In April—Autism Awareness Month—this article highlighted simple changes planners can make to improve the meeting experience for neurodiverse attendees. (Read the story.)  In June, MeetingsNet featured Google’s Megan Henshall, CMP, DES, among its industry Changemakers for her work on The Neu Project, a compendium of resources for making meetings more accessible to neurodiverse individuals. (Read the story.)

Read about the Canadian Visionaries Network, a collection of Canadian thought leaders who signed on to support Destination Canada in its efforts to book international conferences. (Read the story.)

Meeting Professionals International’s Spring 2023 Meetings Outlook Report underlined one of planners’ biggest challenge of the year: Rising prices are straining meeting budgets and will likely continue to do so into 2024. (Read the story.)

Las Vegas is continually on the move and meeting professionals want to stay in the know. That lit up the interest in this article about the demise of the Tropicana and its 100,000 square feet of event space, and the ballpark and hotel that will replace it.  (Read the story.)

A May meeting of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology was disrupted by an assault on a panelist, reminding planners of their critical risk-management responsibilities. (Read the story.)

The buzz around generative A.I. tool ChatGPT, which launched in late 2022, had reached the meetings industry by midyear, prompting a wave of interest in our item, We Asked ChatGPT What It Can Do for Meetings, So You Don’t Have To. (Read the story.) By the fall, a new meetings-specific A.I. tool had several thousand users, and MeetingsNet followed up with a deep dive plus case studies in A.I. Power Users Share Their Planning Stories. The article series focuses on how meeting professionals are using A.I to help build, promote, execute, and analyze business events. (Read the case studies.)

Our friends at Meetings & Incentives Worldwide shared this educational article on how meeting properties have changed the way they handle deposits, billing, rebooking, concessions, and more. (Read the story.)

MeetingsNet annual Changemakers report features 15 meeting professionals who exemplify the diverse and dynamic nature of the meetings and conventions industry, and who demonstrate exceptional leadership that brings about progress. (Read the Changemakers’ stories.)

In general, organizations have pulled back on their use of hybrid meetings, but many are still trying to find the right balance and the best format: Concurrent, staggered, multi-site … there are more hybrid possibilities than you might think. (Read the story.)

If you’re in the market for a third-party planning partner, the CMI25 report is a good place to start. This listing of the 25 largest independent planning companies working with the U.S. corporate market is an annual resource from MeetingsNet, with statistics, news, and resources from these leading companies.

A report from the Global Business Travel Association looking at the frontiers of climate-conscious travel, from carbon fees to sustainable aviation fuel, caught planners’ attention as the urgency around sustainable meetings meetings grows. (Read the article.)