, our industry is all about

that, but this is on a different level. I mean, this is the kind of guy that the next time I go to Antalya, I’ll be bring- ing LEGOs for his son.

. — Michelle Russell

For more information: iaee.org/en/conferences

JULY 2013 PCMA CONVENE 25