How To Plan Meetings On The Internet

This book is about making your job easier and faster by using the internet. Pete and I are not going to waste your time and our ink by telling you what you already know: If you are not connected, you are dis-connected. I mean exactly that. If you are still planning meetings outside the net, you will find yourself chugging along in a horse-drawn carriage on a 2 megabit per second information superhighway. No client or employer in his right mind would choose to ride with you. (SURPRISE!)

As you find other techno-savvy meeting professionals zooming by - taking your ex-clients and ex-employers with them, you will want to get connected as fast as you can. Guess what! It is no fun being left behind to bite the dust.

Do you need a book (or a certification program) to do what you already know you can do on the internet? No, you don't. Not if you want to spend thousands of hours finding an ISP, surfing the internet, searching for those URLs some helpful techies in the meetings industry have provided . You can try not to get frustrated because the URLs are not where they are supposed to be (nobody told you that the internet is so dynamic that web addresses change at the blink of an eye).

You can struggle with tools that do not do what you thought they would do. And of course you can download every software techies recommend until your hard drive crashes.

Or you can pay thousands of dollars attending expensive (no decent computer class costs less than $350 per day) computer classes that do not specifically address your issues or solve your problems. There are dozens of catalogs touting classes on "Networking", "FrontPage", "Client-Server", "Java". CGI-Scripts". Do you want to spend hours sitting in those classes trying to extract ideas you can immediately use (or just trying to figure out what the heck the instructor is talking about?) Just sorting out the jargon can drive you nuts.

But you say you are a supplier - and not a planner? Hey - it takes two to tango. It takes two (more that two, actually) to plan a meeting. If I, the planner am connected and you are not - we cannot do business, can we? I better look for someone who is also connected. Excuse me - while I look for one on the net.

Pete and I spend hours everyday testing software that is specifically suited for exactly what you and I want to do. We have extracted only those that you can easily use. Today. Right now.

Our goal is not to make computer programmers out of you. We just want you to be able to do your meeting planning tasks in the quickest way. The easiest way. The most productive way. The most efficient way. The most cost-effective way.

Here is our story -

BEFORE THE INTERNET

Once upon a time (last weekJ), we also did things the hard way:

1. Printed an ungodly number of brochures, licked stamps, hauled these to the Post office for third class mailing (could not afford first class) , waited for weeks.
2. Painstakingly read every written request for information, stuffed more brochures in envelopes, licked again, mailed again, waited again.
3. Played telephone tag. Spent oodles returning long distance calls for information. Stuffed, licked, mailed and waited again.
4. The fax machine was then our hi-tech tool. We typed documents, printed them, walked to the other office, fed them into the fax machine. It was in the recipient's hands in a matter of minutes - assuming his fax machine was not out of paper.
5. Spent countless hours chasing speakers on the telephone, meetings, waiting for their brochure and video brochures to arrive by snail mail.
6. Spent even more hours flying/driving from city to city - inspecting countless hotels we should not even have considered. At first it was fun - time away from all the hard work in the office, great people, free soap and shampoo. But as we got jaded, this became old and too exhausting - especially after we returned to the office to find more drums of envelopes to be licked (and the family started to refuse to accept soap and shampoo for birthday gifts).
7. Spent a really enormous number of hours and dollars with our hotel contact. We faxed contracts back and forth while holding on the telephone. Of course we both needed the same document in front of us so we knew what we were referring to. When we needed to illustrate a point, we drew it on the document and faxed it to each other again. We valiantly persuaded each other to give more concessions - to produce a "win-win" agreement. All this time, AT&T and Sprint were the ones winning. Our communications budget was seriously shrinking.
8. Drunk gallons of wine, ate buckets of cheese, pretzels, munched on so much raw celery and carrots, we grew rabbit tails. That was because we thought we needed to "network" in person - get the word out that we (the organizers) are having this meeting - convince them (the prospective attendees) that they should attend or their lives will never again be complete.
9. Then VOILA! Our hard work paid off - and we started receiving registrations. These were either mailed or faxed. A few registered on the telephone. Either way, we had to laboriously re-enter this information in our database so we can print out badges, financial and other reports.
10. There was no way for our attendees to give us suggestions for a responsive program or communicate with our speakers except by telephone. By this time, we were so swamped we could not return their calls. We were lucky to even return the calls of attendees who could not get plane connections. (Program? Please! When you get there, you sit down and listen to our outstanding speakers. Your program book will be in your plastic kit with your plastic giveaways. Now - please excuse me while I panic.)
11. Printing proceedings was a major undertaking. The voluminous books were responsible for several flat tires and shocking postage bills.

 AFTER THE INTERNET

Then we discovered the Internet. And our lives forever changed.

We have drastically reduced the number of brochures we are printing. Instead, we use email for communicating and broadcasting meeting information, even to those without an email account.

We set up mailbots that handle requests for information even while we are asleep.

We save tons of money by using the Internet for making long distance calls and sending faxes. No more "Out of Paper" Messages. Our faxes are received by our computers and data can be manipulated and dumped onto filing cabinets, database and/or reply letters.

We created our own website where we make information available 24 hours a day everyday of the week.

We created a virtual community where we can meet and chat with speakers, attendees, colleagues and others.

Does anyone have suggestions, ideas they want to share? These can all be posted on our online bulletin boards.

We create and distribute Requests for Proposals on the Internet.

Goodbye to excessive travel. We now talk with our industry partners and work out details of meetings without leaving our desks.

Participants register themselves on the Internet and data they type are automatically dumped onto our database. (Their names are not spelled correctly? Hey, who typed that?)

Goodbye to backbreaking volumes of Conference Proceedings. Now speakers can post their handouts on the web and attendees can read them instantly. These can be archived and searched.

Not only is work easier and faster. It has also become a lot more fun.

You, too, can do these.