Meeting News - February 15, 2010 - (Page 15)

By Seth Harris sharris@meetingnews.com Association Watch “With the pressures on the corporate side around budget, those skills I learned on the association side about doing a lot more with less. You can learn a ton from a corporate planner as association planners,” she said. services to meet the needs of this broader audience. The association already has adjusted its annual program content and plans to add more programs for specific disciplines, including medical meeting planners and event marketers. “We’ve got the best and the brightest people in those areas working to build the content, as opposed to a generalist trying to build that content,” she said. Also on the agenda is increasing advocacy efforts as Quigley and PCMA president and CEO Deborah Sexton, who also is chair of the Convention Industry Council, foster collaboration with other industry associations to help alleviate negative perceptions of meetings. Advocating for meetings and showing senior leadership how meetings deliver maximum return on investment are steps Quigley already has taken at Microsoft. “It’s really getting much smarter about what the return on marketing objectives are and ensuring that we are consistently tracking that on all the spend on events across the company,” Quigley said. “Also, we are looking at what events make sense still and what events don’t anymore and whether we can combine some of those events.” Quigley oversees a centralized corporate events team that plans 30 to 40 large events annually, including product launches, trade shows and internal events. She manages a team of more than 20 event marketers globally. This month, Quigley’s team is releasing its first “digital playbook” to guide company planners and marketers in integrating digital and virtual technology into the physical events program. ❍ New PCMA Board Chair To Bridge Corporate, Association Gap Microsoft event marketing director Kati Quigley, who last month became the first corporate meeting professional to serve as board chair of the Professional Convention Management Association, plans to use her association and corporate planning background to lead the organization in its efforts to bridge the gap between the two segments, diversify membership and build advocacy partnerships with other industry associations. Quigley, who has been at Microsoft for more than seven years and previously managed planning for 11 years at multiple Washington, D.C.-area trade associations, took over the role at PCMA’s Annual Meeting in Dallas last month from John Folks, president and principal of meetings and events agency Minding Your Business. Being the first corporate meetings professional chair helps shift the historical perception that PCMA has been the organization for association planners, while Meeting Professionals International is tailored more for corporate planners, Quigley said . “In this industry, there are some differences, but we’ve got a lot of the same challenges and we are all trying to move the discipline forward, so it doesn’t have to be divided like that,” she said. Quigley added that the convergence between association and corporate event planning is being driven by a growing industry emphasis on budgets and new technology, two trends that she has experienced in her transition from the association to corporate arena. www.meetingnews.com Microsoft’s Kati Quigley “We are much better off if we have the collective knowledge as opposed to keeping it in silos.” Building on PCMA’s 2008-2010 strategic plan, Quigley plans to add education programs that focus on teaching planners how to take a “senior-level approach with the aim of contributing to the strategic plan of their organization and having a business impact.” PCMA also is adapting its educational format to try to attract new members from other meeting planning disciplines and this year assigned task forces to focus on such new member areas as corporate trade show planners and exhibitors and program content designers. Quigley said there are about a dozen task forces working to tailor educational programs and member CIC To Unveil Green Standards The Convention Industry Council this month is wrapping up its ballot process and expects to issue the official version of its long-awaited industry standards on green meetings. For more than two years, CIC has been working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Green Meeting Industry Council and hundreds of industry participants to shape best practices for environmentally sustainable meetings. Those standards have focused on nine core meetings aspects, including accommodations, audiovisual, exhibits, marketing, food and beverage, venue and transportation. CIC said through the standards it aims to create “a uniform measurement of environmental performance” for meetings and events. The ballot process goes through ASTM International, a body that develops international standards for materials, products, systems and services used in construction, manufacturing and transportation, since EPA can use only “certified standards.” CIC COO Karen Kotowski said she expected final ballots on accepted practices in each of the nine areas to be complete by the middle of February. —Jay Boehmer February 15, 2010 MeetingNews 15 http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - February 15, 2010

Meeting News - February 15, 2010
Contents
Newsmaker
Meetings Spotlight
Viewpoint
Meeting People
Construction Cites
Association Watch
Strategic Mtgs. Mgmt
Gaming Destinations
Island Incentives
Dateline: Hong Kong
South Regional
Travel Dashboard

Meeting News - February 15, 2010