UNLV Shake-Up

If you’re a faithful reader of MeCo posts or follow news items about special events education, you’ll have heard that the University of Nevada Las Vegas is eliminating its meetings and events major – the first (and one the few) education programs to actually award four-year degrees in meetings and events. Note: they are not getting rid of most of the actual courses or the three instructors in the program, but students who enroll in the fall of 2011 will graduate with a degree in Hospitality Management and a “concentration” in meetings and events. That’s “a step down”, according to Professor Patti Shock, the creator of the program and long-time education advocate of higher education in our industry.

I gave Patti a call to see what was behind this seemingly crazy decision – after all, Las Vegas is probably the No. 1 city for meetings, conventions and events and it just doesn’t make sense to cripple a program that feeds young talent into the system.

“It was strictly budget cuts,” she told me – no back-room politics or funny dealings behind closed doors. State-funded schools are being hit hard all over the country, and they’re cutting everything they can just to survive.

It could be worse. At least the courses and instructors will still be there. And Patti tells me that she’s trying to work a compromise that will allow the new Meetings and Events concentration to be noted on the diploma.

We’ll be taking an in-depth look at education options for industry professionals in the June/July print and digital edition, and will update you on Patti’s progress at UNLV.

Think Small

When corporate planners are told to control meeting costs, many of them logically focus on their largest and most costly meetings because of the sheer scale of the spend. But a recent study released by Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) shows that a difference can be made by also taking a look at small meetings – those with less than 25 people.

CWT’s report reveals that nearly two-thirds of an organization’s meeting costs are the result of small meetings like these. The problem is that many companies don’t treat these meetings as real meetings. They are little independent gatherings, often arranged by organizers outside the planning department. And the related travel and meeting costs are often absorbed into other areas of the budget.

If these issues are of concern, CWT recommends developing a small meetings program that helps organizers take advantage of central sourcing, pre-negotiated discounts, service package options and established processes.

If you want to find out how to do this, take a look at the complete article here.

Rethink Forum

You may be surprised to learn that there’s a new group dedicated to promoting the “interactive revolution” – the industry’s shift to participatory meetings that engage attendees through technology, interaction and collaboration. (If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the October/November 2010 issue of Event Solutions for an in-depth story on this new movement.)

Well, the movement is spreading, as I predicted last year. This new group, which was just conceived in December, is called the Rethink Forum, and it consists of groups of like-minded people meeting in various locations and then everyone linking together to create one big, interactive conference. Virtual attendees can join in, too. If this sounds a little like the recent Event Camps hosted by the event profs group, you’re right. In fact, some of the leaders of the ReThink Forum are event profs themselves.

The ReThink Forum’s first meeting was held yesterday morning in New York, with hubs in Paris, Copenhagen and Minneapolis as well as virtual attendees. Sam Smith of Event Camp fame organized and led the Minneapolis group, which I was invited to attend. We had about 20 people there, a nice turnout considering not many people are aware of this group yet, and the meetings are invitation-only. In total, the conference had 297 attendees.

I won’t go into the content in this blog – there will plenty of information available at www.rethink-forum.com after it’s updated. But of course, a lot of it had to do with the changing face of meetings and conferences. Most of us in the Minneapolis group had laptops (provided by Sam) so were able to give our input on ideas several times throughout the conference.

The pacing was a little frenetic. It’s hard to synch different groups in different time zones, engage them as one group, but allow local interaction at the same time. Then there always seems to be technology issues, problems with audio or video, or links. To be honest, I expected that. Nothing ever goes off without a hitch.

And the quality of the video (and audio at times) was distracting. We’re used to hi-def and hi-res, so the grainy, jerky quality of the live images detracted from the message, rather than creating an environment where we truly felt connected. This too, I expected. After all, the conference was free, so budget was a concern, I’m sure.

But it was fun watching Cheryl Kranz and Ryan Hanson use Prezi to give their presentation on a huge interactive event they produced for the local Boston Scientific group – cool stuff.

My overall impression is that we’re still at the crawling stage with this stuff. We have great ideas and creativity when it comes to engaging attendees, but are still pretty much figuring out how to make them work. Events like this are a start and my kudos to the trail blazers who are taking the lead in figuring out what it all means – and how to do it.