Like many independent trade show and event planners, Denise Medved makes important decisions every day. As president and CEO of Annandale, Va.-based The Tiny Kitchen Inc., a live-events and media company in the consumer cooking and entertaining industry, she often finds herself wondering: What has worked for a gathering like this in the past? What hasn't worked? Who might have good advice to share?
Medved's primary source for answers: fellow members of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Society of Independent Show Organizers.
"SISO is terrific in terms of networking, resources, and access to people and ideas," says Medved, who serves on the association's board. "There's so much information exchanged, so many ideas changing hands. It's an amazing organization where competitors are helping each other with best practices and problem solving."
That's exactly the kind of camaraderie that the founders of SISO were aiming for. The organization was started in 1990 by a group of 12 pioneering entrepreneurs who wanted an informal way to get together and share information, network, and have candid discussions about trade show and event-planning issues. Nearly 22 years later, the group has blossomed into a 135-member-strong coalition of companies large and small, representing close to 3,500 global events.
It isn't just its informal, noncompetitive vibe and transparency that make SISO work. According to executive director Lew Shomer, it's also a sense that all members, regardless of size, are on equal footing. The association holds two conferences a year -- the CEO Summit and the Executive Conference -- at which chief executives from global corporations such as UBM or Reed Exhibitions mingle with small-business owners who might host just one show a year.
"When everybody gets together, there are no agendas," Shomer says. "I can ask anybody who's there, any CEO, what they've done, what they plan to do, and get an honest answer. If somebody's actually failed miserably, they don't give me a press release. They tell me, 'I made the stupidest mistake I could've made. I did this, that or the other thing, and you want to stay away from that.' "
The overall effect, says Medved, is that members make her "feel like they are really, truly colleagues of mine sharing the same industry."
New realities and priorities 
While
most industries have in some way felt the effects of today's fast-paced
business environment and the meteoric rise of the role of technology,
the live-events industry has been particularly impacted. After all,
Shomer notes, people no longer have to wait until the biannual trade
show to unveil a new product or touch base with contacts anymore.
"The
reasons people are going to face-to-face meetings now are primarily to
see, feel and touch not only the products but also the people they're
dealing with," says Shomer.
It's no different with SISO's
members. "They want interactivity," Shomer says. Whereas in the past,
conferences followed the conventional formula of an hourlong PowerPoint
presentation followed by 15 minutes of light Q&A, "the plan for this
year is to turn that 180 degrees," notes Shomer. "Members really want
snippets of information with the opportunity to be interactive so they
can ask questions. So we're going to be much more efficient in the
presentation of our information, and much more interactive with fielding
questions and answers."
The association's most recent Executive
Conference, which took place in August in Philadelphia, was tailored to
respond to member's requests, says Sean Guerre, SISO's chairman of the
board, and the organization is looking to extend the live-event
experience and build up a virtual community around it.
Another
major priority for SISO going forward is to increase or further develop
partnerships with sister organizations, Shomer says. This year, the
organization has worked with the International Association of
Exhibitions and Events, the Exhibition Service Contractors Association
and the International Association of Venue Managers to plan a coalition
summit, with the objective being to bring together all the moving parts
involved in putting on a live event.
"All of the stakeholders
that make up an exhibition -- and there are about 15 or 20 -- will be
represented at the coalition summit in order for them to meet each other
and to set up lines of communication, so that everybody can see how any
one decision is going to affect all of the other players in the
business," Shomer says, noting that this communication is crucial in
avoiding incidents like the one in San Jose, Calif., in 2009, when a
labor dispute escalated after the city's convention center decided to
move all labor in-house. That particular issue was actually resolved by a
collaboration among IAEE, ESCA and SISO -- and even resulted in Shomer
bringing his own event, Abilities Expo, to San Jose.
SISO also is
working hard to extend is global reach, forming relationships with UFI,
a global association of exhibition managers and venues, and AMPROFEC, a
Mexican association of convention and trade show professionals. At
home, SISO recently entered into a marketing agreement with American
Business Media, which Shomer says was a natural fit since both the
live-events industry and the media industry are similarly affected by --
and trying to figure out how to navigate -- the current rampant rise of
digital communications.
Ultimately, both Shomer and Guerre
stress that SISO will continue to provide members with "more of the same
-- that level of networking, sharing, having the global community and
being involved so they can learn more," Guerre says.
After all,
Shomer adds, "the ability to interact and exchange information candidly
is very important -- that's why people come to us."