Exhibitions, Meetings and Conferences

• At the end of this course, students should be able to:
• Demonstrate familiarity with meetings and conferences
• Identify different types of meetings and conventions
• Understand various sources of data
• Identify suppliers, intermediaries and their roles
• Demonstrate familiarity with meeting objectives
• Understand the profile of a meeting
• Understand meeting participants
• Have competencies in terms of financial considerations and creating a prospectus

Exhibitions, Meetings and Conferences

• They are public gatherings used to present and discuss information about a specific field or the products and services of a particular industry segment.
• These gatherings serve to be educational
• They allow competitors and rivals to interact
• They announce new products

Exhibition

• It features product demonstrations to debut new products and technologies.
• Product demonstrations promote the latest technology
• It enhances competition in the marketplace

Meeting

• Defined as a real-time gathering of two or more people
• Purpose of achieving a common goal through conversation and interaction
• A form of gathering, in one place at the same time, of a few or many persons
• Purpose to discuss and exchange ideas and experiences, present products
• Knowledge transfer and motivating participants

Purpose of Meetings

• To have people come together and produce a common decision.
• Limiting the attendance is helpful
• Having too many people in decision-making meetings can be unproductive and confusing.

Importance of Meetings

• Help share information and solve problems
• Provide opportunities to share information, solve problems, and keep the team working together
• Help to build trust, improve communication and get more done in less time

Meetings in an organization

• Enable collaboration across teams
• Companies hold meetings to stay updated, brainstorm ideas, solve problems, and make decisions.

Conferences

• They are organized and sponsored by trade associations or industry publications
• Purpose to present and discuss ideas, technologies, and other topics.
• Classes, workshops, seminars, and lectures are offered for educational purposes
• Industry leaders speak about relevant topics.

Meeting Industry

• An autonomous sector of economy associated with the organization, promotion and management of meetings, including:
• Congresses
• Conferences
• Fairs
• Corporate events
• Incentive travel (Celuch 2014, p.30)

MEEC

• Meetings, Expositions, Events, and Conventions Industry
• Includes business sectors, such as:
• Travel and hospitality
• Convention and visitors' bureaus
• Corporate meeting planning
• Event venues
• Equipment providers

Types of events in the industry

• Sporting events, such as the Olympics and Super Bowl
• Social events like family reunions and weddings
• Corporate events, such as sales meetings and strategic planning meetings
• Business events, such as trade shows, consumer shows, county fairs, and much more.

Meeting types

• Assembly - A general or formal meeting of an organization attended by representatives of its membership
• Purpose of deciding legislative direction and policy matters
• Election of internal committees
• Approving balance sheets and budgets
• The process of erecting display-component parts into a complete exhibit
• Break-Out Sessions - Small group sessions, panels, workshops, or presentations offered concurrently within an event and separate from the general session
• Formed to focus on specific subjects
• Can be arranged by basic, intermediate, or advanced information
• Divided by interest areas or industry segment
• Clinic - A workshop-type educational experience where attendees learn by doing.
• Conference - A participatory meeting designed for discussion, fact-finding, problem-solving, and consultation
• Used by any organization to meet and exchange views
• Convey a message, open a debate, or for publicity of some area of opinion on a specific issue
• No tradition, continuity, or periodicity is required to convene a conference
• Usually of short duration with specific objectives
• Congress - The regular coming together of large groups of individuals
• Purpose to discuss a particular subject that often lasts several days
• Involves several simultaneous sessions
• The length of time between congresses is usually established in advance of the implementation stage
• Can be either semiannual or annual
• Convention - Gathering of delegates, representatives, and members of a membership or industry organization convened for a common purpose
• Common features include educational sessions, committee meetings, social functions, and meetings to conduct the governance business of the organization
• Event - An organized occasion, such as a meeting, convention, exhibition, special event, gala dinner, social gathering
• Often composed of several different yet related functions
• Exhibition and Exposition - An event at which products, services, or promotional materials are displayed to attendees visiting exhibits on the show floor.
• Focuses primarily on business-to-business (B2B) relationships
• Forum - An open discussion with an audience, panel, and moderator
• A meeting, or part of a meeting, set aside for an open discussion by recognized participants on subjects of public interest
• Institute - An in-depth instructional meeting providing intensive education on a subject.
• Lecture - An informative and instructional speech tackling all the information of the institute to share with the participants in a specific objective
• Meeting - An event where the primary activity of the attendees is to attend educational sessions, participate in meetings/discussions, socialize, or attend other organized events.
• No exhibit component to this event
• Panel Discussion - An instructional technique using a group of people chosen to discuss a topic in the presence of an audience
• Seminar - A lecture and dialogue allowing participants to share experiences in a particular field under the guidance of an expert discussion leader.
• Meeting or series of meetings of 10 to 50 specialists who have different, specific skills but have a specific common interest
• Come together for training or learning purposes
• The work schedule of a seminar has the specific objective of enriching the skills of the participants
• Social Life-Cycle Events - Events that mark the passage of time in a human life
• Weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, anniversaries, and funerals
• Symposium - A meeting of many experts in a particular field, during which papers are presented and discussed by specialists on particular subjects
• They aim to make recommendations concerning the problems under discussion
• Trade Show - An exhibition of products and/or services held for members of a common or related industry that is not open to the general public
• If it is open to the public, it is called a Consumer Show
• Workshop - A meeting of several persons for intensive discussion
• Developed to compensate for diverging views in a discipline or on a subject
• Informal and public session of free discussion organized to take place between formal plenary sessions or commissions of a congress or of a conference, either on a subject chosen by the participants themselves or on a special problem suggested by the organizers
• A training session in which participants often through exercises, develop skills and knowledge in a given field