Use the purpose to maximize the impact.
Lana Frank, Project Manager with Humana
| Ensure your environment is in sync with the goals of your event. Board meetings, sales meetings, and incentive programs often fit right into the resort atmosphere.
For Humana, Lana Frank plans gatherings from corporate meetings to five-day incentive events. Purposes range from associate recognition, acquisition projects, PGA sponsorship events, consumer-centric information meetings, leadership planning sessions, and a myriad of others that keep Frank’s team of nine planners busy throughout the year.
“Our meetings [and] events involve both internal and external attendees,” Frank says. “Goals as a whole ultimately target engagement and progressing our business strategy forward to continue growth and profitability. Through identifying your goals, you can then begin to work with the resort on establishing a theme to use throughout the event, beginning with the invitations, email blasts, and other promotions geared toward getting your guests involved and excited.”
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 Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, OH announced the opening of its newly expanded convention center, marking the completion of a $22 million, ten-month renovation. The 120,000 sq. ft. addition more than doubles the size of the previous convention center, bringing the total square footage to 215,000 and making the Kalahari Resort – Sandusky the only under-one-roof complex in the Midwest to offer a convention center and hotel of such scope.
As the second largest employer in the area, the expansion will add more than 140 full-time jobs to Kalahari’s 1,200-member employee base. It is also expected to generate additional taxable revenue within the resort equal to the amount of approximately $150 million over the first 20 years.
 Editor's note (December 2, 2011 @ 10:30 a.m. CT): Here at Midwest Meetings, we don't necessarily feel we should need to defend the conference costs incurred by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the recent Mortgage Bankers Association's annual meeting in Chicago. After all, the costs breakdown in the Federal Housing Finance Agency's response appears to contain justifiable line items. It looks pretty self-explanatory to us.
But alas, there's the rub: it makes sense to those who know what they're looking at.
Lawmakers, mainstream media, and the general public, on the other hand, don't have that meetings industry "insider" perspective. And $640,000 does sound like an awfully big number if one doesn't understand how to put it into perspective. So how do we, as an industry, get the message across?
Scroll down for updates as Midwest Meetings continues to gain commentary and insight regarding the latest black eye to the meetings industry from the mainstream media.
 ON24, Inc., the global leader in webcasting and virtual events, today announced a new webcasting solution, the Webcast Elite edition, that combines the rich functionality of ON24 Webcasting Platform 10 with unprecedented ease of use – making it possible for business users to produce their own fully branded, professional-quality webcasts and webinars.
 Today, meeting planners have an overwhelming, ever-changing array of technological options and add-ons to choose from when it comes to enhancing the event experience. When it comes to mobile apps, the Overland Park CVB in Kansas now offers meeting planners a “try before you buy” option that enhances the Overland Park destination experience while helping planners gauge whether this kind of technology is a fit for their groups.
“There are so many destination mobile applications out there today,” says Liron BenDor, vice president of marketing. “They’re all wonderful, and they’re really fantastic tools for visitors coming to any destination. What we were noticing is that we get a lot of meeting planners, and a lot of meeting planners are seeing this for the first time - let's give them a taste of what you can do with mobile app technology.”
by Robert Ware
 Project managers and project team members, like all business professionals, attend numerous meetings of various types, purposes and durations. Examples range from status update meetings, which generally last 30 minutes to an hour and are focused on reporting on the current status of a project, to performance reviews, on the other hand, which last from one to several days.
For project managers, meeting planning falls under the more general domain of project communications management. Meetings, like other forms of communication, are evaluated in terms of the degree to which they facilitate the efficient and effective achievement of project objectives. Consequently, the costs associated with holding meetings are weighed against the benefits derived from the meetings. The project manager must consider not just the direct costs of staging the meeting, but also the costs associated with having personnel attend the meeting instead of doing other project-related work.
 • How state legislation affects meetings.
As always, the meetings industry remains in a constant state of flux dependent upon the laws and regulations of other industries. Recent, ongoing—and potential—changes to state legislation often seem to occur in the blink of an eye, carrying wide-reaching and sometimes unforeseen consequences that impact many groups' site-selection dictums.
Let's look at two recent, particularly buzzworthy topics of legislative interest, along with their associated concerns to meetings…
by Thom Singer  I speak at business meetings, and I’ve seen it all. Every event is unique, but the people you meet are often the most fascinating part of the conference experience.
Several months ago, I was at an event with “thought leader extraordinaire” Matt Church, and we were talking about the meetings industry. Soon we were joking about all the people you can expect to meet at a conference, and I’ve been collecting ideas about “-ists” ever since that conversation. Here are some of the interesting personalities who often show up.
1. The Conference Pacifist. The person who does not want to witness or participate in conflict, controversy, or hands-on activities. Anything can make them uneasy and cause them to flee the conference and seek diplomatic immunity in their hotel room.
 If you’re planning a meeting or event far from home, you might be able to cut your own costs by hiring an independent or freelance planner for some tasks. For instance, the fee to have a local planner inspect the site for you might come in far below your costs of traveling to the location.
Rather than hiring decorators and florists, you can save a lot by creating your own centerpieces and decor. Think about the pieces you’ve seen and how you could re-create the same effect.
 ** If you’re unable to obtain firm quotes from suppliers on a meeting that is a year or more out, obtain from them, in writing, a guaranteed maximum percentage of increase. When putting together your budget, add this percentage on to estimated costs to ensure you write in enough to cover potential price hikes.
** Large meetings and events can leave a positive impact on the cities in which they’re held. In addition to the boost to local hotels, restaurants and stores, consider collecting donations from your attendees to benefit a charity local to your meeting site.
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