Panel Explores the Future of Meetings
On the final day of
MeetDifferent 2010, MPI Foundation (MPIF) vice chair Kevin Olsen, president and principal of One Smooth Stone, quizzed a panel of five industry leaders on the road ahead for meetings and events.
Olsen asked each panelist for one word to describe meetings in 2009. MPIF Chair-Elect
Ken Sanders, president of Freeman AV, chose “transition.” MPIF Chair
Margaret Moynihan, CMP, director at Deloitte LLP, said “pain.”
Michael Massari, VP, meeting sales and operations at Las Vegas Harrah’s Entertainment, picked “persistence.”
Angie Pfeifer, CMM, assistant VP of corporate meetings at Investors Group Financial Services Ltd., said “growth.”
Mike Dominguez, VP, global sales at Loews Hotels & Resorts, said “new.”
Moynihan described the pain of renegotiating contracts and doing more with less. Efficiency was a mantra in 2009, “but you don’t have the time to find more efficient ways of doing things. So it’s just pain.”
Massari said the waves kept crashing down on the industry in 2009 until people picked themselves up and shouldered into the next one. “The waves haven’t gotten any smaller. We’re just learning how to deal with them.”
Pfeifer said Canada’s financial services sector did well in 2009, and is growing now. Her challenge is to do more with less, because “we’re busier than we’ve ever been.”
Dominguez commented that “if anyone tells you they’ve figured it out, they’re wrong, because we haven’t finished yet.” The world continues to change, politically and economically, and “I really don’t know if there’s going to be a ‘new normal’ for five years. It’s going to continue to shift every 18 months, every 24 months. That’s the world we live in,” and every business segment and economy will be affected.
Following a couple of general sessions where speakers urged participants to embrace the unknown, some panelists said their risks would be more calculated. “Until I’m sure what the new normal is going to be, I’m going to be careful about taking huge risks,” Massari said. Sanders stressed the constant need to measure results, noting that Freeman hadn’t become a US$1 billion, debt-free company by being risky.
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