Mtgs. Vets Reselling RegWeb Transactions

A trio of longtime meeting industry veterans, led by technology consultant Jeff Rasco, has created an Internet attendee registration and management company that will license StarCite's RegWeb application to smaller companies that are less inclined to purchase a widescale technology solution.

Rasco will serve as president of Attendee Management Inc., which should be publicly up and running this month. The company was born of a strategic partnership between two independent meetings management firms, Rod Abraham's Professional Meeting Planners Network and Jim Daggett's JRDaggett & Associates. Rasco served as senior vice president of JRDaggett.

"The basic thinking was to serve an underserved population," Rasco said. "It looks to us like there's a need that's not being filled for smaller corporations that want to manage registration online without a big set-up fee or a $3,000 licensing fee."

Effectively, AMI contracted with RegWeb to buy a large number of transactions at inexpensive rates, Rasco said, and will resell them to the marketplace. This structure allows AMI to charge users a per-transaction rate without licensing or setup fees. In addition, Rasco said, the company will handle fax and mail registration and enter them into its online database, allowing corporate planners to access all meeting registrations over the Internet.

RegWeb is the first application AMI will offer, largely due to the management team's familiarity with the tool, Rasco said, but there likely will be others. "We intend to have contracts with several leading application service providers, but we've been so familiar with RegWeb since its beginning," he said.

Rasco will continue to serve as a consultant for technology issues with JRDaggett, but will exit the day-to-day operations of that company.