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21st Century Trailblazing

Association Meetings - February 1, 2001

What does it take to build a successful career in association meetings? Here's a look at the paths of three top achievers, and a game plan for advancing your own career.

Thirty-six-year-old Michele Fetsko started out more than a decade ago as a registration manager with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASLHA) in Rockville, Md. She moved on to become shipping manager before taking charge of the group's smaller meetings and assuming growing responsibility for its large annual convention. About three years ago, her career really took off. That's when the association took its first steps toward requiring online submissions of academic papers for the review and rating process. ASLHA also began developing an online convention program with personal scheduler and search functions for convention attendees.

Almost before she knew it, Fetsko's responsibilities evolved beyond traditional meeting planning functions. Sure, she's still in charge of orchestrating special events at the annual convention, and she still manages the call for papers for the convention. But as the associate director of conventions and meetings, Fetsko now also manages technology applications for ASLHA, serving as liaison with the association's Web team and charged with figuring out how to use technology to improve the organization's processes. It is also her job to flesh out a still-nascent online distance-learning program and to develop effective ways of making the vast amount of information presented at ASHA's annual convention available online for members who do not attend.

Then there is the case of 53-year-old James Youngblood, an 18-year veteran of the Dallas-based American Heart Association, who 12 years ago began managing the program for the association's scientific session. Youngblood was named director of' meetings in 1990, then promoted to vice president, science information, with overall responsibility for meetings, publishing, and membership. Last summer he became an executive vice president with administration responsibility for AHA's entire organization.

As his responsibilities have grown, so has Youngblood's involvement in integrating Internet-based technologies to expand the reach of the annual meeting and educational programming. Recently he helped orchestrate an unprecedented collaboration between his association and the American College of Cardiology, formerly considered a serious competitor. The two groups are creating a joint Web site where physicians and patients can find cardiology-related information.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Youngblood in January became chairman of the Professional Convention Management Association. In March he will leave the American Heart Association to become CEO of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology in Natick, Mass.

Like Fetsko and Youngblood, Debra Rosencrance, 38, has played an increasingly strategic role within her organization, especially with regard to the use of technology. Vice president of meetings and exhibits for the American Academy of Ophthalmology in San Francisco, she joined the academy 14 years ago as scientific program manager. A vice president since 1997, Rosencrance is overseeing the academy's transition to online registration and submission of abstracts. She is gearing up to streamline the processes within the meetings division itself, evaluating which job functions can be automated. She is also involved in plans to re-launch the academy's Web site in March, including working on a project that will supply the site year-round with scientific information presented at its annual meetings. Even before such Web-based initiatives are in place, two meetings division staffers devote half their time to working on the Web site.

"The care and feeding of a dynamic Web site is tremendous," Rosencrance says.

Facing New Frontiers

As the career paths of these three top achievers illustrate, to succeed in the 21st century, association planners must evolve into strategic players in advancing their association's mission. They need to consider how to integrate new online offerings with traditional face-to-face events. That's not to say they can overlook the details of meeting and event planning, but such details no longer constitute the heart and soul of the job. Youngblood sums it up this way:

"You have to have basic meeting planning skills. You have to be extremely flexible. You need some knowledge of management and supervision. You need to train yourself to be able to manage detail under your thumb and at the same time be able to think big and look five years out. You're going to be called on to have more vision. You also really need a fairly broad knowledge of electronic communications."

To help association planners succeed in this rather daunting new world, here is a six-step program, with tips from these three leaders and others for moving your career--and your association--forward.

STEP #1: Re-envision your job

At the Produce Marketing Association in Newark, Del., Patricia Foss Quinlan, director, conventions and meetings, finds that it is no longer sufficient to produce events that earn revenue for the association. "Now I really get into how our events fit into the association's strategic plan and what the industry is doing. If I don't know that, I'm kind of an anachronism."

On the expositions front, Douglas L. Ducate, president and CEO of the Center for Exhibition Industry Research in Chicago, sees greater demands on trade show organizers as well. "The focus of the early exhibition organizers was selling exhibit space, then organizing the event. Today, the logistics piece is fairly simple. Now the challenge is driving quality audiences to these exhibitions. Show managers have had to become marketers, and they have had to understand their customers--the exhibiting companies as well as the attendees."

STEP #2: Breakdown internal walls

Many successful associations are adopting a more interdepartmental approach, according to lacy Hanson, formerly the meetings director for the American Diabetes Association and now vice president of industry relations for MyAssociation.com. She suggests that meeting and event professionals take the lead in this regard. One way is to look at the integrated marketing opportunities that meetings and trade shows offer, she counsels.

"One role of a meeting planner is non-dues revenue, which to me means how does the meeting and the education you're providing link with publication sales, new membership, or any type of resources your organization might sell. When you're putting a meeting together, you need to look at every department in your association and ask what products and services the organization has related to each particular session. Then, market jointly."

The Produce Marketing Association is one group that has taken a team approach. "I find myself in meetings about surveys, membership, strategic planning. I have a much broader internal involvement than five years ago, notes Quinlan, who adds that she has had to make a conscious effort to adapt. "When you've been operating more or less independently, it doesn't automatically occur to you to ask. 'Who else do need in this meeting about the October event?'You have to retrain yourself."

STEP #3: Focus on community

Fetsko of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association believes that creating ways for people who have similar interests to come together and network is a big part of what makes meetings and conventions valuable. Now, those networking opportunities extend beyond the convention. "What you do is you build those communities online with discussion forums and chat rooms. That creates a need to meet, to have discussions face to face, to share. One builds on the other."

Quinlan is looking at similar issues. "I believe that what would have value beyond the virtual trade show is two-way communication. We're trying to add to our virtual trade show by doing listservs with speakers before and after the event, and listservs with members interested in similar topics. You can enhance rather than replace your event that way."

STEP #4: Be a marketer

"Marketing has been an aspect of the job before, but now it's a big aspect. You have to be able to provide leadership in terms of knowing who your customers are and what they need," Youngblood comments.

Doug Fox, publisher and editor of the weekly e-mail newsletter Event-Web, says he expects that eventually the "marketing component will be integrated into the planning component." The key, Fox says, is to "focus on the Internet as a tool to generate significantly greater attendance at upcoming meetings."

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