PCMA or the Professional Convention Management Association completed their annual meeting Convening Leaders in Orlando this past January 13-16. Tahira Endean of Cantrav Services Inc in Vancouver Canada gives you a peek at the conversation about meeting and event design. Tahira heard from several different types of attendees, speakers and even the Chef of the Orange County Convention Center Chef Katurakes. Some guests include Lynn Randall, Niesa Silver, Jeff Hurt, Richard Allchild, Christine Melendes, Wendi Haught, Keith Johnston and Neely Johnston.
More about Tahira: Tahira eats, drinks, breathes and lives events. Since receiving her diploma in Event and Convention Management in 1993, she has worked with a PCO, in destination management and with an incentive house producing meetings and events on three continents; so far! With a primary focus on creative event production, from how it fits into the bigger landscape of the meeting or conference, to the smallest detail of notepaper, floral, pillow or menu design, Tahira considers how to maximize the supplier relationships and deliver a unique design and memorable moments for each event. An instructor of event planning at BCIT, a recent hospitality management degree grad and an avid student of pop culture, trends and people – Tahira brings a passion for creation that has no bounds.
Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen from Grass Shack Events & Media. If it’s not welcome back, again, welcome to your first listen to the Meetings Podcast. We have a special treat today, actually. We have Tahira Endean of Cantrav Services from Vancouver, Canada. Cantrav is a destination management company and more. They do event production and event planning. They do it all, actually. Tahira is a fantastic person to be had doing interviews because she is very well connected in the meetings and events industry and she went out to PCMA. She went out to the Professional Convention Management Association’s annual event in Orlando, Florida and did some interviews for us. In this podcast, she concentrated on “Meeting and Event Design,” which is something that she’s very familiar with and she talked to a lot of great people. So let’s get right into it and I hope you enjoy it. Please give me any feedback, or feedback for both of us, and we’d love to hear it. So here we go…
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Tahira Endean: Meetings Podcast. PCMA roving reporter, Tahira Endean. I’m here with [Myla] Johnson, Keith Johnson, also known as @PlannerWire, and Wendi Haught, also known as @FrameworkMtgs on Twitter. We’re just sitting in the lobby at the Hilton. We are very excited. It’s the first day of PCMA. Some chapter leader sessions have been attended. I was going to talk a little bit about meeting and event design. So we’re going to start with [Myla] who’s going to just tell us, tell us your approach to designing your meetings and events.
[Myla] Johnson: I think there are so many times people really look at marketing strategy and advertising and getting attendance up. At the end of the day, it’s all about the attendee experience and then the end result of what that attendee is going to go through during your meeting and what their lasting impression is of that meeting. So I always try to put myself in the footsteps of attendees when putting my meetings together.
Tahira Endean: I think that’s a great approach. I think it’s really important that we do think about what are the attendees going to leave with.
[Myla] Johnson: Absolutely.
Tahira Endean: How about you, Wendi?
Wendi Haught: Well I agree with you, [Myla]. There are so many times we as planners think we have to cram so much into a two-and-a-half, three day session when the attendees need just a tiny bit of free time to kind of process what they’ve learned and to visit with each other. Maybe contribute to the local economy just a tiny bit. Those are some of the things that are oftentimes forgot.
Tahira Endean: Absolutely. Keith?
Keith Johnson: For me, it’s about thinking about the last attendee when they walk out the door and what you want them to walk away with. I think if you start with that and then work backward, I think meeting planning is a lot easier. I said when you go forward into it, there are so many pieces that you try to fit, like a round peg in a square hole. Whereas if you work backwards, it all just seems to go together.
Tahira Endean: Makes sense. Start with the end in mind. I like it. Now, Wendi, you also mentioned that you have some pet peeves you can share with us about communication?
Wendi Haught: Well, I tend to over-communicate, and others that I know under-communicate. These experiences spawned a conversation about finding out what is the best communication style in each relationship before you start to move forward. So I have one client who only likes me to text. One only wants email. One that wants to have a “Yes, thank you” to every email response and one that doesn’t want me to spam her in that way. So I think there are so many different things where we are peppered now with messaging, that really finding out where that communication needs to originate with each individual interaction has been a big project.
Tahira Endean: So now you said that clients just want us to communicate in specific ways, which I think all of us would agree with. But what about our attendees? Do you think that we’re doing that with our meetings and conferences and we’re finding different ways to communicate with different potential attendees?
[Myla] Johnson: Well in a way though there’s too many ways. So you’re getting things in through your taskforce that you’re under, your LinkedIn group, or you’re getting a Facebook. It’s almost like conferences and association companies that are putting events together need to come up with one portal that encompasses everything.
Tahira Endean: Right. Absolutely.
Keith Johnson: Well, one of the things that you could do, you should have one portal, you should have one place that communicates all of the most important messages for the attendee. How you get that information to the attendee can be through various means. If you want someone to get something, you can send out a link through your Facebook and Twitter and drive them all back to that one spot.
[Myla] Johnson: Yes. I agree.
Tahira Endean: Absolutely.
Keith Johnson: Whereas I see a lot of meetings, including a lot of industry events, where they say something on Facebook, something on Twitter, and if you’re not on Twitter, you didn’t catch what they wanted you to know.
Wendi Haught: Absolutely. Are you finding that you’re asking – event specific-wise, are you asking during the registration process how they want to be messaged to?
[Myla] Johnson: No, but that’s a very good point.
Keith Johnson: No.
Tahira Endean: Yes, I’ve never been asked how I want to be contacted.
[Myla] Johnson: Actually, no. You know what? For the American Association of School Librarians, we are asking if they’d prefer – well, we’re asking if they’d prefer not to be sent messages via text because we’ve got a system that will allow mass texting if there’s an exhibit change or whatever that we’re saying if they want to opt out. So it’s more of an opt out, opt in sort of thing, but we still are asking them that.
Tahira Endean: Maybe that’s one good start, right? Because if you’re going to find out by an email or by an app, you also still want to be texted.
Wendi Haught: Right, right.
Keith Johnson: Well, and I think for a lot of clients that still haven’t bought into social. When you tell them, “Hey, you should be capturing this information from the attendees,” they’re like, “Oh no, no, we can’t do that! That means then we’re going down that road.” But it’s about everyone else is already down the road. You should probably catch up.
Tahira Endean: That’s right.
[Myla] Johnson: I found it interesting, just relating to this event, you’ve got emails that are coming in through Outlook. You’ve got your portal here in this app that I started using and I found amazing, but I couldn’t tie all these different pieces of communication together and I wish there was something that could do that.
Wendi Haught: Right, right.
Keith Johnson: Yes.
Tahira Endean: So it’s just about figuring out how we’re going to best communicate. So our point, our key points that we want to walk away with are start with the end in mind for events and meetings and really make sure that we’re getting through, walking through the experience the attendees are going to have. And then from the beginning, thinking about how we want to be communicated with to make sure that not only are we communicating with our existing attendees that want to be communicated with, but also potential attendees and maybe finding them and attracting them to our meetings. Any last thoughts?
Wendi Haught: No.
Tahira Endean: Alright. Thank you very much.
Keith Johnson: No. We’re all empty.
[Laughter]
Tahira Endean: Excellent! Thank you very much, Keith, [Myla] and Wendi.
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Tahira Endean: Tahira Endean, roving reporter from PCMA for Meetings Podcast. I’m sitting here with Rachel Nocera, Tourism Vancouver. Rachel, I think that Vancouver, because I live there, is one of the greatest cities in the entire world to hold meetings. But you live in Chicago. So you’re in Chicago and you’re talking to planners from around the world who might want to come to Vancouver. So there’s going to be lots of things that I think meeting planners are looking for. What are some of the things that you’re finding as our representative with the Tourism Bureau, what are you finding that people are really looking to you for? What are some of their key hot buttons and things that are important in a destination?
Rachel Nocera: Sure. I think the greatest thing that we can provide as a service as a convention bureau to meeting planners is making sure that once the RFP is received, that we are the one point of contact. We’re the one person that will pull the entire bid together for the entire city, meeting all the objectives of their RFP and making sure that we’re addressing every single one of their needs in their RFP and we’re their main contact from start to finish. From the minute we get their RFP to the minute they do their site inspection until the day they walk into the city for their convention, we’re one of their main contacts from that point forward.
Tahira Endean: I think for all of us in the meeting industry, everyone’s very busy and very stretched out. So having that one point of contact when you need to start to look at convention centers and hotels and other suppliers that are going to be critical, I think what you have is a very important. So do you find that what people are looking for is actually literally is every service that they’re looking for?
Rachel Nocera: Absolutely. And we are the experts to tell them where to go and how to get there and what to do. Not necessarily what to do, but how to do it, and make sure that we set up the relationships and the connections so that their job is easier. Our job is to make their job easier and make them shine.
Tahira Endean: I love that! Making their job easier. Because I think that’s really what people are looking for. Now who are you finding as looking into? Kind of like what size of group is really going to be ideal for Vancouver?
Rachel Nocera: For us, well we, since our convention center expanded in 2009, it opened up an entire world for us with larger shows. We obviously can do the 1,500 to 2,000, but now we’re doing the 10,000 and the 15,000 person shows, and even more. We hosted the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. So that was just a demonstration of how big we really can go.
Tahira Endean: I know. It was awesome. I loved the Olympics.
Rachel Nocera: It was awesome, wasn’t it?
Tahira Endean: It was awesome. So now, one of the things of course that people are really interested, as we start to see more, is technology and how their technology needs can be supported. So when they get onsite, what’s happening from the perspective of whether it’s sustainability through using more electronic signage and those types of things, or whether it’s through having the wireless support in the facilities is obviously one of the key things people are looking for. How do you feel Vancouver stacks up on that?
Rachel Nocera: I think we are one of the leaders in the business. From the green perspective, we won the PCMA Environmental Leadership Award two years ago. That speaks to our sustainability in the building and we are the first building that was certified LEED Platinum in the world for a convention center. So we take that very seriously. So if somebody comes to Vancouver and they meet in Vancouver, they meet green automatically. As far as technology is concerned, because we were the host of the Olympics in 2010 and it was the most technology-based Olympics to date, we had a level of expectation that we’ve met and exceeded for the Olympics and the Olympic committee walked away feeling like we hit the mark and then some.
Tahira Endean: And then the great thing is, is all that infrastructure stayed there.
Rachel Nocera: Exactly.
Tahira Endean: So if people are trying to do a video broadcast or do live feeds or to really just support 3,000 people who are all going to have devices they want to log in to, that infrastructure is there, which I think is really, really great. Well, Rachel, thank you so much. Is there anything else that you’d like to say to meeting planners about Vancouver?
Rachel Nocera: Well, we just found out today that PCMA is going to come to Vancouver in 2016. So we look forward to seeing you there.
Tahira Endean: That’s awesome!
Rachel Nocera: Yay!
Tahira Endean: I’m so excited! Alright. Well, thank you very much. This is Tahira Endean, roving reporter, signing off, with Rachel Nocera of Tourism Vancouver. Thank you very much.
Rachel Nocera: Thank you.
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Tahira Endean: This is from the PCMA Convening Leaders show floor. Tahira Endean, roving reporter for Meetings Podcast. I am here with the fabulous and amazing and beautiful Lynn Randall.
Lynn Randall: I love you!
Tahira Endean: [Laughs]
Lynn Randall: Why did we not spend more time together, Tahira? [Laughs]
Tahira Endean: [Laughs] I don’t know. So far, this is our first time meeting face-to-face after virtually attending meetings.
Lynn Randall: Yes.
Tahira Endean: So our dialogue started because it’s so great how you can actually develop a regard or a sense of fun for the people who are on the other end of your virtual stream, and we did that.
Lynn Randall: Absolutely.
Tahira Endean: And so now, here we are. So Mike said let’s talk about technology and engagement and how things work, and that’s what we’re going to do.
Lynn Randall: Excellent! So I’ll tell you a little bit, because we were just talking off-audio about the camp.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Lynn Randall: And so one of the things that I’ve tried to do is experimental session types. So what I love about PCMA is that they’re absolutely looking for and interested in some kind of different types. So did I tell you about the session I’m doing tomorrow morning?
Tahira Endean: No. Tell me about the session you’re doing.
Lynn Randall: Okay. The topic is engagement. So it’s relevant. I’m not just going off on a segment.
Tahira Endean: No, it’s good.
Lynn Randall: So what I’ve done is I have taken the format of the Choose Your Own Adventure books and created like a fictitious event storyline. And during the session, we’ll come to decision points, and I’ve given four or five things for groups to talk about. And then they use the polling system to choose where the story goes next.
Tahira Endean: Nice.
Lynn Randall: Well, nice, except I had to write – I think it was like between 8 or 16. I can’t remember exactly where I ended up endings for the whole thing.
Tahira Endean: Wow!
Lynn Randall: Because it’s, in essence, a decision tree, and it starts with here are your business objectives and goals, and you make a decision based on that. And then here are your attendees’ needs, and there are different ways to engage attendees. So different kinds of content, different ways to engage, and then you make a choice about including maybe a mobile app or maybe virtual event technologies or hybrid event technologies or changing the design of the experience to better fit what the attendees are looking for and what they’re trying to accomplish. So it’ll be interesting. I hope it all works out because it is technology-dependent. If the whole everywhere technology doesn’t work, then it’s going to be – okay, virtual audience. Just add in the chat box, what you’re interested, what your decision is, and then people in the room, raise your hand!
Tahira Endean: Yes. And that is when you’re reliant on technology because we’ve seen it work with ways today, right? So we’ve seen it work very successfully, we’ve seen it work a little bit slowly. I was just in a session where we could actually watch it happening actually live. The [spieling] was perfect.
Lynn Randall: Oh, wonderful!
Tahira Endean: Yes. Which is great news for you.
Lynn Randall: Yes. I’m glad to hear that, yes, because it didn’t work so well in one of the sessions earlier this morning.
Tahira Endean: No.
Lynn Randall: You know what? What I thought was interesting is he did a show of hands. The speaker said show of hands. And then he said, “Okay. I see about 20% said this and about 50% said this.” And then when the poll actually kicked in and worked, he was spot on. So that’s a pretty good estimator, that speaker.
Tahira Endean: That hands – you know what? You can’t go wrong with hands either. Really, they’re so visual.
Lynn Randall: True.
Tahira Endean: But it is nice when you can use the technology and see it happen. And that sounds really cool. What time is that session?
Lynn Randall: 8:30 in the morning.
Tahira Endean: Oh. So now I have competing objectives at 8:30. It’s a problem.
Lynn Randall: Except mine is going to be captured virtually. So you can always go back and watch it later. It won’t be the same as playing along.
Tahira Endean: Yes. That’s true. I think playing along sounds really cool. And I think that that’s one of the things where it’s just – sometimes we think, oh, people won’t want to play, which is of course ridiculous because…
Lynn Randall: Everybody wants to play!
Tahira Endean: Everybody wants to play. There’s the famous saying, “The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.” I was just reading something this week that was about whether it’s busy work or manual work or physical work or creative work, whatever kind of work it is, that it engages us. And what we tend to think as meeting planners, people get really busy. They get tired. At the end of the day, you go home, you have a glass of wine, you watch TV, and you actually don’t feel better. Whereas if you would have gone home, had a fruit juice, worked in the garden, read a book you were interested in – anything that was actually slightly more engaging, you would feel a lot better, and I think that we forget some really obvious basic human tendencies and tend to, when we come to meetings, think that we’ll play to the lowest level. We’ll show them a video, we’re going to just talk at them, we’re going to give them all of the great ideas that are in my head.
Lynn Randall: That’s right. Exactly. Which I have kind of a wacky head. But never as good as everyone together working towards establishing something.
Tahira Endean: Yes. It’s that whole all of us are smarter than any of us, right?
Lynn Randall: True.
Tahira Endean: Philosophy.
Lynn Randall: Well, the other, I think – and you touched on it – which is kind of the nature of human beings. So one of my other, which I think you know, one of my other little passions is neuroscience.
Tahira Endean: Yes. Which is so underrated, I guess.
Lynn Randall: Yes. Exactly! I think it’s because people just aren’t familiar enough with how it applies directly to our industry, but the actual learning cycle in the human brain is first, gathering. So what we’re doing here, pulling in all of these new input and information. And then you sleep on it. So there has to be that sort of cycle of just letting it percolate a little bit. Then you have to do something active with – actually, I think you do something active, and then you sleep on it. So you have to engage with.
Tahira Endean: Or maybe that’s going to be individual to the person, right? So maybe sometimes it’s going to be – because it’s about 20% of what you hear, 40% of what you see and hear, 80% of what you do something with, but maybe you don’t need to do something with it right away. Maybe you need to go away and look at your notes again and just think about it.
Lynn Randall: Yes.
Tahira Endean: And probably, even in the actual, right?
Lynn Randall: Well, and even the act of typing in notes about something is a reinforcing activity. That actually helps complete that learning cycle.
Tahira Endean: Which completely makes sense.
Lynn Randall: Yes. Absolutely. So I think as meeting professionals, we sometimes forget that it’s all human beings that we’re dealing with.
Tahira Endean: That’s true.
Lynn Randall: How do they absorb information? How do they play with it, interact with it, become active with the information?
Tahira Endean: Yes. Again, that whole thing that it is okay to have [faults] and it’s okay to not know the ending. Like you said, you wrote 8 or 16 different endings.
Lynn Randall: Yes.
Tahira Endean: You don’t know, going into your session, what is going to happen.
Lynn Randall: I have no idea.
Tahira Endean: And how cool was that, right?
Lynn Randall: It’s kind of like standing on the edge of a cliff a little bit.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Lynn Randall: But actually, that kind of gets that energy going and gets you excited to go in there.
Tahira Endean: Yes. Because people will leave your session and they will be like, “That was cool!”
Lynn Randall: Oh, I hope. I really hope.
Tahira Endean: Why wouldn’t they?
Lynn Randall: Okay. So I’ll tell you the other part about the session, is I actually have a secret identity that gets revealed in the session.
Tahira Endean: Oh…
Lynn Randall: So I’m a little nervous that people would be like, “That’s a little…” But we’re in Orlando at Disney, so…
Tahira Endean: That’s right. We had Mickey Mouse at lunch. So why can’t you have an alternate reality?
Lynn Randall: Yes. Why not? Alter ego, something with little superhero powers.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Lynn Randall: Something along those lines.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Lynn Randall: So anyway, we’ll see.
Tahira Endean: [Everyone wants superhero powers]. I think that’s really important.
Lynn Randall: Yes.
Tahira Endean: Well I think that that’s going to be great. Thank you so much, Lynn, for talking about engagement. I really appreciate it. I know that Mike is going to have a thousand more questions, so I see future Meetings Podcasts coming your way.
Lynn Randall: [Laughs] Fun!
Tahira Endean: Which is great. I know, right?
Lynn Randall: Big fan! I’m a big fan of Mike, a big fan of the Meetings Podcast, a big fan of Tahira!
Tahira Endean: A big fan of Lynn!
Lynn Randall: [Laughs]
Tahira Endean: And PCMA. Thank you very much.
Lynn Randall: You are very welcome.
Tahira Endean: This is your roving reporter, Tahira Endean, signing off with the fabulous Lynn Randall.
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Tahira Endean: This is Tahira Endean, roving reporter for Meetings Podcast. I’m sitting here with the lovely Niesa Silzer who is with Details Convention and Event Management from Calgary. We’re at the PCMA Convening Leaders and it’s great so far. So we’re loving getting education here. We think it’s a spectacular experience. I’m just going to say that for both of us.
Niesa Silzer: Yes. I agree.
Tahira Endean: We’re just going to talk a little bit today about education in the events industry because there’s obviously informal education, such as we get at conferences, and then formal education. So maybe you could just tell us a little bit about your educational background and experience, and then we’ll go from there.
Niesa Silzer: My educational background is that I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Toronto from York University, and I have a Masters of Hospitality Administration from UNLV. So I’ve got a lot of formal education in the industry.
Tahira Endean: Yes. As well as a lot of experience.
Niesa Silzer: As well as a lot of experience. I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now.
Tahira Endean: And you also teach in the events industry.
Niesa Silzer: And I teach in the events industry.
Tahira Endean: Yes. As do I. So we both share that teaching of students in part time programs who are wanting to enter the industry, and in about 30 hours to 60 hours, they anticipate that they will be able to gain the 10 years of experience or the…
Niesa Silzer: Right.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Niesa Silzer: Yes.
Tahira Endean: Which I think is an interesting challenge because I think that our industry is full of these amazing experienced, fantastic planners. Many who have education and many who just kind of fell into it. So I think that there’s really an argument for both.
Niesa Silzer: Well, and I think the programs too are all so broad. I teach at Mount Royal University in Calgary and the program is six courses long, but you get everybody from corporate planners to I want to be a wedding planner to I’m 18 years old and I don’t know what I want to do, but I plan fantastic parties.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Niesa Silzer: So you have all these people coming in to a course, trying to get experience or education in events, but events that range from the weddings to the birthday parties to big corporate events and tradeshows.
Tahira Endean: I think it is a bit of a challenge for sure to teach to that range.
Niesa Silzer: Right.
Tahira Endean: And then of course, I would say that what we see coming out is probably into the industry, about 10% to 15% of people who are getting some education, actually then remain in the industry and they become some of our absolute superstars within the industry, which is something really fabulous.
Niesa Silzer: Yes.
Tahira Endean: And there’s also then the certifications as well, which is another whole discussion for another day, but there is absolutely a range again of that formal and informal education and how we can tie education and experience together. So with education, what would you say you have found the value? Because I have a Bachelor of Hospitality Management and a Diploma in Event and Convention Management.
Niesa Silzer: Right.
Tahira Endean: So again, a bit of a mix, and I did them sort of 18 years apart. And I would say that I’m actually glad that I did my degree later when I had some experience because the degree, I found, really focused more on the business aspects, the yield management, the revenue management. Those things that are actually critical to us being successful.
Niesa Silzer: Yes.
Tahira Endean: But what would you say were some of the value points that came out for you from your education?
Niesa Silzer: Well my Bachelor of Fine Arts way back when is all the creativity, the…
Tahira Endean: Yes. Which is really important in what we do.
Niesa Silzer: Yes. And for me, the event production because I was in theatre.
Tahira Endean: Yes. It’s a great background.
Niesa Silzer: Yes. I use that every day in scripting and putting the AV together. And then my Masters was much more – because it was a Masters level, it was much more academic.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Niesa Silzer: And more statistics. But also looking at things at a much higher level.
Tahira Endean: Do you find that when you’re talking to your clients who could be engineers or scientists or doctors, that there’s an inherent value on being able to speak that language of business?
Niesa Silzer: Yes. Absolutely. Well, and I also think as a planner, you need to understand the business of it. Revenues and getting people there and meeting the bottom line and ROI and understanding that on multiple levels.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Niesa Silzer: Yes.
Tahira Endean: Well, and again, that ROI and really understanding that there is a business model and a science that really goes behind that. There is a certain amount of experience that will teach you that when we start to look at education. And then I think also, one of our struggles in our industry is salaries and recognition. It’s still one of the first departments to go because often, when you’re in a meeting planning department, you don’t have that educational background or that degree or diploma that HR departments are looking for. So they’re like, “Alright. So somebody else can do this job” and we tend to lose the value perception I think sometimes of our industry as a whole. Everybody works exceptionally hard to produce these incredible meetings and events that do show a return on investment, a return on objectives.
Niesa Silzer: I think our industry still has a way to go in terms of the value that we bring, and that perceived value so that we’re not just one step above the Administrative Assistant.
Tahira Endean: That’s very true. When you look at all the components that need to actually go into producing a great meeting or event, it’s…
Niesa Silzer: Right. Yes. Not only are we at the table, which we’ve been talking of being at the table for 10+ years.
Tahira Endean: Yes. The strategic value, the strategic business value that a great meeting planner can bring.
Niesa Silzer: Right.
Tahira Endean: With education and with understanding, all of those things that go into the background of a business and how are you going to use a meeting to elevate that process.
Niesa Silzer: Right. Even if you look at the Christmas party where okay, here’s the Christmas party. Okay. Well, yes, we’re going to have a Christmas party. But having a planner who understands why are we going to have a Christmas party and having it be part of the, okay, it’s part of retention, it’s a part of company morale, and making sure that that Christmas party meets those objectives, and even understanding that your Christmas party should have objectives.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Niesa Silzer: Right?
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Niesa Silzer: And then it’s not just a big booze fest why we’re doing it.
Tahira Endean: Yes. That’s very true. I think those are all really good points. I personally hope that we continue to see a growth in that. I love that PCMA, there are 11 students who are here from the program I took 20 years ago.
Niesa Silzer: Nice!
Tahira Endean: I know, right? I think that’s so awesome and I love that they’re also understanding that it’s not only what they’re learning. A little bit, it’s also about getting out in the industry, keeping up the informal side of the education and networking and really being at a place where you are surrounded by people who are really working to understand the value of what professional management in meetings means and how it differs, yes.
Niesa Silzer: Yes. Absolutely.
Tahira Endean: So I think that’s pretty great. Any last comments?
Niesa Silzer: No. Thank you for our interview.
Tahira Endean: Well thank you, Niesa Silzer. I really appreciate it.
Niesa Silzer: Yes.
Tahira Endean: This is Tahira Endean, roving reporter, signing off from the PCMA Convening Leaders.
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Tahira Endean: This is Tahira Endean, roving reporter for Meetings Podcast. I’m here with the lovely Christine Melendes, who is with?
Christine Melendes: Association for Corporate Growth.
Tahira Endean: Association for Corporate Growth? That sounds super interesting. Actually, tell me about that association.
Christine Melendes: It’s an association. We have 14,500 members throughout the world and 58 chapters. We just opened the newest chapter in Brazil. Our members are all the guys and gals responsible for mergers and acquisitions at a certain dollar level.
Tahira Endean: So you have a lot of A types?
Christine Melendes: We have a lot of A types – 75% men, 45 – 55, late adopters to technology. There are lots of fun things.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Christine Melendes: Yes. They’re a great group though and they’re really passionate about what they do, and they love networking.
Tahira Endean: Well, yes. So I was going to say that’s exactly the kind of group you want coming to your events, right? But getting their attention I’m sure has its challenges.
Christine Melendes: It does. It’s really interesting, looking at demographics from registration reports from years past. Like everybody registers right before early bird, and then three weeks out.
Tahira Endean: Right.
Christine Melendes: It’s really interesting. They’re looking at their calendars, they’re looking at their pipeline of business and deals and figuring out whether or not they need to add some additional networking into their schedules. And our meeting is really networking-focused with some education, but it’s not a driver for attendance at all.
Tahira Endean: Oh. The networking is the driver?
Christine Melendes: Yes. They’re attending those.
Tahira Endean: So how are you reaching out to people?
Christine Melendes: We are doing a lot of new things this year. I just started last year anyway. So this is like my first full year where I’ve been able to implement my own plan, communications marketing plan. So we designed a new microsite that had been integrated with their regular website. It was really difficult to navigate. It just wasn’t user-friendly. And when you have somebody with like very quick needs to register and they don’t have a lot of time to find things, you need to make it easy.
Tahira Endean: Yes, or they’re just wading through stuff.
Christine Melendes: Right. You have to make it really easy. So we’re doing a lot of email campaigns and the segmentation to the different types of members that we have, talking about the content that we have for them. And then traditional pieces – print pieces, postcards, etcetera.
Tahira Endean: Yes. They still work.
Christine Melendes: They do.
Tahira Endean: That’s the thing.
Christine Melendes: We have very little adoption of Twitter or Facebook or anything, but they’re pretty good on LinkedIn.
Tahira Endean: Okay.
Christine Melendes: So we’re starting to reach out on Twitter on a daily basis and trying to expand our reach. Mainly to media outlets to let them know about us and our event and stuff.
Tahira Endean: Okay. Which is the perfect tool, right?
Christine Melendes: Yes.
Tahira Endean: What kind of events are you doing?
Christine Melendes: Well, we have one major event every year and it’s in April and it’s a convention or it’s kind of a tradeshow, kind of a networking thing.
Tahira Endean: So now you must have found this – right now we’re at PCMA Convening Leaders. We’re inside of the Tradeshow Reimagined. So you must have found some of these concepts actually pretty interesting?
Christine Melendes: It is really interesting and I love the engagement and the interactivity of the session. I’m going to call it a session because it’s like a lot of little sessions inside of one.
Tahira Endean: It is. Yes.
Christine Melendes: Eating and networking and sitting down and learning, I think is a really nice concept to explore further, and I think that our members would really be interested in that. Maybe adding a bar or some other components to really keep people in a certain space, yes.
Tahira Endean: So think about this. So imagine that you have your bar. Then beside that is a genius bar. So you can go get a drink at one, and then you can go to the next, put your arm up and have a chat with somebody.
Christine Melendes: That’s a concept that we’re actually going to be implementing at our show this year.
Tahira Endean: Oh.
Christine Melendes: Is kind of the genius bar idea. Not maybe with the drinks, but we’re doing a new digital publication. So like getting help. How do we download an app? How does it work? How does it look? How do you read it? That kind of stuff.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Christine Melendes: So we’re going to have that provided, and hopefully it will be an interesting concept.
Tahira Endean: That’s so great. It sounds like you’re working on just some really phenomenally interesting things.
Christine Melendes: We’re trying to, yes.
Tahira Endean: Now, do you have like sort of one – because you said your events are really primarily networking. So you’re going to do the tradeshow and you’re going to get the genius bars. What would you say is your like one big networking idea that it really seems to work for your group?
Christine Melendes: They really like being in one place.
Tahira Endean: Okay.
Christine Melendes: So having the ability to meet people very quickly, and this is not a crowd that’s afraid to say, “My name is so and so and I work at this company and I think we should do some business together.” I mean, they’re like Networking 101. They know exactly what they’re doing and they won’t spend more than two minutes with anybody. So being able to facilitate that is really important.
Tahira Endean: Yes. That sounds great. If you are thinking about how your communication strategy is going to roll out from this year to next year, is there anything more that you’re going to try to continue like build on to LinkedIn? Do you think you’re going to get some of those late adopters starting to adopt some technology?
Christine Melendes: I absolutely think so. I think with this last holiday season, a lot more of our members probably got tablets of some sort.
Tahira Endean: Right.
Christine Melendes: I think that’s going to keep growing, and so we need to stay in front of that.
Tahira Endean: Would you consider a mobile app for the event?
Christine Melendes: We do do a mobile app as well.
Tahira Endean: Okay.
Christine Melendes: So just really kind of integrating some of that with our current technology.
Tahira Endean: Within that app, are you starting to look at doing a community that can perhaps build off of that?
Christine Melendes: We do have a community through our website, and then we’re doing a lot of that right now.
Tahira Endean: It’s so difficult, isn’t it? Because it’s difficult to get people into understanding that stream and the value of it.
Christine Melendes: Yes. We’re picking a new association management system. So through that, we’re going to have access to roll in people’s LinkedIn information to make it a little bit easier for them to use and maybe spend a little more time with that.
Tahira Endean: Yes. You know what? I think you’ve probably taken them from like sort of like 20 to 80 in the last year, haven’t you?
Christine Melendes: We try to [Laughs].
Tahira Endean: I think that’s awesome.
Christine Melendes: There are a lot of little things that can be done, and that’s really the important part of any job, is just make small incremental changes that are really easy to implement that nobody’s going to freak out about, and then focus on some bigger things. Like when I was at the Digital Disruption session this morning, like how do we bring technology into our meeting? It’s a huge concept that would need a lot of conversation.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Christine Melendes: So I can’t just like implement that, but there are a lot of other things. Like a microsite, easy.
Tahira Endean: Right. You know what? You’re so smart. I love that. Thank you so much, Christine Melendes.
Christine Melendes: Thank you.
Tahira Endean: This is Tahira Endean, roving reporter, signing off for Meetings Podcast from PCMA Convening Leaders. Thank you.
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[Music]
Tahira Endean: Alright. This is Tahira Endean, roving reporter for Meetings Podcast. I’m here with Chef K from the Orange County Convention Center. Chef K has done an awesome job at the PCMA Convening Leaders conference of serving great, healthy, brain-friendly food to 3,800 delegates for a few days. So Chef K, thanks for taking a few minutes to talk with us.
Chef K: You’re welcome.
Tahira Endean: You have some great philosophies on food that I’ve appreciated since we started working on this session that we’re going to do together of “Selling Change: How to Make Healthy Menus a Reality” with Andrea Sullivan. Just talk to me about some fresh food.
Chef K: Sure. I believe that fresh food or healthy food, it doesn’t have to be bad food.
Tahira Endean: No. It should be delicious and tasty.
Chef K: It should be. We’ve started a wellness program here at the convention center, and with a lot of the groups that are coming in, they weren’t healthy food. And coming up with healthy food that is not scary food so that you’re not…
Tahira Endean: People can pronounce it.
Chef K: What’s that?
Tahira Endean: People can pronounce it and they recognize it.
Chef K: Sure, they can, and it’s identifiable. And we implemented several things that helped with the healthy and fresh food, and that’s something as simple as not using salt when we make our steamed vegetables so that it is automatically healthy. And then if they want a little salt, they can put a little salt.
Tahira Endean: It’s their choice.
Chef K: So you don’t have to have a lot of butter. We do a fried rice where we actually use brown rice and we use greens and sprouts, fresh sprouts. Not just mongo bean sprouts, but we actually get fresh sprouts from a farm that we give them a week’s notice and they’re sprouting fresh sprout for us.
Tahira Endean: Now, you also said that you are thinking about the possibility that you might just be growing a few things here, and I think that that, when you start talking about feeding 3,000, 10,000, 17,000 people, that’s so amazing to me that – even if you decided you’re only growing food for groups of 50, that you’re even taking on the philosophy of everything being fresh.
Chef K: Right, and local.
Tahira Endean: I think you mentioned it’s [entry level], and the local is great. I mean just the things we talked about, exactly that fresh, local, organic, seasonal.
Chef K: Living greens.
Tahira Endean: Oh, living things. What a concept! [Laughs]
Chef K: We had the living mushrooms today. They were living.
Tahira Endean: Oh, that’s great.
Chef K: If you saw on the pasta stations, they’re actually living.
Tahira Endean: I saw Andrea eating the pasta that had the living mushrooms
Andrea Sullivan: It was delicious!
Chef K: Yes. And we had the fresh living mushrooms right there.
Tahira Endean: I think that’s fantastic.
Chef K: Even, again, with salt, and salt is not good for you and we know that, but playing with seasoned salts or smoked salts or different types of sea salts, but again, using a lot less.
Tahira Endean: Which I think is great. I think the salt is one of the big things. We’ve also noticed that one of the other things you’re doing here is the water with the fruits and things in it.
Chef K: Yes.
Tahira Endean: So people have the alternative of plain water, bottled water or water that’s flavored.
Chef K: Yes. And it’s very refreshing. It’s refreshing and…
Tahira Endean: I have some cucumber mint water now. I’m loving it.
Chef K: Right. And it doesn’t hit you with all that sugar burst that a soda will.
Tahira Endean: Yes. Exactly. I think that that’s one of the things when we start to look at – it cuts down on your waist and consumption, which is awesome. And again, it’s hydrating people. Like I said, I think what you guys have done, we’ve seen some really innovative lunches, and one of the lunches that we saw here actually had the room broken into quadrants for over a thousand people each.
Chef K: Yes.
Tahira Endean: So there’s French food, a healthy food station, the tapas and…
Chef K: It was the comfort food.
Tahira Endean: And the comfort food.
Chef K: Yes. But it still was not a heavy comfort food.
Tahira Endean: And the other thing that I think is really important about having a comfort food is sometimes when we do travel, that’s what we want.
Chef K: Right. It’s very identifiable.
Tahira Endean: Yes. So to me, that you were able to create four separate meals for 4,000 people, was a phenomenal testament to what you guys are doing here. It was really spectacular.
Chef K: Thank you. Did you see our living greens salad bar today?
Tahira Endean: Yes. The living greens salad bar was excellent.
Chef K: Yes. It’s from a local farm.
Tahira Endean: What I also really liked that you did today was those variations on the Caesar salad. So I had the vegetable Caesar salad.
Chef K: Right. With the blueberries and the strawberries.
Tahira Endean: Yes. So I think that you can do some really simple things with food.
Chef K: And it’s not scary.
Tahira Endean: It’s not scary. It’s delicious! And it’s something that, you know what? You come away from that lunch and you feel good and prepared for the afternoon and ready to go, and I think that that’s really critical. So I think you’re doing a great job.
Chef K: Thank you. Thank you very much. The sweet potatoes with the…
Tahira Endean: The sweet potatoes and that delicious beef, and your homemade pickles. Let’s talk about those homemade pickles because who would go to a convention center and think that they would make homemade pickles? That’s just craziness!
Chef K: Yes. Well, the story behind that is that because conventions go up and go down, we would always have byproduct because of the changing, or you can never nail exactly how many of some of the things you need. And we would end up with peppers and cucumbers, and we ended up pickling them. So now, we have to order for those because they’re part – everybody wants them.
Tahira Endean: You know what? And they were great. They’re one of the best pickles I’ve ever had. So Chef, thank you so much for sharing your philosophies with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing your food with us. I really appreciate that. And I’ve just heard nothing but positive comments and a lot of comments around, again, that it’s healthy and delicious, and for these road warriors, they’re so happy. So thank you very much. This is Chef K of the Orange County Convention Center, and Tahira Endean, roving reporter, signing off. Thank you.
Chef K: Thank you.
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[Music]
Tahira Endean: Tahira Endean, roving reporter for Meetings Podcast. I’m here with the amazing, fantastic, uber smart Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw. Now Jeff, we’re here at PCMA Convening Leaders. You’ve done some excellent and interesting sessions. One, provocatively entitled “Brain Candy.” So what are we talking about in Brain Candy?
Jeff Hurt: First off, thanks for the nice compliment. Paycheck’s in the mail.
Tahira Endean: [Laughs]
Jeff Hurt: It was called “Brain Candy: Your Experimental Meetings Laboratory.” And so I had five room sets in one room.
Tahira Endean: That’s a lot.
Jeff Hurt: It’s a lot. And then everybody rotated through at least four of the sets. They experience the first set with me. One of the areas was dedicated to places. This is research from Stanford University that we need to design our venues thinking differently instead of general session, break, breakouts, lunch break, breakouts, to start thinking instead about these terms – Where is home base? What are gathering spaces? What are your transition spaces? And where are your service and support spaces?
If you designed a conference with that mindset, that where is home base where everybody can come back to and find their likeminded community members, what would you design in that area? So just take that little nimble, that golden nugget from The Design School in Stanford University, and think about what if we did home base, gathering spaces, transition spaces and support and service spaces. How would our conference be different and how would the activities experience be different?
Tahira Endean: I know we’re not looking for an answer right now. I know that.
Jeff Hurt: It’s a rhetorical question, yes.
Tahira Endean: I think that it is, but I think that it’s about time that meetings started to really go back to that end in mind in what is the attendee going to experience and how can we take all of the things we’re doing all year and culminate them into this one thing and make it so that it’s actually user-friendly.
Jeff Hurt: Yes. That’ll do it.
Tahira Endean: I like it. Thank you very much, Jeff Hurt.
Jeff Hurt: Thank you.
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[Music]
Tahira Endean: Tahira Endean, roving reporter with Meetings Podcast. I’m here with Richard Allchild from IMEX. Richard, I’ve mostly invited you here today because if your dreamy accent [Laughs]. But we also thought it would be great to talk about Reimagine Tradeshows because we think that IMEX has been doing a fantastic job of what a tradeshow looks like. I mean you’ve obviously had huge success in the American market. You’ve come to PCMA to learn even more, which I think is super cool. So maybe you could just tell me the big global cause that IMEX has around what a tradeshow is looking like now.
Richard Allchild: With a tradeshow, what we try and do is take away from the guests who are going to the show. Like with the online appointments and the hosted buyers that come to the show, you can have like a full schedule of appointments before you come with prequalified buys so you’re not just there thinking how many people are going to stop by and try to grab people in the aisles. Although it is still a mobile tradeshow and you have that element to it. Before the show you can still have over 100, 200 appointments to like up to 1,000 appointments, depending on the size of your booth, but prequalified hosted buys. So that’s the main benefit of having a show like IMEX.
Other things we’re doing, you’ll notice when you come to IMEX, is the feel of the show, when you’re walking around and just how it looks. There’s no [Unintelligible, 42:43]. Very few hardwood booths. It’s all clustered booths with like meeting space. And then on top of that, the larger booths are having food and beverage, receptions, as well as just to promote networking on your booth. Probably just sort of you stop by, give us your business card and walk away. It’s just to create an atmosphere of actually meeting some business being done on the booth.
Tahira Endean: I really think you guys have done a great job because as you know, we exhibit with Vancouver there. So I have a really good working knowledge of both being an exhibitor and also being on the floor. I think in the first year, would it be fair to say that the hosted buyer program, being new to America, was a bit tougher for people to adopt, but you still had great buy in, that I think by the second year, certainly the energy that I saw on the floor was just people were like, “We get it. We love that there’s hosted buyer programs. We love knowing who we’re going to see” from a buyer perspective. And from the exhibitor perspective, they love that balance of having yes, the appointments, but also the ability for people to still drop by their booths.
Richard Allchild: Yes. It was quite a long education process and it’s still ongoing. The first year, not many Americans knew what we were up to. And then as you said, on the second year, they get it and they’re making their appointments, walk around and just viewing what’s there. And obviously, the American market is growing because we have exhibits all across the world.
Tahira Endean: Yes.
Richard Allchild: It’s really international. And so, it is pretty much like the world in one place for them. So I think it’s still an ongoing process and we’re obviously looking to increase the hosted buyer program year-on-year as the amount of exhibits increase. So we’re going out as much as we can.
Tahira Endean: Because you’re growing this year.
Richard Allchild: We’re growing this year. So last year, from the first and second year, we grew. It was 29%.
Tahira Endean: Wow!
Richard Allchild: And so, this year again, obviously, we don’t know yet, but if we will grow and we’ve moved into [holes] A and B. We’ve sold out last year.
Tahira Endean: I think the other thing that I really liked last year was the way that you incorporated education. Obviously, there’s the MPI on the frontend and PCMA on the backend, and the Association of Corporate Focuses, which were great. But I think also the way that you brought in the round tables and the camp buyers and some of those elements really gave people the opportunity to enjoy that bite-sized education, which really almost is a bit of a respite in some ways, but also is a reenergizer for when they went back in and started talking to the destinations again, which I think is really…
Richard Allchild: Yes. And the education around I’m sure is very important, but our party is the tradeshow. We don’t like taking bites off the show floor.
Tahira Endean: Which was nice about the bite size.
Richard Allchild: Yes. So the bite size that happens on the show floor, and it also just helps you so you get pools of the big crowds that keeps people on the show floor and then circulates the traffic as well around, around the show.
Tahira Endean: Yes. I think that I can say to anybody that I’ve talked to, IMEX is going to be there at the go to show both as a destination and as a buyer. People are really excited about it again. So congratulations on doing a great job. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today.
Richard Allchild: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
Tahira Endean: Thanks.
Richard Allchild: Bye.