Mary MacGregor joined BI WORLDWIDE (BIW) in January of 2013 as corporate vice president – event solutions. She comes to BIW after serving as the leader of business development, events and marketing for other major third-party organizations. In her current role she is responsible for all operating areas of the BIW Event Solutions Group including purchasing, design, delivery, group air, individual incentive travel, onsite operations, technology, communications and merchandise. She leads a team of more than 175 industry professionals who deliver memorable experiences and measurable results for their customers. In 2011, Mary served as global president of Site (Society of Incentive & Travel Professionals). For more information, visit BIWorldwide.com or email info@biworldwide.com.

Hosting meetings and events with international participants has become the norm for many organizations. Making sure global meetings with multicultural participants is successful requires careful forethought, extensive planning and immense flexibility.

Due to the tremendous complexity of internationally attended events, always consider hiring an experienced global event planning agency to help you. Their firsthand knowledge and extensive network of government, transportation, hotel, facility and destination partners will be invaluable.

Whether you decide to plan your own event or work with an agency, here are nine critical factors to keep in mind to make your event successful.

1. Analyze Your Potential Attendees’ Country of Passport Origin.

It’s important to know what passports your participants hold — not necessarily where they are currently living. This will determine what destinations can be considered and how long ahead you’ll need to plan for visas. You don’t want to select a destination that won’t allow citizens of certain countries to enter.

2. Plan Global Meetings Farther Ahead Than You Normally Would for a Domestic Event.

Providing letters of invitation and then obtaining passports, visas and other entry requirements can take months. With today’s volatile political situations, governmental agencies often can be extremely slow and methodical in processing paperwork. Attendees should be working on gaining necessary documentation at least six to eight months before your event takes place.

3. Consider Your Event Site Carefully.

While smaller countries, cities and out-of-the way resorts certainly can be appealing in terms of experience and cost, they may not be able to provide the support services you will need to serve your international guests. Make sure your destination can easily provide:

• Convenient airline connections. For events taking place over seven or fewer days, travelers will want to have as few connections as possible and reasonable layovers in connecting cities; should a flight be cancelled, you don’t want your guests stranded for several days waiting for the next inbound or outbound flight.
• Translation services. You may need translators as airport greeters, at the hospitality desk, at the check-in desk, to accompany tours and offsite events, and to attend dinners and meetings. Larger cities will have more resources to draw upon.
• Culturally appropriate menus and nearby restaurants. For example, the Indian diet is very specific so you many need to hire an Indian chef if you have a large Indian guest list; South Americans prefer to dine later, so nearby restaurants that are open late will be desirable. Venues should have the expertise and flexibility to provide basic food needs for the variety of diets your guests may have.
• Embassy or consulate support. Should a guest run into any difficulties, illnesses or crisis back home, help from their country’s embassy or consulate can be invaluable.
• Acceptance of diversity. Small out-of-the-way places can be very insular in any country, so be sure the location is generally welcoming to international guests with very different customs.
• Smoking availability. Most U.S. hotels restrict smoking or are smoke-free. Yet, because many international travelers smoke, you’ll need to work with your venue to accommodate smokers in the U.S. as well as accommodate U.S. non-smokers when in other countries.
• Access to services for foreign travelers. This can include multilingual hotel staff, currency exchange availability onsite or nearby, international power and phone jacks in rooms, and foreign television stations and newspapers.

4. Study Calendars Before Picking the Event Dates.

Bank holidays, national holidays and religious holidays can impact whether guests choose to attend and what services will be available. For example, Muslim guests will not travel over Ramadan, and U.S. guests will want to be home over the Thanksgiving holiday. Most travelers like to do some shopping and touring so it’s important that stores are open and local attractions aren’t extremely busy with local tourists.

5. Set Expectations With Pre-Trip Communications.

Develop webinars, videos, interactive Web platforms and print communications that carefully explain to the international travelers what the customs are of the event destination. Encourage travelers to immerse themselves in this new cultural experience. Guests may choose not to change their own habits to adapt to different customs, but they must at least be aware of them.

For example:

• Time expectations. In some cultures, a time is merely a suggestion not a mandate. If you will stick to a specific schedule, make that clear. If dinner is scheduled at 7:00 p.m., make sure guests know that the food will be served at that time. Or if a tour leaves at 8:00 a.m., the bus will not wait for late-comers. Likewise if the cultural norms are that an 8:00 p.m. dinner means you can show up as late at 9:00 p.m., make that clear too. Also describe if the country uses 12-hour or 24-hour time notations.
• Food expectations. Describe what foods are normally served at that destination for breakfast, lunch, dinner and receptions. Provide lists of foods and how they are customarily prepared and eaten. If you will provide alternative menus, let the travelers know.
• Clothing and dress expectations. In addition to weather, guests must know what clothing is considered appropriate in hotel lobbies, at meetings, on tours, for parties, when entering religious or government sites, etc. Strolling in the hotel lobby in swimwear is fine in the Caribbean, but not acceptable in many other locales.
• Gender mixing. If attendees have gender restrictions at public events such as dinners or on buses, guests need to be aware if your event will offer separate accommodations or if they will need to accept a mixed group. They should also be aware if your staff is mixed gender.
• Behavior expectations. Educate attendees about how to properly greet others (formally or by first name), how to approach a handshake, how to distribute a business card, the significance of a head nod or a specific hand gesture, the appropriateness of maintaining eye contact, and other local customs that can create very uncomfortable or insulting situations if participants are unaware.
• Safety expectations. Make sure attendees are well-versed in local scams that take advantage of tourists and what areas to avoid.

6. Be Aware of the Complexities of Global Shipping.

Shipping items for global events can be extremely tedious. Duties, customs issues and a plethora of paperwork add complexity and time. While it may be fun to give every attendee a tote bag and T-shirt, getting those things into some countries can take months and be very expensive. They also can become easily “lost” and never arrive at all.

Even if you purchase participant gifts locally, make sure the items can be exported and then imported legally at the participant’s home destination. Make technology your partner when providing conference print materials: Whenever possible, give travelers the ability to download materials onto their laptops or tablets, or access the material digitally when they return home.

7. Staff Up.

You will need more staff for an event that has international participants. Everything will take longer, and you will need to access services and make arrangements that attendees at a domestic event wouldn’t need or would handle themselves. Pre-event communications with participants will take longer as you work through time-zone issues. You may have to hire translators or interpreters for phone conversations to gather important information or help handle travel arrangements.

Transportation to and from the airport will be more complex, especially if travelers have done their own ticketing or haven’t informed you about their arrival and departure plans. Hotel check-in may take longer if you need to help with translations.

8. Prepare All Travel Communications in English, the Destination Local Language and the Traveler’s Native Language.

With English being widely spoken as an international business language, most travelers will speak some English or can hand their documents to someone who can interpret for them. If the travel materials are also in the destination local language, the travelers can ask a local for help, too.

9. Accept That Global Meetings Won’t Always Go Perfectly.

Here’s where your sense of humor kicks in. You won’t be able to please all the people all the time, but you can still host a wonderful event. If you are gracious and welcoming, most people in most cultures will respond in kind.

The opportunity to bring together international travelers can be exhilarating, educational and enriching. Being well-prepared and having the ability to adapt will serve you well. Doing it yourself is possible, but working with an experienced global agency will likely save you time, stress and expense in the long run. C&IT

Since 9/11, the general notion of meeting and event security has evolved from acute concerns about a terrorist attack to much more practical and likely threats, such as hackers stealing sensitive company information or an employee dying during the meeting.

However, even though the focus has shifted to more likely eventualities, the underlying concern remains the same — legal liability of some sort and a hefty related expense if anything goes wrong.

The bottom line on meeting and event security: “Having meetings that are secure, both physically and electronically, is a topic that is the most important one there is today for many companies,” says Gregorio Palomino, CDMP, CEP, CWP, CRE8IVE executive officer of San Antonio, TX-based CRE8AD8 Event & Travel Management, which operates 19 offices around the world.

That said, however, Alan Brill, senior managing director at global security consulting firm Kroll in Secaucus, NJ, notes that in the meeting industry, not enough attention is paid to event security.

“The most significant risk is really a planner or executive at the company who simply doesn’t realize there is a risk,” he says. “For example, on the airplane on the way to the meeting, they can be reading about a hacking attack or a malware attack on a company. But when they get to the meeting destination, that awareness seems to leave their mind because they’re focused on the meeting itself. So they do things that if they thought about them, they’d realize they’re not such a hot idea.”

And that inattention to risk applies to both meeting planners and attendees, Brill says.

He says, for example, both planners and attendees often use an unsecured wireless Internet connection in the hotel or venue. “And they don’t see the sign or the message that says, ‘This is not a secure network,’ ” Brill says. “And that means someone can eavesdrop on what you’re doing. But that seems to not register with an awful lot of people.”

A related reality is that meeting planners and attendees do not often think of themselves as a potential target. “They say, ‘Who would target me? What do I have that’s worth targeting?’ ” Brill says. “And those people are forgetting how valuable and in demand intellectual property is these days. They also tend to forget that their financial information or information about their customers is online — and vulnerable to the kinds of malware attacks we’ve seen recently.”

The Big Threat — Onsite Activity

Despite obvious concerns in some quarters about external threats, the real threat, in a day-to-day practical sense, comes from what could happen onsite during the meeting, says Eric Clay, complex director of security at Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort in Orlando.

“That is definitely a major concern now for every group that comes in,” Clay says. “And because of that, they want to know exactly how things are going to be handled in the case of any kind of emergency.”

Therefore, advance preparation is now a key consideration. “For large groups, we now have meetings months in advance to go over details of the meeting,” Clay says. “And we work very closely with the meeting planners and our security team to try to go over a very comprehensive plan of exactly how we would respond to each individual kind of situation. We work hard to make sure everyone is on the same page and in agreement about how things will be handled.”

A key current area of concern for meeting planners and company executives is a hotel’s local emergency response capabilities. “For example,” Clay says, “they want to know what sort of medical facilities are in the area and what sort of medical care we can provide for our guests.”

The reason: that kind of emergency is the one most likely to happen during a meeting or event.

For example, an attendee has a heart attack or suffers a fall or some other kind of injury or infirmity onsite.

“And recently, we’ve seen that question asked so much that we’ve actually hired a couple of EMTs (emergency medical technicians) to work on-property,” Clay says. “That’s important now, because large groups generally want a dedicated EMT.”

Swan & Dolphin charges a fee to assign an EMT exclusively to a particular group.

“Additionally,” Clay says, “all of our security officers have received basic first aid training so that they can render aid until paramedics or an EMT is available.”

Another concern commonly cited by planners is the response time of the local fire department. “And that response time is very quick,” Clay says. “Generally, they can be on-property within about three minutes, because we’re very close to their facilities.”

Planners also ask about the proximity of local hospitals. “We now have a sheet that we provide to groups that shows the closest hospitals, trauma centers and pharmacies,” Clay says. “We also provide turn-by-turn directions on how to get there in an emergency and phone numbers so they can call ahead.”

Evacuation Plans

Another hot topic of current concern is emergency procedures in the event of an onsite disaster, such as a fire, Clay says. “A few years back, we didn’t get a lot of questions about that, but now people are really concerned about things like evacuation abilities and staging areas in case of some sort of disaster,” Clay says. “People now ask about our ability to respond to a range of emergencies that could happen on-property.”

Specifically, he says he gets a lot of requests for details of the resort’s emergency evacuation plan.

One major concern that is relatively recent, but understandable given blaring media headlines over the last few years, is the possibility of an onsite active shooter.

“The possibility of there being an active shooter on-property is a hot topic right now,” Clay says. “So we get asked how we would respond to that — what our exact procedures are.”

Swan & Dolphin has a specific plan in place that is drilled quarterly, Clay says, noting that many other major meeting properties have similar plans in place now.

“We also work very closely with our local emergency response personnel, from the sheriff’s office and the fire department, to regularly review the plan, including reviews of physical layouts of the property so that they are familiar with it,” Clay says. “And that includes walking the property to see where the places are where something could happen.”

Although concerns about things like a shooter or a fire prompt a lot of questions from planners these days, the more immediate concern — and the one that needs an equal amount of attention — is internal considerations within the meeting group.

Full Disclosure

“Trust is a big part of the process,” Clay says. “That means the planner has to be prepared to sit down and go over with us everything they think could possibly happen at the meeting that could require some kind of emergency response.”

For example, he says, “Does the group include attendees with a heart condition or someone who suffered a heart attack in the recent past? Do you have any disgruntled former employees who have made any kind of threat against the company? Has the company received any external threats and if so, from where and from whom?”

When those kinds of questions are addressed, Clay says, “there is sometimes something we learn that could occur, whether that’s a medical condition or some kind of threat. The point is that we need to know everything that the planner knows about the kinds of things they might encounter during the meeting.”

It’s only with such complete disclosure and knowledge, Clay says, that a full spectrum of protections can be properly put in place.

Meeting and Event Security Threats From Within

Palomino points out that in reality, the most likely threats to a group originate from within the attendee population, rather than from the outside.

Therefore, at a large meeting open to third-party attendees, every registrant must be fully vetted. “You have to make sure you know who everyone is at your meeting and that they belong there,” Palomino says. “You need to verify identities and also understand exactly why people are at the meeting.”

“You have to make sure you know who everyone is at your meeting and that they belong there. You need to verify identities and also understand exactly why people are at the meeting.” — Gregorio Palomino

A related threat is a disgruntled employee who is planning to leave the company after the meeting — and who is planning to take very valuable information with them to inflate their market value. “And it’s hard to know who those people are,” Palomino says.

Best practices for onsite security under such circumstances “start at the curb,” Palomino says. “You really need to make sure that the only people pulling up to the curb are people that belong at the meeting. And at that point, people who know who the attendees are must be checking badges to make sure everyone showing up is a legitimate attendee. And you have to have people identifying and challenging anyone suspicious before they ever get into the hotel or venue.”

And because of the importance of doing that properly — outside the meeting rather than inside — “it’s extremely important that you have the meeting or event planner out there as the first touch point,” Palomino says. “You don’t want to be using a personnel firm at $10 or $15 an hour to clear people into the meeting, because they don’t know your people, and they don’t know what to look for. You have to have people there that know each and every attendee and can identify them.”

Once an attendee is inside the venue, identities need to be checked and confirmed again when they check in. “And there are a lot of meetings these days where that is not done properly,” Palomino says. “They just pretty much have open doors and just about anyone can walk in if you’re not careful. And the bigger the meeting, the more true that is.”

Data Theft

The vulnerability of sensitive data or intellectual property to theft is a primary concern. And given all the headlines lately about data breaches at major U.S. companies, the concern is growing.

“If you’re using wireless Internet technology at your meeting in a hotel — and virtually all meetings do that now — it’s very important that the information you’re sharing does not leave the room,” Palomino says. “And maintaining optimal security today involves an expense. I wish I could say that meeting planners could just walk into a typical hotel and use their free Wi-Fi for their meeting. But it’s not that way anymore. These days, security breaches happen all the time. So as a meeting planner, you have to be extremely mindful of that and be prepared.”

And the most severe threat today is not from hackers, Palomino says. “It’s from well-organized corporate espionage — criminal organizations,” he says. “The reason is a hacker does not know what he’s looking for. A criminal organization that does corporate espionage knows exactly what it’s looking for, such as IP data on your new product or details of the business strategy you’re presenting at the meeting. That’s the kind of information that is really valuable.”

The more sensitive — and therefore more valuable — the information being disseminated at the meeting, the greater the threat, Palomino says. That’s because industrial espionage has become a very lucrative global enterprise. “So you have to be extremely careful today,” Palomino says.

And no vulnerability is greater than that of unprotected wireless Internet service, Brill says.

Unfortunately, he adds, he does not think the average meeting planner or attendee understands the vulnerability of a public Wi-Fi network. “The reason is they just don’t think in those terms,” Brill says. “They’re used to being connected at the office and at home and they’re used to having Internet access 24/7. So when they go into a different environment, they’re now vulnerable, but they never think about that.”

And now that more and more major flag hotels are introducing free Wi-Fi throughout the property as a selling tool, the threat is being further exacerbated.

The good news is that protection via the use of VPN (virtual private network) technology is also now readily available and inexpensive, Brill says. And all meeting planners should implement VPN security as a standard practice for all meetings and events, Brill adds.

He also advises that if valuable intellectual property or other sensitive data is being discussed at the meeting, it should never be stored on a laptop or smartphone.

“In fact, you shouldn’t store data on any kind of machine anymore. Keep it on some kind of external device, such as a thumb drive or other kind of secure memory chip.” — Alan Brill

“In fact, you shouldn’t store data on any kind of machine anymore,” Brill says. “Keep it on some kind of external device, such as a thumb drive or other kind of secure memory chip.”

State-of-the-art protection at the moment, Brill says, is a USB drive mini-computer that stores data and uses a laptop only as a monitor, without transferring the data or storing it on the laptop.

The International Situation

To the extent that genuine external physical threats exist today, they are largely limited to overseas destinations, particularly in places such as Ukraine and Venezuela, where violent political upheavals could have created severe problems for a meeting group that happened by coincidence to be there when the trouble started.

“That’s the issue that currently keeps me awake at night, because for an overseas meeting, when my attendees are landing, I’m sleeping,” Palomino says, adding that international arrivals and departures are now the greatest concern. “And the way the world is going, I think international security is going to become more and more of a concern.”

A specific and very real concern internationally is the kidnapping of executives for ransom, which companies have been known to pay and then keep the incident quiet.

Palomino cited the example of a CEO kidnapped overseas not long ago. And the company paid a ransom in the millions. “And nobody ever heard anything about it,” Palomino says.

“The company kept it quiet. And that is not that uncommon anymore.”

As a result of this type of threat, companies now often provide expensive around-the-clock bodyguard protection for top executives at international meetings, unless they want to roll the dice on an even more expensive problem, Palomino says.

In a broader sense, Clay says, companies today must address meeting security with end-to-end attention to the most specific details of the most realistic security concerns and ensure the ability to respond immediately to any eventuality.

“We call it concierge-level security, where we are prepared to deal with anything that could happen,” Clay says. “And as a venue, we have to be constantly in contact with planners to let them know that we are prepared and that everything will go smoothly during their event, no matter what happens.” C&IT

The show floor at last year’s IMEX America offered countless opportunities for networking. Credit: IMEX America

It used to be that content was king. If you looked at meetings a decade ago, says Shuli Golovinski, founder and CEO of events software company Newton­strand and an innovator in this space, “It was 95 percent content and five percent networking.” But that’s changed — attendees want more networking events and less content (something they can always get online).

Meetings and events technology maven Corbin Ball, CSP, CMP, says that while networking has always had a role to play in events (“One good contact can pay for an entire trip,” he points out), the problem is that planners have never really had the right tools to facilitate it. “For years the key networking tool has been the name badge,” he says, adding that networking formats such as cocktail parties and receptions hadn’t changed much either.

What’s Wrong With Cocktail Parties?

The problem, says Golovinski, is that these conventional networking activities don’t work very well.

For example, a 15-minute networking break built into an all-day meeting program may work just fine for some individuals, particularly if they are extroverted. “So you may be a very open and easygoing guy who can start a conversation with anyone, but I’m kind of a shy guy,” Golovinski says. “I’m drinking a glass of wine, standing at the back of the room, waiting for someone to approach and start a discussion with me. So for people like me with that kind of personality, that 15 minutes is a waste of time — I’m not going to network with people during that break.”

Speed Networking

Another networking activity is “speed networking,” which is akin to speed dating and which Golovinski says is potentially a “huge waste of time.” He recalls a speed-networking event he attended for the events industry in London in which he spent five minutes with a woman who really didn’t have a clue about what Golovinski did or could provide.

“I asked her what she did, and she told me she ran a dry cleaning service,” Golovinski says. Rather taken aback, he asked her why she was attending a function for the events industry and was told that many of her clients were from that industry so she considered herself to be an “events professional” who wanted to grow her business.

“So I told her — with all due respect — that this had been a total waste of my last five minutes,” he says. “I would prefer to spend 15 minutes with a planner instead of five minutes with the dry cleaning lady!”

In addition, Golovinski adds, from a numbers point of view, speed networking doesn’t make a lot of sense. If there are 50 people in the room and a planner wants all of them to meet each other in five-minute segments, that works out to about five hours of non-stop speaking. “So the question becomes that in a meeting or conference — some of which can be as big as 20,000 people — how do you identify the five or 10 people that you would like to meet throughout the event,” he says.

Corporate Responsibility as Networking

American Micro Devices (AMD), a multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, was the driving force behind the integration of a volunteer corporate responsibility event at a South by Southwest (SXSW) ECO Conference in Austin, TX.

It was the first time this kind of event had been integrated into the ECO Conference and, according to AMD Global Sustainability Manager Justin Murrill, it was inspired by a certain sense of disappointment with experiences at similar events in the past.

“When we come back from a lot of these events we talk about what we learned and what we liked about these conferences,” says Murrill. “And in our discussions with our director of corporate responsibility, we kept hearing ourselves talk about how the quality and quantity of networking at these events was limited. The other thing we are supposed to get excited about is the cause that we were there to support, but there was never any kind of action taken at the event. So we decided to do something about it.”

In organizing the corporate responsibility aspect of the event, AMD collaborated with other local businesses such as Dell and Whole Foods, as well as the City of Austin, Austin Community College and the University of Texas at Austin. It also partners with nonprofits such as Keep Austin Beautiful, the Waller Creek Conservancy, American YouthWorks and the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.

“In our discussions with our director of corporate responsibility, we kept hearing ourselves talk about how the quality and quantity of networking at these events was limited.” — Justin Murrill

In conjunction with the conference, AMD sponsored the cleanup of Waller Creek, inviting hundreds of volunteers to help clean up trash along the urban waterway. Starting on the University of Texas campus, volunteers worked their way down to Lady Bird Lake, picking up litter by foot and by kayak. The daylong project covered 25 blocks of creek through central Austin and included tree planting on the UT campus.

So not only did AMD maximize attendee involvement in an activity that complemented what the conference was all about (environmental action), it also created a model it hopes it can follow in other events. And it did so in a manner that provided a unique networking opportunities for its employees — one that differed from the traditional reception/cocktail party that doesn’t always work.

So what did this event achieve from a networking perspective, that more conventional methods didn’t?

“I think there is an intrinsic value associated with the activity,” says Murrill. “So it creates a deeper, more meaningful experience when it comes to building relationships. It’s a much different experience that facilitates deeper conversations and gets people beyond the typical ‘who do you work for and what do you do?’ interaction. It’s the kind of discussion that will more likely lead to a continued relationship after that initial interaction.”

In addition, the activity itself, by definition, required a degree of collaboration and working with people, says Murrill. “You get three or four people together to try to figure out how to pull a waterlogged hammock out of a creek and other things like that that people can’t do themselves.” Making this group structure available within a prolonged time frame assures that everyone should interact with the other members of the group in a meaningful way.

The planners also held a reception after the event to provide the participants with a more typical networking experience.

It Takes a Village

Last July, networking events expert Sarah Michel, CSP, vice president, professional connexity, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting, Colorado Springs, CO, helped organize what is called “Sage City” for Sage Summit 2013, a huge annual gathering of customers and business partners of Sage, an accounting and business management software supplier for startup, small and mid-size businesses. It was held at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in Washington, DC.

Instead of an opening general session with a keynote speaker, the summit features Sage City, a two-hour live conference networking event that allows people to meet and share what Michel refers to as “tacit knowledge” — the kind of actionable intelligence that people can use to solve their business problems.

“When you tell (attendees) ‘We’re going to make sure the networking you do is educational and we’re going to set it up for you to get some tacit knowledge,’ then that’s what they want.” — Sarah Michel, CSP

The most important aspect of Sage City, says Michel, is that it’s designed to foster networking not only during the actual event, but before and after as well. Before the Sage Summit takes place attendees are contacted and intelligence is gathered about an attendee’s background, interests, passions, concerns, as well as answers to random questions such as “name five people you’d like to sit next to during dinner.” The idea, Michel says, is to give attendees the opportunity to connect with people who work in the same space and are like-minded, “before they even got to the event.”

At the actual conference, the two-hour live networking event worked like theater-in-the-round — in this case a ballroom that on its perimeter had a series of villages representing the kinds of different jobs the attendees performed, with Michel in the center acting as the lead facilitator. And at each village participants had the chance to talk about hot topics collected from the attendees during the registration process. The groups met for two 40-minute rotations giving the attendees the opportunity to network in different villages and talk about different concerns “that kept them up at night.

“This got people connected from the get-go,” says Michel, “and those connections built up during the week.” And with the end of the conference came the creation of the “Sage City online community,” which gives the attendees the opportunity to continue the conversation that began back in Washington, DC.

This kind of emphasis on networking combined with education is critical, because that’s really what conference attendees are looking for, says Michel.

At the Sage Summit, slightly more than half of the attendees who were Sage customers were brand new to the event, she says. When she asked them as a group if they were at the meeting to network about half of them raised their hands. “But when I asked them how many were there to network, if the networking included education, almost everyone raised their hands,” Michel says.

So for many attendees the term networking still implies cocktail parties and discussions over bagel and coffee — activities many aren’t interested in, says Michel. “But when you reframe the question and tell them ‘we’re going to make sure the networking you do is educational and we’re going to set it up for you to get some tacit knowledge,’ then that’s what they want.”

What planners have to do is to create the space for that kind of networking to occur, Michel says. “Putting out bagels and coffee, saying we’re going to have a networking hour, and then hope that at least 50 percent of the room isn’t introverted and won’t know how to initiate a conversation, just isn’t going to work.”

Tech Tools for Networking Events

What does technology have to offer? Newtonstrand has developed a tool called Chance2meet, which, Golovinski says, empowers structured networking. Prior to the event, attendees can log on to the event’s website where they can see the profiles of attendees (absent their personal and contact information) to get a sense of which ones are worth networking with.

It gives the attendees a chance to preschedule meetings — without the hassle of going through some ice-breaking process — so they can get right down to business and network for a prescribed period of time. “And if the chemistry is good, you can continue that discussion through and after the event,” Golovinski points out. “It’s a way for participants to take full advantage of a networking event.”

There’s been a “whole plethora” of social media tools that recently have been designed for meetings and events, says Ball. “Meetings were really the original social media, so they really go hand-in-hand with these new tools, many of which are free.”

One that he’s particularly excited about is a mobile networking application called Bizzabo. With Bizzabo a planner can create an instant social network for his or her attendees before an event takes place. The planner can incorporate event details such as logos, agendas, locations and social media links so that attendees can access meeting agendas, check out who’s attending the conference, message other attendees and schedule face-to-face meetings, and use social media links such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

Bizzabo also provides event analytics and polling features, which give planners some real data to work with while eliminating the need for feedback forms. “And it’s free, so the price is right,” says Ball. “It’s a good example of how mobile technology is changing networking.” Bizzabo also offers a tiered pricing schedule for larger events.

“We’re a gregarious animal — we’re always looking for ways to congregate and meet. It’s a biological imperative,” says Ball. “Now, we’re finally getting better tools to do it with.” C&IT

Chris Lee, DMCP,  is chief executive officer of Access Destination Services, one of the most recognized destination management companies in North America. He has been involved in the hospitality industry since 1987. Chris is a co-founder and past president of the Association of Destination Management Executives International, a contributing author to The Guide to Successful Destination Management, and the more recent Best Practices in Destination Management. He was among the first to earn the DMCP certification and is a past Destination Management Professional of the Year honoree, the highest peer award in the industry. www.accessdmc.com

Each year, meeting planners and destination management companies around the world are challenged to impress an increasingly savvy clientele. Companies are challenged to keep guests on the edge of their seats and create powerful, meaningful and memorable experiences. Events need to be impactful — not stale. Attendees want to be at the forefront of what’s new, trending and relevant. And, they want something interactive.

Multi-Sensory Events

In the age of information, your guests’ minds are constantly stimulated, but what about their physical senses? Building events and experiences to awe your clients by seeking creative ways to activate all five senses will differentiate your meeting in a crowded market and give your attendees something to connect with through sight, taste, scent, sound and touch.

Eaglewood Resort & Spa completed a $1.2 million renovation in 2013. Credit: Eaglewood

As convention centers and major hotel conference centers offer less space and fewer dates with limited amenities, turning to a conference center allows planners to stay within budget while offering attendees an experience with even more perks.

Though the meeting industry has rebounded and hotels are taking more powerful positions in negotiations, conference centers are still proceeding cautiously, eager to work with planners to create the best agreement for all parties. Thriving conference centers are placing a higher priority in their packages, services, and physical spaces to help planners provide that intangible something special for attendees.

In the Seller’s Market, Planners’ Needs Can Take a Back Seat

“People feel like the economy is coming back, and they’re willing to have more meetings, but while we’re able to have more meetings, we’re not able to pay more for them,” shares Judy Anderson, senior manager, meetings and travel, for Grapevine, TX-based GameStop. “I will choose locations that will keep rates steady. Going five dollars over my room rate will cause me to leave.” While many planners share her sentiments, not all hotels are listening.

Julie Powers, CMP, manager, global accounts for HelmsBriscoe in the Lake Forest, CA, office, comes across a wide swath of the market in her work, and suggests the writing is on the wall. “We’re going into a seller’s market,” she says. “We were starting to see it at the end of 2013 and now in 2014, it’s going to be in full force.”

When Joann Chmura, CMP, CMM, meeting and event manager at Stamford, CT-based Viridian Energy (at the time of this writing) set out to plan Viridian’s main 2014 event, she had to begin at square one. “We were trying to find a location. We were going to Baltimore, because we outgrew the size of the hotel in DC. The hotel in DC knew they couldn’t make it work, and we just shook hands and parted ways. I was trying to track someone down at the Gaylord National Harbor, and when I did she was very apologetic about the initial lack of response. The person we dealt with at DC ended up going to Gaylord, and he didn’t even follow up on our request.

“But we went to meet them, and then it took a couple weeks to get one room drawing,” she continues. “Then I asked for a contract and one week went by, then another and so on. We were thinking about going somewhere else, and then in one day, we had six drawings. Location number three is what we finally went with, and since we signed I went to Gaylord to tell them we went somewhere else, and they asked me why. I told them, ‘It just wasn’t going to work. You just weren’t doing everything you could to work with us.’

“It’s a seller’s market with the hotels and convention centers, and it wasn’t like that a few years ago,” Chmura shares. “I just started getting the feeling that if we’re not getting the focus now, how is it going to be while we’re onsite? I think they lose sight that this is about relationships. Why burn that bridge? That person isn’t going to be there forever.”

CBORD attendees network at Joe’s Joint at Grand Oaks Mansion, an indoor recreation of a Southern mansion located inside Mardi Gras World. Credit: Bordway Photography

There’s nothing quite like a great accolade to attract visitors to a city. National Geographic Traveler magazine has named New Orleans as one of the 21 “must-see” destinations in the world for 2014. The New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau even helps along the process of planning meetings in their city by offering suggested themes like “Big Ideas in the Big Easy,” “Get Jazzed in New Orleans” and “Get Down to Business, then Just Get Down.”

New Orleans

Kelley DeMarchi, senior marketing and events manager for the technology solutions company The CBORD Group, staged her company’s 33rd annual user group conference in New Orleans in October. She has had the city on her radar for a while.

“We chose New Orleans because after Hurricane Katrina we’ve been hearing a lot about the refresh of the city, and our attendees like to have fun. This is an educational conference, and it’s all about the professional development for our customers. New Orleans was always in the back of our minds, and we thought ‘Hey, let’s give it a try.’ ”

High-Tech Hotel

CBORD chose the Hyatt Regency New Orleans for its conference, which attracted approximately 625 attendees, including customers, vendors and staff. DeMarchi explains why they decided on this hotel. “We chose the Hyatt due to the newer technologies that they have. They have RFID key cards, and they have a high-speed elevator system, so you use your key to get on the elevator. There are no buttons inside of the elevator.”

The Hilton Sandestin Beach & Golf Resort on Northwest Florida’s Gulf Coast. Credit: Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa

With all the focus on Orlando among corporate planners considering the Sunshine State, it’s refreshing to see a company that diversifies its Floridian destinations, taking advantage of cities such as Jacksonville, Boca Raton and Key Largo for business meetings and incentive programs. Richardson, TX-based Lennox Industries is one such company, giving each of these cities — as well as Orlando — a piece of its meetings “pie,” as Cecilia Daddio, CMP, event and incentive manager, colorfully puts it. “Florida is one of our favorite destinations for different types of meetings. Whatever message you are trying to (convey with your event), Florida has an appropriate site, whether beachy or not. There are hidden jewels out there that work for the budget.”

Jacksonville

One of those jewels is Jacksonville, which Daddio likens to San Antonio and New Orleans in terms of its accessibility, affordability and convenience to attractions for attendees on their free time. The 963-room Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront (110,000 sf of meeting space) was a short commute from the airport for about 450 attendees of a recent Lennox business meeting, and “those who wanted to could explore the riverfront,” Daddio relates. Jacksonville Landing, situated in the downtown area along the St. Johns River, offers dining, shopping and nightlife. “And within 30 minutes, they could reach Amelia Island or St. Augustine,” she adds.

There is plenty of recreation to be sought in Jacksonville beyond the riverfront. The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, which turns 100 years old this year, will celebrate by opening the new Land of the Tiger exhibit in March featuring endangered Asian tigers. Home to more than 2,000 rare and exotic animals and more than 1,000 plant species, the zoo is Northeast Florida’s most visited attraction. The zoo offers rooms and locations throughout the park for themed events as well as behind-the-scenes tours and scavenger hunts for groups.

The city’s more refined side is represented by The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, which has started a renovation project that includes the Olmsted Garden (a riverfront garden that dates back to 1931) as well as the entire Riverside Avenue portion of Cummer’s campus. Rentable event spaces at the museum include the Hixon Auditorium, Terry Gallery and Italian Gardens, with maximum capacities of 130, 300 and 50, respectively.

Twenty miles southeast of Jackson­ville, the seaside Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, a landmark since opening in 1928, caters to lovers of the outdoors with 36 holes of golf on the Ocean Course and Lagoon Course, beachfront event options, an oceanfront fitness center, 15 tennis courts, pools and panoramic views of sand and sea from most of the resort’s 250 luxury rooms and suites. There is more than 25,000 sf of flexible indoor function space, which includes a 6,240-sf ballroom that can accommodate 450 attendees.

Could this massive sculpture called Cupid’s Span be one of the iconic images to appear on San Francisco’s new game app? Credit: San Francisco Travel

Destination Marketing Organi­zations (DMOs), also known as Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs), are hopping on the digital and social media marketing bandwagon to promote their destinations to planners and the public, vie with competitors for meetings, and grow return on investment.

Indeed, DMO websites are centerpieces of marketing efforts. The sites are integrated with social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to provide resources and information that meeting planners need to sell destinations to groups and executives.

Looking to leverage the power of social media, DMOs are forging social media partnerships with hotels, restaurants, attractions and others to co-promote destinations. Many DMOs are stepping up marketing via smartphones and tablets and optimizing their websites to make browsing easier on the small screens of mobile devices.

Websites Provide a Wealth of Information

DMO websites are often the first stop for 25-year meeting planning veteran Maureen Santoro, manager of group operations at Atlas Meetings + Incentives in Milford, MA. “When I first started as a planner with no experience, CVB sites were a great help to learn about destinations,” says Santoro. “But as I grew as a planner and became more experienced and well-traveled, I used them less. But now I’m back to using the websites again, very much so due to the information they offer. They are a lot more sophisticated and designed like a planner thinks.”

Santoro knows what she wants on DMO sites. “I look for downloadable versions of information such as meeting and convention services booklets, links to suppliers and a planner’s toolbox,” says Santoro. “There are also checklists and templates to help with planning. I also check meeting schedules to see if there is a large city-wide happening to tell me if pricing is going to be an issue because availability will be tight.”

Recently, Santoro navigated the Visit Tucson site as she began planning a four-day meeting for 60 executives of an industrial machinery company. She examined several sources. “I spent a good amount of time on the site,” says Santoro. “I looked at everything — hotels, resorts, things to do, the weather, transportation, the Tucson region and volunteerism opportunities, which are important to the clients. When I was done absorbing what I could on the site, I got the name of a CVB person from the site and called that person. She gave me valuable information about hotels to consider that I couldn’t get on the website.”

Santoro finds that DMO digital information helps her zero in on attributes of a destination to educate and persuade groups and C-suite executives. “If I’m trying to convince a group to go to a destination and I don’t know much about it, then I’m not going to sound convincing,” says Santoro. “The information I get from a website in combination with speaking to somebody is invaluable in taking the information and passing it along to clients. If they are on the fence about a location, it might actually help make up their mind.”

Traditional and Digital Marketing Activities

Planners are finding that social and digital media play an increasingly large role in DMO marketing. The Destination Marketing Association International’s 2012 DMO Marketing Activities Study sums up the progress: “Although traditional marketing (print/broadcast advertising, consumer shows/events) still commands a large share of DMO leisure marketing dollars, there is a noticeable commitment toward digital marketing,” the report states.

“DMOs have fully embraced a wide variety of online activities into their overall destination marketing efforts. Banner ads and search engine marketing (SEM)/adwords dominate, comprising more than half of DMO online budgets. Social media is now a permanent element of destination marketing, with almost all responding DMOs present on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube,” states the report.

Numbers tell the story. Traditional marketing methods account for 63 percent of the total of all DMO marketing budgets, while digital efforts make up 34 percent, the study reports. Ninety-eight percent of DMOs use Facebook, 91 percent are on Twitter and 88 percent utilize YouTube.

Much of the information that DMOs market to planners also is available on digital sources other than CVB websites. For example, planners such as Mary Ann Willingham, who extensively use services such as Cvent also use CVB marketing information. Willingham, director, meetings IQ operations and account management for Plymouth, MN-based Travel Leaders Group LLC, says that they also use CVB sites because they don’t want to rely on a single source for information that’s important to their clients. “We use CVB sites as much as anything to make sure we haven’t overlooked any information. And the information from Cvent can be a starting point to contact CVBs for more specifics and establish a relationship if none exists.”

Willingham cites an example of how she uses CVB digital information. “We have one customer that goes to Australia every year. Very often, they want to do something different, like a different restaurant or activity. So the CVB information in a place like Sydney can be very useful. Information that we get on a community, whether we get it from a CVB or Cvent, is crucial to a presentation, because the more information you have about a destination, the better,” says Willingham.

The new Omni Nashville Hotel is integrated with the newly expanded Country Music Hall of Fame.

“Nashville seems to be the ‘it’ spot. There has been a lot of investment in downtown, and there have been so many improvements in facilities and infrastructure. There’s a lot of excitement about Nashville right now.”

Christopher Bartholomew, a senior meeting planner for Shaklee Corporation, experienced it firsthand when the company brought 5,000 attendees to town last summer for the Shaklee Global Conference, which had previously met in the city in 2007.

“Nashville is very compact and convenient,” Bartholomew adds. “I hesitate to say this, but it’s sort of like Las Vegas in that regard. You can walk out of your hotel door and have entertainment right there. But it’s far better than Las Vegas, at least for our group. Nashville is fun and exciting, and has all the great music and dining, but it also always feels like a place where you can really bring family.”

Credit: NicoTucol/www.Shutterstock.com

As the meeting industry continues to evolve during its post-recession recovery, one significant new trend is the increase in the use of hybrid meetings that cater to two distinctly different kinds of audiences — live and virtual. In order to be successful, planners need to understand the unique needs and challenges involved in helping speakers and presenters deliver maximum impact, based on the underlying objectives of the event.

“You have to plan for two audiences having two different kinds of experiences,” explains Troutdale, OR-based veteran speaker Roger Courville, author of “The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook” (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2009) and the former president of the Oregon chapter of the National Speakers Association. “That’s a meeting planner problem and a speaker problem. And both of you have to address the challenges.”

The speaker, Courville says, needs to be fully aware that there is a second audience and plan very clearly for how they’re going to engage that virtual audience. At the same time, however, the planner and presenter must carefully plan for maximum impact at the live event, too.

“If there is a mistake or shortcoming, it starts before the meeting, because you have to start the process by designing a new experience that is tailored to a specific goal,” Courville says. “And a big part of that is always thinking through how you are going to engage people and bring them into the conversation.”

At the heart of that mission is a fundamental requirement for careful planning of how attendees — live and virtual — will be equipped with the essential information they need in order for the goals of the meeting to be met and success to be measured. “And one of the things I would suggest, as a speaker and presenter, that planners can do more effectively would be to ask — if not prod — the speaker about how they can help design that new experience, and what supporting information before, at and after the event is required to be able to do that.”

Proper Preparation

Chris Kelly, co-founder and principal of New York City-based Convene, which operates state-of-the-art offsite meeting venues in Manhattan, has been directly involved in the ongoing maturation and evolution of hybrid meetings. As a result, he has identified another obvious key to success.

“One of the things that we find that is basic but is often forgotten or overlooked is proper preparation, which requires a walkthrough with the speakers,” Kelly says. “What we have found time and time again, regardless of how many times the speaker has made similar presentations before, is that doing a simple walkthrough and getting the presenter familiar with whatever the presentation method is — meaning how things are set up and will be executed — often is the single most effective way to mitigate against problems with the presentation.”

It’s also a proven method for making sure the speaker clearly understands the goals of the meeting and how those should be translated into the presentation.

Given those kinds of practical considerations, Nicholas Cox, Convene’s director of technology, stresses that comprehensive rehearsals are another key to success. “Ideally, you want to do a lot of formal rehearsals, to make sure that both the live and virtual components go as planned,” he says. “The basic idea is to make sure that the experience is essentially the same for both the live and virtual audiences within the context of the meeting. And part of that is making sure that audio levels are right and that your bandwidth allows the right speed of delivery to your virtual audience so nothing is delayed or disrupted. And accomplishing that sameness of experience, in real time, requires a very formal, quality-control process.”

Engagement Strategies

There probably aren’t many meeting planners left in the industry who do not grasp the notion that the catch phrase of the last few years has been “attendee engagement.”

However, Cox says, there are quite a few who still do not fully understand the differences between engaging a live attendee and a virtual participant.

By definition, he notes, the methods and quality of engagement are fundamentally different for live and virtual audiences. “That’s one reason why so many companies still want to have only live meetings, where they have face-to-face engagement,” he says. “That’s because in a virtual meeting, there are only two dimensions — audio and video. You don’t have the human element that you do in a face-to-face meeting. So you have to know how to compensate for that to get the same results from a virtual audience in terms of engagement.”

For example, Convene preaches the need for a dedicated person in the live audience who will act as the onsite representative of and advocate for virtual attendees.

“The reason that is important is because the people who are at the event physically tend to take precedence with their questions and comments over the virtual audience,” Kelly says. “So the best way to prevent that or correct for that is to have someone who actually represents the virtual audience and makes sure they are equally engaged and heard.”

That advocate can field questions and comments from a live Twitter feed or Facebook page and relay them to the presenter. In another variation, tweets from both live and virtual attendees can be prominently displayed for everyone to see and react to, which in turn drives a deeper level of collective engagement.

However, Kelly says, one hard-learned caveat for many planners is that while there are an ever-increasing number of technology options that can produce very dynamic events, the greatest audience engagement comes when the program or app interacts with the technology that participants are already most familiar and comfortable with. “As opposed to adding additional or new technology onto the conference platform,” Kelly says, “we like to think in terms of what kinds of tools are already in play with a particular group of attendees that we can adapt to the conference, instead of asking what kind of crazy new technology we can impose upon the audience.”

His point is that often the simpler the technology, the better the results. “Instead of looking for what’s newest and most technologically advanced, planners really should look for the lowest common denominator based on who their audience is, their relative degree of technological sophistication, and the tools they know best and are most comfortable with,” Kelly says.

Technical Education

Another unfolding realization among meeting planners responsible for staging hybrid meetings and making sure presentations go off without a hitch is an understanding of ever more complex technical challenges.

For example, Cox says, the available bandwidth in many hotels and meeting venues — and the cost of accessing it — is a fundamental issue that must be analyzed and addressed. Related to that is the reality that with regard to the delivery of problem-free hybrid meetings, a venue is by definition only as good as its capabilities.

The rapid evolution of Wi-Fi technology and the numerous types of devices that many attendees carry means a planner must look carefully at how many total participants will be at a meeting and how many a prospective data network can handle.

Meanwhile, the list of new technology options that support meeting effectiveness keeps on growing.

One current trend that is generating a lot of excitement is highly interactive, cloud-based technologies. “One is TeleOffice, from iDeep Solutions Corporation, which provides innovative engagement capabilities with touch-panel screens,” Kelly says. “Attendees can actually interact with the screen itself and make notations, and those notations will be received by every attendee who has a Wi-Fi enabled mobile device. From a presenter’s point of view, that allows you to share screens in real time with your entire audience, both live and virtual. The only requirement on the recipient’s end is a Wi-Fi-enabled device.”

Feedback Is Vital

Regardless of the type of meeting or the technological flourishes deployed, getting in-depth feedback from both live and virtual attendees is vital in order to assess the success of the event.

That is particularly important to Christina DeHaven, CMP, project manager at Universal World Events in Allentown, NJ, because she specializes in pharmaceutical meetings. And no component of a pharma meeting is more important than effective presentations and attendee comprehension, she says.

Therefore, a key weapon in her arsenal, especially for hybrid meetings, is an audience response system (ARS) that allows her to monitor and measure attendee engagement and learning.

“I have found that is necessary to help the speaker overcome the kinds of engagement challenges that can come up at both live and virtual events,” DeHaven says, adding that her common practice now is to make sure there is a steady flow of questions and comments from attendees — in real time.

One innovative provider she favors is Tallen Technology, which offers an assortment of ARS tools. Among the newest — and the one DeHaven likes best — is a Reply Ativa keypad equipped with Tallen Audience software. The device, about the size of a smartphone, features a fully dynamic color touch screen. Its capabilities include a virtual QWERTY keyboard, SMS text messaging, customizable viewing space, smart-card programming, self-paced testing and advanced Q&A management.

DeHaven finds such a sophisticated device essential to the ability of her clients to assess every aspect of the effectiveness of speakers and presenters and the overall success of a meeting.

However, she also uses the kind of on-site “attendee advocate” that Kelly and Courville recommend. DeHaven uses the same person to facilitate engagement of both live and virtual attendees.

“I believe that the most advanced ARS tools are critical to ensuring that the physicians that attend my meetings are engaged and that they are absorbing and understanding the information being presented to them,” DeHaven says. “So we throw in a lot of polling questions, just so we can get feedback and assess who was actively participating in the presentations. It’s not all just about information of data. We also want the speakers or presenters to have fun with the material and make it fun as part of the larger engagement strategy. It can’t just be about an overwhelming amount of technical information.”

What she has learned as the use of hybrid meetings increases, DeHaven says, is that planners and meeting hosts must be able to gather a clear measurement of just how engaged attendees were, both in the live audience and in the virtual arena.

“I want to know who we kept engaged for the whole time and who we lost,” she says. “And if we lost someone, we know whether we lost them at the beginning, in the middle or at the end. Or did everyone stay engaged and then say they enjoyed the meeting? And that kind of detailed knowledge about how your presenters are performing is very important.”

Although April Abernathy, director, program management, at Beaverton, OR-based Opus Events Agency, agrees with DeHaven’s assessment of the importance of attendee feedback, her focus is on making sure the right equipment and technology are deployed for a meeting and that everything will work as planned when it comes to problem-free presentations.

And for many planners like her who are new to the world of hybrid meetings, Abernathy says, a focus on technical fundamentals precedes a focus on more sophisticated capabilities such as audience engagement and feedback.
“For us,” Abernathy says, “because we are relatively new to hybrid meetings, the most important thing is making sure that speakers and presenters are properly prepared and ready to go, with an understanding of the goals of the meeting and how success will be measured.”

But, she quickly adds, she has already mastered a valuable lesson she can pass on to other planners who are a step or two behind her on the learning curve. “And that is to take nothing for granted when it comes to staging a hybrid meeting and making sure your presentations accomplish what they are supposed to,” she says, adding that wise planners also will combine that with respect for Murphy’s Law — and that indeed, anything that can go wrong likely will.

And that, in turn, she says, just reinforces the need for extensive preparation and attention to every detail of the meeting.

“And when it comes to doing a hybrid meeting, the other thing I’ve learned,” Abernathy says, “is that you have to think in terms of the performance in both arenas. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s really a live meeting. I just have to set up a WebEx event as the online portion. It’s not that simple.” C&IT