PCMA Canada East Chapter

One of our initiatives for 2011 and into 2012 is to become more involved in the organizations that benefit professionals within our industry.  PCMA Canada East Chapter is one such group that we were eager to sponsor, so when they accepted our offer to provide Event Wizard for all chapter events and meetings we were quite excited.

PCMA is the leading organization for meeting and event professionals. Headquartered in Chicago, PCMA represents more than 6,000 meeting industry leaders from 17 chapters in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Members include planner professionals, suppliers, faculty and students.  Jacqui Sullivan is the President of PCMA Canada East and just returned back from PCMA Convening Leaders Conference in Las Vegas.  We caught Jacqui in a rare moment of downtime to find out how the start of 2011 has gone and what’s in store for rest of the year.

“The PCMA Convening Leaders Conference, our annual meeting, is the single best educational event of the year for meeting professionals like myself, and this year was no exception!  PCMA introduced new concepts in Meeting Management and for very first time, successfully experimented with a virtual meeting extension, which increased participation and engagement with those who were not able to attend in person.

I am energized to begin 2011 serving as President of the PCMA Canada East Chapter.  It is an honour to work with such a dedicated group of professional planners and suppliers as we strive to achieve our primary goals of providing top level education and increasing our membership at the local level.

I was especially happy that this year we secured DotCom Your Event as a sponsor to provide their Event Wizard registration software and service for us.  As a volunteer, it is critical that we have an easy to use solution that securely processes payments and allows us to run multiple programs.  Our chapter administrator Julie Siedel had one lesson on the system and is fast becoming a pro.  She has already completed the registration process for our first program in Ottawa last week and a second program in Toronto that had to be moved to March 2nd due to the expected snow storm that never was!  PCMA Canada East Chapter looks forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with DotCom Your Event.”

We have also become members of PCMA Canada East and look forward to participating in the events and opportunities offered through the chapter.  Learn more about the chapter and upcoming events at www.pcma.org/Chapters/Canada-East.htm.

About Jacqui Sullivan, CMP

Jacqui has been an integral part of the Absolute team since its founding in 1995. Previous to joining Absolute she held several positions with a large hotel chain, and in not-for-profit organizations as member relations manager and meeting planner.

Jacqui plans and manages a variety of conferences, events and related projects for Canadian and provincial associations.

In Good Company

It has been a big year for the DotCom Your Event team and brand.  We redesigned our corporate website and our Event Wizard website and of course launched Event Wizard 5.0, which we might add (warning: shameless plug coming), has been very well received.

With all of this excitement we decided it was time to become part of the bigger picture and align ourselves with like-minded folks.  So, we have just recently joined Meeting Professionals International and the Professional Convention Management Association.

Are you part of either of these organizations?  Let us know what you like most about being part of them, and maybe we’ll see you at the next event!