Log In
Known for its high-quality content, Convene offers a monthly series of must read articles organized around CMP knowledge areas that, along with an online test and essay, enables readers to easily earn CEs.
You will need a PCMA account to access the Convene CMP Series. Click here to create a free account.
Convene CMP Series: July 2022
Article: Using Data to Chart a Path Forward
Data is not just a matter of what information you collect about your events and its participants — the most important part of the data journey is how you communicate stats and numbers to others. It’s about taking a point of view about the data and creating a compelling story to take action. Here’s how to get started.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: May-June 2022
Article: How Are You Feeling?
It’s time to have a healthy conversation about mental health and wellness in the business events industry — how we foster it for each other in our workplaces and our participants at our events.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain E: Human Resources
Convene CMP Series: April 2022
Article: How Convention Centers Are Evolving in a New Events Landscape
In the wake of the pandemic’s disruptions, convention centers are going all in on human-centered needs — plus broadcast capabilities, nature, and outdoor spaces — to bring back groups.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: February 2022
Article: How Event Professionals Can Think Like Futurists
Amid continuing uncertainty around planning events during COVID’s wild ride, we turned to professional futurists to help put us on the path to envisioning business events going forward. Here’s a shorthand guide to thinking like a futurist.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: December 2021
Article: A ‘Watershed Moment’ for Events — and the World
How the United Nations’ biggest climate conference — and a critical moment in human history — could change the event industry’s “business as usual” narrative on sustainability.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: October 2021
Article: The New Now: How the Pandemic Changed the Events Industry
As the COVID-19 crisis has rocked the business events industry, new business models have spring up — not as short-term workarounds, but as lasting shifts.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: August 2021
Article: What Changes Caused by the Pandemic Will Stick?
The pandemic’s effects were so profound and far-reaching that not changing ceased to be an option for almost everyone on the planet. But which changes will be permanent, and how will they transform events?
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: June 2021
Article: Real-Life Examples Show the Importance of In-Person Events
Perhaps we once took for granted the larger role that face-to-face events play in our society, but the past year has shown us that they are far more than economic engines. These case studies show how physical events have given fledgling industries a foot-hold and path to success.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: April 2021
Article: Virtually There: Connecting Digital Event Attendees to Physical Places
These digital gatherings connect participants to the physical world, transporting them to real places and engaging their senses and emotions.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: February 2021
Article: The Challenge of Virtualizing Trade Shows and Exhibit Halls
There’s no such thing as a virtual exhibition, said Jochen Witt during a Web Summit 2020 panel discussion in December. “It’s nonsense. It does not exist. An exhibition is feel, taste, smell, touch. It’s not possible virtually, it’s not possible digitally. Did you ever take a digital swim or a virtual meal?”
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: December 2020
Article: Mother of Invention: Rethinking Business Events in Light of COVID-19
‘Necessity’ is a mild way to describe the impetus for invention brought by COVID-19. We’ve learned in 2020 that creativity is, as business strategist Natalie Nixon argues, ‘incredibly practical and crucial to survival’ — in the business events industry especially, where the pandemic has forced us to go digital or go dark.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: September 2020
Article: What Matters Now: How the Pandemic Has Changed Priorities
If we’ve just been waiting for the COVID-19 crisis to pass to go back to business as usual, we’ve missed a rare opportunity to see our lives and our work in a new light. Here are some ways our world has changed and what we hope will stick once the pandemic is behind us.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: June 2020
Article: Embracing the Digital Opportunity
As the pandemic pushes record numbers of business event planners toward new ways of connecting online, it may ultimately strengthen the ability of meeting professionals to serve their audiences and to reach their business goals.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: April 2020
Article: Scientific Meetings That Aren’t Afraid to Experiment
Scientific collaboration and innovation are needed now more than ever. Several scientific and medical conferences are changing to meet the demand.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: March 2020
Article: A To-Do List for Planet Earth’s Planners
Event organizers are embracing the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The goals featured individually throughout this story are the ones that planners most often mention when surveyed. (Courtesy UN)
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: February 2020
Article: Business & Pleasure Seekers
As global travel booms and the world shrinks, destinations are upping their leisure and business events offerings in equal measure. Here are a handful from around the world that are raising their profile to appeal to both planners seeking a sound meetings infrastructure and attendees, who increasingly make decisions about what events to attend from a tourist’s perspective.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain I: Marketing
Convene CMP Series: January 2020
Article: Brand-New Experience
Building an authentic brand identity is a complicated process for destinations. Here’s how CVBs have tackled that — and how organizers have meaningfully hitched their events’ theming to those brands.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain I: Marketing
Convene CMP Series: December 2019
Article: Driven to Indistraction
As workers in the knowledge economy, you’re valued for your creative problem-solving abilities and the innovative ideas that come from focusing deeply on tasks and challenges. But with so many things — mostly digital, some environmental — competing for your attention and taking you off course, how is that even possible? Put your phone aside, set your laptop to sleep mode, and let’s concentrate on solutions.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: November 2019
Article: Can Events Help Solve the Global Food Crisis?
It’s clear that our food systems will need to change — and change radically — if we are to safeguard the planet and feed a growing population. What can be done? The best place to start, and where we, the business events industry, can have the greatest impact, is with a renewed focus on food waste.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: October 2019
Article: When Conferences Lie
Be a speaker. Serve on the organizing committee. Present your abstract. Sounds like traditional association conferences’ calls for subject matter experts. But it’s also how fake and predatory events reach out to students, academics, and professionals across a swath of industries. Providing little or no substance, these events — if they even take place at all — not only create confusion in the market, they siphon off the very same audiences legitimate events work so hard to attract and educate. What can be done?
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain: Multiple Domains
Convene CMP Series: September 2019
Article: Crowd Control
As cities around the world recalculate the cost of tourism to their communities, business event organizers have an outsized opportunity to make a positive difference. But that doesn’t mean that it’s business as usual.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: August 2019
Article: Human Intelligence at Work
As AI makes inroads into areas that have traditionally been the domain of humans, the question becomes: Where will people fit in, particularly when it comes to work? Let’s take a peek into the future. You might want to buckle up.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: July 2019
Article: Deeply Engaging
Join us as we take a behind-the-scenes look at an experiential marketing event that delivers on the top trends identified in a recent attendee-engagement study. Plus, here’s how one event venue embodies five consumer trends spotlighted in the PCMA Foundation/Marriott study, ‘The Future of Meetings & Events,’ by designing environments that connect with attendees at a human and emotional level.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: June 2019
Article: Wisdom of the Ages
Age discrimination in the workplace is routinely called “the last acceptable prejudice”. Here’s what an ageism activist, communications exec, and serial hospitality entreprenuer say about why a truly inclusive and diverse workforce must be multi-generational – and what that looks like and how it benefits society as a whole.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain E: Human Resources
Convene CMP Series: May 2019
Article: Making a Healthy Case
From beacon-collected data to lead scanners to third-party evaluations, here’s how two medical meetings are tackling the exhibitor ROI challenge.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: April 2019
Article: Property Wide
From escalating F&B and AV costs, to room-block angst, to the difficulties of negotiating in a consolidated market, working with hotels has become increasingly challenging for event organizers. We know this because you told us. If you’re looking for some insights to help make things easier for you, you’ve checked in to the right place.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: March 2019
Article: Why Joy Matters at Events
Participants’ experience at an event is shaped more by their emotions than you might think. Joyful author Ingrid Fetell Lee thinks planners have an opportunity to interject moments of joy into their event environments — and she shares easy ways to do just that.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: February 2019
Article: Like a Local
Most travelers now want to venture off the beaten path and explore a destination like the locals do. Here’s how that desire for an authentic sense of place — along with four more trends — is changing meeting design.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: January 2019
Article: Leading From Within
We’ve long thought that the only way to lead others — whether you’re the CEO of an organization or managing a small team — is top-down. But as organizations struggle to navigate a rapidly shifting economy and increasingly complicated marketplace, a slew of experts say it’s time to ditch that model. They point to a different way forward: It’s called humble or servant leadership. We explore what that means and speak to a bestselling business author and two association executives who subscribe to that approach.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain E: Human Resources
Convene CMP Series: December 2018
Article: Teaming of Business Events, Startups Hooks New Audiences
Objective: The next wave of breakthrough innovations will bring startups and business events together
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: November 2018
Article: Balancing Act
Objective: Sure, it’s tough to negotiate in a seller’s market, but hotels don’t hold all the chips. Event organizers and negotiation pros share their tactics for reaching a fair deal.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain D: Financial Management
Convene CMP Series: October 2018
Article: On The Streets
Objective: How the meetings industry is responding to homelessness.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain C: Risk Management
Convene CMP Series: September 2018
Article: This Is Your Brain on Events
Objective: The attendee experience is not just one thing, it’s many. It’s how people think about an event before they arrive on site, how they experience the event while it’s happening, and how they remember it afterwards — all shaped by unconscious influencers. This, says behavioral scientist Charlotte Blank, represents a ‘whole new world of opportunity’ for event design.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: August 2018
Article: ‘An Exciting City Environment’
Objective: What’s the common denominator in the perception of large and small cities as desirable places to live, work, or visit as a tourist or attendee? It’s their vibrancy, according to one destination-branding firm, which has found a new way to measure just that.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: July 2018
Article: Well-Timed
Objective: Daniel Pink applies the scientific insights in his bestselling book “When” to the scheduling of event programs.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: June 2018
Article: Mindfulness: Working With Your Emotions
Objective: Meditation is a powerful tool for increasing focus and reducing stress, but who has time to sit on a cushion at work? Leah Weiss teaches business students and organizations the skills to bring mindfulness into the fray of the workplace.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain E: Human Resources
Convene CMP Series: May 2018
Article: Design Thinking: An Event Strategist’s Toolkit
Objective: Challenge your assumptions, look at your events with fresh eyes, remove judgement. Does design thinking sound like a warm and fuzzy approach to meetings planning? Warm, yes, because it’s human-centered. And considering our handful of clear strategies, there’s nothing fuzzy about it.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: April 2018
Article: Community Service
Objective: In her 2011 book Alone Together, MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that the technological innovations that have created greater interconnectivity – email, texting, social media – and have also made us feel more alienated from each other. We connect more via digital social networks than in person.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: March 2018
Article: Is Science Under Fire?
Objective: Amid stories of a drop in the participation of U.S. government-funded scientists at conferences, a year of uncertainty over international travel to the U.S., and global shifting in funding for scientific research, three experts weigh in on the pressures on international scientific meetings.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain A: Strategic Planning
Convene CMP Series: February 2018
Article: Screen Time
Objective: Online events will continue to cannibalize in-person events! No one will ever figure out the right balance of virtual and face-to-face content for a hybrid meeting! And after all the hype, virtual reality will never come to anything!
Right? Not at all. Log on to our portal of stories for an exciting 360-degree look at what’s possible in digital events – today and tomorrow.
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design
Convene CMP Series: January 2018
Article: The Future Will See You Now
Objective: The convergence of healthcare and technology is reaching an inflection point at a time when other pressures are putting the squeeze on medical meetings. How can they stay relevant in a shifting landscape?
Clock Hour: 1.0
EIC Domain G: Meeting or Event Design