> Kevin Spacey at BAM I went over the weekend to see Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Harvey Theater and the production, with Kevin Spacey as the villainous Richard, impressed me on every level. And that … Continue reading →

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Kevin Spacey at BAM

I went over the weekend to see Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Harvey Theater and the production, with Kevin Spacey as the villainous Richard, impressed me on every level. And that includes an email BAM sent me a couple of days before the performance, which got me thinking about the opportunities organizations have in helping attendees prepare for events.
I didn’t expect the email, which reminded me that I had tickets to the performance, which I bought months ago. It also included production notes, …

> Meredith Rollins, left, and Mona Simon (in toque) As editors, we’ve often written about the benefits of interactive experiences at meetings — of how a shared activity can strengthen relationships more effectively than just bringing attendees together in a … Continue reading →

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Meredith Rollins, left, and Mona Simon (in toque)

As editors, we’ve often written about the benefits of interactive experiences at meetings — of how a shared activity can strengthen relationships more effectively than just bringing attendees together in a meeting room or around a conference table.

Last week we experienced it ourselves, when Convene’s editorial and sales teams met with members of PCMA’s executive, marketing, partner relations, and business innovation staffs for a planning retreat at Grove Isle Hotel & Spa in Miami.

One sultry evening, Chef Ehren Beers led us in an …

Hello again!
I have received numerous notes, emails, tweets, skywriting, posts, carrier pigeons, and phone calls regarding my first use of this blog. OK, there really was no skywriting or carrier pigeons. What I did receive was a steady stream of communication, both public and private, with suggestions, concerns, topics, rants, and some people that just wanted to make a personal connection. One thing I heard a lot was that I did not really define myself, as I prefaced that I would in the start of the last post. Since my …

Kelly Peacy, CAE, CMP,
Senior Vice President, Meetings and Events
The generous support and collaboration of PCMA’s partners assists us in bringing superior speakers and affordable education to our audiences. Yet, as post-event surveys have revealed, our audience is turned off by the traditional talking head, on-stage commercial messages of the past.
For our 2012 Convening Leaders program we took a new approach to sponsorship recognition.  We wanted to ensure that the attendees heard and engaged with the partner’s message while increasing our partner’s impression returns – we went VIDEO.
Our mantra for this …

> Today is the first-ever national Digital Learning Day, a good day to talk about computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor who is leaving a tenured position and will teach free online computer science classes to a global audience. … Continue reading →

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Today is the first-ever national Digital Learning Day, a good day to talk about computer scientist Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor who is leaving a tenured position and will teach free online computer science classes to a global audience. (Thrun begins talking at 2:27 minutes into the video.)
Thrun is a very popular professor at Stanford — the class he taught with Peter Norvig on Artificial Intelligence (AI) routinely drew 200 students. But when Thrun offered the course online and, with one email,  invited the world to enroll, that number jumped …