Congratulations to the latest graduates of the Certified Meeting Management program, hosted in 2011 in Cancun thanks to the sponsorship of Mexico Tourism Board and Riviera Maya. For your outstanding accomplishment, hard work and dedication to advancing the profession, we all commend you on your CMM.

Our association is built upon great people who want to succeed, and we want to support them.  I think one of the best ways our team here at HQ does this is through our continued production of great research and reports that are timely and help savvy pros navigate some pretty tough water through this recession.

I'm a big fan of the Business Barometer and chose this post to highlight some of the findings from this bi-monthly report's latest edition (August).  As our economies merge on a global landscape there is relevant data in here for all members, regardless of their geographic location or side of the business.  But for my purposes here, I've pulled out some key points both by geography and sector.

Taking a hard look at the US and North America, Business Barometer found:

•    Continued global economic uncertainty. Professionals labeled the global economy, along with U.S. Congress and the domestic economy as the most influential trends on the industry.
•    Nearly 10% decrease in concern about U.S. fuel and airfare increases; concerns around long-distance travel remains.
•    The number of companies hiring full-time and contract workers continues a 14-month continued growth.

Within the European Market some key indicators included:
•    Global economic uncertainty continues to concern meeting and event professionals.
•    The EU is reporting increased part-time employment (in the industry).
•    The greatest increases in meeting and events are in the areas of domestic and international corporate.

Hoteliers and other suppliers within the hospitality sector should consider:
•    Attendance levels at meetings and events is consistently higher than 2010.
•    Spending per meeting continues a steady, albeit, slight growth.
•    In the US, the greatest event increase is in the domestic corporate and association segment; for Europe the domestic and international corporate segments continue to grow.

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Note: Immediate access to this research is a valued benefit of MPI Membership, and MPIWeb Connect users have access to previous editions on a two-month delay.  All other industry professionals may purchase the research either in an annual subscription or per issue.

It goes without saying that Visit Orlando does a fantastic job of showcasing their city for media. The tour created for WEC writers, in my opinion, went beyond the expected: the writers saw a side of the city I’m quite sure that not many, not even Orlando natives, have an opportunity to experience.

Friday night, the host hotel for the media, Peabody Orlando, started everything with a welcome reception in the Rocks bar, where the journalists had a fantastic view of the refined dining space and the outdoor pool and water park area. The Peabody recently finished a half billion dollar renovation, and the results are dazzling. From there, it was on to the One Ocean Show in Shamu Stadium at SeaWorld Orlando. The Show, with trained killer whales as the entertainment, not only entertained but educated; between sets, the audience learned about the conservation efforts of the park. Afterward, the group even got to meet some of the animals helped by SeaWorld: a toucan, sloth and other curious animals that delighted everyone and caused a flurry of pictures. We capped the evening with an informational dinner in the private event space and a Q&A on how groups can enjoy the kind of experience we just enjoyed.

Our group got an early start the next morning at the Citrus Club for a tourism roundtable with Visit Orlando CEO Gary Sain. While enjoying a private breakfast, the media learned about the city’s role as a leading meeting destination and the more than $4 billion in new developments. Gary had a great comment how Orlando works with planners to not only create incredible return on investment but also a return on ideas. After this, the topic turned to sustainability at a Clean the World hands-on recycling event at the organization’s headquarters. Clean the World works throughout the hospitality industry and the sanitizing session demonstrated the dedication that the organization and its volunteers have to providing soap for impoverished areas of the world.

Next we were off to the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA), part of the University of Central Florida’s Center for Emerging Media. Truly a highlight, the reps at FIEA explained the growth of the interactive and digital media industry, its tie to the local economy and how groups and associations are making use of the technology in learning and presentations.

A behind-the-scenes view of the Amway Center, home to the Orlando Magic, revealed several spaces available for events, each with a distinct environment. The added bonus was a catered lunch provided by Amway in the Fairwinds Tower Room, with a clear view of downtown, and the opportunity to speak with Scott Joseph, Orlando restaurant critic and writer, who discussed the evolution of Orlando’s fine dining scene.  The day ended with a tour of Medical City at Lake Nona, an attraction for medical groups who use the research laboratories and education facilities, and one of the venues that makes Orlando a popular destination for medical meetings. After an extensive Q&A, the group was ready to make it back to the Peabody and prepare for the opening night reception at Disney’s Epcot Alive!

A huge thank you goes to Jennifer Dienst and the Visit Orlando team, all host venues, the media themselves for being such a receptive audience to the locations and everyone involved. 

As Theresa said in her post “With the Attendee in Mind,” one of the focuses of the re-designed WEC experience is including our community in the process of developing the content that is presented at conference. Daily Download, a new addition to WEC, will take the insights and opinions of attendees that are shared online throughout the day and filter into one session onsite. The event design team is using Wiffiti, a service of Locamoda, to crowd-source the social media stream from Foursquare, twitter and Flickr, as well as mobile and web messages, and present it to Daily Download attendees. To make it easier for professionals to contribute to the discussion, the following hashtags have been specially created. We encourage attendees to tag their photos and tweets from pre-conference events, education sessions on Sunday through Tuesday and the Flash Point presentations with these hashtags:

You can also quickly send in details by texting "@WEC" and your message to 87884 or sending an email with the message in the subject line to wec@wiffiti.com. See you in Orlando!

Even though our members are reporting a powerful business recovery, we face a growing demand from our community for more education and business opportunities, more professional development resources, a wider variety of programming and ways to meet the needs in emerging markets. So your board considered for the first time in seven years, a dues increase.  And I think it’s one of the most challenging decisions any volunteer leader makes for their organization.

We took a long, hard look at what our community needed and what investments had to be made for the future, and even asked consultants for a fresh perspective.  After much analysis, feedback within our membership showed support from supplier members to step up and make an investment in the professional future of our community.

As such, we’ve decided to increase member dues for our supplier members effective July 2011 to an annual rate of $/€450. To put a perspective on the increase, it amounts to approximately one client dinner over the course of a year. While this is the first adjustment to dues pricing in seven years, MPI’s member dues rate remains the lowest amongst the major industry associations.

Investment enables us to expand our base of professional planners and dedicate more financial resources into education at the local chapter and international level.  We’ve already seen initial investments in these areas begin to pay off.

Our first endeavor this year, MPIWeb Connect has exceeded all early goals.  Our increased investment in chapter education will bring more planners to chapter functions which provide more opportunities for our supplier members to meet and build lasting business relationships with MPI planner members.  This final step of our supplier members increasing their investment in our community enables us to support more education and build more diverse marketplace opportunities like those you’ll see at WEC in July.

If your company is evaluating association memberships, consider promoting your affiliation with MPI as one geared towards professional development and lead generation.  You can cite our recent commitment to develop the professional development portal as well as expanding marketplace opportunities and increased access 24/7 to our growing online communities.

I've blogged about my experiences with the exceptionally hospitable people of the Duesseldorf Congress Centre and the city during the press tour of our European Meetings & Events Conference, but  when it comes to telling the story of why this year was so successful and different no one can say it better than our delegates.  And they are saying it.  Survey results indicate 98% of delegates were satisfied with this year's conference and we saw significant gains in content satisfaction, moving above 92%.

But let's face it, numbers are numbers and the delegates themselves and images from the experiences tell the story more sincerely.  So here are some excerpts I'd like to share that our team has recently received.

    "I have not attended this meeting in 5 years and wasn’t sure what to expect but I was blown away with the top notch education, the quality of the participants and the wonderful networking events we were hosted to over the 3 days. I thoroughly enjoyed the education content and the great conversations that generated as a result, both in the sessions and outside them." - Claire Smith, VP Vancouver Convention Center

    "I would like to take the opportunity to thank the EMEC organization team. I have really enjoyed and already executed many changes in my center as result of the EMEC conference. I caught the message that we need to run more green meeting if we want to support sustainabililty." - Susana Carricando, CMM, MDIC

    "Thank you for a very interesting EMEC! I enjoyed participating and got a similar reaction from most of the connections I made. I enjoyed the opening session, the flash point and the individual sessions. Most of it is reflected in the survey I completed. Thank you also for the sponsorship opportunity. We were honored to sponsor one of the sessions..." - Alda Egurrola-Wienke, Regional Director Elite Meetings International

    "After all the hype of EMEC, my MPI friends and peers just said 'you have to go.'  Thanks to the MPI foundation I did, and I got to experience first hand what EMEC was.  Honestly I can say it was a fantastic, enjoyable and fun event.  The educational content, the learning environment were all of high quality, the networking second to none.  And you felt at home with your MPI peers and friends.  And thanks again to the MPI Foundation that made it feasible for me to be there, I will certainly make the effort to go again, and I would recommend it anyone." - Charles Perkin, Events Manager, CIRIA

    "[The Solution Room] best session of the conference, bar none. Inspiring peer-to-peer solution findings" - Miguel Neves, CDMP with Synaxis Meetings & Events.

I think I honestly speak for all of Team MPI that these are the kinds of remarks that make our day or month or even our year.  Knowing that the hard work put in for years and months is delivering what our members actually need is incredibly fulfilling. So we offer a thanks to all the sponsors, investors, speakers, collaborators and the delegates that made EMEC 2011 all it could be.  We're truly looking forward to delivering more in the future at all of our live events.

If you weren't able to attend EMEC and would like to dig in to the experiences, I recommend you first take a look at the video below from the Solution Room that moderator and MPI Board member Ruud Janssen created.  Then take a look at our flickr photo stream, our twitter transcript and members can log on and listen and watch EMEC education sessions. 

So our Saturday adventures here in Düsseldorf with myself, Edita Blaha from the CCD, Caroline from RheinBuzz and our guest media were packed with meeting different people from some amazing venues.

One of the nice things that Edita and team did for our guests was make sure that the people we met at venues were operation, functional and really worked the venue. No offense to the official marketing teams (heck I've been in them) but for myself and our media to really interact with the engineers at the ISS Dome who can tell us about the nine different configurations of this arena and their fastest load in and out times was really cool, and gave the reporters insight into some of the important logistics that this industry is truly built on.  It was also probably pretty cool for them to skate on a professional European hockey rink (much bigger I learned than those in the US).

The ESPRIT center was super cool as well.  And we found out they could close the roof and make it super warm if they wanted to, or take out the turf and change the floor, or remove areas of seats and beams and such and reconfigure so many different ways. Heiko Müller was a great guide who really understood the ins and outs of the arena.  The attention to security, crowd control and how that helps them have efficient start times and access to mass transit was really interesting to learn about - really.

Herr Müller said something on our tour that I thought was perfect to hear from a venue, "We do not have standard sets.  We listen to what the client needs to achieve, and then we make it happen."  Even to the point of having a catered dinner for ten in the center of the football pitch.  Oh, or host EuroVision 2011 in May.  Talk about scope of service.

Then we were off to the Media Harbor which I will just not be able to write enough about right now.  However, the reason we went there was to inspect the newly opened (the day before) Hyatt Düsseldorf.  One word. Woah.

Well, okay, maybe three words: stylish, natural and urban all at the same time.  Master sushi chefs from Tokyo, the best view of the Media Harbor and the Rhein Tower, walking distance to amazing architecture, art and clubs.  The lunch they provided us of impecable sushi, veal and gold gilded creme brulee was stunning.  I didn't take pictures because I was entirely too enthralled with the dining, the view and the conversation about the trends in business guests.  Which I think is the best sign of hospitality - when they can make you forget about work.

From there we met up with our fantastic Dusseldorf expert, Joop, who taught us all about the Media Harbor and the advertising agencies, broadcast companies, photographers and such that are revitalizing this area along the Rhein and town.  We ended our walk along the harbor for coffee and cake at Rhein tower, where both the food and the view at Top 180 was very enjoyable.

And how did we cap off this full day? Oh, just a night at the Düsseldorf Oper Am Haus for Platee a modern operatic performance that was so cool and unexpected.  With an unexpected surprise coordinated by Caroline with RheinBuzz that let us backstage before the show where we learned about some of the unique experiences they can create on tours - and met the General Director, and the Conductor, and the star of the show. 

Impressive.

Where to begin, oh where to begin?

Since arriving in Dusseldorf last Thursday I have been more and more impressed with this city and the welcoming people here each day.  The Dusseldorf CongressCenter (CCD) and Dusseldorf Marketing & Tourism (DMT) collaborated with my team and MPI to create a special trip for some of the media prior to the start of EMEC 2011 (which is going on right now).

Why has it taken so long to get this blog post up, if I arrived last week.  Because there is so much to do!

First of all, I do not think you could make a guest feel more welcome than the hotels do here in Dusseldorf. Our partners here in Dusseldorf arranged for the media to stay for two nights at the Breidenbacher Hof A Capella Hotel.  Our tour with Bjorn Stremme was not only luxurious and pleasant but incredibly enlightening.  As I shared on twitter and with images on our Flickr stream, this is one of the most attentive and luxurious hotels that is more wired than any other I have visited.  At each turn there was something thoughtful. Like the digital touch screen in your nightstand drawer that controls the features of your room.  Or the fact that they do not have concierge at the hotel - everyone receives a personal assistant to attend to their stay. I could gush for hours about this hotel but then I'd never tell you about the rest of the FAM.

Our guide from the DMT, Joop Eskes, was phenomenal.  He met up with us at the oldest and most official Altbeer brewery and our official Dusseldorf education began.  As we strolled down "the longest bar in the world" Joop was great to listen to and learn from.  We explored 14th century areas of Dusseldorf, saw monuments to the great battle of 1288, walked along the Rhine and experienced a bar named after a grumpy old man.  But Joop and Edita (from CCD) made this felt like strolling through town with old friends.

The next day was another experience.  But that will have to go in the next entry.

Once upon a time in a small coastal Spanish city of Malaga, three meeting and event professionals began to chat at an opening reception. Each pro had a penchant for technology and social media and the conversation over tappas soon led to how at the next major event they could take away some of the mystery from technology and social media.  And an idea was born.

The opening reception was at EMEC 2010 and the three pros were Theresa Davis (@MPITheresa), Samuel Smith (@samueljsmith) and Miguel Neves (@miguelseven).  The exciting thing is, that the initial idea of offering tutorials on how to use an even mobile app at a "genius bar" has now evolved.

When I arrived back at MPI HQ from EMEC 2010 we were diving right into our preparations for WEC10 in Vancouver.  As any conference planner knows, it takes a while to develop a comprehensive idea that actually fits into meeting design. I as an enthusiastic PR chick wanted to jump right in last year with this idea.  But, no, I was schooled in the ways of patience, concept development and event design.

So in collaboration with not only my team in communications and social media, but also creative services, publications, event management, content and (oh yeah don't forget) our leadership - MPI will launch "The Hive" at WEC 2011 in Orlando, FL.  The Hive became our working name as a tounge-in-cheek idea answer to the question, "Where will the 'buzz' at WEC be?" Then, as things tend to do when you let them organically develop, we realized that The Hive really works.  And if it works, don't try and fix it.

Now I will say, that we did come up with some outlandish ideas in brainstorming.  The two-story lounge with diving board and trained bees didn't make it into the final design, but in all honesty we had a hard time justifying the ROI on the diving board and PETA probably would have had issues with trained bees serving cocktails (even if they were tiny, tiny cocktails).  What has made the final cut is a unique blend of areas where the tech-savvy and the tech-curious can meet, learn and share.

We've evolved far beyond a standard bank of desktop PCs at the cyber-cafe and wrapped that feature around an area encompassing a tech concierge station, a demonstration/education stage, a rear projection screen that can run the #WEC11 twitter fountain or other presentations, and then there's One+ unplugged.  In the One+ unplugged area WEC participants will get to see bloggers, writers, and designers in action during interviews or production on the WEC Dailies.  The Hive will also house lounge areas with charging stations and provide areas to meet with speakers and facilitators.

So we're at a cool place now from concept through development and now seeing The Hive begin to come to life. I hear from Meg and her team in Marketplace that savvy sponsors are looking at how they can interact with WEC guests in The Hive and that just makes me want to do a happy dance too.

So while we're not at a wrap, and won't be for many months - I wanted to thank both Sam & Miguel for a stimulating conversation a year ago that has led to one of the coolest projects I've ever had a chance to be a part of, and to Team MPI for sticking with this wacky idea. When we meet, we change the world.