MCLEAN, VA.—The demand for affordable meetings is increasing, especially with continued budget cuts due to the current recession. Today planners are dependent on reliable and affordable partners as they are still tasked to produce high-quality events while often working with a smaller budget. Planners will find these partners and other affordable solutions at the Ninth Annual HSMAI’s Affordable Meetings Mid-America at Chicago’s Navy Pier, April 1 to 2, 2009. Affordable Meetings offers attendees the opportunity to choose from 24 educational seminars and workshops designed to offer in-depth coverage of important industry topics including sustainability, budgeting, contracts, event planning, and marketing. Some highlighted sessions include:
• Why You Can’t Afford Not to Go Green in 2009. This session will explain how reducing, reusing, recycling and other sustainability strategies can actually help conserve resources and make meeting and event budgets go further, and will highlight how to work with sustainably minded suppliers to maximize financial and environmental savings.
• Event Budgeting: From Start to Finish. This easy-to-understand session will de-mystify the process of creating a comprehensive budget. Attendees will learn the basics of budgeting and related skills like identifying the often forgotten hidden charges, discounts and fees that lead to budget overruns and how to prepare reports to impress management.
• Negotiating in Turbulent Times. In today’s challenging business climate, the ability of meeting planners and hoteliers to negotiate successfully can make the difference between success and failure. This program will help attendees feel more confident and better prepared for the negotiation process.
• Champagne on a Beer Budget: Food and Beverage Cost Cutting Techniques. One of the greatest challenges planners are faced with today is how to do more with less while still providing memorable and highly successful meetings. This session will provide practical tips that will help establish cost controls in the area of food and beverage, including quantity and guarantee controls, menu planning, and negotiating.
• Technology Trends Meeting Planners Need to Know. In this session attendees will review trends within the software industry, including looking at some no cost management tools and techniques that can be applied to help assess technology needs while justifying ROI.
• Women Taking the Lead: Skills and Strategies for Leadership, Career Development and Debunking the “Myth of Balance.” This program presented by a successful card-carrying member of the sandwiched generation includes experienced wisdom from text-book learning as well as real life living.
The seminar schedule will also include sessions on event and meeting technology subjects featured at the inaugural Event Technology Expo held last September at HSMAI’s Affordable Meetings National.
More than 1,000 attendees, representing meeting and event planners from a variety of organizations, with a majority representing corporate, association and independent sectors and the balance from government, nonprofit, education, religious and medical/health care organizations, trade show management and the military, are expected to visit HSMAI’s Affordable Meetings Mid-America 2009 show.
Go to www.affordablemeetings.com.
