When we were brainstorming about the cover topic for this issue, it was before the financial crisis. As the stories were coming together, the economy only got worse. We asked ourselves, would a focus on content - enabling your attendees to shape it, extending it beyond your face-to-face event, and making it freely accessible - seem a bit out of touch, something of a luxury in a hunker-down environment?

No, we decided. But, while only 16 percent of the roughly 400 Convene readers who responded to a recent survey said they've cut meetings scheduled for 2009 (see p. 10), we have to be realistic. During economic downturns, meetings are vulnerable. They're a line item that gets slashed at many organizations, and after years of growing attendance, bellwether annual conferences and conventions face the prospect of a weak turnout in 2009.

Which makes the need to transform face-to-face meetings into something absolutely compelling, and harnessing the technology to do so, all the more urgent. That means seeing content and community - what brings people to meetings - in a new light. And it means engaging attendees as full participants before, during, and after a physical get-together.

We were careful not to position all of this as unexplored territory. After all, the unconference and the practice of posting educational content after the meeting (see our stories starting on p. 46) have been around a while … and social media has been exploding all around us. Yet meeting planners who are engaging their attendees in these ways are in the minority. According to our survey, only about one-third make educational sessions available online following conferences; 36 percent dedicate time or space for open-ended discussion among attendees; and less than half employ social media as a way to encourage attendee participation.

We hope that the examples of other meetings that are successfully using these tools and approaches - and insights shared by those inside and outside the meetings profession - will inspire you to get out from behind the curve. Here's a sampling of what you'll find in this content-rich issue:

Elliott Masie: "[The economic downturn] subtly makes travel a more obvious place in which organizations, smartly or dumbly, make cuts. So how do you have that meeting when some of your attendees, or some of your speakers, can't travel? To me it's a no-brainer. You use technology." (p. 48)

Allen Blue: "[We realized that] a very popular thing [for meeting attendees] is the ability to create community around the given event, which lasts well before the event and then well after the event." (p. 57)

Jimmy Wales: "A wiki is really about a community. It's a software tool, of course, but a software tool isn't where the magic is. The magic is in the community. It's having a group of people who have relationships over time, with a shared goal and a shared purpose." (p. 82) Let's make magic in 2009.