8:30 a.m.- 9:00 a.m. Continental breakfast
9:00 a.m. – 9:05 a.m. Welcome
9:05 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Dianne Devitt’s “SenseUp”: Designing Event Experiences for the Senses
We remember 15% of what we hear and have over 80% sensory recall. How this affects learning is at the frontier of meeting design. Subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) touches can influence the entire meeting experience. Dianne will introduce SenseUp training as it pertains to meetings, and then set attendees loose to storyboard their own event with the five senses in mind.
10:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Break
11:00 a.m. – 11:45 p.m. Jed Mandel on Potential Contract Pitfalls
Changes in the buyer-seller environment have had an impact on meeting contracts. Well-known industry lawyer Jed Mandel will share several scenarios that even experienced planners might not have considered—and advice on how to handle them contractually.
11:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Roundtable Discussions: Challenging contract clauses
12:15 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Next-Level Meeting Budgeting
Mark Benson, president of Applied Meeting & Hospitality Solutions, has spent years in hotel sales and marketing in executive roles with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Grupo Posadas and Atlantis, Paradise Island, and has collaborated with meeting professionals on countless programs. He will share his process for taking budgetary metrics and cost analysis forecasting to the next level, alerting planners to contingencies they might not have considered.
1:00 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. Lunch
1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Managing Internal & External Stakeholders: Panel discussion
Our meeting planner panel will discuss the delicate balancing act of managing both their internal teams and their external suppliers/partners.
2:45 p.m. -3:00 p.m. Break
3:00 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Attendee-driven Content Roundtables
We will poll attendees ahead of time about the topics they want to discuss and develop roundtables based on those. Each table will have an assigned facilitator. Attendees will get to benchmark with peers who share the same challenges!
3:45 p.m. Wrap-up
4:00 p.m. Hotel site inspection (optional, for those who could not attend on the previous day)
