Spotlight on Conference, Event and Association Management

Things change. New technologies emerge, people are constantly connected and bombarded and pretty soon they get overloaded with information.  It gets harder and harder to cut through the noise and reach people with the stuff you know they want and need but don’t yet know about. Disruption seems to be the only thing you can rely on. We could really be talking about almost any industry here, but it seems particularly true of the meeting and events business these days. Writing for the website Skift earlier this year, Greg Oates offered three key trends that will disrupt the meetings and events industry in 2017. The article was also published in EXPLORER, the magazine of the British Columbia Chapter of Meeting Professionals International. This summary is indebted to Oates’ excellent insights as well as to those of other experts in the industry. 1. Convergence is the new innovation Oates quotes Julius Solaris, founder of Event Manager Blog as saying that if you’re not up to speed with the latest event technology as a meeting planner, you’ll be out of business soon. The management of events has moved on from the technology we use to organize them. It’s just something that’s expected as standard. Oates says that there’s now a “growing excitement around pairing together event speakers, experiences, and content” that may have previously seemed unrelated. He goes on to describe events that have combined retail experiences with street art depicting gang

When associations excel in meeting the needs of their members, you can be sure that it doesn’t happen by accident. Hard work, dedication and persistence are part of it for sure. But without a decent strategic management model, those things won’t get you very far.

Managing a not-for profit association sure isn’t easy. As we’ve seen, a good board helps. You’ll need an effective Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a committed group of professional staff too. But even with those things in place, there are plenty of things that can go wrong that will prevent an organization from maximizing its potential.