Meeting Planner Careers

Lately it seems that lots of people want to have multiple skills for others to draw upon, especially if they are in business for themselves. However, making yourself an expert in a subject can be a real boost for a meeting planner, especially in the area of educational meetings. Here’s why….

Experts Know the Little Details

If you are an all-around event planner and someone asks you to plan a continuing education meeting for nephrologists, you may have to turn down some big money because you had to look up the word nephrologist to begin with. However, if you specialized in continuing education events for the medical field, you may have been able to do the job.

Additional Education

Many specialists in meetings like the above come from other backgrounds. For instance, the medical event specialist may have a background in nursing or hospital administration. She might know what is required for these sessions in order to provide accredited continuing education credits for doctors. She may also know which technologies are necessary for each meeting–the last thing anyone wants is guesswork on a meeting with that level of importance.

Of course, medicine is not the only field where a specialty is necessary. Look at meetings and conferences scheduled for various job categories–searching the Internet should get you a lot of them–to see if there is one that is right for you.

Crises are always followed by change. It’s not only necessary, it’s inevitable–humans want to fix things that are broken. However, when the crisis is on a global scale, the change has to be in proportion. For the modern meeting planner, this means that other people may try to steer your business until you have little to say.

Whether of not they succeed is up to you. For instance, the recent government regulations on meetings may have caused the demise of small meeting planner businesses. Those business owners may have simply felt like they were not only swimming upstream, but up some giant waterfall. Read more…

During your educational experiences, you may find that you love being involved in meetings but being a planner responsible for the whole enchilada is too much at first. You want to ease into it but don’t know where to start. Here are some ideas to consider.

Culinary Arts

If you enjoyed learning to plan the dinners and receptions the most, you may want to consider more education in the culinary arts. There are lots of culinary institutes around, sometimes several in one city. Community colleges also offer various courses of study, including a pastry chef specialization. Read more…

At the recent 2009 Meeting Professionals International (MPI) Southeast Educational Conference at the Edon Roc in Miami Beach we had the opportunity to hear Brad Nickel, VP of Marketing for Landry & Kling, speak. He gave a presentation called “Find Yourself Online”  and agreed to let us publish that presentation here, for those meeting professionals who were unable to attend.

Here is the presentation – let us know if you have questions!

Brad was also excited to tell us a little about the upcoming launch of a new resource for meeting and incentive professionals: Seasite.com.

Seasite.com, a new Landry & Kling company, will be the industry’s first online cruise marketplace for global meetings and events. Mr. Nickel, explained, “Seasite.com puts cruise sourcing on par with hotel site selection along with easy RFP generation for multiple brands and ships.”

The site will be launching in late September but in the meantime they are running a contest to win an inaugural cruise aboard the new Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas, billed as the worlds largest and most innovative cruise ship. To enter simply go to their web site, Seasite.com, and sign up to recieve their newsletter and be notified of the official Seasite.com launch. The contest winner will be selected at random on Sept. 10, 2009.

2009 MPI Southeast Educational Conference was held at the Edon Roc Hotel, Miami Beach, August 13th-15th. For more information visit http://mpisec.org/

Our thanks again to Brad – and here’s his bio:

If you are now entering the field of event planning, you may feel like you are barging in at the worst possible time. The government and public are both highly critical of the meetings industry, some of the companies that got bailouts also got in trouble for meetings (and incentives), and companies are very wary about going forward with anything that looks like an extravagance.

However, you may have come at the best time for your long-term future. See, companies and business people of all kinds were becoming just a little complacent. What you are seeing now are businesses ramping up sales techniques, motivating teams as best they can, and changing the way they do business.

This will benefit you because you will have to learn straightaway what it is to be lean and mean. You will learn how to keep costs down right now because you won’t have the chance to spend too much money on sticky notes and paper clips. You are not going to have the chance to say, “Oh my, here comes the recessions–I’d better tighten my belt.” Yours will start out cinched. Read more…

It’s one thing to know how to book travel for participants, and quite another to provide the information they will need to make it safe and enjoyable. While it is more their responsibility to make sure they can get into another country, or are even able to fly, you should familiarize yourself with resources in these areas so they can find accurate information.

Crossing Borders

Every country is wary of criminals, and you can’t blame them for that. However, a person who offended a neighbor by hanging out laundry wearing her nightgown may be considered a persona-non-grata in another country and may not be allowed to cross the borders.

Health

When your visitors arrive in their destination, you can bet your bottom dollar that one of them has a health problem that could be serious. Sure, that guy is in the pink of health but he’s allergic to peanuts. Make sure everyone has emergency medical and health information before they leave, complete with hospital phone numbers, police, and fire. Read more…

Even if you have had years and years of planning experience, you may end up with a meeting that you have no idea what to do with. You already know that the standard choices–DJs, rock bands, comedians, and tap dancers just aren’t going to do it for them. You need a different approach that they will remember for many years.

Look to the Company for Answers

Sure, it may be a generic kind of product or service company, but there are some places you can go for ideas. For instance, a manufacturing company might make part of their missions statement a comment about creating their products with as little carbon footprint as possible. If they are particularly good at it, and appreciated for it, consider a Native American music and dance group. Paying the original inhabitants of this land to come in and offer their arts is imbued with several layers of thanks. Read more…

You probably know important a brand can be. It helps mark a product or service with a seal of quality and assurance. It also helps customers feel confidence with consistency, making the item worry-free. And let’s face it, who wants to worry?

You can also brand the places where you want to send your clients. Some places already have some strong branding going on. However, remember that a brand is only an interim step, a visual metaphor for the item on which it resides. To choose visual metaphors that will link your clients to destinations, think about how you would create a logo for the country.

Begin with a mind map. What words remind you of France? Great food, gardens, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and maybe a few other things pop into your mind. Keep that list handy and collect images that match those words. Then when you have a client who wants a European destination, get that file out and see what images and words match your client’s business or vacation desires. Read more…

Festival planning can be hectic, sure, but it can be a fun and exciting way to spend your work hours. If you enjoy the entertainment industry in all forms, love social contact, and can keep a lot of balls in the air, you may want to consider a career in festival planning.

Of course it requires some education, training, experience, and certification to be at your absolute best. The certifications also provide assurance to potential clients, giving a competitive edge in your field. Here are some of the details about becoming a festival planner.

Business Training

You will need some business training, and you may want to get a bachelor’s degree in business for the best background. In addition you will want to have communication courses, leadership experience, management, project coordination, and marketing. Read more…

“Three Pharmacists Walk Into the Unemployment Office…”

And one says, “Let’s go get jobs as meeting planners!” While this seems tastelessly appropriate for some out-of-work pharmacists, it may not be an impossible move. A pharmacist who is outgoing, professional, social and sociable, and has a background in business could fare very well as a pharma meeting planner.

Part of the reason for this is the reason that you may see a pharmacist in the unemployment line to begin with–many of them are mid-career professionals who hold bachelors’ or masters’ degrees in pharmacy. Those degrees used to be the accepted entry level degree for employment in pharmacy.

That all changed a few years back when the doctorate degree became the minimum degree for new pharmacists. Now it seems the ones with the lower level degrees are like the red-headed stepchildren of the pharmacy world. Pharma departments want to replace them with their better-educated counterparts–after all, they are often new graduates, so these companies can get more education for less money. Read more…