New Mexico's Albuquerque CVB named Tania Armenta its new president and CEO beginning Jan. 5. Armenta is the CVB’s current chief operating and marketing officer and has been with the organization for more than 17 years. The CVB says Armenta is a forward-thinking and proven marketing leader known for building partnerships and developing strong and talented teams.
Renaissance Boca Raton welcomes Mehmet Bahtiyar as its general manager. With over 15 years of hotel industry experience, Bahtiyar will oversee the day-to-day operations of the 189-room hotel, which includes attention to its service, guest relations and generative revenue. The property features 15,000 square feet of meeting space.
The Santa Cruz County Conference & Visitors Council announced the promotion of Krista Rupp to director of sales and marketing. Rupp previously served in the position of sales and marketing manager. Her background includes four years of experience at the CVC, preceded by boutique hotel sales roles at properties along the Central Coast and a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Min Kim is the new meetings and events coordinator with Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C., the nation’s leading nonprofit for advancing the arts in the U.S. She works to produce an educational and professional platform for events to promote the activities and services of Americans for the Arts and the art community.
Featured Industry Profiles:
Editor’s note: The recent legalization of the recreational use of marijuana in three key Western states, Colorado, Washington and Oregon, will have ramifications on the meetings industry. Additionally, a number of states are expected to attempt to follow suit in coming years. Following are two profiles of Movers & Shakers who work in the industry from two different, but related, standpoints: regulation and industry tradeshows/media, Both intersect with the meetings industry via their conferences.
Dan Rowland
Citywide Communications Advisor
City and County of Denver
Working in the City of Denver’s Office of Marijuana Policy, Dan Rowland recently planned the Mile High City’s first-ever Marijuana Management Symposium, held Nov. 5-6 at the Colorado Convention Center and described as the “first cannabis event of its kind organized by a government agency.”
Following the passage of Amendment 64 to the state constitution in 2012, Colorado officials are now tasked with regulating a legal marijuana industry, making a symposium on the subject a given.
Far from just a gathering of pot enthusiasts, this 330-attendee symposium was tailored to Colorado regulators and others who handle the “legal” side of legalized cannabis. Think politicians and city administrators from municipalities curious about Denver’s successes (read: tax revenue) and challenges; fire departments that have to deal with codes regarding indoor “grow” operations; departments of health; government attorneys; law enforcement; and even some attendees on the retail side and delegates from other U.S. states and international locales.
“In my work as a communications director, I’ve planned a lot of press events and product rollouts,” says Rowland, who took the lead planner role, from booking the facility, caterers, speakers and coordinating the presentations to managing the room block. “This is my first marijuana conference, but it wasn’t a whole lot different than other events I’ve been a part of.”
Challenges included how to identify who potential attendees would be and how to market a first-time event with a minimal marketing budget, as well as how to communicate that this was a regulator-to-regulator event, and not a retail/consumer expo.
“It was a challenge to explain what this was and who it was for, because those types of events happen all of the time, even right there in the convention center, so this was certainly unique,” Rowland says of the task of clarifying that it was different from a consumer/retail-focused show.”
Buoyed by the symposium’s success, Rowland says the city is entertaining the idea of holding another one next year, although there are no concrete plans at present.
But given the tax revenue pouring into city coffers following legalization, the number of municipalities that decide to follow Denver’s lead may indeed make the symposium a going concern.
“Different cities can opt in or out,” Rowland explains of how the recreational marijuana law works in Colorado, and of the interest of other communities in Denver’s experience. “But in Denver we opted in—way in.”
George Jage
President & Publisher
Marijuana Business Media
The momentum of the marijuana legalization movement has created huge opportunities for entrepreneurs such as George Jage, president and publisher of Marijuana Business Media, who is using his background in trade publishing as the founder and president of World Tea News and the World Tea Expo—bridging the gap between buyers (readers) and industry suppliers—to gain leverage in the booming new industry of legal cannabis.
“When the business started in 2011 it was launched as an online news and information website—originally called the Dispensary Business Insider and then quickly renamed MMJ Business Daily. MMJ is used as an acronym for medical marijuana and at that time it was just medicinal marijuana,” Jage says. “We launched our first national conference and published the first Marijuana Business Factbook in 2012. In 2014, as the recreational markets were opening, we rebranded as Marijuana Business Daily.”
Besides Marijuana Business Daily magazine, a website (http://mjbizdaily.com) and various directories, Pawtucket, R.I.-based Marijuana Business Media produces two Marijuana Business Conference & Expo shows (https://mjbizconference.com), one in spring and one in fall. Its most recent fall outing, held Nov. 11-13 at Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, attracted some 5,500 delegates—“bar none the biggest show in North America for the legal cannabis market” —and offered an exhibit hall, a Ralph Nader keynote, panel discussions and breakouts.
Jage expects his next spring show, held May 9-11 at The Gaylord Palms in Orlando, to draw north of 3,000 delegates, and just like any other attendance-craving tradeshow, he is considering anchoring the fall conference in Las Vegas due to the big numbers it attracts.
Anybody worth their MBA could probably identify the upward arc of this nascent industry, which according to Jage is beginning a steep climb and winnowing down to its key players, with less room to jump in and produce competing tradeshows.
“The fascinating part of this industry is that there are comparisons to the dot-com boom and ‘Green Rush,’ but this is different because you have an existing black market that’s converting to a white market, so it’s not like the dot-com market, which was a new market,” Jage says. “And now that it is coming out of the closet, people that didn’t before are buying it because it’s legal now.”
And that means business is booming.
“Our Marijuana Business Factbook for 2015 estimated that the total marijuana market was $3 billion in sales in the U.S., and we estimate the multiplier [total market value, including ancillary products] is over $10 billion in sales,” Jage says. “Cannabis is a $60 [billion] to $100 billion industry down the road.”
Do you know any Movers & Shakers? Contact Kate Cripe.