Sessions: Meetings Spend Consolidation & Management Tools Part I & II
Debi Scholar, CMP, CTE
Co-Chair of the National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Groups & Meetings Committee
Meeting & Event Services Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P.
Debi Scholar is the Co-Chair of the National Business Travel Association (NBTA) Groups & Meetings Committee which leads the hospitality industry in Strategic Meetings Management initiatives. In addition to being the Director of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Meeting & Event Services team, Debi also participates on the Meeting Competitive Advantage Forum (MCAF) which is a best practice and benchmarking team composed of 20 Leaders in the Meetings Industry from Fortune 100 companies. She is a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP), Corporate Travel Expert (CTE) and a Certified Technical Trainer (CTT).
Debi's team, Meeting & Event Services (MES), recommends meeting locations, contracts with suppliers, plans and implements meetings in addition to webcasts for PwC Partners, staff and clients.
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Session: The APEX Toolbox: Bringing Standards to Event Management
Speaker: Chip Meyer,CEO, DataApp
Chip Meyer is CEO of DataApp, Inc., a leading software company in the hospitality industry. DataApp software manages operations at some of the largest venues in the country, including Mandalay Bay and the Sands Expo. The Convention Industry Council (CIC) recently selected DataApp to produce APEX Powershop, the next generation solution for the meeting industry, and supporting CIC's APEX standards. In addition to his role at DataApp, Mr. Meyer has served as the acting CIO for organizations such as the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Sands Expo, and LA Center Studios.
Mr. Meyer can be reached at his email address: Chip@DataApp.com
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Session: eRFPs/Site Selection Tools
Speaker: Melissa Shemanski, Director, Meeting Management Solutions, Lenos Software
An accomplished meeting planner who was an early technology adopter, Melissa has managed meetings and events globally in various companies, including M&M Mars, Aventis Pharmaceuticals and Deloitte Consulting, as well as a 20,000 person educational training program for IBM. Most recently, Melissa was the Director of Event Technology at AllianceBernstein where she was responsible for Strategic Meeting Management solutions. Melissa graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management from the University of Delaware.
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Session: Web Meeting Software – Tools to Engage Participants
Speaker: Julia Young, Facilitate.com, San Francisco, CA
Julia Young is Vice President and co-founder of Facilitate.com, a leading provider of web meeting software whose signature product, FacilitatePro, offers collaboration tools for innovative thinking and decision making. Julia has over 20 years of experience as a facilitator and process consultant, the last fifteen of which have been focused on the integration of collaboration technology into group processes. Combining the logical mind of an engineer and a facilitator's attention to group dynamics, Julia seeks to explore how technology can augment the effectiveness of work groups. Julia regularly runs online webinars for clients and acts as a trainer and coach to other facilitators as they take their first steps into the world of online facilitation.Prior to founding Facilitate.com, Julia worked as a senior management consultant for Gemini Consulting, helping government organizations and large corporations achieve sustained competitive advantage. She began her career as an HR Manager in the high tech industry, coaching managers on how to develop high performance teams.
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Session: Housing/Room Block Management
Speaker: Sam Fahmy, Vice President of Marketing & Products, Passkey
As part of Passkey’s executive management team, Sam heads up the product management and marketing teams. Among his key responsibilities is championing new product ideas, technologies and innovations in the event and meeting management spheres, with an eye toward maximizing the efficiency and the return on meeting investment for all involved in an event, attendees, meeting planners, hotels and housing managers.
Prior to joining Passkey, Sam co-founded and led marketing, products and strategy at Bungo, an award-winning web-based software company. During his tenure at Bungo, Sam grew the company from concept into a venture-backed, high-growth software company with hundreds of thousands of users, a stellar list of Fortune 1000 customers and growing international presence.
Before Bungo, Sam was senior executive at Japonica Partners, a leading buyouts and private equity firm, where he was instrumental in several landmark transactions that netted over $2 billion in value for stakeholders. Sam spearheaded massive revenue and profit growth at Sunbeam, contributing to the spectacular 18-month turnaround and $1.2 billion initial public offering of the company. Sam started his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble, received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from American University, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Notre Dame.
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Session: Lead Retrieval/ Attendance Verification Tools
Roger Lewis, Senior Vice President , Alliance Tech, Inc.
Roger is a Senior Vice President of Alliance Tech, a technology company focused on marketing intelligence and analytics. He has 15 years of event marketing experience and is a veteran meeting professional analyst. Under Roger design and execution companies such as IBM, Dell, CA, Cisco and others have benefited from Alliance Tech technologies and gain insight into event marketing analytics. Mr. Lewis has won several industry awards for RFID and Lead Management including the prestigious CEMA’s 2006 Tech Shoot-out. Roger is an acclaimed speaker for using technology to measure and understand marketing performance metrics for meetings, conferences, and events.
Prior to Alliance Tech, Mr. Lewis enjoyed a 12 year successful career with IBM. He left IBM to form a start up in which he lead sales and the company was recognized as 148 on Inc. 500 list of Fast Growing Companies.
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Session: Attendee Management–Registration
Bill Flagg, President, RegOnline
Bill Flagg is the President and co-owner of www.RegOnline.com the leading online event registration system. For over ten years RegOnline’s web-based system has made registration easier for corporate meeting planners at companies such as American Express, Sony, and Oracle. With Flagg’s help, the company has grown ten-fold over the past three years. RegOnline now powers the registration and attendee management for over 25,000 corporate meetings and events annually. Mr. Flagg frequently speaks at meeting industry conferences about how to attract more registrants and make event management easier.
Prior to RegOnline, Flagg built a national advertising company called Word of Mouse. He also worked in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Harris Bank in Chicago. Flagg received his BS from the University of Michigan.
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Session: Audience Polling/Response Tools
Eric Alzuhn, MSInteractive
Eric has been creating interactive meetings and events for over 14 years. His experience on both the client and agency side leads to a great understanding of what makes a successful event. Eric's philosophy is - 'no one was ever bored into action.' To that end, Eric's methodology is to help identify goals and objectives, creating an event strategy to engage your audience and move them to action. After all, today's audiences expect to be informed, involved and inspired – usually all three at once!
Eric's approach has led to the creation of successful events for Freightliner, The North Face, Nike, HP, Intel and Nautilus to name a few.
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Session: Tradeshow Tools
Rich Stone,CEO, ACT Inc. / EXPOCAD
Rich Stone is the CEO of ACT. ACT/EXPOCAD is the industry leading software supplier to the exposition industry. Rich has been with ACT for 20 years and has been involved in the IT field for 35 years. Rich has presented and taught for ASAE, ESCA, and IAEM. Rich has worked within the exposition industry for 18 years, holds multiple US and international patents.
Richard is an adventurer and has backpacked many exotic places throughout the globe, holds multiple US and international patents, has served on numerous industry panels and committees and recently recognized by Tradeshow Week ® as a Who's Who in the exposition industry.
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Session: Database Management Tools
Speaker: Kevin Corson – Founder, CEO and Chief Vision Officer, HBN, Inc.
Over the last 25 years, Mr. Corson has developed or brought to market a number of popular cutting-edge, computer-based technologies. They include several worlds' firsts, such as the first soundcard and voice recognition products, The Sound Master, Voice Blaster, Modem Blaster and Sound Blaster (COVOX, Creative Labs). Kevin also brought to market the popular windows audio editing software Sound Forge, (Sonic Foundry/SONY), and invented the first full-duplex Internet phone (DigiPhone) that enabled two or more people to speak over the Internet at the same time.
Kevin founded the High-Tech Broadcasting Network (HBN Inc.) in 1999 to develop a new generation of Web-Free database content management and peer-to-peer technologies. He has recently written two chapters on Internet downloading and peer-to-peer networking for ONLINE – THE BOOK by John Dvorak and Chris Pirillo.
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Session: Networking/Matchmaking Systems
Speaker: Michael Hatch– Sr. VP of Marketing and Sales, a2z, Inc.
Michael Hatch is Sr. Vice President of a2z Inc., a developer of web-based event software that helps associations and independent trade show organizers to create easy-to-use, state-of-the-art event web sites, that help them to automate, manage and market their expos, booth sales, and conferences easily and effectively all online.
Before moving to the ‘virtual’ world and joining a2z Inc., Mike spent nearly 25-years in the ‘real’ exhibition industry, managing two major corporate exhibit programs for both AT&T, and Holiday Inns International and working closely with the Trade Show Exhibitors Association.
Mike also owned and operated two successful exhibit design and production companies that served over 10,000 exhibitors during a seventeen year span, and produced over 50 successful trade shows and education conferences during the same period.
Mike is an award winning exhibit designer, marketing consultant, professional speaker and trainer, and a recognized expert in online event management and marketing, successful exhibiting and trade show marketing.
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Session: Audio Visual Products/Services
Speaker: Tim Brady, Vice President , Swank Audio Visuals
Tim began working in hotel audio visuals in 1980 and joined Swank Audio Visuals in 1984.
Previous work experience included Audio Visual Technician, Assistant Director, Director, Director of Training, Team Leader and Regional Manager. Promoted to Vice President in 1997.
Current responsibilities include management of all aspects involving sales, marketing and operations in the Western Division. Utilizing over 20 years of in-house hotel audio visual experience, oversees all operations in the Western United States.
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Session: Event Marketing Tech Tools
Speaker: Ed Lemire, Executive Vice President, Acteva
Ed is currently the Executive Vice President at Acteva – Online Registration & Payments. Since joining the company in early 2005, he has played a key role in developing their target market initiatives; setting the company’s strategic product directions; enhancing the marketing, sales, engineering and support operations; building new pricing and packaging strategies; leading the development of new product enhancements; and managing all corporate marketing, product marketing, lead generation and market awareness functions for the company.
He is a 22 year veteran of the software industry with over 12 years in executive roles in the areas of marketing, product, sales, international operations and business development at companies such as Acteva, FORTEL, TIDAL Software, Unitech Systems, HarrisData and Pansophic Systems. Ed has provided marketing leadership to enter new markets, introduce new products, establish strategic relationships, acquire new technologies and expand internationally. Ed has won awards for his marketing programs and has worked with sales teams to consistently produce results exceeding 100% of quota. He is an accomplished speaker and writer with papers presented and articles published to regional, national and international audiences. Ed graduated Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems and a Bachelor of Science in Finance.
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