“Our distance from our pride to the ground scares us into standing still forever just so our knees never have to scrape the pavement.”
Before keynote speaker Tucker Bryant helped attendees conquer their fears in the afternoon keynote, Smart Monday, powered by MPI, once again served as a powerful lead-in to one of the meeting industry’s biggest and most-important, can’t-miss events: IMEX America in Las Vegas.
At Smart Monday, complimentary education and professional development are provided to all IMEX America buyers and sellers.
“The agenda for Smart Monday is a collaboration between MPI and IMEX, as we seek and find the compelling topics, formats, educators, facilitators and speakers,” says Tim Luepke, CMM, CMP, CTS, DES, director of the MPI Academy. “We also extend opportunities to other industry associations, nonprofits and organizations to ensure that all our industry community is well represented. Our She Means Business programming continues to be one of our strongest partnerships, in collaboration with IMEX and tw magazine.”
MPI also has a hosted buyer program at IMEX America that helps facilitate valuable buyer/seller connections, along with daily keynote speakers, daily booth education sessions on the show floor and MPI Foundation fundraising events that benefit the future of the meeting industry—highlighted by Rendezvous, the meeting industry’s party of the year, at Drai’s Beach Club and nightclub (sponsored by Caesars Entertainment).
Beyond the wide-ranging education opportunities, there were plenty of fun activities for Smart Monday attendees, from painting with the Foundation for Hospital Art (which involves patients and volunteers worldwide in the process of creating colorful, soothing artwork that is donated to hospitals), the always popular Headshot Experience with photographer Chuck Fazio (sponsored by Kalahari Resorts & Conventions and Visit Raleigh) and puppy cuddling with Paws for a Break (sponsored by Cvent).
Stephanie Gerken, director of training and development for Michael’s Angel Paws—which brought the therapy dogs to Smart Monday—said the biggest takeaway for attendees is “smiles through wagging tails.”
“There’s nothing better in life than a hug from a dog to melt away your fears and stress and bring a smile to your face—and add some pep in your step, too,” she said.
She Means Business
“This year I had the opportunity to not only play your host, but also to co-curate the content for this year’s She Means Business experience,” Courtney Stanley, CEO of Courtney Stanley Consulting LLC, said at the onset of the all-day She Means Business program (sponsored by Visit Seattle, Fort Worth and OVG360). “It was one of the most joyful and meaningful moments of the year because I was able to really sit with IMEX and MPI and talk to their education teams about how to truly make today a day of service for you. Because I know that you carry a lot on your shoulders, today is really meant to be a day for you to relax, to be in your own skin, to have meaningful conversations and to leave here feeling empowered and inspired.”
Devon Pasha, the opening speaker for She Means Business, told the crowd she wore the letter “E” during “Your Scarlet Letter: Redefining Shame as Strength.” (The session title, as Pasha pointed out, was inspired by the novel “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which “a woman in a puritanical society who has a child out of wedlock and as a punitive measure is made to wear a scarlet A on her clothing to indicate that she is an adulteress.”)
“I’m an emotional person. I have been wearing the scarlet letter E for ‘emotional’ for my entire professional life,” said Pasha, director of North America for the Event Design Collective. “And it’s become a weight. It’s become heavy. And I realize that there is another way. There is a better way for us to live. There’s a better way for us to think and a better way for us to exist.”
Pasha told the audience she wanted them to take a journey with her to “flip the script” on labels.
“It’s not them, it’s you. You’re not the one creating labels, and you’re not the one handing them out. But you are the one wearing it,” she said. “We are the ones who took it and put it on. We collectively believe that we need to wear them. The idea is that it’s not necessarily our fault, but we need to understand that as people give us labels, we put them on.”
When we are given labels, we are essentially given scarlet letters to wear, Pasha explained.
“We automatically go to a place of creating a list—an internal to-fix list, AKA, ‘I have done something that deserves to be punished and need to fix myself in order to get back into my community,’” she said. “That’s a heavy burden. What I found is that any characteristic can be turned into a problematic label for women in the workplace. There are over 30 different types of labels that can be used to bring women down, to shame them, to give them these scarlet letters for them to wear, for them to fix themselves.”
Pasha said awareness of where labels come from gives you the power of choice and helps you find your superpower.
“Once we identify that superpower, once we ignite that little spark inside of you, we need to fan that flame not only within you to keep it burning bright, but to help you to burn bright to your community, to your family, to your job, to this community that we’re all in,” she said.
Smart Monday keynote
Before Tucker Bryant took the stage, Jessie States, CMP, CMM, vice president of the MPI Academy, welcomed attendees to Smart Monday 2023 and led a moment of silence for our community members who have been impacted by recent global atrocities, as well as those that came before.
IMEX Group CEO Carina Bauer then welcomed attendees by noting that we measure our success through our shared purpose of delivering better human connections and building a resilient, caring business industry that's focused on positive change.
“The business, the connections, the networking, the inspirational moments and ideas that you take away this week will ensure our industry grows, improves and has a meaningful impact on the world,” she said. “We hope that you come away with some better business and better connections as a result. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that change is constant. And our biggest challenges in the industry are to stay adaptable, stay curious and be open to innovation.”
MPI President and CEO Paul Van Deventer noted the strong partnership between MPI and the IMEX Group, which has been going strong for nearly 15 years, and also discussed the strength of the meeting industry.
“The industry has really come storming back over the last 12 months since we were here, and MPI has benefited from that growth as well,” he said. “We are seeing strong growth across our membership, with almost 7% growth over the last year. But for me, more importantly, we're seeing growth in our community, those who choose and proactively interact with each other through MPI, whether that’s at a chapter, whether it's an event like this where we're hosting education or in our signature conferences like the World Education Congress.”
Van Deventer said that with such a massive influx of new people in the meeting industry, it’s imperative to get involved and join an organization (whether MPI or others in this space) to help yourself and the industry.
“It’s going to help us as an industry grow,” he said. “It’s going to help raise the professionalism. It's going to help us continue to be able to deliver what we do: experiences that change the world and benefit the world overall.”
Ronnie Collins, senior vice president of sales and services for Visit Anaheim, discussed the destination’s strength as a meetings hub as well as lots of growth on the horizon.
“Anaheim is not only the home to world-famous theme parks like Disneyland, but also a bustling hub for businesses and culture,” he said. “The Anaheim campus is a unique space that is anchored by the largest convention center on the West Coast with over 1.8 million square feet of flexible exhibit and meeting space. There are four major hotels adjacent to the convention center—we call that the campus, with over 4,800 rooms within 100 yards. We have welcomed new hotels near the Anaheim Convention Center. There are also additional luxury hotels in process that will add another 2,000 rooms within one mile of the convention center. Another exciting development: ocV!BE, a live entertainment district anchored by the Honda Center. It will feature indoor and outdoor concert venues, two new hotels, over 30 new restaurants and bars and a market hall brimming with culinary experiences.”
Tucker Bryant, a poet and storyteller, presented a keynote titled “The Artist’s Guide to Unlocking Innovation” (sponsored by Visit Anaheim). One of the many inspirational stories he shared involved one very small, unlikely hero.
“The African spiny mouse is a peculiar animal. After thousands of years at the butt end of every joke about the food chain, these rodents developed a rather strange survival strategy: they became tougher by growing thinner skin,” he said. “You see, with flesh that could rip, like soft tissue paper, these mice could scurry into any situation knowing that if they found themselves on the wrong side of a predator’s smile, they could jump out of its jaws and grow the skin back in no time.”
Bryant said the mice understood the alternative to transforming was ceasing to exist at all.
“So, remind me again why we want to hide behind a shield of ‘this is the way we’ve always done things,’” he said. “Our distance from our pride to the ground scares us into standing still forever just so our knees never have to scrape the pavement. Fear is a bully. One that so scares us our ideas might come out crooked, and instead we let them rot under our tongues. But an imagination can only sit in the attic for so long before it becomes unrecognizable under all that dust.”
There’s something we all might learn from an animal so willing to tangle with the things that scare it most, Bryant explained.
“We need thinner skin—not brains that protect us from ever getting hurt but bodies that know we can heal,” he said. “When you hear an idea too large to fit in your head, stretch your imagination around it and call it yoga for the mind. If you don’t believe in magic, walk towards your doubts and watch them vanish from head to toe. Drag fear to the poker table and call its every bluff because I know the future will be different, but I know that is not scaring you. Because tomorrow’s just an event we build right here at IMEX America.”
Photos by IMEX Group.
