IAEM CONFERENCE REVIEWS DOT-COM DEMISE "What a difference a year makes," said Fast Company co-founder and editor William Taylor, back for a repeat keynote presentation at the annual meeting of the International Association for Exhibition Management held in San Diego in November. The event drew a record 2,843 attendees and 318 exhibitors.
E-commerce was a major theme at last year's IAEM annual meeting. But the promise of the dot-com world has been turned on its head recently with NASDAQ tech stocks on the skids and high-tech fortunes in ruins. Taylor observed, "That am-I-fast-enough, unprecedented exuberance has wisely receded to the background. It forces us to revisit the first principles of business, to get back to the basics, to the customer. The organizations that will thrive are not based on how big their offices are but how deep their convictions run. The team with the clearest sense of purpose will win."
Satisfying customers (attendees) was the theme of "New Breed of Attendees," a packed session led by Allen Konopacki, PhD, a consultant in the exhibition industry with many pharmaceutical company clients. Recently, he studied attendee behavior on the show floor at the Radiological Society of North America annual meeting in Chicago.
Konopacki said RSNA was "very attendee conscientious." It's the little things that make attendees more apt to return the next year. For example, RSNA "put in more furniture in the hall, put up a big gazebo, and served lemonade." For more, visit www.tradeshowresearch.com.
Intertec Publishing, the business-to-business publishing unit of Primedia Inc. (NYSE:PRM), has acquired Medical Meetings magazine and its five sister publications in the meeting industry, as well as the MeetingsNet Web site (www.meetingsnet.com), from Adams Business Media. The acquired publications, based in Maynard, Mass., also include Association Meetings, Corporate Meetings & Incentives, Insurance Conference Planner, Technology Meetings, and Religious Conference Manager.
The Meetings Group of magazines is now part of Intertec's Marketing Division, led by Vice President Jeff Reinhardt, and will be overseen by Group Publisher Kerry J. Smith. Leading products in the division, based in Stamford, Conn., include Folio:, PROMO, American Demographics, and Direct. The Web site will be part of the IndustryClick community of Web sites. IndustryClick, Primedia's Internet operating unit, manages all Web properties for Intertec.
Due to an editing error, the LegalEase column "Copyright 101," December 2000 issue, page 201, incorrectly stated that the song "Happy Birthday" is in the public domain. It is not in the public domain, and thus copyright laws apply should someone sing it at a public event.