Bruce Harris retired this month as president of Conferon Global Services (CGS), one of the country's largest meeting-planning firms. Harris founded CGS predecessor Conferon in 1971 and has been instrumental in many of the meeting industry's innovations over the past 35 years. He recently spoke with MeetingNews senior editor Marshall Krantz about where the industry has been and where he thinks it is headed.Q: What do you consider the most significant change in the meetings industry during your career?A: One of most significant changes has been a focus on the value of a meeting planner. Years ago, there wasn't a meeting-planning title. You did membership and you did planning, or you did something else and planning. I'm sure there were some people doing meeting planning full time, but they didn't get the recognition; they didn't have the title.Conferon started in corporate meeting planning, and almost every time I planned a meeting, it was with a vice president or director and a secretary--there was no meeting planner. It would have been much easier to have a meeting planner to call on.When you realize the millions of dollars that go into meetings, both the corporate side and association side have realized the importance of having a meeting planner lead the charge. Q: Any other significant changes?A: When I first started in the meetings business, no one was calling on third parties. Now, there's a real understanding of what the third-party marketplace is. It took years and years of being in the marketplace for third parties to establish their credibility.That the industry is creating best-practice standards is critical. It will only work if industry executives get together and agree to collaborate, which I think we're trying to do, and get the word out about these recommended standards.Technology has also changed tremendously--the ability to search for meeting facilities online and pass information back and forth with hotels.Q. Looking ahead in the next decade, what's the most significant change you see in the meetings industry?A. This whole concept of building a community online through social networking. Currently, when you belong to an association, basically the networking you do is when you show up to a meeting. But there are these places on the web that give us the ability to connect to contemporaries year-round, where every person has a profile and it can be matched against other profiles.Tapping into the knowledge of attendees and speakers and the ability to connect with people of similar minds 365 days a year will give people more reasons to join associations and attend meetings. There is a great need to actually meet with the people you've been social networking with.So, social networking will change the face of meetings. You'll find associations, when they start social networking, will then, for example, have breakfasts at meetings where you sign up for a table to continue the social networking you've been doing year-round. It's very powerful to get face to face with people you've been meeting on the web.Social networking will also bring in the younger generations that are missing from meetings, because they love to communicate on the web.