The Best Preparations for the Worst Case Scenarios I don’t remember walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror, but lately we’ve had some tough karma when it comes to our client meetings. Faithful blog readers (that’s you, Mom!) may remember that we had a meeting back in September that we had to cancel due
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Category: Conference Planning
Virtual: A Day in the Life – Events Planner
Q&A with Brittney Burns, Events Manager at Virtual What do you do at Virtual? At Virtual, I manage events for a technology-focused, non-profit association management company. This might mean planning conferences and member meetings. Virtual’s event planning team plans numerous Board of Directors and association working group meetings every year. We run events in 35
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The Four Secrets to Making a Big Impression at Your Member Event
Our team just wrapped up another PCI Security Standards Council Community Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland. With hundreds of attendees, scores of speakers and dozens of exhibitors, the meeting—and its counterparts in the US and Asia—have a ton of moving parts. But if I do say so myself, we hit it out of the park on
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As the Calendar Page Turns…It’s Tech Conference Season
As the calendar page turns, it starts to become conference season. The period from February to June is stacked with industry conferences of all kinds in the tech space. Starting with CES, but moving on to the RSA conference and dozens of others. Having gone to more of these than I can count, here are
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Meetings 5.0: Five Ways to Improve Your Events
This week I’m speaking on a panel at the New England Society of Association Executives Annual Meeting. I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the session title is. But I know it has something to do with “innovations in meetings and programs.” And while I’m not entirely sure of the topic, I’ve got some
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Simple Truths About Strategic Planning for Your Professional Association
Too many professional associations function without a strategic plan. And whether they know it or not, they suffer major consequences. Without strategic planning, an organization lurches from priority to priority, depending on who has the loudest voice at the Board table; volunteers are frustrated, and critical goals go unmet. If you ask these groups why
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Association Meetings, Sweat The Details
It’s meeting season. Over the past three weeks, our clients have held nearly a dozen meetings and conferences of all types—with over 2500 total attendees. We’ve had some great success with our meetings and events in recent weeks. As I think about why, it struck me that there are a few general rules that associations
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CXPA Caselet
Challenge
CXPA, a brand-new member association, needed to go from zero to full member service in under a year while delivering on its mission of connecting professionals and promoting best practices.
Solution
Virtual worked with the new Board to create a financial plan, start marketing the first annual event, provide member service, and create a brand identity and web site.
Result
CXPA has become the premier networking and education source for customer experience, with 2,000 members in the first year and a successful first annual conference.
