The $211 million DeVos Place convention center opened its doors in December, encompassing a total area of one million square feet in the heart of Grand Rapids, Mich. The 162,000-square-foot exhibition hall is the size of three football fields...

Photography plays a key role in capturing the memories your attendees will have of all the fun and fellowship at your event. It also keeps the event alive well after the decorations come down and the choir goes home...

An argument can be made that the most important job of a religious meeting planner is negotiating contracts. To negotiate well, keep these strategies in mind...

Talk about a room with a view. From my 18th-floor balcony I could survey an enormous expanse of placid Pacific waters, the full sweep of Waikiki Beach, as well as the jutting brown face of Diamond Head. At the Marriott Waikiki Beach Resort, a two...

It took meeting planner Barbara Martin six months to find a job after losing her longtime position with a trade association in Washington, D.C. She finally landed a job with the Washington Area Automobile Dealers Association, needing to convince...

Several new initiatives were kicked off at the 48th annual meeting of the Professional Convention Management Association, held mid-January in Indianapolis. The meeting drew about 2,500 registrants — about the same as last year's annual meeting...

CLAUSE: Group will not be required to use Facility's in-house, exclusive, or preferred contractors or vendors for services such as audiovisual, security, exhibition services, and similar types of goods and services. If Group brings in outside...

More and more people in the meeting industry are reevaluating their careers as just one element in an overall balance in their lives. Unfortunately, society places high demands on all of us. If you achieve a “high-level” position, expectations are...

TALK TO THE RESIDENT GEEK IN A CONVENTION CENTER'S tech support group long enough, and you're bound to hear something like this: “We have the scalable capacity to partition and provision multiple secure LANs, WANs and VLANs for point-to-point...

From the lights of Las Vegas to the hustle and bustle of New York, downtown America is as popular as ever for association meetings. Downtown meetings can be expensive, but there are ways for budget-conscious planners to save money. Here are 20...