SOME MEETINGS ARE never going to take place at a luxury hotel. Alicen Holmes, a meeting planner with Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., and panelist at the Ritz-Carlton Luxury Meetings Forum, an event for meeting trade editors held at the Ritz...

“You can't look at four guys dressed up as nuns and not laugh,” says Paul Creighton, executive vice president, T. Skorman Productions, about the corporate entertainment act he represents, “Our Sisters of Perpetual Motion.” ...

TWO YEARS AGO, Derek Carissimi took a look at his industry — health care — and began to think about programs that his hospital could use to attack the labor shortage problem that was endemic to the field...

At Meeting Professionals International Professional Education Conference, held January 18 to 20 in San Antonio, Terri Breining, CMP, CMM, chairwoman of the MPI board of directors and president of Concepts Worldwide, and Colin Rorrie, PhD, CAE...

Competing with upstart IMEX, Reed Travel Exhibitions' 2004 EIBTM show will take place later in the year than in the past — November 30 to December 2 — in a new city, Barcelona, Spain, at the Fira Gran Via exhibition hall...

THE COVER STORY of this issue focuses on technology, and it got me to thinking about how much we now live in a techno world. From financial services to shopping to meeting planning, technology is having an impact on every aspect of our lives. So...

The 007 theme song was playing as we stepped into the Juniper room at the Essex Conference Center & Retreat in Essex, Mass. A woman dressed in a black and animal print outfit peered down her sunglasses at us (it was a dark and rainy day), gave...

Greetings from the Great White North! I have just experienced my first ICPA board meeting and have quite a to-do list in front of me. One of my more exciting to-do's will be to pick up where my predecessor left off in growing our membership, with...

Meeting budgets for independent planning firms are projected to increase in a big way in 2004, states FutureWatch 2004, an annual meeting industry survey sponsored by Meeting Professionals International and American Express. Budgets for...

In a slow-moving economy in which competition for meeting business is fierce, the hospitality industry in Cleveland has come up with a way to lure business. The Greater Cleveland Convention and Visitors Bureau's new “Rock Your Bottom Line”...