David Byrne, former lead singer of the Talking Heads band, has a new creative outlet. Byrne has actually found a way to make PowerPoint presentations — the bane of meeting attendees — cool...

Medical emergencies will happen at meetings. Often the difference between life and death may be seconds or minutes. Relying on your meeting staff or calling 911 is not the only answer, since few meeting venues are adequately trained or prepared...

The key to developing an income and expense budget is to include every element that may be part of your event. It is better to maintain a complete list of budget items, even if you don't need all of them at this moment, than to overlook an item...

Starting in January, foreign visitors traveling to the U.S. are being photographed and fingerprinted at 115 domestic airports and 14 seaports as part of the US-VISIT (US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) program, launched by the...

For years, planners have scratched their heads wondering why hotels could not cross-check an electronic list of their meeting attendees against the hotel's reservation system. Was it really rocket science to do so? Well, here's a new tool that...

With the lodging industry headed toward recovery from its three-year slump, hotel rates are likely to increase in 2004, according to Bjorn Hanson, global lodging analyst with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Speaking at the Professional Convention...

Looking for cost savings at your religious meetings? Printing is an area in which you're likely to find ways to save money. Consider the following...

When holding an international meeting, investigate the benefits of negotiating an official airline carrier with regard to attendee compliance, cost savings, etc. Begin as soon as the site is selected. Here is a checklist of issues to consider...

Calling all Thomas Fosters, John Shaws, Barbara Halls, and Leslie Saunders. If your association books a meeting in Toronto this year, it might win free entertainment by comedian Russell Roy. Roy is offering 12 organizations (one per month this...

We asked our new staffer, upon returning from his first industry meeting, what his perceptions were of the meeting planning field. This seasoned newspaper journalist had previously never heard of PCMA, MPI, ASAE, and never dreamed he'd one day be...