PCMA 2006 Philadelphia Weblog

Notes from Creating Customer Loyalty session

Paul Wehking of Omnipress submitted the following post:

Wow! I just returned home from PCMA in Philadelphia. As a first time attendee since the exhibit hall was dropped a number if years ago, I must say that the event was very well done from what I could see.

My company, Omnipress, is a perennial exhibitor at most association industry tradeshows including ASAE, MPI, Affordable Meetings Series, Holiday Showcase, CESSE, AAMSE, NOCA, NOA – so in short we have been to a few of these things over the years. I have sat through sessions that frankly could make an insomniac drop over in minutes but I wanted to mention two sessions in particular that I found to be very useful.

What did you learn today?

You've attended a whole day's worth of sessions today.  What did you learn?  What will do with this new learning when you return to your organization?  How will you take your meeting from the ordinary to the extraordinary?  Share your thoughts with us here!

Great photos!

If you look to the immediate left of this post (at least when it is at the top of the blog), you will see the Flickr photo feed for the meeting.  There are several contributors posting photos, and we are totally blown away by the great images we're seeing!  We strongly encourage you to check them out, just by clicking on any of the boxes in the badge to the left.

If you would like to post your pictures, just send us an e-mail, and we'll send you the instructions.  If you'd like to share your reflections on the meeting, send them to us in the e-mail and we'll post them on the blog.

Waiting for lunch

I shot this little video clip while I was waiting for lunch yesterday afternoon.  Quite a crowd had gathered outside Hall C waiting for the doors to open, and so I tried to have a little fun with it!

Joan Eisenstodt talks open space

If I may offer a personal testimonial here, Joan has been one of my mentors for many years and it is always a genuine pleasure to participate in her sessions.  Today was no exception, of course.  This Meetings Xperiment was a true success.  Great job Joan!

There's plenty of time to contribute!

If you'd like to see your name up in lights...well up in digital ink actually...then share your thoughts on the PCMA Annual Meeting on the blog.  Simply send us an e-mail with your thoughts, and we'll post them to the blog in the coming days!  Be sure to include a title for the post, as well as your name, title and organizational affiliation in your e-mail. 

Also, if you have photos you'd like to see us include in our Flickr feed (which can be seen on the left side of the blog), please send us an e-mail and we'll send you the instructions for uploading them.  Your perspectives on the meeting, expressed through either words or images, are invaluable.  They help us better understand the uniqueness of your experiences, and contribute to the richness of the narrative we are trying to create on the blog.  Thanks so much for your help!

Impressions so far

I'm only going to be at the meeting for a short time, so I want to make sure to share some of my impressions.  What I've experienced so far has been really great, and I'm sure it will only get better in the next couple of days.  It makes me wish I was going to be here for the rest of it!

PCMA is a very welcoming community of learners and leaders, and the organization has certainly gone the extra mile this year to try new things.  As a well-known innovation phreak myself, I greatly appreciate the Meetings Xperiments, which are simple and easy experiments with various new approaches that attendees may be able to apply to their own meetings.  Yesterday's Executive Edge was really excellent, and being hosted at Wharton definitely added a touch of prestige.  Gordon Bethune was as advertised here:  candid and capable.  He did a great job.

All in all, my little slice of PCMA has been great fun.  In the days ahead, I'm sure those of you who stay on in Philadelphia will be treated to a really fantastic time.  Do make the most of it and enjoy yourself!   

The quotable Gordon Bethune

From this morning's general session:

"What do people want from an airline?  They want to get where they're going safely, on time and with their underwear."

"Why do fishermen put bait on the hook?  Because the fish doesn't care about you."

"Masochists do better in aviation."

You can't make this stuff up, can you? 

Gordon Bethune: Candid and capable

Today's general session speaker, Gordon Bethune, is the former CEO of Continental Airlines.  Bethune was the subject of a profile in the Business Section of this past Saturday's New York Times.  (Unfortunately, this particular column, written by Joseph Nocera, is part of the newspaper's Times Select area and requires separate registration and payment.)

Bethune's chief indictment of the "legacy airlines" such as United, Delta and Northwest is simple:  they have been mismanaged by executives who don't really understand what matters to customers.  And Bethune doesn't pull any punches on his views.  When asked by Nocera what he would do to address the problems of United Airlines, which comes out of bankruptcy next month, Bethune's responded, "I think prayer would help."  Bethune's candor is probably a major reason why he's delivering lectures (for $35,000 a pop he points out) rather than running an airline.  And he doesn't seem to mind one bit.

Bethune is famous in the airline industry for his pithy observations.  Here are a few from the article that he might use today:

• "Someone asked me once how come I knew so much about people.  I told him it was because I used to be one."
• "If you're going to be in the watch business, it helps to know how a watch works."
• "If you are being rewarded for finding ways to make pizza cheaper, eventually you'll take the cheese off.  You'll make it so cheap that people won't eat it."
• "If we have six three-legged horses and we put them in a race, one of them is going to win.  It's not pretty, but you're still beating those other five horses."

Unrelenting candor and clever turns-of-phrase aside, Bethune delivered results during his ten-year tenure at Continental Airlines.  In 1994, Continental had a $600 million loss.  Today, as Nocera puts it, Continental is "unquestionably the best-performing airline this side of Southwest."  When he came to Continental, Bethune defined success not in financial terms, but in getting planes to their destinations on time.  He did not try to dump the airline's pension commitments onto the government, as others have.  He rebuilt trust with union employees and did not eliminate "extras," such as food.  As a consequence, Continental has won numerous awards for service quality and has been regularly included on the Fortune Magazine's "Best 100 Companies to Work For" list.

Enjoy this morning's session with Gordon Bethune, and let us know what you think of his perspectives here on the blog!

UPDATE:  Bethune used a variation on the pizza comment, and the three-legged horserace comment in his remarks this morning!

What do you think?

Here is Shellie O'Toole, CASE, director of convention sales & convention services for Experience Columbus, commenting on the Executive Edge experience. The video is 23 seconds long.