How the Spokane Convention Center Turned a Reception Into a Site Inspection

Drummers kept the beat as the Spokane Tribe of Indians dancers performed.

The AMC Institute (AMCI) Annual Meeting is a small event — between 200-300 participants — but it can pack a big punch. That’s because AMCI is a nonprofit organization that supports, promotes, and advances the association management community, meaning each attendee represents association management companies with the potential to book future business in that host destination on behalf of their clients.

Which no doubt was part of the reason why Visit Spokane approached Tina Wehmeir, CMP, CAE, president and CEO of AMCI, in 2021 “when things were uncertain” in the pandemic period. The DMO said “they’d love to host us in 2026,” Wehmeir said. “They were fully engaged and ready to support our strategy. I came out here and thought: This is a great partner.” Wehmeir made a total of four trips to Spokane, Washington, between the initial discussions with local stakeholders and Feb. 8-13, when AMCI’s 2026 Annual Meeting took place at the Davenport Grand, a hotel and convention center located downtown.

Visit Spokane hosted AMCI attendees and Convene for pre- and post-meeting group experiences that included tours of local shops, tasting rooms, and wineries. And while the AMCI Annual Meeting program wasn’t held at the Spokane Convention Center (SCC), the center’s team wanted a creative way to showcase the venue to attendees who in turn would be inspired to bring future groups there. Instead of a traditional facility tour, they dreamed up an opening reception that would help attendees explore the entire facility through activations in different parts of the building.

Going With the Flow

Jessica Deri

“I think that about 90 percent of the AMCI attendees had never been to Spokane, so it was a great opportunity for us,” Jessica Deri, the SCC’s director of sales, told Convene. AMCI was not “a convention center piece of business,” she said, but the conference participants “have convention center pieces of business. So, while I had the audience, I wanted to show them around. But I didn’t want to just show them a ballroom — they all have seen ballrooms. We needed them to see the facility.” She and her team choreographed a progressive opening reception where AMCI attendees and I experienced the 300,000-plus-square-foot SCC through a series of on-site activations that not only showed off the building itself but gave us a taste of Spokane’s unique culture.

On the evening of Feb. 10, we entered the SCC through an indoor skybridge from the Davenport Grand, then descended to a ballroom lobby space for brief remarks from the SCC team, who introduced the Spokane Tribe of Indians dancers. The Spokane Tribe recently became the center’s naming rights sponsor, and the SCC is in the process of being rebranded as the Spokane Convention Center presented by the Spokane Tribe of Indians.

A land acknowledgment video helped us understand how present-day Spokane was built on the ancestral lands of the four bands of the Spokane Tribe of Indians: Sntútʔulixʷi, Snxʷmeneʔi, Sc̓qesciłni, and Sčewíleʔ (Upper Band, Middle Band, Lower Band, and Chewelah Band). We enjoyed light bites on passed trays and more cocktails, while the dancers performed a variety of traditional and contemporary dances — including Prairie Chicken, Grass, Jingle Dress, and Fancy Shawl — accompanied by a group of drummers who kept the energy level high. “We understand that we are on ancestral land and in the Pacific Northwest, especially in places like Spokane, and our diversity comes from our tribes. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do some storytelling within the building to share the Tribe’s heritage and help visitors understand how long they’ve been in Spokane,” Deri said. “I want more dancers to come in for large groups, and I’d love for their speakers to come in as well.”

Once the performance had con-cluded to thunderous applause, we flowed from the lower lobby through the promenade, where another cocktail station had been set up and an AMCI gobo illuminated the SCC’s riverside lawn. Next, the crowd headed to the east side of the facility for a screen-printing T-shirt demonstration with Chris Bovey, who runs Vintage Print & Neon in Spokane with his wife, Liz. Bovey is known for retro-style stickers, sweatshirts, and T-shirts that pay homage to Spokane. He worked with Deri to design a custom print that incorporated both the AMCI logo and the iconic cable cars from Spokane’s Riverside Park Numerica SkyRide.

The AMCI opening reception wrapped up with entrees and dessert in the SCC’s exhibit halls. Rather than a buffet setup, the center’s catering team opted for standalone food stations that were arranged along the perimeter of the hall. “For fams we always try to do a tasting menu, so we wanted to give the AMCI attendees a similar experience,” Deri said. “Basically, if you came here for an event, these are the different options that are on our menu.”

A dessert table was laden with cookies, miniature pies, and chocolate truffles in every color of the rainbow. Participants could savor them while sitting down to socialize with fellow attendees at small tables in the middle of the hall or fill up takeout boxes with the treats. “A lot of people travel from the East Coast and they’re tired by the end and don’t really want to eat dessert right there,” Deri said. “But it’s so fun to have like a little to-go box and bring it back to your room for later.”

Ripple Effect

Key to what Deri had in mind for the opening reception of the AMCI Annual Meeting was the venue’s flexibility. It was easy for her team to reimagine different spaces as suitable homes for each activation and to seamlessly take the group of attendees from one area to the next.

“I actually had a couple of the attendees reach out, as well as a couple of competitive cities,” Deri said after the progressive reception. “They appreciated that we opened the whole building. We opened every door and turned on every light just so that they could see our center.”

The effort Deri and her team put into the AMCI opening reception was well worth it. When we spoke for this story about a month after the event, she had already received three RFPs from attendees.

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor