Join our WEC Today television show broadcast and gain exclusive access to interviews with conference keynotes and experts, breaking industry news and content you just can’t find anywhere else. This is your opportunity to ask questions and gain insight into the future of the meeting and event industry alongside your peers from all over the world. Last year, more than a thousand industry professionals joined us from 17 countries to learn the next practices and the latest industry fare. Once a day on Tuesday and Wednesday and twice on Thursday, our television broadcast is the place to find the news and segments you need—right when you need them.

During this unprecedented time of change and uncertainty, we are collaborating faster and more often than ever before. We feel like we’re connected – but are we really?

How do we connect meaningfully with our audiences and partners right now? How do we make sure work still gets done in our own teams and keep morale high? How do we build inclusive and inspirational events virtually and through hybrid models? In this session, you will learn how to master the art of Connectional Intelligence and Digital Body Language, led by 21st-century collaboration expert and author Erica Dhawan.

Learner Outcomes

1. Develop a modern meeting strategy to create the most engaged and successful events in this time of change and uncertainty
2. Reduce the confusion and frustration that comes with digital collaboration across all our various mediums, like email, phone, IM, text, chat, and video meetings
3. Understand your personal collaboration style and what digital body language signals you are broadcasting (even if you don’t intend to!) and build trust and human connection, no matter the distance

It is an unprecedented time in the business travel & meetings industry and we must work together to overcome the issues at hand. Join us, as we sit in on an enlightening conversation with Cheryl Payne as we discover tips and tricks to contracting in & beyond these challenging times.

The only thing constant in our industry is change.

As we adapt to the changes that are currently taking place in our industry, this session will arm you with real-time tactical strategies that will help you to negotiate and defend your organization.

We will review what is happening in today's environment, explore new ideas to elevate your contract to current times, as well as, learn about what other Meeting Planners are doing to minimize their risk with hotels for 2021 and beyond.

We will review key contract clauses, including force majeure and cancellation clauses, and explore negotiation tips and proven strategies on how to get to “YES” while reviewing variables that help influence a hotel's decision to accept your business.

Learner Outcomes

1. Understand our current marketplace and how it affects a planners' strategy during negotiations.
2. Review key contract clauses and how to defend them to benefit your organization’s bottom line.
3. Discuss variables that the hotels consider when reviewing their overall business value.

A good conversation can shift the direction of change forever. Would you leave it chance?

Would you like to know how to identify, respond and act in situations of ambiguity with your event owner?

A conversation with the authors and creators of the Event Canvas™ with a sneak peak into their new book "DESIGN to CHANGE".

Driven by the needs and conversations with Event Owners and Event Designers who use the Event Canvas™ around the world in a turbulent time of change, we have drafted the “DESIGN to CHANGE” companion book to the best-selling “Event Design Handbook”.

In this session, you will explore with the authors and EDC MasterMinds the implications of the change in the event landscape and how to design the conversations between Event Owners and Event Designers. A story about wants and needs, process and outcome, and horizons of change from a dualistic perspective.

The session is for designers, owners, managers, change-makers, and gatekeepers, interested in how events can create value for an organisation over time.

Learner Outcomes

1. Discover communication strategies to have compelling conversations with event owners about the usefulness of claiming Time, Team, and Space to design for more valuable outcomes.
2. Better understand your own behaviors and why you may not always be taken seriously when event owners were having the conversation about change. How to identify, respond and act in situations of ambiguity.
3. Ability to address risk and reward with your event owner in your next conversation as an event designer/planner.

One thing that is not going to change for events is the need for engaging, confident speakers. Instead of providing them with a list of dos and don'ts for the virtual stage, we must empower imperfection.

Learner Outcomes

1. Understand why speaker imperfection engages audiences.
2. Find out how this mindset will enhance speaker confidence.
3. Discover easily executable tactics to improve speaker performance.

For much of the past 12 months, there has been keen discourse around buzzwords like business continuity, endurance, pivoting, and recovery, but it’s impossible to understand what all these truly mean without context that explains how industry professionals can act, analyze, turn and—most importantly—change as we seek to accelerate forward. Sure, you’re ready to “Make Your Future,” but why and how? MPI invites key leaders from critical industry sectors (corporate and association) and supporters (technology, destination marketing, and hospitality) to share their inspiring stories of innovation and reinvention during the pandemic—and challenge the idea that we’re “going back to normal” with the realization that we never will go back. Discover key lessons from the past year that will inspire your future-focused path with applicable ways you can chart a new normal. Don’t miss this historic and fleeting moment in our history when we have the opportunity to design the future of our industry together. 

Session Sponsored by: 

In the most competitive business environment in modern history, the winners today are often those who are remarkably easy to do business with. Being better tuned in to the increasingly unique and shifting wants and needs of your customers and clients creates better experiences and increased loyalty. In this eye-opening, high-content, and very entertaining session, popular Customer Experience, and Marketing expert David Avrin, CSP shines an uncomfortable light on the profound shift in customer expectation, while showing your team everyone’s role in eliminating barriers, engaging prospects, and creating Customer Experiences worth sharing.

Learner Outcomes

1. Better understand the profound shift in customer and client expectations and behavior and the drivers behind them.

2. Understand how to remove points of friction along your customer’s journey.

3. Recognize the important differences between customer service and customer experience — and why that matters. 

Session Sponsored by: 

As our industry moved from live events to virtual events during 2020, meeting professionals started to become familiar with how to produce an effective virtual event. Although not ideal, there has been a reluctant acceptance of virtual events. However, hybrid events are still a bit of a mystery to a lot of meeting professionals and they are seen as complex and costly. This presentation will focus on the six key drivers that every meeting professional needs to know about planning, producing, and executing a successful hybrid event. 

Learner Outcomes

1. Define a hybrid event and the benefits to participants and your organization.

2. Understand how to maximize your hybrid event ROI utilizing six key drivers.

3. Understand how to apply the key drivers to common meeting types. 

Session Sponsored by: 

Want to be an even better leader? Of course! But really, who has time to invest in leadership training? Not the leaders who need it; they’re too busy leading!

Yet, our organization’s health and success heavily rely on leaders who evolve their skills and become the best leaders possible. See the quandary?

Busy Bosses is a fun, efficient, and, most importantly, actionable course on the leadership trends needed to excel as a leader in today’s environment.

Some of the trends covered include:
- Prioritization
- Intellectual Humility
- Overcoming Fear of Conflict
- Fostering Trust Across Difference
- Virtual Collaboration
- Tactical Empathy
- Empowering Others
- Inclusion
- Maintaining Mental Clarity
- Servant Leadership

During this talk, Melissa Majors, CEO of Melissa Majors Consulting, synthesizes best practices for evolved leadership into a comprehensive course that you actually have time to take! This discussion is relevant for leaders of people and initiatives.

Learner Outcomes

1. Demonstrate tactics associated with relevant leadership trends and best practices.
2. Describe the need for evolved leadership.
3. Gain access to resources (infographic and pre-defined social posts) that can be used to continue the conversation with your network.