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Convene launched a year-long celebration of 40 years of covering the business events industry at CL 2026 in Philadelphia.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Convene, which began as PCMA’s 32-page quarterly journal in 1986, and in a very real sense, grew up alongside an events industry that was just beginning to see itself as a profession.
The late Barbara Nichols, who became Convene’s editor that year, also was the editor of the first-ever guide to meeting planning, Professional Meeting Management, published just a year earlier.
The first Convene cover, Spring 1986.
Looking back at the early issues, it’s easy to spot the things that make 1986 sound like the very distant past — Convene carried stories about how to safeguard registration sales made in cash on site and warned against serving turnips to meeting participants, which might remind them of the Depression or post-WWII food shortages.
But the stories — initially written by volunteer planners recruited by Nichols — grapple with changes that echo the questions we are asking today about the impact of technology. One story warned that the “softwarization” of business and life — “the voice mail that transfers a caller from one electronic operator to the next, the automatic teller machine that spits out currency at the touch of a button, and the computerized ticketing device that provides you and your attendees with the flight coupons for travel to your next convention destination”— could drain all the color and intimacy from events.
And in the years following the 1987 stock market crash, the pages of Convene reflected deep worries about rising hotel and travel costs and the impact on meeting registrations — concerns that have a familiar ring. “National conventions,” wrote one respondent to the magazine’s 1992 Meetings Survey, “appear to be white elephants for many of us, with a new emphasis on local and state meetings due to travel and expense limitations.”
Now, as then, the future is unknown. But as we look back, we’re inspired by seeing the endless ways that meetings professionals have adapted, reinvented, and expanded the business events industry in the face of endless challenges and changes. Today, the industry that was in its infancy in 1986 contributes approximately $1.6 trillion to global GDP annually.
One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is that Convene’s editors continue to rely on the expertise and the generosity of meeting professionals who share their best ideas with us and one another. In the coming year, as we look back into our archives to trace the story of how the business events industry and Convene have evolved over the last 40 years, we hope you will join us.
Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor