Meetings Beat - 2003-09-22

CIC's APEX Cracks $1M, More Sought
The Convention Industry Council earlier this month announced it has raised $1 million in support of its Accepted Practices Exchange initiative to develop and implement standard practices throughout the meetings industry. Still, CIC president Mary Power noted that the organization, an umbrella group of 30 industry associations, seeks an additional $900,000. "Reaching $1 million in our campaign demonstrates the commitment of the entire industry to support the development of accepted practices," Power said. The APEX initiative is comprised of seven aspects of the meetings industry for which CIC seeks to develop standards: terminology, history and post-event reports, requests for proposals, résumés and work orders, meeting and site profiles, housing and registration.


Certain Extends 123 Service
Certain Software earlier this month introduced a new version of its Register123 attendee management application that allows corporations to install its online registration tools on their own Web and database servers. The new deployment, dubbed Register123 Enterprise, allows corporate clients to maintain registration data in-house. Officials at the San Francisco-based company said the release stemmed from a market need for a version of its technology that gives corporations higher security and the ability to better use their own technological resources. Certain bought Register123 in November 2001.


Res At Reg W/Contracted Rates
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based attendee management technology firm EmeetingsOnline has developed a hotel reservation application that enables meeting attendees to book negotiated hotel rates at the point of attendee registration in real time, following a deal struck with Dallas-based hotel reservation technology firm Pegasus Solutions. "Attendees can now arrive and check in with a hotel-issued confirmation number, while meeting planners increase quality control and considerably reduce costly labor and time related to managing the contracted and overflow needs of their meetings," said EmeetingsOnline president Jack Schaufele.


Microsoft To Deploy Live Meetings
Microsoft Corp. this month plans to release the Webconferencing tools it acquired after its January acquisition of Mountain View, Calif.-based Webconferencer PlaceWare. However, the services, newly dubbed Live Meetings, are not integrated into Microsoft's expected October release of its Office 2003 suite of desktop management tools, according to an Internet Week report. The company told the magazine that Live Meeting is a service, not a product, and therefore is on a separate development cycle than its Office offering.