Encouraging. Wonderful. Enthusiastic. Stimulating.
Those were just some of the words that volunteer leaders shared Saturday during Meeting Professionals International’s (MPI) European Chapter Leader Forum about their experiences working on behalf of the world’s largest association of meeting and event professionals.
Others from the more than 30 chapter leaders who were in The Hague for MPI’s European Meetings and Events Conference (EMEC) expressed terms like dynamic, tight-knit, inspiration, growth, thrilling and energetic.
But others also used terms such as challenging, small, rebuilding, busy and rebooting to describe their roles.
“It’s not always easy,” one said, “but it’s what we love to do.”
The volunteer leaders shared their sentiments during a day of education and networking on the eve of EMEC. The volunteer leaders also had the opportunity to meet with several members of MPI’s Global leadership team to hear updates on company initiatives.
“This is a grassroots organization,” said Paul Van Deventer, CEO and president of MPI. “It is about the community. We are investing in a proactive marketing program and bringing the brand to life in Europe. We have a lot of content today that is not always tailored to Europe, but with some work, we’ll adjust the content and make it more relevant.”
Van Deventer explained his strategy for strengthening the European base, acknowledging how he had to focus on the U.S. aspect of the business when he joined MPI more than five years ago.
“Not that we took our eye off the world, but we had to get the U.S. back on track,” he said. “We’ve done that over the last few years and now we’re turning back to Europe and Canada.”
One strategy was the activation of an advisory council led first by Krzystof Celuch, then by Angeles Moreno last year. Pieter Allaerts will lead the European Advisory Council in 2019, with fellow MPI members Celuch, Paula Blomster, Milo Bravo, Anne Dalgaard, Wojciech Lizka, Giovanna Lucherini, Suzanne Mulligan and Hector Venegas. Miguel Neves will continue as the liaison with the MPI International Board of Directors (IBOD) while Federico Toja is the staff liaison.
“We’re in a great place to start,” Van Deventer said. “We’re going to refresh the brand with the council and re-energize. We hope to see growth over the next five years and reinvigorate our investments in Europe.”
Those investments include human resources, marketing support and content support.
“We’re going to support the investment where you think it should go,” he said.
“It was a new concept, but the program is strong, very rich,” he said. “It’s been really well done.”
The senior leadership team, including Van Deventer, COO Darren Temple, IBOD chair Steve O’Malley along with Neves and Toja, will start a European road show Feb. 12 in The Hague, followed by visits to chapters in Brussels, Cologne and London. Van Deventer said the plan is to align future road shows with other meetings when the team is in Europe.
“One of the pieces of feedback we got was we needed to increase the presence of the MPI Global staff in Europe to get out and about,” van Deventer said.
Other presentations Saturday included updates on membership initiatives, the MPI Foundation, marketing and chapter reports.
