With one co-located show under his belt, AREMA’s Charles Emely, Ph.D., CAE, CMP, offers some advice to meeting professionals embarking on joint events:
Talk, talk, talk. “Keep in constant communication with one another, and work to resolve the cultural and opera- tional differences between the organizations. If we didn’t do that, it never would have worked.”
Make all decisions on a consensus basis. “There were occasions where the decisions weren’t unanimous and we decided we would take majority rule, but I always tried for unanimity.”
Present a unified front. “It took months to decide on the name and the logo. Once we had that, everyone needed to get behind the event and promote Railway Interchange, not their individual shows.”
Negotiate volume discounts (for F&B, audiovisual, etc.) with the facility. “I specifically said that four organizations were each getting billed individually, but I want the bill to reflect the volume of all four organiza- tions. Any discounts were based on total volume. We demanded and they agreed.”
Use the personal touch. “I have a longstanding personal relationship with the CVB [Meet Minneapolis], so that helped in terms of getting things accomplished. They provided a subsidy for shuttle services, for example, which was very helpful.”
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said. “As we got closer to the date, we had several meetings involving key staff and one meeting held at our office in June of 2010 to sit down and say, ‘This is what we’re doing. Let’s talk this whole process through.’ The planning document from that meeting is what we implemented.”
Switches and Signals One of the biggest challenges of the co- location was dealing with the cultural and operational differences of the four groups. “The way that one organization did something for 100 years isn’t the same way another one did it,” Emely said. “In order to make it work, everybody had to give up something.” A major concession for RSSI was giving up the wildly popu-
INSIDE OUTSIDE: Railway Inter- change included AREMA’s technical conference, indoor exhibits by REMSA, RSI, and RSSI, and (above) outdoor exhibits displayed in a railway yard near the conven- tion center.
lar food court on its exhibit floor — which itself had been a con- cession of sorts. “We felt that things were getting out of hand with exhibitors hosting so many private parties and private din- ners,” Drudy said, “so my group passed a rule prohibiting pri- vate events, and we expanded the trade show to include a nice food court where we would offer top-of-the-line meals three times a day. Our customers loved the fact that they had a place where they could get a bite to eat and sit down with suppliers and talk outside the exhibit booth.” But RSSI lost 30,000 square feet of space at Railway Inter-
change and was forced to scale back food service considerably as a result. “We just had high-top tables and waiters walked around with food on trays,” Drudy said. “The food-service peo- ple did a terrific job, but it wasn’t the same. On our surveys al- most everyone said they missed the food court.” Registration was another adjustment for REMSA, RSI, and
RSSI, because AREMA chose to handle the process in-house. Emely’s staff designed the system together with a group of