The Professional Meeting Planners Network, Durham, N.C., which specializes in physician symposia, CME events, and other small medical meetings, has spun off a new company to resell online registration services and try to make Web registration and housing more practical for smaller groups.

Launched in June, Attendee Management Inc., based in Wimberly, Texas, is led by top independent meeting pros, including president Jeff Rasco, former senior vice president at medical meeting planning company JRDaggett & Associates, and chairman Rod Abraham, president of PMPN.

In the past, planners who wanted to incorporate online registration into their meeting management contracted with a registration company — typically paying a license fee, setup fee, and per transaction fees — and then had to learn to use the registration package. AMI plans to buy registration transactions from the major registration providers at volume discounts (its first contract is with RegWeb, recently acquired by StarCite, see below), then resell them to groups. AMI builds a registration/housing site, but the client has access to the back-end reporting functions.

“Chances are pretty good that a meeting planner is going to be able to get his or her per-transaction cost at about the price as they would get if they contracted directly with the [registration] ASP, but they don't have to learn how to use the software, and they don't have to pay the licensing fee or the other upfront costs,” says Rasco.

AMI had its first registration site online in July. The company's Web site is expected to be up shortly at www.attendeenet.com.