The Professional Convention Management Association has embarked on a new "external-focused" drive to increase the group's role as an advocate and resource for the meetings management industry, according to Deborah Sexton, PCMA's incoming president and CEO. The association has adopted a strategic plan that calls for closer relations with other industry associations to expand professional development projects and the advancement of original market research and surveys.
"Our strategic plan its vastly different than our last one three years ago in terms of the posture PCMA is taking within the industry. It's a much more outward- focused plan than the internal issues that our last plan was in place to deal with," said Gregg Talley, chairman of the PCMA board and president of association and event management company Talley Management Group.
"That's the leadership that we're looking to Deborah to provide that is fundamentally different than where we've been in the past," Talley said.
Sexton said on March 28 she will end her job as president of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau and literally move down the hall to take up the position of head of PCMA, which is headquartered in the same building.
Sexton has been a member of PCMA for about 20 years and served on the board of the group's foundation for the past two years.
Sexton said her first 90 days will focus on getting to know the staff and working with them to organize three major events the group has scheduled during that period. However, as a longtime advocate of PCMA's educational resources, she said there is a greater role the group can play in the meetings industry at large.
"We want to be thought of as the go-to organization for information, research and knowledge," Sexton said. "One of the reasons that people have always gravitated to PCMA is because of the educational offerings and my goal is to continue to enhance that."
Although PCMA has focused on serving associations in the past, Sexton said the group has started to reach out to corporate meeting buyers, and that the time is right to expand.
"There are opportunities for PCMA today to broaden their membership base," Sexton said.
Talley said that PCMA also would look for future opportunities to further deepen its member base within the association industry.
"We would never turn a corporate planner away, but if our primary mission and focus remains associations, we can go wider and deeper into that association market then we've been," he said.
Talley said that the new strategic plan calls for PCMA proactively address issues affecting the convention and meetings industry, such as visa and security regulations and the state of the airline industry. "We need to get other partners to help us with these issues," Talley said.
Nearly every meetings industry association has embarked on cooperative projects in the past year, and PCMA is no exception. Sexton said previous collaborations have been "extremely successful," and will continue.
"Each organization needs their competitive edge and particular niche and that's very important, but I also think there are many opportunities for us to get together—sometimes two organizations, sometimes all of the organizations—to produce research and to have collaborative efforts on all kinds of issues," Sexton said.
PCMA already has cooperated with Meeting Professionals International to produce a meeting multiculturalism toolkit, released at the PCMA annual meeting in Honolulu in January, and with MPI and the American Society of Association Executives on a joint statement regarding labor disputes, issued Feb. 17
(see story).Sexton said the organization's strategic plan, adopted last year, provided a road map for her to follow in leading development. The plan focused on education and advocacy and addressed the entire meetings industry, instead of associations alone.
Enhancing PCMA's educational resources includes expanding its professional development series, she said.
One track provided to members at the group's annual meeting in the past two years, offered meetings industry education to senior-level meeting planners and suppliers. Next year, the course may be expanded to include a special track for C-level executives only, she said.
The new strategic plan also calls for broadening the group's original research and surveying efforts, Sexton said, and this year's budget supports expanding paid staff or turning to outside sources for conducting more in-depth surveys.
PCMA has had relatively rapid leadership changes during the past five years. Roy Evans retired after 17 years as president and CEO in 2000 and was replaced by David DuBois
(Meetings Today, March 20, 2000). Two years later, David Kushner was hired as CEO and now Sexton takes over the position.
However, Sexton said she expects to keep the position longer than her two predecessors. "If I felt that this was a short-term endeavor, I would not have accepted the job," she said.
Sexton said both DuBois and Kushner were hired for specific purposes: DuBois to handle the transition period after PCMA moved to Chicago in 2000, and Kushner to analyze and set up internal processes and procedures.
"Now the board wants more of an external individual, and so they reached out to try and find someone that was known in the industry and that knew our members, both the supplier community as well as the planner community," Sexton said. "That's why they ended up with me."