A business executive from 1952 is transported into the present and given this mission: Plan a meeting. It shouldn't be too much for him (yes, him) to handle, right? After all, it's just a matter of a) determining how he'll use the Internet to market and coordinate the event; b) combing through the 30-page contract sent by the hotel; c) e-mailing the presenters to make sure their multimedia presentations are Windows XP-compatible; and d) setting up several teleconferences with the client. And should we tell him he's got all of six weeks to get it done?
Without a doubt, the last thing this poor fellow would do before fainting is ask for a Brioschi to settle his stomach.
Fifty years ago, meetings weren't much of a business, with convention delegate spending worth just over a million dollars a year. Twenty-five years ago, they were a minor business: Meeting Professionals International had 141 full members and 127 associate members. Today, meetings are a huge, complex business, with 16.4 million square feet of new exhibit space currently being built in the U.S. alone, and industry associations boasting a total of 81,000 members.
From all the progress that's taken place over the past half-century, we've identified the five developments that have made the biggest difference on the state of meetings -- ones that would render today's meetings landscape virtually unrecognizable to the business executive of years gone by.
The PC
Though personal computers were around in the 1970s, August 1981 saw IBM create an electronic box, from off-the-shelf components, that people could actually use for business. Even with a few kilobytes of memory and floppy-disk drives, the PC's word-processing and spreadsheet functions revolutionized the way planners and suppliers gathered meetings information. "Before then, you couldn't live without secretaries whose sole job was dictation and typing," says Roger Smith, CEO of the Pasadena Center Operating Company, and a 37-year industry veteran.
C. James Trombino, director of conferences and professional development for the Metal Powders Industry Federation in Princeton, New Jersey, and 33-year veteran, offers this: "I remember when we thought that going from the old Royal machines to IBM Selectric typewriters was the best thing ever to happen to us. And when Wite-Out came out, that was a dream!"
The bottom line is that "computers have saved us tons of time," says Jan Allen, president of Austin, Texas-based Jan Allen Enterprises, and a 24-year veteran. "It's cut our work in leaps and bounds, especially for data-driven and logistical tasks. When I think of the number of people it took to complete the tasks that I myself do on a computer today, it's just amazing."
Smith says that the Philadelphia CVB's enormous file room is the relic that, for him, crystallizes what the PC has done for the meetings business. "When I worked there, we kept every piece of paper for every account over the past fifty years in a sea of cabinets," he says. "And there was a lady in charge of that room who'd simply say, 'What are you looking for?' You'd name the association; she'd squint for a moment, and then respond with something like, 'Fourth aisle, third cabinet -- the file's about three-quarters of the way back.' " Today, the hard drive of a single PC can hold every bit of information that was stored in that room.
The piece of software that forever altered the content side of the meetings business is PowerPoint. Introduced over 10 years ago, it is far from the most sophisticated package in today's marketplace. Nonetheless, it remains in 2002 the most popular presentation program in business.
The Internet
While the PC moved the meetings industry forward immensely through the 80s and early 90s, it was still just a solitary processor confined to one person's desk. Come 1994, however, the Internet allowed for instant electronic messaging between one PC user and another, and the World Wide Web offered the ability for companies to showcase their services to anyone with a PC and a modem, at a specific "site." From then on, "business as usual" had an entirely new meaning. "Communication has become so rapid and precise that it's altered the way almost everything gets done," says Mark Kent, director of Mamaroneck, New York-based Meeting Services, who started his firm 38 years ago.
For instance, lead times for even a small meeting in the 1970s were at least three months. Even in the early 90s, a flurry of faxes and FedEx deliveries could bring the shortest of lead times down to about two weeks. Today, planners can contact suppliers, make deals, swap information, and get people from around the world to come together in the same week -- using a single laptop machine.
Event registration, housing, and marketing have also become far more sophisticated thanks to the Internet. Attendees can sign up for educational and social events at meetings, book into the group's hotel block, and pay for it all, at any time, without once speaking to someone.
Trombino notes that "Web marketing is huge for groups like ours. We were using strictly paper mail for all those years, but the interactive elements brought into the mix make things so much more immediate. Marketing won't ever be fully electronic, but being able to e-mail documents and brochures that can print in full color right to someone's desk drastically alters our approach."
Finally, meetings today can take place despite the fact that every participant is in a different city and learned of the meeting just 10 minutes before, thanks to desktop videoconferencing.
Of course, the flip side to the ever-growing influence of the electronic medium is that it "takes a lot of human element out of the planning process, for bad more than for good," says Kent. "It's a planner's job to sweat the details, and that can only be done effectively through personal contact."
The Rise of Women
In 1963, Mark Kent fell into meeting planning. The impetus: A female client of his was plainly ignored by a hotel's sales staff while on site. Only by threatening to blackball the hotel among his promotional firm's other accounts did Kent get the staff to acknowledge his client. When she asked him to handle other events for her company, Kent had himself a new business.
In fact, such a chilly reception would not have been so unusual even as late as 1980, when the vast majority of suppliers were men, and women were just starting to assume significant roles on the planning side. "It was a very male-dominated business when I first got into it in 1977," says Jan Allen. "I felt like some men didn't take me seriously, and that I had to prove myself over and over again."
Today, things couldn't be more different. There are 14,236 female planners and suppliers who are members of Meeting Professional International, compared to about 4,500 men. Further, many women have used the position of planner to prove their business acumen and advance through their organizations. For instance, Evelyn Laxgang, director of strategic programs and events for Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola, has become part of the company's senior executive team after honing her skills in the chief marketing office for 20 years. "If planners are actively identifying measurable goals and objectives for their events and presenting the results, then they are going to get management's attention," she says, "because those measurement tools translate across every department."
The Complexity of Contracts
There's no clearer symbol of the economic importance of meetings today than the sheer size of a typical meeting contract. While any attorney would tell you that a voluminous contract simply protects both sides and gives peace of mind, planners and suppliers alike wistfully recall simpler days. "When I first started, there were no contracts," says Smith. "There was just a letter of agreement, and to even call it a letter is pushing it. It was usually just a scribbled note that would say: 'Hotel X is holding the dates of August 6 through August 9 for Group Y, along with 250 guest rooms and two ballrooms. Thanks for the business.' You didn't even have to sign it and send it back. A few more letters sent back and forth as the dates got closer would spell out room setups and other specs, and that was it."
Trombino recalls that terms such as cancellation and attrition hardly existed 25 years ago. "If a group didn't pick up, it was too bad for the hotel," he says. "It was up to them to confirm history and reasonableness of the block. On the other hand, hotels would often cut a block on their own without telling the planner." And if a group cancelled a meeting? "Everyone felt bad about it, and you tried to rebook another meeting in the same chain. But that doesn't satisfy anymore, because hotel ownership issues are so complicated," he adds. "That's why the contract process is far more detailed these days."
When Lynne Tiras, president of Houston-based International Meeting Managers, began her career in 1979, a two-page contract and a handshake were the norm. Not anymore. Now, "We provide our own contract, and it's between twenty and thirty pages," she says. "We have someone in my firm who works full time on contracts. That's how bad things have gotten."
In 1969, SM Editor Robert Letwin wrote an editorial regarding cancelled meetings affecting hotels' costs, and potential remedies. He found that "nothing so far suggested beats the integrity of both parties." Some things never change.
The Professionalism of the Industry
Looking to get out of town and have fun for a few days, while your company foots the bill? Get yourself to a meeting!
We're kidding, of course. But 25 years ago, this line of thought was hardly uncommon. "Groups would have business meetings to get away, with lots of hospitality suites where you could drink and play cards all night," Trombino says. "It was pretty crazy."
But since then, the focus of meetings has shifted, as companies realized the benefit that employee education can have on the bottom line. As a result, meetings have become more business-oriented—and accountable.
Many in the meetings industry, however, have known this for decades. In fact, the Professional Convention Management Associa-tion began under a different name way back in 1957, while Meeting Professionals International was founded in 1972. Their purpose: To have planners from around the country exchange knowledge and best practices so that the standards -- and the reputation -- of meetings would rise. And these groups tapped a source of interest that will never run dry. The proof: Each year, more and more planners take the Certified Meeting Professional exam (instituted in 1985) and Certification in Meeting Management exam (instituted in 1998) -- not only to become better at planning, but also to be able to prove how their job contributes to their organizations' bottom line. Further, technology now allows planners to share information and best practices instantly and directly, through the use of Internet listservs that connect people based on common interest in a topic.
Come the 1990s, the meetings industry was coherent enough to begin a concerted lobbying effort of elected representatives. The first Legislative Action Day in 1994 saw hundreds of planners and suppliers fan out across Capitol Hill to bend the ear of Congress, telling officials just how important meetings- and business- travel-friendly legislation is to the health of the overall economy.
The tumultuous events of 2001 have only reinforced that message. And as the next 50-year chapter unfolds for the meetings industry, the business world will become ever more aware of its importance.