Marking its one-year anniversary, the meetings industry listserv called MeCo, short for the Meetings Community, is launching a new feature called Chat Lessons 1.0 for its growing online community.

Chat Lessons 1.0 is a monthly educational seminar that will be hosted and facilitated by a variety of industry leaders in the MeCo chat room. The first session, on Meeting Environments and Content Delivery, will be held January 24, hosted by independent planner and industry educator Sandy Biback. “Basically it will be an interactive conversation on what the prefect meeting environment would look like and what some of the best ways to deliver content are--so that those in the room have a better chance of 'getting it.’”

Future sessions will be led by Corbin Ball, Julia Silvers, Andrea Gold, Sherry Parks, and Association Meetings magazine editor Sue Pelletier.

Since launching January 6, 2006, as an online conversation for meeting professionals, MeCo has grown to more than 1,100 members. Founded by Loretta Lowe, James Louis, Dan Parks, Jean Travers, Sue Walton, and William Youngs, MeCo is an online community designed to provide members with a forum to network, job search, share resources, and exchange ideas.

"The Meetings Community has grown beyond what I envisioned for it when we first started. It has become a central gathering place for people all over the world,” stated Louis, chief information officer at Best Meetings Inc. and MeCo co-founder. “Initially, MeCo was designed just to allow members to communicate through e-mails. At the suggestion of our users, we have added a membership directory, a chat room, and an interactive job board with resume posting ability.”

For more information on MeCo, visit www.meetingscommunity.org.