Celebrating 40 Years

Remember the days before e-mail, cell phones, and BlackBerries, when the world moved at a slower pace — and planners could count on a handshake to seal a hotel contract agreement? Those are just a few of the seismic shifts that insurance and financial services meeting professionals have experienced in the 40 years that this magazine has been reporting on the industry. As we thought about what to include in this special anniversary section, we realized the one thing that has remained constant is the enduring value you get learning from each other. You'll find our timeline of meeting, travel, insurance, and technology milestones that begins on this page punctuated by insights from veteran planners who have merged, purged, and changed with the times — while still maintaining the core relationships that are the lifeblood of their profession. Read on to page 33 for interviews with current and past Board members and Hospitality Partner Committee members of ICPA, an association that has engendered lifelong friendships and unsurpassed peer networking. Enjoy your trip through time!

1965-2005: Growth, Change, Innovation 1965

The first GREEN BOOK OF CONVENTION PLANNING, forerunner of Insurance Conference Planner magazine, is published.

1967

The Insurance Conference Planners Association (informally launched in 1958 by a handful of insurance executives) issues a statement of “Association Purposes” that includes the “ultimate goal” of “quality professional service that assures the maximum possible profit for the company's expenditure of time and dollars.”

1969

ROLLOUT OF THE BOEING 747, making same-day, coast-to-coast trips possible.

1970

After 11 years of domestic meetings, ICPA holds its FIRST OFFSHORE CONFERENCE at the Hamilton Princess in Bermuda. Nearly half the association's 63 members make the trip.
A professor from East Tennessee State University tells a subcommittee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that it is harder for a barber to get licensed than it is for an insurance agent. A subsequent PUSH FOR STATE-MANDATED AGENT EDUCATION finally ends in 2001 when Vermont is the last state to implement mandatory continuing education requirements for insurance salespeople.

1972

MEETING PLANNERS INTERNATIONAL (later changed to Meeting Professionals International) is LAUNCHED in Middleton, Ohio with 159 members.

1973

Martin Cooper and a team of scientists at Motorola invent the cell phone.
The SOCIETY OF INCENTIVE TRAVEL EXECUTIVES (later changed to The Society of Incentive & Travel Executives) is FOUNDED in New York City

1974

After five years of the insurance industry coming under attack by consumer advocates like Ralph Nader, the National Association of Life Underwriters requires that AGENTS MUST MEET MINIMUM EDUCATIONAL REQUIREMENTS to maintain membership in the association.
ICPA WELCOMES ITS FIRST WOMAN MEMBER, Nancy Nolan, from Connecticut General. About 50 ICPA members attend the annual meeting at the Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, paying a $25 room rate.

1975-1976

ICPA inaugurates a steering committee, with Jim Jones, Connecticut General, serving a three-year term as chairman.

1976

The Green Book of Convention Planning changes its name to INSURANCE CONFERENCE PLANNER.
Section 602 of The TAX REFORM ACT OF 1976 limits the deductibility of expenses incurred in attending meetings outside the U.S. in a series of complex regulations. Incentive travel expenses, however, are treated as taxable income to the recipient.

1978

The AIRLINE DEREGULATION ACT OF 1978 significantly lowers airfares and causes a retrenchment of major airlines, creating a free market of competition that leads to the growth of Southwest and other low-cost carriers. The lifting of airline pricing constraints opens a new era of airfare negotiations for planners.
ICPA's annual meeting at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville has its FIRST JOINT SESSION WITH THE HOTEL SALES & MARKETING ASSOCIATION, (later changed to Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International).

1978-1980

High interest rates and changes in insurance regulations result in new products such as UNIVERSAL LIFE INSURANCE, with agents selling life insurance as an investment. Many insurance companies shift to an independent sales force, ramping up their incentive programs to motivate and retain top producers.

1981

NEW YORK STATE PASSES REGULATION 93, which sets forth guidelines under which New York — based insurance companies can hold meetings. Some of the regulation's more stringent requirements initially include prohibitions against holding agent conferences outside the United States and Canada — restrictions which are later relaxed, and eventually eliminated.
The 137 planners and 150 HSMA suppliers at ICPA's annual meeting in Dallas learn that the association, in partnership with other industry organizations, will help to develop a certification program for meeting planners — later to become the CERTIFIED MEETING PROFESSIONAL designation.
American Airlines introduces the first frequent-flyer program, AAdvantage.
IBM releases the FIRST PERSONAL COMPUTER.
MeetingPro (now People-ware) releases the first comprehensive database product for the meeting industry.

1982

After an addition, the Las Vegas Hilton becomes the largest hotel in the world, with 3,174 guest rooms and an extensive gaming area.
Landry & Kling, the first company to sell the idea of incentive travel cruises and meetings at sea to the corporate market, is founded. At the time, no cruise line has a corporate incentive department.

1983

ICPA LAUNCHES ITS FIRST OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER, published in ICP magazine.
At its 25th Annual Meeting, held at Marriott's Cambelback Inn, Scottsdale, Ariz., ICPA announces that the roughly 400-member, volunteer-managed association will become a not-for-profit corporation with annual dues of $50. Leila MacFeeley, Prudential, is chosen as ICPA'S FIRST CHAIRPERSON, serving from 1984-85.
Holiday Inn starts the hotel industry's first frequent-stay program, called Priority Club, based on the airlines' frequent-flyer clubs. Other chains soon follow suit.
The first cellular phone network starts in the United States.
The patent for voice mail is awarded to Gordon Matthews and sold to IBM.

1984

Apple releases the Macintosh, the first widely distributed computer with a mouse and a graphical user interface.
MPI launches its research and educational arm, THE MPI FOUNDATION, which has since invested more than $10 million in programs and studies.

1985

The Convention Liaison Council (now the Convention Industry Council), a meeting and convention industry umbrella organization founded in 1949, launches the certified meeting professional program. A GROUP OF 46 TAKES THE FIRST CMP EXAM, and 23 are certified. By 2005, the number of people worldwide certified with the CMP tops 10,000.

1986

Unum Corp. (later changed to UnumProvident Corp.) demutualizes, launching A WAVE OF INSURANCE COMPANY CONVERSIONS FROM MUTUAL TO STOCK OWNERSHIP that persists into the new century. It is easier for these publicly-held companies to raise capital, and to participate in mergers and acquisitions.
Among the hot workshop topics at ICPA's annual meeting at the Capitol Hilton: “How to use a computer to enhance your meeting planning skills,” and “Should your company have a centralized conference and travel services department?” Another topic of heated discussion was whether or not to welcome nonmarried “significant others” to company incentive conferences.

1987

SITE establishes its not-for-profit research arm, THE SITE FOUNDATION, to fund research related to the incentive industry.
POWERPOINT 1, (originally called Presenter) is released. It has only black-and-white images, and runs only on Macintosh computers.

1987-1989

The number of fax machines in use worldwide more than doubles, to 2.5 million. Fax use continues to accelerate throughout the 1990s.

1989

The number of computers used worldwide hits the 100 million mark.
Thirty-five planners attend ICPA'S FIRST EDUCATIONAL SEMINAR at the Four Seasons Clift Hotel in San Francisco just prior to the annual meeting. Later to become the Summer Educational Forum, its goal is to review basic meeting planning skills for both novice and experienced planners. Also in 1989: ICPA hires Karen Hopkinson to do its administrative work.
Tim Berners-Lee invents the WORLD WIDE WEB. By 1993, the Web has 130 sites. By 2005, it has more than 74 million sites.

1990

Broadcast Music Inc. and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers begin enforcing MUSIC LICENSING COPYRIGHT LAW in the meeting industry.
The American Society of CLU and ChFC and its educational wing, the American College, institutes a Professional Achievement in Continuing Education plan requiring new CLUs and ChFCs to earn 60 credits of continuing education every two years.

1991

The first notebook PCs, dubbed “freedom machines,” are introduced by several personal computer manufacturers.

1992

The AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT goes into effect, prohibiting discrimination against disabled persons. Meeting planners and facility operators must assume responsibility for accessibility at meetings and events.

1994

The first spam e-mail, called “Green Card Lottery 1994 May be the Last One!! Sign up now!!” is sent by Laurence Canter.
Two Stanford University students, in an effort to keep track of the growing number of Web sites, launch “Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web,” soon renamed YAHOO!.
The FIRST SOFTWARE PRODUCT TO TRACK MEETING SPEND AND SOURCING is introduced by McGettigan Partners (now Maritz McGettigan). This evolves in 1999 to a separate company, StarCite, as a package of Web-based sourcing and consolidation solutions.
The Business Travel Contractors Corp., a strategic buying group composed of U.S. corporations that annually purchase $1 billion in travel services, is formed by Kevin Mitchell, the former head of conferences at CIGNA. A few years later, it becomes the BUSINESS TRAVEL COALITION, an advocate for air transportation issues.

1995

MPI initiates the CERTIFICATION IN MEETING MANAGEMENT program, an advanced-level designation for meeting professionals focused on executive decision-making. Today there are more than 350 CMM's worldwide.
Nearly 1,700 travel industry leaders join forces in Washington, D.C., for the first WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON TRAVEL & TOURISM. The goal, says President Bill Clinton, is to “develop a shared vision both of the industry's future and the role of travel in our nation's future.”
Holiday Inn launches the first hotel Web site with online purchasing of sleeping rooms.
The FIRST ONLINE MEETING-REGISTRATION TOOLS emerge — all hand-coded by Web programmers.
PlanSoft starts work on www.plansoft.com (now www.mpoint.com), the first comprehensive searchable meeting facilities database combined with a request for proposal engine. Plansoft.com comes online in 1997.

1996

Lee Travel introduces the first housing Web site to track room blocks and real-time housing inventory. It becomes b-there.com in 1998. Online housing company Passkey is also founded in 1996.
The San Francisco Miyako (now Radisson) Hotel offers the FIRST ONLINE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL, built by Cardinal Communications.
Cardinal Communications creates the MEETING INDUSTRY MALL, the first Web-based interactive meeting industry portal. From this grows the MIMLIST, a listserv for meeting professionals, that goes live in 1999.
MeetingsNet.com, ICP's new Web site, is named one of the 200 most popular sites by PC Computing magazine.

1997

The meeting consolidation movement gains steam. ICP publishes one of many case studies in November/December 1997, reporting on New York Life VP Jules del Vecchio's early efforts to get his arms around all of his company's meeting planning and spending.

1998

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECURITIES DEALERS ISSUES AMENDMENTS to rule 2820 and rule 2830. They allow broker participation in sales incentive programs only if the incentive is sponsored by the producer's member firm or affiliate, and is based on total sales production, with equal weight given to each product sold. The amendments also address training and education meetings for brokerage firms and securities dealers, restricting where they can be located and how they can be conducted.

1999

THE FINANCIAL SERVICES MODERNIZATION ACT dramatically reshapes the financial services industry by removing barriers between banks, insurance companies, and investment firms.
Merger mania peaks. During the 1990s, about 7,500 mergers and acquisitions valued at roughly $1.6 trillion, occur worldwide in the financial services and insurance industries. In March/April 2000, ICP publishes a case study on one of the biggest, reporting on how Michael Key and Rosemary Riesett handled Monumental Life's first joint sales conference with the former Providian Agency group for more than 2,300 attendees in August 1999.
Research in Motion introduces the BlackBerry, a powerful wireless handheld with e-mail software invented by RIM founder Mike Lazaridis. Sales reach $85 million by early 2000, as Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston, and other financial services firms buy BlackBerries for their executives. By 2004, there are more than 2 million subscribers.
The Convention Industry Council launches APEX, the Accepted Practices Exchange, the first voluntary standards initiative for the meetings industry.

2000

GetThere Direct Meetings provides the first online, group room block reservation tool.
The LOVEBUG worm/virus infects 2.5 million PCs and causes an estimated $8.7 billion in damage.

2001

After the TERRORIST EVENTS OF 9/11, organizations curtail nonessential meetings, giving new emphasis to videoconferencing and webconferencing. The meeting and travel industries intensify their security focus.
StarCite offers the first Web-based, two-way, real-time request for proposal tool for meeting space and rooms.

2002

On January 1, the long-awaited switch to the EURO takes place in 12 European countries. At that time, the exchange rate is 87 cents to one euro.
The SARBANES-OXLEY ACT passes Congress in response to the Enron scandal and other corporate governance failures, with the goal of improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. Meeting planners are particularly impacted by section 404, which requires that processes, policies, and procedures in large, publicly-held companies are in place, documented, and controlled.
IMEX, the Worldwide Exhibition for Incentive Travel, Worldwide Meetings and Events, is launched in May in Frankfurt, Germany, by Ray Bloom, founder of EIBTM, the European Incentive & Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition, which he had sold several years before.
Hyatt rolls out E-mmediate Meetings, an online meeting-booking tool designed for small meetings. From this comes E-mmediate Response, the first real-time, two-way connection between an RFP site (in this case, StarCite) and a hotel sales system.

2003

New York State ATTORNEY GENERAL ELIOT SPITZER investigates financial services companies for illegal sales and trading practices, as does the Securities and Exchange Commission. Major mutual fund companies such as Prudential Securities, Janus, and Putnam Investments are implicated. As well, NASD begins seriously cracking down on companies violating its 1998 rulings that govern incentives and meetings, including Morgan Stanley and David Lerner & Associates.
ICPA HEADQUARTERS MOVES from Vancouver to Chicago and SmithBucklin takes over management of the association, under the helm of Executive Director Steve Bova, CAE.
APEX delivers its first product, an online glossary. Many more products, including recommended voluntary standards for requests for proposal and contracts, are to come from the Convention Industry Council's standards initiative.
Outbreaks of SARS in parts of Asia and Toronto, followed by a World Health Organization advisory against nonessential travel to Toronto, create a wave of canceled meetings and force many companies to re-think their meeting contracts.
Travelers flock to online travel booking sites for discount hotel rooms, causing attrition problems from attendees “BOOKING OUTSIDE THE BLOCK” and disgruntled incentive program qualifiers who find cheaper spouse fares online.
Intel incorporates wireless Internet communications in its Centrino chip. WIRELESS HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS is deployed in more than 6,000 hotels. This is expected to grow 1,100 percent by 2008.

2004

New York State Attorney General Spitzer begins targeting the insurance industry, suing Marsh & McLennan Cos. for bid rigging. Spitzer investigates other insurers as well, and state regulatory bodies quickly follow, launching their own PROBES INTO INSURANCE INDUSTRY SALES PRACTICES, including incentive programs.
Online bookings for Hilton Hotels exceed those at its call centers.

2004-2005

In late 2004, A TSUNAMI devastates areas adjoining the Indian Ocean, killing more than 100,000. Incentive destinations in Thailand, including Phuket, are particularly hard-hit.
HURRICANE KATRINA roars into the Gulf Coast in August 2005, killing more than 1,000 and causing catastrophic levee failure in New Orleans. The city won't open to large meetings until at least the spring of 2006.

2005

Starwood launches Meetings in a Moment, an online booking tool for small day meetings with instant online confirmation of meeting space, food and beverage, and audiovisual.
ICPA members are asked to vote on bylaws changes that, if approved by two-thirds of the membership, will change the association's name to FINANCIAL & INSURANCE CONFERENCE PLANNERS.
Insurance Conference Planner magazine changes its name to FINANCIAL & INSURANCE MEETINGS.

KIM DeVILLERS

Years in Meeting Planning: 17

First Title: Director of Incentive Travel, Hemphill Harris Travel Co.

Current Title: First Vice President, Corporate Event Marketing, Countrywide Financial, Westlake Village, Calif.

Meetings Planned Per Year: Approximately 1,000 meetings and events, including a trade show, conferences, all events related to corporate sponsorship, and five incentive meetings for from 250 to 1,600 attendees.

Department Size: 15

Department Reports To: Marketing

Most Recent Meeting Site: The Wynn Las Vegas, for an incentive meeting

On Strategic Sourcing: In 2004, our executives gave us a directive for strategic sourcing and vendor management. We started with three large incentive meetings at The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess. I've already completed two programs there, and the third will be a 600-room buyout of the property for a March 2006 meeting. I'm in the process of tracking the savings and showing the return value to the shareholder, but I estimate that we shaved costs about 15 to 20 percent per meeting. And my buying power will go so much further with hotels throughout the Fairmont chain after this. I can pretty much count on across-the-board negotiations not only on room rates and food and beverage, but on every service they offer from audiovisual to spa. It makes contract negotiations easier, and it's how you build a partnership.

On Keeping Attendees Connected: Another mandate from corporate is that all Countrywide meeting attendees need to be able to stay connected. In 2003 we became one of the first companies that required wireless access for BlackBerries in hotel meeting space. I partner with our technology team and the hotel's technology team to make sure the wireless signal can come through — to this day, hotels are being built with walls that are too thick. This has often meant bringing in towers that cost close to $10,000, in order to get a strong enough signal. One of the reasons I chose the Fairmont Princess [see above] is that it has BlackBerry service throughout, in every meeting room, sleeping room, and even on the golf course. Wireless access in hotels is starting to become more of the norm, but even six months ago, that wasn't the case. There are still instances when I have to bring in a tower.

ROB GINGRAS, CMP

Years in Meeting Planning: 19 (plus 9 in the hotel business)

First Title: Corporate Conference Planner, Travelers-Citigroup

Current Title: Director, Conference & Travel Management, CIGNA Corp., Hartford, Conn.

Meetings Planned Per Year: Between 350 and 400, including recognition, incentive, customer, sales, internal, and training meetings.

Department Size: 8 in Hartford, 3 in Philadelphia

Department Reports To: Corporate Services

Most Recent Large Meeting Site: Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, for the CIGNA All Sales Conference

On Core Meeting Planning Skills: Up to about 10 years ago, a planner could be effective by managing food and beverage and room blocks. Not anymore. Today, planners have to be well-versed in contract language, marketing, best practices in adult learning, online meeting management resources, procurement, state and federal regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley and NASD — the list goes on and on. The scope of knowledge required is much broader, and it's also very specific and specialized. At the same time, the qualified labor pool of experienced meeting planners is getting smaller. I think that there's a demand for professionals who have these core skills, but a shortage will force companies to outsource segments of their meeting planning. They don't want to hire people with entry-level skills.

On The Next Level of Technology: Technology as a meeting management tool for things like registration has been around for a long time. Now, we're starting to use technology to monitor the meeting itself from start to finish, giving us real, minute-by-minute data as the meeting evolves. For example, attendees can use cyber kiosks to check in to the hotel room, register for the meeting, and input their feedback and evaluations. Using the same kiosks, meeting managers can see which sessions attendees are actually attending, where their interests and challenges lie, and so forth. We have the opportunity to react quickly to their needs. This kind of technology is coming along very fast. It is enabling planners to become strategic and analytical versus logistical and reactive.

PATRICIA KERR, CMP

Years in Insurance/Financial Industry: 16; 11 in meeting planning

First Title: Agency Marketing Specialist, Manulife Financial

Current Title: Director, Conference Planning & Recognition, Manulife Financial, Waterloo, Ontario, Calif.

Meetings Planned Per Year: Between 120 and 140, from small advisory boards to 6 large incentives spread out over a two-year period

Department Size: 7, including 5 full-time meeting planners

Department Reports to: AVP, Distribution Sales Support

Most Recent Meeting Site: Sheraton on the Falls, Niagara Falls, for 170 officers of Manulife Financial Canadian division.

From Logistics to Full Service: When I started with Manulife in 1995 as a junior meeting planner, I was one of two people involved in meeting planning, and our focus was simply to handle logistics for events and small meetings that were being booked by another person operating completely separate from us. We were handling 15 to 20 events a year. Today, the world is a very different place! The team now handles not only meetings but all Manulife recognition programs: up to 140 different meetings and events a year. Two full-time team members handle all non-meeting recognition and incentive programs. Five full-time meeting planners handle all other meetings. Further, the scope of the team is all-encompassing. Manulife's Canadian Division does everything in house, from site selection and contract negotiation to meeting execution and budget reconciliation. The only function we ever outsource is the actual booking of air!

On Mergers and Acquisitions: During the last decade, Manulife has acquired between 10 and 15 companies, from very small to very large — the biggest being John Hancock in 2004. At first, there's an initial shock and a kind of panic, because we realize the work that's ahead. But then we get down to business. We identify the action steps: what needs to happen and when, not only from a business point of view but from a people point of view. From a business point of view, it can be exciting and exhilarating. We have all these meetings, they have all these meetings, but now there's just one sales force, so we need to consolidate. We look at best practices of each company and then decide how we're going to make the best of two worlds. But what isn't so exciting and exhilarating is that after we've merged all these meetings, jobs are made redundant and people are let go. That's not an easy thing to do. It's the most difficult part of the process.

CHUCK LANE

Years in Meeting Planning: 21

First Title: Director of Public Relations, Green Bay Packers

Current Title: Director of Incentive Travel and Public Relations, Humana, Green Bay, Wis.

Meetings Planned Per Year: About 5 incentive meetings; nearly 1,000 meetings and events companywide

Department Size: 3, including shared personnel at the home office in Louisville, Ky.

Department Reports To: Associated Business Services

Most Recent Meeting Site: The Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver

On Procurement, SOX, and Adapting to Change: This business is all about change. I've reported to about seven different departments during the past 21 years. The most recent phase is that we've gone from being sales and marketing-driven to finance and procurement-driven. Up until about three years ago, we had very little exposure to procurement — there wasn't even a procurement program in place. Now, procurement has gotten involved with our contracts, both hotel and merchandise. The challenge, of course, is convincing procurement of the value of our experience, so they don't get in the way of our relationship-building process with suppliers and agents. Dinosaurs like myself still believe that this is a relationship business. The positive side is that procurement has helped to give us an accounting structure to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, which, as a Fortune 200 company, we must do. SOX compliance has turned me into an accountant. Every bill and every item on the budget has to be double-checked and accounted for. For example, we've always taxed our attendees for any gift they receive that's valued over $25, but SOX has reminded us we have to be very careful about how we do this, and we have to document it.

KELLI LIVERS, CMP

Years in Meeting Planning: 21

First Title: Special Event Coordinator, American International Group, Houston

Current Title: Director Global Meeting Services, AIG, Houston

Meetings Planned Per Year: 500 meetings for 25 people or more.

Department Size: 8

Department Reports To: Corporate Travel

On Meeting Department Centralization: We started centralization within a sub-business unit of AIG in 2000 to 2001: We were able to save $1.2 million over 18 months. I worked in that unit until I was brought on board my current position in January of this year. In 2004, our CEO initiated a company-wide centralization. Before that, there was formal review process to ensure that proper terms and conditions were being met to reduce AIG's risk. We have basically gone through an outreach process with all of our contracting entities and developed new policies and procedures that we launched this month [November 2005]. We are concentrating on consolidating the procurement process. Everyone I've talked to says it takes two or three years to get your arms around the big meeting spend — those meetings of 25 or more people. And it's not until then that you get to the small meetings, where I think there are more opportunities for big savings. We haven't really implemented the program and we've already saved $1.4 million. That's just from picking the low-lying fruit. So the potential is huge.

KOLEEN ROACH

Years in Meeting Planning: 19

First Title: Meeting and Events Coordinator, Dayton Hudson Corporation, Minneapolis

Current Title: Director, Recognition and Conference Planning, Securian, St. Paul, Minn.

Meetings Planned Per Year: Approximately 50, including about 12 annual incentive meetings

Department Size: 2 senior planners, 1 department coordinator

Department Reports To: Executive Vice President

Most Recent Meeting Site: The Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch, Beaver Creek, Colo., for a top incentive meeting

On Contract Negotiations and New Hotel Fees: My department manages all aspects of contract negotiation. I consult with legal and compliance if I need to, but they don't have to review every single contract. That saves a lot of time, because if planners have to send contracts to their legal department, it can take months to get the contract back to the hotel. But I do have to know how to manage attrition, keep up on NASD rules and make sure our recognition programs are compliant, understand legal language, etc. There's no standard contract anymore; we need to read all the fine print much more carefully. In the past 18 months, hotels have begun trying to impose new fees, for things like electricity. One of the goofiest new fees I've seen is in the attrition clause. Attrition used to cover lost revenue for hotel rooms and food and beverage — now hotels are trying to loop in resort and recreation fees. I just cross those out, and haven't run into any hotels that push back. Our company operates with integrity. If we book a meeting and have to cancel, we're not going to leave a property high and dry. But we won't pay attrition on lost revenue from people not renting beach equipment or paying gym fees.

JANA STERN

Years in Meeting Planning: 10

First title: Meeting Planner, Northwestern National Life, Minneapolis

Current Title: Director, Convention and Conference planning, ING, Minneapolis

Meetings Planned Per Year: About 42, including non-overnight training meetings, week-long conventions, and 5 incentive meetings

Size of department: 3, plus self

Department Reports To: President, ING Life Distribution

Most Interesting Meeting Site: The Grand Hotel, Amsterdam, for a May 2005 incentive meeting.

On Regulatory Compliance for Incentive Meetings: Because some of our clients sell variable products, our meetings fall under NASD guidelines. Compliance plays a big part in who can attend incentive meetings. When the 1998 regulations went into effect, we lost some qualifiers because the rules said that agents had to be affiliated with the ING broker-dealer to attend our life company trips. While our department isn't involved with the selection process, we do have to know what the rules are. Luckily, we have a great legal department. If I don't understand a regulation, I can pick up the phone or shoot off an e-mail, and legal explains it in language I can understand. And the program itself has become more conservative. There's less of a party atmosphere. For example, at an evening event, the focus is on dinner, with a shorter cocktail reception. Overall, it's more of a business environment, even though it's an incentive meeting.

How Procurement Rocked My World: About 3 years ago, all the ING planners in the U.S. received a dotted line into procurement. My initial reaction was somewhat apprehensive. But over the last few years, I feel we've made a very good collaborative team. Procurement doesn't have anything to do with where we choose to go. We pick a site, negotiate for room rates and comps, and start the contracting process. Procurement does the legalese. ING, and procurement, understand the value that planners bring to the table.

JAMES WOLFE, CMP

Years in Meeting Planning: 30

First Title: Confidential Clerk, U.S. Steel, Pittsburgh

Current Title: Director, Administrative Services, NCCI Holdings, Inc., Boca Raton, Fla.

Meetings Planned Per Year: About 400, including day meetings

Department Size: 4

Department Reports To: CFO

Most Recent Meeting Site: Hyatt Grand Cyprus, Orlando

On The Invasion of the Bean Counters: There's a lot of fallout from a world that's led by bean counters, not hospitality people. Consider the proliferation of unsolicited e-mails. Planners are just names on someone's computerized hot list. I don't even open half the e-mails I receive, because if they're from someone I don't know, they might crash or infect my system. The only plus side to e-mail is that we don't get tons of promotional materials in the regular mail any more. But I'd much prefer a call — if it is from one of the wonderful vendors I work with. I still believe that my success in event planning is due to my one-on-one relationships, and I work hard at maintaining them.

On Shifts in Food and Beverage: The first event I planned, 30 years ago, was a retirement party at a local country club. Back then, the catering manager had to check his inventory for shot glasses because it was a shot and beer crowd. Now it's all about designer water and white wine. Food hasn't seemed to change all that much. For a while, in the 1980s, low-fat spa cuisine was all the rage. Toward the end of the 1990s, low-carb cuisine became popular. Now, low-carb menus aren't as hot. But there are have always been attendees who like meat and potatoes. The difference is, today we offer a variety of choices.

Additional reporting for this article by Michael Bassett and Alison Hall. Technology timeline elements by Corbin Ball.

What People Miss — and Don't Miss— About Meeting Planning in Days Past

I miss sending out a contract for a simple signature. No addendums, no lawyers, just a handshake and trusting relationship. Whatever happened to the cocktail napkin theory?
The industry was not nearly as serious. There was much less pressure and not as many rules and regulations to consider. But many of the things that made it fun in “the good old days” are things I don't miss in the current business environment — especially the lack of professionalism and respect for the industry.
I miss having more time to discuss things over the phone. I don't miss typing four-page banquet event orders on a manual typewriter using carbon paper.
There were no BlackBerries and cell phones. The telephone was our primary mode of communication and you were really able to get to know the people with whom you were working. People weren't concerned that it took a few hours to get back to them; now, everyone wants an answer immediately.
It used to be a bit of a pain, but not a huge security thing to get on a plane and participate in an incentive trip. Now, what an effort. It's no wonder a lot of people just want to stay home.
In the good old days, we got things done by working very hard but we had a great time doing it. We laughed, built our relationships, and gave each other Christmas gifts. Above all, we were absolutely honest with each other.
I think there is so much “bottom-line” focus and corporate etiquette these days that people don't have fun doing their jobs anymore. As much as I love e-mail, it has harmed personal relationships, because people don't talk to people the way they used to.
I miss the money from the good old days! I might thrive on the pressure, but it sure would be nice to have a budget boost. We can all hope and dream.
I won't shed a tear that the “old boys' club” has generally speaking been eliminated!
I miss three-martini lunches. I don't miss three-martini lunches.