I have been to some pretty cool places to attend conferences, conventions, trade shows and events. One of the places I have never been is Hawaii. I was wondering why none of my conventions or trade shows have ever been held in the 50th state and I suppose it has to do with the logistics of having an event that far into the Pacific. The travel the cost and everything else that might be associated with planning an event to be held there may prove too difficult. I decided to take a look at the Hawaii Convention Center and see for myself.

The Hawaii Convention Center was opened in 1998 at a cost of $350 Million. It brings together all the real culture of the Hawaiian Islands. A release provided by the center states it nicely:

From a distance, the Hawai`i Convention Center is awe inspiring with its airy, glass-walled lobby featuring a 70-foot misting waterfall. The foyer is crowned with canvas canopies, reminiscent of ocean white caps and the sails of voyaging canoes. A grand exterior staircase descends to the Ala Wai Promenade. More than 60 percent of the center is landscaped, including an award-winning, 2.5-acre rooftop garden with flowing ponds and tropical flowers.

I would not expect anything different from a tropical paradise such as Hawaii. It does seem that they have difficulty in getting meeting and event planners to choose their facility but they give the top 10 reasons why they should be considered for an event. They have an uphill battle with the prices of air fare to Hawaii, but they seem to offset that cost with some lower pricing than their competitors. The Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau talks about the return on investing in an event held in Hawaii:

“As much as anything, these past few years have amplified Hawai‘i’s value as a meetings destination. Clients have found that holding meetings in the islands consistently provides a proven return on investment and that we satisfy their objectives while staying within budget,” said Michael Murray, CMP, CMM, CASE, vice president of sales and marketing for HVCB’s CMI division.

Murray sums it up nicely about the Hawaiian experience:

“Groups and incentives love to come here. Associations consistently see attendance exceed expectations, and we’re the number one destination for incentives. The net result is that attendees return home refreshed and reinvigorated. Add it all together and it’s easy to see why Hawai‘i is the ‘ultimate global gathering place’ for business meetings.”

I would love to attend a meeting, or event in Hawaii to test that theory of feeling refreshed and reinvigorated. If you are planning an event there and need someone to report there about the experience of your show drop me a line. I still owe my wife that Hawaiian honeymoon.

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This year has seen more travel than in years past for me and it seems that I am getting more and more speaking engagements and have been attending more conferences as well. This week I wrapped up a conference on Tuesday and traveled all day yesterday to get back home only to find out I needed to make travel arrangements again for early next month. I just finished compiling my receipts and the shock was a little high on the price of traveling.

I am not a large corporation that has its own travel department, and in fact I am not even good at trying to earn miles like many of my peers. I am the guy that waits until the last minute and pays the highest possible amount for hotels, cars, and air fares.

I noticed recently that many companies are making arrangements to limit the travel for all of their employees. Even large companies that somehow find ways to fund any travel their employees want. Basically, the price of fuel is beginning to take its toll on employee travel. This is going to have a direct impact on conventions and trade shows in the future. Your boss is not going to allow you to attend an event across the country as the price of flying will be too high to allow it as part of the budget. I hope conventions can make adjustments to this phenomena. In the meantime, don’t procrastinate like I do making travel plans. The sooner you make the plans the better. Fuel prices don’t look to be going down any time soon.

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I was thinking the other day about how event planners and convention planners choose the locations of their trade shows or events.  The title of this post is not intended to be an endorsement of Chicago as a place to choose for your next event but merely the name of the official site of the City of Chicago and the Chicago Conventions and Tourism Bureau.  The site talks about planning your next event:

Chicago offers an incredible range of venues for events as small as corporate board meetings to the largest trade shows and convention in the world. The one thing that every Chicago meeting has in common is the assurance that the city’s hospitality community is fully committed to its success.

The City of Chicago has McCormick Place located along Lake Michigan, Navy Pier, and the Arie Crown Theater.   If you think they can’t handle a large event I guess we could always wait and see how a show with 74,000 attendees does in the next few days.  The National Restaurant Association is holding an event at McCormick Place.

I really like the layout of their site and the ease of use it provides for Meeting Planners.  They have a great resource guide for the people in the industry and list them all out so they are easy to find.  With hundreds of businesses listed they also have them broken down into categories for a quick look at what you might need.  They make it nice to actually “Choose Chicago”.  Job well done for the people at CCTB.

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My wife is a huge CSI fan.  She records every episode of it so that she can make sure to watch them.  Now that the writer’s strike is over, tonight she got to see a brand new episode.  I’m not sure who is more excited about it being back on, her to watch her show or me to not have to hear about why the writer’s strike stinks.  Naturally, since I love to check out if there is a convention or trade show on a certain topics or industry I had to see what was available for crime scene investigators and where they convene.

A small world that it is, I found it right in my own back yard.  The American Academy of Forensic Sciences is holding a conference at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver on February 16-21, 2009.  The annual meeting is described as:

The Academy’s annual scientific meeting is held in February at which time over 500 scientific papers, breakfast seminars, workshops, and other special events are presented. The AAFS consists of ten sections representing a wide range of forensic specialties, and the annual scientific meeting gathers these professionals who present the most current information, research, and updates in this expanding field.

I guess the time not to commit a crime in Denver will be that week in Denver in February.  Criminals beware.

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As one of my many sources of information related to the world of conventions, besides of course my parent site, Conventions.net, I read Meetings and Conventions Magazine.  I especially took notice of their “On The Cover” article about “Where Bed Taxes Go.”

This is an amazing read about how they finance things by selling hotel rooms.

Guests still experience sticker shock when it comes to hotel tax, which now frequently adds between 12 and 16 percent to bills (usually between $10 and $30 per room night), even in second- or third-tier cities. In places like New York, or at high-end properties in smaller cities, hotel tax easily can add $40 or more per day.

I always notice on my bill when I leave that there are certain taxes that are paid but, I never really realized what the charges were and where they went.  Read through and see just what huge amounts of cash are generated and the way it can change with a simple law change.

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I am coming to the conclusion that nearly every industry has a convention or trade show.  I guess I’m not totally surprised.  Some are small and some are quite large but I have yet to speak to someone in an industry that does not have some annual convention or some big event that takes place each year.

I was speaking today to a person at Where.com.  They have a cool platform where people can make cool widgets for their mobile phone.  After we discussed this a little they referred to a convention where they wanted to make a splash called Navteq.  It’s a convention for developers and others in their industry.  They also wanted to make sure they were a part of another part of their industry called Where 2.0 Conference.  Appropriately named for their company as it stands.

After I hung up from the call, I pondered the idea that this small company in a very niche business, had two very large events that it planned to take part in and it made me wonder how many small business or even large participate in events.  As I tried to wrap my mind around the number of events there must be in a single year, I started to lose myself in the numbers.  Conventions.net has it’s work cut out to keep up with numbers such as those.  You can help, make sure Conventions.net knows about your event, convention, trade show or conference.

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I have a friend I was meeting with last night over drinks tell me that his boss at work wanted to have a submission for a proposal for all of the conventions and trade shows he planned to attend in 2008.  This would then be approved by upper management.  This may seem like busy work to some but to upper management worried about their budgets for the coming year, it is an invaluable resource to have for their planning.  The problem is which conventions and trade shows are available and where do I find the information?

Conventions.net is getting close to rolling out a listing service of all of the available conventions and trade shows, and will have some very cool features to allow people to search for conventions and trade shows within their niche and can find out more information from there.  I can’t wait to see it finished and a part of the site.  I think it will be a very valuable resource for our users.  How many conventions do you attend in a year?  How to you plan for them?  I would like to interview you and see how you accomplish your schedule, so make a comment here so we can talk!

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I knew after a few minutes into the conversation with Arnie Roberts (pictured right) of Smart-reg International  that I was in way over my head as it related to technology and the issues surrounding convention or event registration, and the associated lead generation and lead retrieval, or what Arnie likes to call “Lead Capture”.  There are so many issues related to how registrations are done and how lead retrieval is acquired, that our supposed brief conversation turned into a marathon phone conference and left me with my head spinning with all of the information available.  Think I’m kidding?  We talked about Russian spy stuff and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), copper coils and chips, world economics, and many other very technical and cool James Bond kind of stuff.  After all, Arnie got his start more than 30 years ago in the technology sector working for the American Broadcasting Company in their corporate data center.  Arnie knows data.

I can only describe Smart-reg International in a single word - INNOVATIVE.  Arnie Roberts is truly the leading expert in the area of convention or tradeshow registration.  He is sought after by companies not only locally but also globally to provide information on how best to handle registrations not only online as is the case with many of his other competitors, but also on site which is a unique offering of Smart-reg International.  Smart-reg International has handled conventions or events from as small as 200 attendees up to 92,000 people. I’m not sure how I would carry around 90,000+ business cards, but Arnie’s company offers a simple solution with their technology and innovation.  He has done this in locations here in the US, and in places like Barcelona, Berlin, Singapore and New Delhi to name a few.

Not only do they have the technology in place for handling registration and lead retrieval, they are also innovating ways for convention planners or event planners to do some very interesting things.  They are using RFID as I mentioned above to track attendees and provide invaluable data to organizers.  In addition they are adding significant value to the way conference planners can generate more exhibitors by giving value added benefits to them through new technologies.  The technology that is awaiting approval for its patent is the trademarked “ALL IN THE BADGE” technology.  A very cool badge indeed, and all of the benefits are difficult to list here, but suffice it to say, if I wanted to track my attendees, and generate leads, allow them to purchase products, or handle transactions using a badge, this would be the first place I would stop.  Other technologies the company is looking to offer for conventions or trade shows are Product Locater, Colleague Tracker, Smart Mat, and Refer-a-Friend.  Like I said, these guys are a one stop shop for getting your event on top with all the possible technology to make it a success.  If you can make it out to Las Vegas next week (December 10-12, 2007) for the IAEE’s Annual Meeting and Exhibition, stop by and speak to the folks at Smart-reg International at booth #1006, I know they can dazzle you with their service through the use of their technology.

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I was asked the other day if I could help promote an event that a friend is putting on in the Northwest.  She wanted me to speak at the event and told I would be glad to do so and wondered what efforts she had gone through to promote the event.  She laid out some of her ideas and I had a few other ideas for her as well.  I thought I might share those with you in three words. 

Use social media. 

Many people have no idea what social media is, so using it to promote an event is completely lost on them.  What is social media?  Well Wikipedia tells us that it means:

Anything that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations.

Being that they are in serious need of an expert to work over that entry, I’ll add a few thoughts to that definition.  Not only does social media facilitate conversations, it also creates participation, builds relationships and can help gather a crowd, which is the idea of promoting an event, convention or conference.

Using social media is a great way to create a buzz for your event.  Set up a blog for the event, do a podcast to talk about your conference, while planning your convention, let people see a livecast of planning meetings or other functions.  All of these are great ways to help promote your event.  They also prove to be very valuable to attendees sponsors, exhibitors and others involved.  If it is valuable to them, your event will be strong year after year.

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One reason we appreciate your questions is because that means that you are reading here and getting some value.  We welcome anyone to leave a question in a comment on any of our posts or use the contact page, but make sure you get your questions in for us to respond.  Even if they seem trivial to some, like “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” or my favorite, “What is the meaning of life?”  Any of your questions are welcome and we will respond as best we can.

Vince Baker in a comment on here asks:

When will the convention calendar go online at conventions.net  and will we be able to look up the size and types events? What other details will be available?

Not working on the calendar or its functions and not knowing the response, I quickly contacted the powers that be, on a Sunday no less, and they responded to my inquiry quickly:

We are trying to go live by October 21.  We will list every show in the world, with multiple ways to query, like Events, Dates, Industry, Organizer, Geographically, and Keywords.   In addition we will be providing full contact info, links, logos’, descriptions, and eventual exhibitor and attendee sign up.  The database will also include conferences worldwide, with ability to register Online.

There you are Vince, a quick response to your question and I might add a thorough response withe some cool information.  Make sure to check in to Conventions.net on the 21st of October and check out your event listing or convention calendar.  And I didn’t want to go without responding to the other questions posed above about the bird and life.  The answer to both questions I believe is “42″.

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