There are myriad professional associations offering meeting professionals educational opportunities on a chapter level as well as at their annual conferences. They offer education on topics such as meetings technology, contract negotiations, food and beverage trends, strategic meeting management, ROI, and sales and marketing. They also offer sessions on more specific topics, such as strategies for online events, risk management, ways to enhance adult learning, and more.
While this is a valuable way to stay up-to-date as a meeting professional, there are a variety of other methods that meeting planners use on a daily basis to help keep themselves challenged and their skills and abilities fine-tuned.
My Experience
Sometimes your personal interests can provide opportunities to challenge yourself as a meeting planner.
I moved about a year ago and was looking for a way to get more involved in my new community. Having taken up golf about two years ago, I found the perfect opportunity advertised in the community connection section of the local newspaper to help coordinate a charity golf tournament for Habitat for Humanity of Sonoma County [Calif.].
Although I had put together golf events and small tournaments in conjunction with the corporate meetings and incentive programs I planned for clients, I had never dealt with marketing a similar event to the public. I did a lot of research online about organizing charity golf events and spoke to other meeting planners who had experience in this area; I even signed up for a webinar titled “Planning a Great Golf Outing.” As a result, I plan on doing more of these events for nonprofit organizations.
David Wierdsma, clinical support specialist at Sunnyvale, Calif.’s Accuray Inc., was a competitive swimmer in high school and decided to use his meeting planner experience as a way to get involved in the sport again.
He has volunteered this year at several championships in Northern California, including the 2006 FINA Masters World Aquatics Championship held at Stanford University, where his responsibilities included announcing.
Because of his Scottish heritage, Wierdsma became a member of the Caledonian Club in San Francisco, which hosts an annual Scottish Highland Gathering and Games. As a result, he had the opportunity to work on room blocks and food and beverage on a much larger scale than he gets to in his job.
Going Back to School
Managing a meeting or event requires having knowledge in a number of different areas: legal issues when you deal with contract negotiations; marketing, because you have to effectively communicate the goals and objectives of a program and why people should attend; and accounting, because you have to develop and mange the program budget as well as final billing reconciliation.
Taking classes at a local college or university is a way to become more adept in these areas.
Heidi Bechtold, CMP, manager, Meeting Services at New York’s American Thoracic Society, has certainly found that to be true for her.
“One of the best classes I have taken since graduation has been a basic accounting class at a junior college,” she says. “There is so much that revolves around budgets that I use the accounting skills every day, and it helps to be able to ‘talk the language’ with the back of the house people who work on all of the billing.”
Maybe your challenge is dealing with meetings where your attendees are more culturally diverse. You might consider taking an online class, as Wallsh recently did. She took an online World Cultures and Hospitality course through the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
The great thing about how the meetings industry has grown is that there are an increasing number of certificate and degree programs for meeting professionals.
Take Stacey Weaver, program consultant–Incentives & Awards for Columbia, S.C.’s Colonial Supplemental Insurance, for example.
First, she received a certificate in meeting and event planning from the University of South Carolina. She is now enrolled in a graduate degree program to get her master’s degree in Hotel, Tourism, and Restaurant Management from the University of South Carolina’s School of Hotel, Tourism, and Sports Management.
Keep your eyes open the next time you receive literature from your local junior college—see if there is a class that could help expand your skills in a particular subject that you deal with at work. Look into participating in an online course or webinar about an area of meeting planning you are interested in learning more about.
In short, it’s always beneficial to explore opportunities to expand your experience based on your personal interests.
