The last few months have given me the opportunity to attend a couple meetings industry events that were quite different in nature, yet still served their core constituencies well.
Mid-November marked my first attendance of SPINCon, the fourth annual meeting of the Senior Planners Industry Network, held in St. Louis.
For lack of a better descriptor, the event was a bit on the “touchy-feely” side, with programming focusing on wellness, fitness, work-life balance and other personal issues. A highlight, for me, anyway, was a session on meditation from the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.
Carrying a different theme every year, SPINCon also offered some of your more-traditional sessions dealing with meetings and business issues, but its concentration on the personal was really a refreshing change from the major conferences, which can sometimes seem “cookie-cutter” and impersonal in comparison.
However, one such major conference, PCMA’s Convening Leaders, held last month, may seem traditional on its face, but its purpose and execution is anything but.
With a primary objective of providing a “laboratory” for attendees, PCMA’s leaders make no apologies when sometimes its programming experiments fall flat—that’s why they do it, so planners can see for themselves, which is refreshing.
Of course, Meetings Focus is gearing up for its 2015 roster of Meetings Focus Live! events, one-on-one hosted buyer events that skew on the smaller, more-personal side.
Make sure to check out www.meetingstoday.com/MFLive to register and learn more.
We hope to see you on the road!
