The Professional Convention Management Association’s Convening Leaders in San Francisco In early January served as an engaging and energizing way to kick off a new year and a new decade. I’ve been a regular attendee and active volunteer in PCMA for over 25 years and continue to be impressed at their willingness to take risks and incubate innovative … [Read More...]
Invest in Your Speakers to Grow Your Value Proposition
The bread and butter of conferences is concurrent education sessions. Keynote speakers and main-room experiences are pivotal for bringing the community together and sharing key messaging, but attendees expect—and deserve—transformational learning (change in ideas, attitudes and behaviors) from … [Read More...]
Top Tips for Preparing Your Presenters
Imagine how you might do your job differently if your performance and compensation were evaluated based on overall session attendance and industry presenter ratings at your annual conference. While this notion may seem a bit extreme, conference education systems need increased accountability, … [Read More...]
What I’ve Learned This Year Could Fill a Book
After nearly 30 years leading the event development and execution at the Society for Human Resource Management, I took the leap earlier this year to join the remarkable VCC team and focus on helping associations and organizations improve their annual events. The work we do has reignited my deep … [Read More...]
Sponsorship Needs to Be More Than Banners and Clings
Sponsorship is the most powerful form of marketing. When done well, it can change participants’ attitudes and behaviors about a brand. Banners, ads, signs and enhanced listings shouldn’t be lumped into the same category — they don’t make that emotional connection. Recently I’ve received … [Read More...]
How to Turn Around Your Sponsorship Revenue
If your conference is like most, sponsorship revenue is underperforming. There are two benchmarks we like to use to identify healthy conference revenue business models: Industry revenue — 30 percent or more of a conference’s total revenue should come from the combination of sponsor, exhibit and … [Read More...]
Do You Really Have Them at Hello? Rethinking Your First-Timer Strategy
One of my biggest pet peeves is the way some conferences approach first-time attendees. Being intentional and having a plan for how you welcome someone who is experiencing your conference for the first time is not only the right thing to do, it’s also a smart attendee acquisition strategy. It’s a … [Read More...]
So Teamwork Can Make the Dream Work!
Hallelujah! The Washington Nationals won game seven of the World Series to become world champs. This is a huge deal for Washington sports fans and their story should resonate for all of us in the meetings industry as we are dependent on our teams to successfully execute our events. As I listened … [Read More...]
5 Improvements for Event Registration Data Collection
It’s difficult to determine what to include — and not include — when collecting attendee data at the time of conference registration. We need to make it easy to click “yes” during the registration process, while also collecting intelligence to drive personalization. Data fields and pick lists … [Read More...]
