And now it's time for a commercial break: We're putting on a free webinar next week called "Managing Up, Down, and Sideways: Discover Meeting Management Tools the Pros Already Use." On our looong drive back to Massachusetts from Stamford, Conn., yesterday (we were down there having a meeting with our Web guys), our editorial director Betsy Bair told me she was totally impressed with Webinar leaders Linette Kostel, travel Manager with Sepracor; and Lisa Palmeri, director of consulting services with OnVantage Inc. They really "get" it, she said, and she's pretty excited about the whole thing. It'll be live Wednesday, June 29, at 2-3 p.m. Eastern, then archived for a while so those who couldn't make it the first time can check it out.
Anyway, it's about how you can use technology to help demonstrate just how valuable meeting professionals are to sponsors, senior management, and procurement specialists, in addition to managing your own teams and workload.
According to our press release:
You will learn:
* How to use online tools to improve the attendee registration experience and still stay within budget
* How to control meeting costs
* How to gather metrics for demonstrating process improvements
* How to gain efficiencies in contract management
* How to get buy-in from financial, sales and marketing, and other departments involved in meeting management
Here are some articles with good background info on all this stuff:
National Business Travel Association White Paper: Building a Strategic Meetings Management Program
Five Steps to Consolidating Your Meeting Data, By John Chang
They just finished the run-through a few minutes ago, and I hear it went swimmingly. Hope you can come check it out (did I mention that it's free? OnVantage is sponsoring it, so you don't have to.) For more info or to sign up, click here.
OK, back to our regularly scheduled program.