MPI is offering three pre-World Education Congress (WEC) sessions this year that will help you boost your career and supplement existing knowledge.

“There are few opportunities to easily and quickly earn enough clock hours for your CMP,” said Kristi Johnson, CMP, CMM, marketing manager for MPI. “WEC gives you the ability to earn 10.5 clock hours by attending concurrent sessions during the event. Add in six or seven hours by attending a pre-conference session such as the ROI Workshop or the CMP Master Class, and you are well on your way to satisfying Convention Industry Council clock hour requirements for CMP certification or re-certification.”

Attendees at the Two-Day ROI Workshop will learn why ROI needs to be measured, major steps in ROI methodology, 12 guiding principles of ROI, how to develop a detailed evaluation plan for a meeting and how to identify and describe at least three ways to isolate the effects of a meeting.

The CMP Master Class will provide attendees with a unique organizational strategy by which to prepare for the CMP test as well as offer important test-taking tips. Attendees will also be able to decrease test anxiety, strategically prepare and increase their success rates of obtaining the CMP designation.

We’re also offering a Core Skills Workshop for attendees new to our industry or looking to refresh basic skills. In this workshop, attendees will learn about menu planning, audiovisual planning, space planning and room sets, content/program planning, site visits, contract negotiation, budgeting and more.

The city of Honolulu—and in fact the entire tourism industry of Hawaii—felt that it had more or less dodged a bullet in March when the National Football League (NFL) announced that it was not going to relocate the annual Pro Bowl game from the Aloha State in 2014. The internationally televised game would return to Aloha Stadium, at least for another season.

“This is really important to the tourism industry and indeed the entire community in Honolulu, because it is not just an event that produces US$25 million to $30 million in direct revenue in tourist spending, but it is something that has been part of the fabric of the community for 30 years now,” said Michael Story, the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s (HTA) sports tourism brand manager. 

Story says that while Hawaii pays the NFL $4 million a year for the rights to host the Pro Bowl and received $3 million in tax revenues from what the tourists and the visiting news media spent there during Pro Bowl week, the destination gets what the HTA estimates at as $200 million worth of TV, Internet and print media exposure from coverage of the event.

“And then there is the incalculable value you get when NFL players visit children’s hospitals in our community, and the players and the cheerleaders hold workshops for our local youngsters—that’s something of huge value,” Story said.

One reason the NFL had been talking about leaving Hawaii is that as football games go, the Pro Bowl is not exactly an advertising revenue cash cow for the league—it draws lower TV ratings than regular-season games. That is in part because although the players enjoy the limelight of being selected for the Pro Bowl, as the Associated Press wrote, they tend “to hit like they were in a pillow fight instead of a football game.” The players are incentivized not to risk being hurt, which could potentially end their individual, multimillion-dollar careers in a game that does not count against any championship.

That situation would not, of course, be any different if the location of the game was changed.

The HTA is making every effort to keep the game permanently and, as Story says, is in “negotiations with the NFL to see what makes the most sense for both sides of the partnership in our ongoing relationship with the NFL.”

The Pro Bowl discussion and Hawaii’s efforts to keep it for years to come serves to underscore just how important special events that draw national and international participation and media coverage are to the communities in which they occur.

No one is in a better position to have an insider’s perspective than Tracy Halliwell, director of business tourism and major events for London and Partners. The 2012 London Olympic Games are currently the biggest revenue-producing event for a destination’s economy in world history, having added £10 billion (the equivalent of $15.7 billion) to the British economy by most estimates.

Halliwell, who was a key player in the team that conducted four years of preparation leading up to the 2012 Olympics, says a major focus of that preparation was crafting plans to make the London Olympics an event with a permanent impact on the tourism economy going forward.

“There is no question that it has been,” she said. “Before the Olympics, we had about 87,000 hotel rooms in London, and now we have about 105,000, with still another 6,000 under construction as we speak. By 2015, we will have about 120,000 hotel rooms in London, and that would not have happened without the impetus provided by the Olympics.”

She says the 2012 Olympics provided a stimulus for both private investors and government to come forth with the requisite money to make transportation and communications infrastructure capital investments that have allowed London to land major future events such as the 2017 IAAF World Championships in Athletics.

“The Olympics more or less made us raise the bar for ourselves and think outside the box as a community,” Halliwell said.

That is exactly how Irene Caban—president of Savvy Events and Entertainment, a Tampa (Florida) DMC—felt about the 2012 Republican National Convention (RNC), which brought an estimated $153 million to Tampa’s local economy.

“[It was] something that made us change our game not only as meeting professionals and participants in the tourism industry, but as a community as a whole,” said Caban, a past president of the MPI Tampa Bay Chapter. “Not only did we have to up our game to meet the requirements of events at an RNC level, but the community had to up the ante, with renovations and improvements and upgrades of the infrastructure. Both of those efforts will serve us well going forward.”

—By Rowland Stiteler

(Photo via Flickr: Department of Defense/U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth/Creative Commons.)

Kristen Van Nest recently wrote an interesting article for VentureBeat called “For Women, Conferences can be a Powerful Career Booster.”

Van Nest wrote that the women she has spoken with have found “models and mentors within their fields” through conference participation.

The downside, though, is that “they also spoke of how few women are taking advantage of these opportunities.” 

That’s unfortunate, because “conferences provide great opportunities for women to share advice, forge supportive relationships and build their network,” Van Nest said.

In fact, columnist Tim Sanders says sharing knowledge is one of the five best gifts for others. 

“Knowledge is a resource that grows as you give it away,” he wrote in our June issue. “Too often, we think of generosity in material terms, but in fact, one of the most generous things you can do is to mentor someone during his or her time of opportunity. You should always have an active mentee. Look for someone in transition, usually taking on a new task or role, where your insights can help.”

Conferences provide an excellent opportunity to share knowledge, become a mentor or mentee and educate yourself. 

“Education is, by far, women’s most powerful secret weapon, and we have been preparing for a sneak attack for at least the last decade,” said educator and author Katharine Hansen, Ph.D. on Quintessential Careers. “In 1975, a majority of the college degrees awarded went to men. This was true at the associate, bachelor’s, master’s, first professional and doctorate levels. By 2000, a majority of the associate, bachelors and master’s degrees were awarded to women, according to the Postsecondary Education Opportunity Research Letter.”

Hansen says that women are making serious inroads in the knowledge is power equation, and their best hope to crash through the glass ceiling is to keep doing what they’re doing.

“Consider informal ways of educating yourself through, for example, joining professional organizations, attending conferences and keeping up with trade publications in your field,” Hansen said. 

Well, now, I believe we here support all three of those strategies. Won’t you? 

Ernest Hemingway once said, “Write drunk; edit sober.” I’m beginning to think he had beer and coffee in mind. 

For you see, the two elixirs have their benefits, depending on what you want to accomplish. Knowing what works best is crucial to staging a productive meeting or event. Let’s say you plan a meeting that depends on the exchange of knowledge like bees exchange pollen. Beer is your best bet then. Or perhaps you plan a meeting that has a lot of to-do items that attendees need to blaze through. Coffee is your choice for that type of meeting. 

Why does beer (alcohol) affect creativity? Sian Beilock, Ph.D., offers a reason. 

“The answer has to do with alcohol’s effect on working memory: the brainpower that helps us keep what we want in mind and what we don’t want out,” wrote Beilock, author of Choke. “Research has shown that alcohol tends to reduce people’s ability to focus in on some things and ignore others, which also happens to benefit creative problem solving.”

Coffee, though, works differently. 

“Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors, preventing adenosine from binding to its receptors and tricking your brain into thinking you have lots of energy,” wrote Mikael Cho, co-founder of the online talent creative marketplace ooomf, in an insightful article on Medium.com. 

Adenosine, by the way, is a neurotransmitter that helps tell your brain that it’s running low on energy.

“Adenosine is kind of like your brain’s battery status monitor,” Cho wrote. “Once your energy levels get low, adenosine alerts your brain and starts to slow down brain functioning. This is why after a few hours of intense work, you begin to feel tired, like your brain has run out of juice.”

Thus the ubiquitous coffee break found in between conference sessions. What better way to stimulate an attendee than a shot of caffeine? Is that the best way, though? With more sessions becoming interactive and relying on the exchange of information to increase knowledge, perhaps a Fosters instead of Folgers is the best choice. 

“When thinking of this, I immediately thought of the one country [Italy] that doesn’t have a Starbucks franchise on every other street corner,” said Ruud Janssen, CMM, managing director and owner of The New Objective Collective in Basel, Switzerland. “Yet it inspired Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks) to create a new category across the world around coffee and ambiance (and free Wi-Fi).”

Janssen, a member of the MPI France-Switzerland Chapter, is co-founder of the Solution Room, a peer-to-peer session held during MPI conferences. 

“Thinking of the Solution Room—the epic closing general session format that I have the pleasure of crafting with my good colleague Mike van der Vijver (a fellow Dutchman who happens to live in Italy) in collaboration with MPI—prompted me to think what would happen if you offered beer in the Solution Room,” Janssen said. “Interesting thought, and I must admit that when the Solution Room format was cooked up in Dusseldorf, the paper cloths and atmosphere in the social event (think a carnavalesque beerfest atmosphere on the Monday evening at MPI’s EMEC 2011) must certainly have played a serendipitous role in bubbling up the right components and (with coffee the next morning) aligned the thoughts that made up this thrilling experiment.”

Then again, Janssen says, coffee could provide what’s needed at meetings.

“I think back to a recent MPI Italy board retreat where I had the pleasure of facilitating in Pisa, Italy,” he said. “Coffee is infused into the meeting at all opportunities, and the ritual has led, in the case of the real coffee brewed in Italy, to some pretty phenomenal creations. Top of mind, I could think of a string of legacy products and services the Italians have created over time. Are they infused by their unparalleled barista coffee culture or was it the Tuscan wine and exquisite food that seems to be ingrained into the creativity process?”

I think Janssen’s comments reinforce the idea that beer is better for certain sessions compared to coffee. A session such as the Solution Room lends itself to beer (or at least you could decorate the room like a beer hall). Board retreats, though, where agenda items need to be checked off, should feature coffee at every elbow. 

“The best time to have a beer (or two) would be when you’re searching for an initial idea,” Cho wrote. “Because alcohol helps decrease your working memory (making you feel relaxed and less worried about what’s going on around you), you’ll have more brain power dedicated to making deeper connections.”

Coffee, Cho writes, won’t help gain access to your brain’s more creative parts like beer will.

“If you’ve already got an idea or an outline of where you want to go with your project, a cup of coffee would do wonders compared to having a beer to execute on your idea,” he wrote.

A last item to add: Consume beer and coffee in moderation. Once you drink too much, you lose the benefits of both. You don’t want to be that attendee. 

“When the body feels well, the mind feels well, and in that respect, the level of activity in the room is a key performance metric in my book,” Janssen said.

Have you ever served beer or thought about serving it before an interactive session? Please share your stories with us in the comment section. 

(Photo via Flickr: Guillermo Ruiz/Creative Commons.)

Well now, look at this. CareerBuilder and Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. recently named the job of meeting, convention and event planner as one of the top five jobs of 2013. Ah, but we already knew that, didn’t we?

As meeting professionals, we recognize that face-to-face meetings and events play a critical role in connecting people and driving business results. We know the work we do as an industry is important. Our industry is not only an agent of change and progress, but it is also a powerful economic driver. 

Many outside of our industry still don’t fully understand the value of meetings. This is evident by the criticism found in several recent news stories about improper spending by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for a conference in 2010. We should not let misrepresentations like this diminish the perception or the reality of the social and economic value that business meetings provide.

So, we thought it may be helpful and timely to share a list of resources that can help you advocate for our industry. Check it out below.

Tools for Advocacy and Education

The “One Industry, One Voice” campaign urges meeting professionals to show solidarity and speak louder, together. Visit www.mpiweb.org/oneindustryonevoice to participate in industry actions and stay educated on this important topic.

MPI’s Business Barometer research, with bi-monthly and annual editions, provides an inside look at the state of the meetings business. Download it at www.mpiweb.org/Portal/Research/BusinessBarometer.

The U.S. Travel Association’s grassroots coalition at www.travelcoalition.org offers resources, news and contact forms to help you get active—right now—in voicing your support and expressing the value you and the meeting industry bring to business in the U.S.

A vibrant toolkit to educate peers, clients and the government on the value of meetings can be found at www.mpiweb.org/bvom, an initiative supported by the MPI Foundation and AIBTM.

The Convention Industry Council funded a survey of corporate and association meeting planners as well as industry executives on the importance of face-to-face meetings. The result was Face-Time. It Matters. Read it at www.conventionindustry.org/ResearchInfo/FaceTimeInternal.aspx.

The American Society of Association Executives Center for Association Leadership helps you stay tuned in to the value of associations through its site www.thepowerofa.org.

A wise person once said, “Go to where the fish are.” Today, those fish are on Facebook. It’s the one place where the most engagement happens, whether that’s through likes, comments or shares.

Members of the U.S. Congress know that too and now we have Cosponsor.gov. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) launched it as an app last year, and now it’s a Facebook-based website. 

Through the site, you can attach your name as “cosponsor” and follow a bill as it winds its way through legislation. There are currently 2,529 bills—introduced by Democrats and Republicans—you can cosponsor. You can search by title, sponsor and bill number or browse broad issues such as “economy and jobs” and “education and workforce.”

For example, you can cosponsor and follow H.R. 1354, “Jobs Originated Through Launching Travel Act of 2013,” or maybe you’re more interested in following H.R. 859, “Taxpayers’ Conference Overspending Prevention Act.” There you will learn that it has been referred to the subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security and its congressional sponsor is Joseph Heck from Nevada.

Check out Cosponsor.gov and let us know what you think in the comments.

(h/t Dan Parks over at the MeCo's PoliticsHQ Facebook page.)

World Education Congress (WEC) is quickly approaching, and it’s one of the meeting and event industry’s can’t miss events. Why, you ask? Well, here are just a few reasons.

1. The meeting and event industry’s best education—presented the way YOU want to learn. 
2. General Keynote and Flash Point speakers who will share transformative takeaways you will be able to put into action immediately. 
3. Save up to $300 if you register before rates increase on June 14 
4. Or, you can attend for FREE by participating as a hosted buyer planner 
5. Once, you’ve registered, you can take advantage of low summer airfares and MPI airfare discounts 
6. If you’re earning or maintaining your CMP designation, WEC offers the ability to earn clock hours for your CMP. 
7. And don’t forget about the networking—RendezVoo, RISE Awards Luncheon, The Big Deal—just a few of the great opportunities we’re offering for you to meet and interact with industry colleagues. Look who’s coming!

Visit the WEC page to learn more about sessions, speakers and the great networking events we have planned for you. 

See you in Las Vegas!

Twenty-five barons signed the Magna Carta in 1215. Fifty-six men signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776. Fifty-one representatives signed the Charter of the United Nations in 1945.

Add to that list 27 political leaders around the world who signed the “Declaration of Support for the Meetings and Events Industry” at IMEX 2013 in Frankfurt, Germany. The leaders (listed below) put pen to paper and agreed with the following statement.

“In a critical period of global economic transition and recovery, I believe that creating jobs and retraining work forces, increasing trade and inward investment, spreading knowledge and improving professional practices, enhancing innovation and creative development, nurturing community awareness and advancement and stimulating business regeneration are all essential factors in sustaining long-term economic growth and stability. 

“I further acknowledge the key role that meetings and events play in delivering these important objectives by instigating and facilitating the critical interactions required to exchange information, share knowledge and achieve consensus while at the same time enriching the visitor economy and raising the profile of the host destination.” 

Destinations will now be encouraged to use the declaration as a way to open up dialogue with their local politicians and help solicit their public support for the meetings and events industry locally. IMEX and its partners are aiming to secure 100 signatories for the declaration by the end of the year, and the document is also being used by the Joint Meetings Industry Council as part its new “Speak Up” advocacy campaign.

“The emphasis on working collectively to achieve recognition has inspired me to go home and really work to break down remaining barriers,” said Wendy Simon, a city councilor for Liverpool, England. “And we’ll definitely be highlighting our part in the Declaration of Support. I think it’s important that Liverpool knows it had a voice here today.”

Below is the list of all 27 signers. 

Director Tourism Planning & Development, Ministry of Culture & Tourism, Azerbaijan—Fikrat Mammadov
Vice Mayor, Antwerpen, Belgium—Koen Kennis
Chair, Canadian Tourism Commission, Canada—Steve Allan
CEO, Tourism Victoria, Australia—Leigh Harry
The Egyptian Minister of Tourism—His Excellency Mr Hisham Zaazou
President of France Congres - Mayor of Deauville—Phillippe Augier
Deputy Mayor of Toulon, France—Sophie Verdery
President, Toulouse Metropole, France—Bernard Keller
Vice President, Nantes Metropole, France—Valerie Demangeau
Ministry of Economy, Transportation & Innovation Hamburg, Germany—Dr. Rolf-Barnim Foth
Councillor, City of Milano, Italy—Franco D’Alfonso
Deputy Mayor - The Hague, Netherlands—Marjolein de Jong
Vice Minister of Tourism, Panama—Honorable Ernesto Orillac
President and CEO, Seoul Tourism Organization—Sung-Real Lee
Chief Executive, Singapore Tourism Board, Singapore—Lionel Yeo
Director of Spirit Slovenia—Bostjan Skalar
Vice President Moderat Party, Skovde, Sweden—Michael Nimstad
Vice Municipal Commissioner, Municipal of Tranemo, Sweden—Claes Redberg
Deputy Mayor, Municipality of Ulricehamn, Sweden—Mattias Josefsson
Member of Parliament, Sweden—Penilla Gunther
Vice President, Region Vastra Gotaland, Sweden—Conny Brannberg
Municipal Commissioner, Municipal of Boras, Sweden—Lena Palmen
Member of the Geneva City Government, Switzerland—Guillaume Barazzone
Mayor of Lviv, Ukraine—Andriy Sadovyi
Minister for Sport and Tourism, U.K.—Rt. Honorable Hugh Robertson, MP
Member of Parliament, U.K.—Nick de Bois
Cabinet Member for Culture and Tourism, Liverpool, U.K.—Wendy Simon

André Borschberg angled his aircraft to approach the runway sideways. It was something he had yet to do in his plane, but the winds were blowing at 30 knots (35 miles per hour) and he had to improvise. From Phoenix to Dallas, Borschberg rode the downdrafts and updrafts of winds, cruising sometimes as high as 27,000 feet. After more than 18 hours since leaving Arizona, he finally touched down at 1 a.m. on May 23 at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. He was immediately given a cowboy hat by Bertrand Piccard.

Flying from Phoenix to Dallas doesn’t normally take 18 hours, but Borschberg’s plane is no ordinary aircraft. It’s named Solar Impulse, and it’s 100 percent fueled by the sun’s energy. In 2010, Borschberg and Piccard set a milestone for the first ever day and night solar flight in aviation history. Now, they’re looking to fly around the world in their zero-fuel aircraft in 2015. To do so, they’re flying across America in order to test the aircraft and to raise awareness of how new technologies can save energy and the environment. 

“I initiated [Solar Impulse] in 2002 in order to promote the pioneering spirit,” Piccard told us in our November 2012 profile of him. “In particular, to show how clean technologies can help save the natural resources of the world.

“The clean tech industry is, potentially, the biggest new industry in the world,” he continued. “It brings on the market a lot of new products that allow us to reduce energy consumption. Instead of producing more and more energy, we must first save energy. Otherwise, the renewable energy will never be enough. We could, with the currently available technology, reduce 50 percent of our fossil energy use.”

The trek across America is also a way to motivate people. Borschberg and Piccard say it’s time to stop talking about problems, and instead show enthusiasm for profitable solutions that combine environmental protection with economic growth. The Solar Impulse isn’t a concept or dream or talking points—it’s a real object showing proof that actions often speak louder than words.

People often talk about something rather than act on it. This endless chatter is driven by fear, primarily the fear of failing (what if I actually do it and it fails?). 

“The notion of something being possible or impossible stands in our mind much more than in reality,” Piccard said. “If we free ourselves from the fear of failing, we can achieve much more than what we can think at first.”

Piccard says that the best way to face fear is with what he calls a “pioneering spirit.”

“Our entire life is made of the unknown, with uncertainty and unpredictability,” he said. “Playing with that fear means exploration and adventure. Letting that fear consume us makes our existence a nightmare.”

Borschberg and Piccard are working toward making humanity’s earthly existence better. In an information packet at the Dallas event where people could get an up-close viewing of the Solar Impulse, Piccard is quoted as saying that the plane was built to convey messages and not passengers. 

“We want to show what can be achieved using clean technologies,” he said. “It’s not only the environment that would be a winner. Job creation and purchasing power would also benefit from opening up these fascinating development perspectives.”

Because of their openness to change, these two aviation explorers are finding success. In fact, a willingness to change just may be the Holy Grail to success that so many people seek.

“The fear of the unknown causes a resistance toward changes,” Piccard said in our profile. “Most of the unhappy people are the ones who try to control what they cannot control, and don’t try to change what they could change. Successful people know that it’s useless to fight against the wind, and they would rather change their altitude and attitude to find a better direction.”

Borschberg knew that when he had to land his plane. He realized it couldn’t be a normal landing because of the winds, so he changed tactics. And by doing so, he achieved a better understanding of the project that will help him and Piccard achieve their dream of a zero-fuel, around-the-world flight.

(Additional reporting by Ken McIntyre.)