Carol McGury, executive vice president, event and education services for association services company SmithBucklin, has been elected as chair of the PCMA Education Foundation’s Board of Trustees, which governs the organization. McGury will assume the role following PCMA’s Convening Leaders meeting January 6-9, 2019, in Pittsburgh. She will replace Maritz Global Events President David Peckinpaugh.

Dallas Johnson is an event planner with the North American Scrabble Players Association, which utilizes a number of destinations for events, including Fort Wayne, Indiana. Here she describes her experience meeting at the Grand Wayne Convention Center.

If your attendees are being sequestered within the four bland walls of a cookie-cutter hotel to suffer through endless PowerPoints punctuated by flavorless breaks and networking events that rival watching paint dry, you’re going to want to mix it up by using a special venue. Meetings Today teamed up with Chuck Salem to profile some of the top off-site options available in Indiana.

Members of the UNITE HERE labor union, which represents hotel workers across Canada and the U.S., ratified an agreement with Marriott International to end their strike in Boston.

Martha Sheridan was hired as the president and CEO of the Greater Boston CVB.

Hyatt Hotels Corporation will join Marriott International, Hilton Hotels & Resorts and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) in cutting independent meeting planner commissions from its current 10 percent rate to 7 percent. Jack Horne, global head of sales and revenue for the hotel chain, revealed the news in a letter sent to meeting and event planners who have done business with Hyatt on Thursday, November 15, 2018.

The expert of record for all things meetings tech for more than 20 years, Corbin Ball—owner of Corbin Ball & Co.—has ingrained himself in the meetings industry on a global level. An inveterate traveler—he spends about a third of his time on the road every year—Ball recently received the highest honor in the industry after being inducted into the Events Industry Council’s (EIC) Hall of Leaders.

Association services company SmithBucklin acquired 360 Live Media in a move that will significantly augment both companies’ meetings offerings in an environment that increasingly demands a high level of experiential elements, immersive attendee experiences and other format disruptions.

Wynn Resorts has scuttled its lagoon project but is restoring its 18-hole Tom Fazio designed golf course that has been closed since December 2017, according to a report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

An insatiable appetite for everything “food” is essential in the makeup of Mark Kropczynski, executive chef at San Diego’s THE US GRANT, a Luxury Collection Hotel. In fact, if you walk down to the San Diego shoreline after the kitchen of the Marriott-brand property’s Grant Grill closes you may find Kropczynski, dive light in hand, hunting for California spiny lobsters.