The Convention Industry Council early this year will release a guide to best practices in event housing and registration management, as the fifth and final year of the Accepted Practices Exchange initiative begins. Juli Jones, CIC vice president and Apex project director, said the first three products of the initiative—an industry glossary, post-event reporting guide and event specifications guide—already have been put into use by CIC members and she expects the housing and registration guide to be released in late January or early February. Three additional accepted practices, including a guide to contracts, are scheduled to be released this year.
"Things have fluctuated a little bit from the original schedule, but we're still on target to complete work by the end of 2005," Jones said. The release of the housing and registration guide was delayed because the project's technology advisory council has been working to map the final product into the Apex database, Jones said.
The housing and registration guide is an "action accepted practice," Jones said, that drew heavily from a project CIC launched in 2003 to address concerns over attrition.
"The guide also has a lot of really good information, less accepted practice and more best practice, in that they're not required things but it's really good information to consider as you're developing your housing and registration for an event," Jones said.
On Sept. 30, 2004, Apex released an event specification guide. The guide is split into three sections, Jones said, an overview, a schedule feature and function orders that specify the exact services required from a vendor for the event.
"Not only will event organizers have a standard format to follow to make sure that they're providing all of the information that their supplier partners need, but it helps on the supplier side because that means that all of the event specifications will come in the same format and in the same order," Jones said. "That alone will make for a tremendous time and labor savings, because people won't be searching for the information that they need to put in their computer system in the right place."
The first Apex products, an online searchable industry glossary and a post-event guide, were released in 2003
(Meetings Today, Dec. 8, 2003). In November 2004, nearly 200 terms were added to the glossary. Jones expects every product released to change over time.
"We want to make sure that accepted practices evolve, otherwise they won't continue to meet the industry's needs. There's a great piece of updating ability built in to the process," she said.
Many of those updates come from member feedback at city discussion groups across the country Jones said. The groups are volunteer-driven and are charged with reviewing the preliminary reports from the seven Apex panels.
"I don't think we would have gotten as far as we have with Apex without the city discussion group aspect," Jones said. "It makes sure the involvement aspect is covered, that all accepted practices are thoroughly reviewed and vetted and that we get lots of different perspectives before we come up with a final product."
On Oct. 14, 2004, Jones spearheaded the first Apex Day to raise awareness of the development of accepted practices.
"We're always looking for new and creative ways to capture the industry's attention," Jones said. "Sometimes it's hard to absorb and understand what Apex is doing, but once you have personal experience with it, it becomes very clear what the potential is."
The Convention Industry Council is comprised of 31 member organizations, but Jones said Apex event attendees are not required to be members. "We try to keep those events either free or very low-cost to facilitate that involvement," she said.
CIC has raised $1.4 million to support the Apex project, but Jones said it needs and she expects another $500,000 to be secured in the next couple of months.
Jones said two more guides—one on requests for proposals and one on meeting and site profiles—should be released simultaneously in July or August.
The final product, a guide to meetings contracts, will be released "at the finish line" in December.
"Every event is unique therefore every contract must be unique. We don't want to get rid of contracts. We don't want to get rid of attorneys, because they're very important to the process. What we do want to do is come up with some guidelines and some standard language," Jones said. "It helps in the review and preparation of contracts if specific information is always in the same place, or always in the same order, because you know where to find it."