Meeting Evolution Workshops

Robert J. Wilson is President of Meeting Evolution, an Overland Park, Kansas based Technology Company that was founded in 2008. Meeting Evolution is the most comprehensive web-based Strategic Meeting Management (SMM) software available to the meetings and events industry today. Meeting Evolution integrates global sourcing, custom hotel contracting, meeting consolidation / leveraged spend and data management. Our focus at Meeting Evolution is to leverage technology and business intelligence that drives team efficiencies and increased productivity for organizations implementing SMM solutions. 

Rob is very involved in the meeting and hospitality industry, including Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), Professional Conference Management Association (PCMA), Meeting Professionals International (MPI), Toastmasters International and serves on the Convention Industry Council (CIC) APEX Technology Committee. Rob speaks at many industry events and contributes articles to industry trade publications.

Rob graduated from Drury University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.

Presentation Schedule

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Using Business Intelligence to Deliver Strategic Meeting Management

The combination of the recession, introduction of Strategic Meeting Management (SMM) and increased expectations by senior management has thrust ROI back into the spot light.

The intense focus on meeting "value and accountability" clearly is changing the way that planners plan and execute meetings & events.

In this interactive workshop, attendees will learn how to connect data that is typically kept in silos, leverage business intelligence for maximum negotiations & value and create specific metrics to define, measure and report success.

Using Competitive Analytics to leverage your buying power

The combination of the recession, introduction of Strategic Meeting Management (SMM) and increased expectations by senior management has thrust ROI back into the spot light.

We are in a competitive marketplace, revenue management is a critical part to determining the cost of your event but it is often that meeting planners don’t have a complete picture of their meetings spend or their organizations meeting spend to help them get the best deal for their events.

This workshop is all about reporting that should be readily available at a planner or planning organization fingertips to make the best business decision based upon data for a successful event. Typically data is often kept in individual silos as planners work through planning an event. The data for each meeting is valuable to an organization to understand their total spend that should be leveraged in current and future negotiations.

How Hotels Value Your Meetings

These turbulent economic times have changed the way planners plan and execute meetings and how hoteliers sell and provide service.

In this interactive session, attendees will learn how to succeed and maximize negotiation results, regardless of shifts in the marketplace. This includes how to assess your leverage based on hotel revenue management criteria and creating an action plan and strategic negotiation process that will add value to your meetings and bottom line.

Meetings are big investments and attendees will have immediate take-aways that will impact meeting results and ROI.

Technology in the Meeting and Events Industry

Technology is everywhere in all industries. How do you make sense of it all? Moore’s law says that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles about every two years. That is amazingly fast considering some events can take 12 months or more to plan before they actually happen.

Most of us struggle with getting the hang of using my mobile devices, laptops, blackberry’s and whatever else device you use to do your job before the next version comes out and the manufacturer changes the whole interface, again. But if we hand our technology world to our kids they have it all mastered before dinner is over. I think that is a good thing!?

In this workshop we will review technology in the meetings and events industry that is used for sourcing, event marketing, social media, lead retrieval, attendee registration, event planning, post event and more.

Industry Standards: Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX)

Industry Standards are the foundation that our industry needs to leverage technology to create efficiencies in the event planning process.

In this workshop we review the industry standards that have been defined by the Convention Industry Council Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX). We talk about the industry standards around the RFP, housing and attendee registration, Event Specification Guide, Post Event and more.

This workshop provides a great opportunity for new and seasoned professional meeting planners to learn who is using the standards, how are they being used and the future of industry standards in the hospitality industry.