Conferences and Conventions: The $20-Billion Industry That Keeps America From Working
Kaufman, Walter Shapiro and Aleta
Conferences and Conventions: The $20-Billion Industry That Keeps America From Working by Walter Shapiro and Aleta Kaufman I was reading Fortune magazine when I stumbled on the Rosetta Stone that...
...A golf course and private airport are nearby...
...and slide presentations were a favored method of enlivening conventions...
...Not surprisingly, Meetings and Conventions calls it a “rousing success” thanks to a “spirited mix of in form a t ive presentations, sports celebrities, golf and tennis clinics and tournaments, social and dining events...
...That’s why we’re putting more pizzazz into meetings...
...Think of it...
...Then Ben introduced the president of the Concrete Pipe Association with a three-screen presentation backed up by a 14-piece orchestra and six singers and dancers...
...Congress’ continual tinkering with the tax code is another important source of revenue for conference planners...
...Coolfont is dominated by the Treetop House, which features a glass-walled restaurant and bar...
...Courtesy Associates, which handles a riumber of conferences for the government, began as a telephone answering service...
...Although schools of hotel management at universities like Cornell, Michigan State, and the University of Washington are beginning to stress cohvention management, there is not yet a specialized degree program in this impoi-tant area...
...There is business enough to go around, however...
...h o t h e r feature by Sam Huff, former New York Giant football star who is now an executive with the Marriott Corporation, recommends that convention planners devote a half-day to what he calls a “Business Persons’ Decathlon,” with everything from bicycle races to putting contests...
...By packaging facts, by presenting them visually, by bombarding all the senses, by applying theatrical techniques, we get delegates to bring back from the convention facts that mean dollars and cents to them...
...Combine the medical profession’s penchant for conferences with the need to interpret complicated federal regulations, and one can olhly imagine the bonanza that national health insurance would mean for the conference industry...
...The best explanation for this counter-cyclical development was given by a spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention Authority, who said, “Whenever we have any kind of crisis situation, economic or energy, it makes conventions much more important for people to attend because they can discuss their common problems...
...Conferences and Conventions: The $20-Billion Industry That Keeps America From Working by Walter Shapiro and Aleta Kaufman I was reading Fortune magazine when I stumbled on the Rosetta Stone that explains the decline in American productivity...
...Already, nestled in the Washington Yellow Pages between “Convalescent Homes” and “Convents and Monasteries,” are three pages of entries under “Convention Services and Facilities.’’ The background of firms in this area is diverse...
...Taken as a package, these figures suggest that $20 billion might be a reasonable estimate for the gross national convention product...
...Generally, academic institutions are more than willing to help a new profession professionalize^' itself by setting up special degree programs...
...Love is a missionary who sees “education becoming more important...
...There is no Depression in the meeting business,’’ he boasts...
...They’re talking to you and me...
...At the end of the convention it was time to look to the ’future...
...During the 1960s, elaborate film...
...The “Meeting on Meetings” is a direct competitor to the ASAE’s annual convention, which is also designed to unveil the newest concepts in meeting techniques...
...The emphasis on continuing education explains why the American Medical Association and its regional affiliates hold more meetings than any other organization in America...
...The service features that separate the advertisements in Meetings and Conventions convey the same message...
...Walter Shapiro is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...
...Louise Lynch, the president of Courtesy Associates, estimates that she had to outbid 125 other firms for her last government contract...
...The final dinner was called ‘A Cause for Celebration.’ We had a large replica of the Liberty Bell and small replicas on each table for delegates to t&e home as souvenirs...
...The International Association of Visitors and Convention Bureaus estimates that sponsoring organizations alone spent more than $3 billion in 1974 on their conventions...
...The accommodations are often far from spartan...
...We’re talking about people conventions weren’t even interested in years ago...
...he Little Guy from Oshkosh’ Perhaps the most important trend in conferences is their democratization...
...In this case, it is a slick monthly called Meetings and Conventions...
...Or, as he puts it, “We bring the flair of the theater to what may otherwise be 8 dull business meeting...
...So we had them sing-and we wrote...
...Let me cite as evidence a 1975 Associated Press story with the headline, “Conventions ’75 : Recession, Believe It or Not, Gives Industry a Boost...
...The ads are blatant enough to convince even the most ardent skeptic that despite the rhetorical emphasis on continuing education, the main purpose of most business meetings is recreational...
...We put the organization on trial-or an important concept on trial-with a judge and a prosecutor and with the audience as the jury...
...He enthusiastically explains that the conference business has weathered every economic crisis in the last decade and just keeps on growing...
...The convention’s opening cocktail party was entitled, “The Way We Were...
...ASAE is part of a trend that reached its culmination a few years ago with the publication of a Newsletter on Newsletters...
...It goes without saying that the ASAE dfeams of the day, When only graduates of its prograp will be allowed to practice as convention planners...
...It was an entertainment package built on education and designed to build pride in the concrete pipe industry...
...A discussion of trade shows warns exhibitors that most delegates “will spend no more than 10 to 20 per cent of their time at the show...
...In some ways it is as futile to rail against the excesses of the convention industry as it is to denounce the hoopla that surrounds the Super Bowl...
...On stage was an orchestra in 1‘8th:century costumes, and each buffet table featured the indigenous foods of one of the original 13 colonies...
...The syllabus provides some clues to the content of the modern convention...
...The magazine is mostly advert i sem ents interspersed with bland editorial copy...
...Another course, “Social Events and Food and Beverage Management,” promises the attentive student that he will leap about “menu selection, creative presentation of food, illustrating and extending program theme, creating mood, food personnel, and party themes...
...America’s Leading...
...We’re not talking about motivating big shots...
...Even the ladies’ program was tied in to the ‘We the People’ theme,” said Love...
...The American Concrete Pipe Association’s 1976 convention at the Del Coronado Hotel in San Diego was planned by Wedgewood Productions...
...Byrum clearly believes that it is more important to serve as the Elmer Gantry of capitalism than to run his own corporation...
...How traumatic it must be to be a business executive who is not a fanatic about either golf or tennis...
...It’s hard to keep your mind on thirdquarter earnings reports while your boss is the center of attention at the late-morning cocktail hour at some corporate retreat like Hilton Head, South Carolina...
...Specialization Is Not Far Behind Theatrics, rather than high technology, is the approach favored by many meeting planners...
...Unfortunately, colleges and universities have been somewhat laggard in seeing the opportunities presented by the rise of the convention planner...
...And a giant beach warmed by the Florida sun...
...Then there is Pine Isle, which brags that a convention at this “luxurious new resort just 45 minutes from Atlanta” is “more than golf...
...These checks are then cashed, and part of the money is used to pay for such illicit activities as cocktail parties...
...It doesn’t take too much business sawy to realize that you too can pass your work (and Byrum’s work) along to subordinates and head for an almost-as-important conference in Key West...
...An appeal by the Spanish National Tourist Office proclaims, “The only problem with a convention in Spain is getting your people to come home...
...Yet planning government-sponsored conferences presents special problems...
...The ASAE program, which consists of 10 six-hour courses, is taught during iweekends at convention hotels like the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco and the Americana in New York...
...If a businessman has a problem, he’s got to ~ meet and talk about it...
...Running g overnment-sponsored conferences has become a big business for Washington consulting firms...
...To get around these restrictions, a convention planner must maneuver as carefully as a nursing home operator trying to cash his patients’ social security checks...
...Ted Driscoll-the founder of Ted Driscoll Associateswas formerly the sales manager of Washington’s Shoreham Hotel...
...A key course is “Staging and Audio-Visual Techniques,” which is designed to “emphasize ways to dramatize conventions, includes instructions on lighting, sound effects, script writing, using decorating firms, and illustrating theme...
...From consumerism eight years ago to product liability today, it’s never let up...
...The closing sermon on the American conference industry will be delivered by Neal Love of Wedgewood Productions: “Conventions are not talking to the big people any more...
...You have a whole stage set with the dock, the judge’s bench, and the witness box that you can just fold up and crate around the country...
...When registering for the conference, delegates were asked if they wanted to participate in the golf or tennis tournaments and were required to list their handicaps...
...And what makes it even more appealing is that it is all tax deductible...
...And conventions can provide the kind of motivation that man needs...
...We’re looking ahead to laser beams and holograms...
...Aleta Kaufman is an intern at The Washington Monthly who did much of the research for this article...
...According to Jim Low of ASAE, new breakthroughs in convention planning are constantly needed to combat boredom: “Television has made it so that you can’t keep an audience’s attention by reading papers to them...
...I used to be on Ed Herlihy’s ‘Children’s Hour,’ he said, referring to a popular radio show of the 1940s and 1950s...
...They’ve gotten so common...
...In a burst of reformist zeal, the AMA decreed in the early 1970s that all doctors must spend 55 hours a year on continuing education programs in order to maintain their licenses...
...Just sophisticated enough to get the message across...
...The Center’s director is also a much-sought-after speaker at business conferences and conventions...
...It claims that associations held 45,000 conventions and exhibits in 1974, which attracted over 80 million delegates...
...The lead article in the November issue is a report on the second annual “Meeting on Meetings,” which the magazine sponsored at Marriott’s Lincolnshire Resort, just outside of Chicago...
...The convention’s theme was “We the People,” and this was integrated into all the proceedings from beginning to end...
...As Fortune explained with unrestrained awe, “He has established a formidable record as a public speaker, making dozens of appearances a year before university students, civic groups, business organizationsand anyone else who will hear him out...
...Neal Love of Wedgewood Productions designs convention programs...
...One convention consultant, who requested anonymity, outlined some of them: “The government can’t sponsor a cocktail party...
...The ASAE produces figures of its own...
...You don’t have to be super-sophisticated when you’re talking to people like this...
...The motif of “We Opened the West” was used for another cocktail party at the convention, and to get to it, guests had to clamber through a tunnel and endure a mock Indian raid...
...Sitting in Love’s office at the American Bankers Association, one of his clients, it is easy to dwell on how far from the theater Love has come...
...The 1975 survey of the 500 trade associations was conducted by a Washington-based group called the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), which could be described as an association of associations...
...Pretty soon everyone in the company is out on the conference circuit except for two junior executives who have yet to get the message, the company janitor, and the legions of receptionists and secretaries who are needed to explain politely but firmly to all callers, “I’m terribly sorry, but Mr...
...As an added incentive Sam Snead was on hand to play a hole with each golf foursome and Jack Kramer was available for tennis clinics...
...And this does not include the billions spent by individual delegates on travel, hotel accommodations, food, and entertainment...
...The popularity of such farflung conferences is suggested by the vehemence with which the business community and the conference industry are opposing these regulations...
...Coolfont prides itself on its facilities for tennis, horseback riding, trout fishing, and swimming...
...the most recent attracted 1,000 delegates to Washington’s L’Enfant Plaza Hotel...
...An advertisement on the back cover of last November’s issue explains that there are “three major reasons to come to a Florida convention res o r t . . . . Golf...
...Guests may stay in individual furnished cabins, or choose the more communal atmosphere of chalets nestled in the surrounding woods...
...Such conducive environments include San Francisco, New York, and Seattle...
...In years past, corporate presidents went to conferences while the average white-collar Charlie had to make do with getting drunk at the American Legion convention...
...But now Life is gone and Time is fading and Fortune regularly prints gushing profiles with titles like, “An Awesome Mind Is Fletcher Byrum’s Secret Weapon...
...And conventions will be tne colleges of the masses...
...Tennis...
...Jim Low, the president of ASAE, tends to see himself as a leading theoretician of American meetings and solemnly intones such meaningful homilies as “a meeting is the manifestation of the last result...
...For example, the New York Law Journal sponsored conferences in December and January to acquaint lawyers, accountants and businessmen with the new changes in the income tax laws...
...While skimming the Bymm profile in the July 1976 issue of Fortune I found the sentence that crystallized my feelings about American productivity: “Byrum has delegated so much of his authority that he is able to spend nearly half his work days away from the office, tending to what he considers the external duties of the chief executive...
...new words for it-‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’ ” Government -sponsored conferences are rarely as elaborate as the American Concrete Pipe Association’s convention, but there are surprising similarities nonetheless...
...A column called, “How to Speak Effectively in Public,” begins with this advice: “If you want to be really effective as a public speaker, you’d better let your audience laugh while they listen...
...Jim Low of the ASAE confidently predicts that this law will be changed in 1977...
...over their per diem allotments to the convention planner...
...The article refers to a survey of 500 trade and professional associations that showed only 18 per cent suffered a decline in convention registration despite the precipitous downturn in the economy...
...But what it does reveal is that the Productivity Center spends much of its time sponsoring conferences on the problems of American productivity...
...We wrote a whole new Preamble to the Constitution for the Concrete Pipe Association,” Love says...
...Here is the head of an important industrial conglomerate delegating most of his work to junior executives, so he can spend his days going to meetings...
...The opening session began with an actor dressed as Ben Franklin reading the Declaration of Independence and our special Preamble...
...The ASAE also figures that the typical delegate spends $250 while at a convention, excluding transportation...
...Product liability, is the hottest thing since OSHA [the Occupational Safety and Health Act...
...The man in the street, the little guy from Oshkosh, the little shop around the corner...
...These prohibited expenditures are hidden by extra surcharges added to the food and hotel bills...
...Conference planners made fortunes from the Occupational Safety and Health Act and pension reform legislation...
...They only pay a limited per diem for each delegate...
...The American hotel industry, for example, would be decimated if there were a significant decline in convention business...
...Every new piece of regulatory legislation is a godsend for the conference industry, as meetings are immediately planned to explain the new regulations to the business coMmunity...
...True, contacts of really top caliberJohn Gardner or Robert McNamaraare unlikely to be at the American Concrete Pipe Association convention, but it is probable that the next Federal Highway Administrator was there in San Diego...
...More Than Golf Just as every profession must have its certification process, it must also have its trade journal...
...I’ve owned and operated dinner theaters...
...His role...
...Reliable figures are hard to find, but it seems likely that Americans spend more than $20 billion annually on conferences and conventions...
...And because of an archaic regulation, the Feds will not pay for public meeting space in most instances...
...At the beginning of the conference, all delegates sign...
...Ironically, one of the clauses in the 1976 tax bill limits deductions for attending conventions held -outside the United States to two a year...
...It’s also “swimming, tennis, riding, sailing, fishing, and relaxing in the sunshine...
...The Hottest Thing In the Field The type of part-time “continuing education” that the ASAE uses to certify its convention managers is the hottest thing in the entire conference field...
...Smith is out of town at a conference and won’t be back in the office until next Monday...
...The classes run from nine to five with, of course, a cash bar open during the 90-minute lunch break...
...American life is permeated with friendship or old-boy networks...
...But he seems to regard it as just one of life’s compromises, a way of continuing to write and produce shows and still make the kind of living that the theater provides all too few...
...The Center’s 1976 annual report does not discuss the relationship between the proliferation of conferences and the decline of American productivity, although it features an introduction by Nelson Rockefeller, who as Vice President should know something about non-productive employment...
...Conferences also perform an important contact function in American life...
...Industrv A visit to the Productivity Center, the permanent replacement for the federal Productivity Commission, did little to dispel the notion that conferences are America’s leading industry...
...Once a new profession like conference planning establishes itself, specialization is not far behind...
...Low’s favorite innovation in this area is the “trial, which we initiated at an ASAE convention a few years ago as a methodology for getting the involvement of members...
...Like those in most newly emerging professions, conference planners are deeply concerned about ways of restricting entry into the field...
...To make education palatable for the masses...
...During the 1950s Fortune was the intellectual jewel of the then-glittering Luce magazine empire...
...1 like to write and produce shows...
...From here it is just one short step to an all-encompassing theory of American productivity: The tag in American productivity is directly related Po the steady increase in the number of business conferences and conventions...
...Conference planning is one of the new occupational categories that will probably have to be recorded in the 1980 Census...
...Gus Duda of Gus Duda Associates started his career while in the Air Force, running the annual “bash” held by the Air Force Sergeants Association...
...Since there is money to be made from continuing education, the AMA structured its requirements so that it was much easier for doctors to get their 55 hours at AMA meetings than elsewhere...
...If “I’m all right, Jack” is a bankrupt Britain, then Fletcher Byrum is America...
...As a result, the ASAE has been forced to step into the breach with a threeyear study program that culminates in the awarding of a certificate in’,convention management...
...Bymm is the chief executive of the Koppers Company, which, among other things, designs and builds the heavy industrial equipment used to make steel...
...The government provides another major stimulus for conferences...
...In addition, the Productivity Center holds an annual convention...
...The annual report tells of “workshops” that it holds for “union leaders and management officials . . . in at^ atmosphere conducive to better understanding the value of cooperative endeavor...
...Other professional groups such as the American Psychological Association are seriously considering following the MIA’s profitable lead in this area...
...Perhaps the first signs of this trend should have been detected years ago, when the AFLCIO started meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida, and the UAW built itself the Black Lake convention center on Mackinac Island in Upper Michigan...
...But for a growing number of organizations, convention planning is a task best left to professionals...
...Conferences have become something that everyone in business can live for...
...To me, Fletcher Byrum’s work life symbolizes the decline in American industrial greatness...
...Love, who looks like a younger version of Zero Mostel, is also a man of the theater...
...Put yourself in the position of one of Byrum’s subordinates to whom the real work of the Koppers Company is delegated...
...For example, the Treasury Department and the Agency for International Development are known to favor the Coolfont Conference Center, located about two hours from Washington in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia...
...But, Low explains, “Fourscreen audiovisuals are now a thing of the past...
...The annual convention of the Productivity Center is planned by the secretary to the director...
...Washington’s Madison Hotel, which once boasted “never a conference or a convention,” found that such scruples guaranteed an annoyingly high vacancy rate...
...The job may be meaningless, the work demeaning, and the chance for significance nil, but if you can just hang on to your sanity for six more weeks, there is always the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association convention (yes, there really is one) in Las Vegas...
...And conferences-or any other ersatz activity that brings together people from all over the countryplay a major role in fostering the connections that are a concomitant of success in modern America...
...Even the man in Goshen, New York, needs to be motivated...
...While there are still Aspen Institutes and Airlie House symposia for the Fletcher Byrums, conferences have become universal...
...Agencies such as the National Cancer Institute and the Energy Research and Development Administration believe that one of their major missions is to sponsor conferences...
Vol. 8 • February 1977 • No. 12
