How do you build enough flexibility into your planning to allow you to roll with those punches? BH For years we managed to get by without a pro- curement office, but we have a procurement officer now, and one of her main tasks isn’t necessarily on the pricing of what we buy, but it’s the terms and the conditions and the scalability and the flex- ibility of what we buy or rent. And I think [that’s] putting a lot more pressure on our suppliers.
LA I’m new with [ISTH]; I started there about a year ago. And my primary role over the past year is setting up a Strategic Meetings Management plan that will then put us in the direction that you’re speaking of. I’m almost starting from scratch, because the way that the organization typically held meetings in the past is that physicians bid it
— pretty much an international setup — and they would then hire a PCO. When we hit 8,000 mem- bers or 8,000 attendees, I think that the board and the [ISTH] Council took a look at it and said, “Wait a minute, we need to have some centralized man- agement here,” realizing that the main revenue for the organization is our meeting, and that’s critical.
What are some of the opportunities facing medical meeting planners? BH I thought about this before we started, and as the main challenge I put uncertainty and as the main opportunity I put uncertainty. Because, in a sense, the fact that there’s quite a lot of uncertainty in the profession for which I work, within [ESC members’] own professional life they’re beginning to have fewer and fewer solid references and solid things that they can rely on, i.e., jobs and sources of funding and so on. The association is one of the few things that remains constant in their professional life, so I think that is actually an opportunity, because that means that we will have their content. They will contribute their content to us, and with the technologies that are evolving we can con- tinue to [be] the platform where we put that content. So the value proposition that we can offer the members and the leaders is still strong, because they need us, and new technologies are allowing us to do things that are not neces- sarily meeting-related, but we can meet their requirements for high-profile visibility and representation, advocacy, and so on.
BS I think that contrary to the popular press saying that people are never going to talk to each other, teenagers are never going to have a conversation, adults are never going to want to meet face-to-face — a la 25 years ago, when they
PCMA.ORG
CASE HISTORY
International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH)
Carrboro, N.C., USA Largest meeting ISTH Congress Last July 23–28, 2011, Kyoto Most recent June 29–July 4, 2013, Amsterdam Next June 20–25, 2015, Toronto
isth2013.org
“It’s not actually an annual meeting — it’s held every other year,” said Lisa Astorga, CMP, ISTH’s director of meetings.
“However, on the off year, there is a smaller SSC [Scientific and Standardization Committee] meeting that’s held in conjunction with the larger meetings, so technically we call it our annual meeting. We’re anticipating a little over 8,000 attendees [at ISTH 2013], primarily in the field of thrombosis and haemostasis researchers.... It’s pretty broad-based, so a lot of other disciplines dabble in it — cardiology, surgeons, any group that would encounter issues with blood clotting or deep vein thrombosis. The [show] floor is very large — to my surprise, from working with other societies, the floor just continues to grow. We’re probably now at about 100,000 square feet [and] at about 60 or 70 exhibitors. In Amsterdam this year, we’re actually putting in a canal with some ducks. That was the meeting president’s idea. It’s a three-and-a-half-day exhibition hall, and we’re able to attract all the major sponsors with pretty large booths, so I’m very excited about that.”
said we would never go to the movies again because of video — people want to meet face-to-face. Incredible synergy and col- laborations happen in the halls of hotels outside the meeting room, inside the meeting room. Our thyroidologists already have international collaborations on research, international collaborations on writing guidelines, and what a meeting like this provides is that opportunity for, as we’ve all experienced, that kind of light bulb going off. That always happens when human beings get together and sit down and talk to each other. I don’t think that will ever be replaced.
LA Our role as meeting planners has evolved tremendously over the past 10 years, and it is exciting. You look at a plan- ner 10 years ago, before we had this influx of technology, and it was sort of managing the compliance issues, which were pretty straightforward from a logistical standpoint, and really just taking a second seat in the society. Where now, I see especially a medical meeting planner really being able to have a seat at the table — if you can grasp the whole technology and you’re on board for change. I think it’s exciting, and I’m really excited for the younger people in the profession. We’re
AUGUST 2013 PCMA CONVENE 73
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