The Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) hosted over 4,500 event profs at the Convening Leaders conference in Nashville last week. It’s no surprise that a meeting for meeting planners offered great attendee experience.

From a registration desk at the Nashville airport, to a comprehensive mobile app that allowed us to keep track of our schedule, PCMA had everything covered. Not only was there amazing music to hear and interesting professionals to meet, but there was also excellent content to see. I want to share a few topics that stuck with me.

You Can’t Spell Meeting Planning Without AI: Artificial Intelligence is being utilized everywhere, the meeting planning industry is no exception. In one breakout session, I learned about a large medical conference that included Alexa as a way to communicate with attendees. It seems that chat bots will become an event staple in the events industry – even if they do get a little sassy sometimes.

The People Love a Story: I was fascinated by a session that was all about storytelling. It is a great way to connect with your audiences and inspire a call-to-action, so event professionals need to make sure their event is serving as an avenue for storytelling. You can start spreading the message of your story in pre-event communications seen on social media and digital advertising. Continue the story after the event ends in wrap up emails and posts.

Importance of Team: General Stan McChrystal’s keynote on highly effective teams reminded me of the power of culture, communications and relationships. At Opus, we believe that a happy, cohesive team produces the best work. Any leader should read McChrystal’s book, Team of Teams as well as Opus’ eBook The Magic Behind Winning Teams.

I would recommend attending a PCMA event to any industry professional who wants to be inspired and have a great time.

PCMA will be rebroadcasting the most talked about sessions from Nashville for free on their website in February 2018.