I loved this session, which was kind of a speed-dating thing where you pick a topic table, discuss that topic for 20 minutes, then shift to a new topic table. The three I hit during the session were: Extreme makeover, trade show edition; social media and attendance marketing; and incorporating experiential content into your show. Way too much to go into here, but here are a few takeaways:

Extreme makeovers can be risky: some things may go over well, others may flop. Make sure everyone’s ok with that concept.

Social media and marketing are a natural, but your marketing department may be a little scared of it. A great solution probably almost no one can do is to hire a dedicated social media person to track and contribute to conversations your organizations should be involved with.

If you’re trying to market your meeting by starting up a Facebook or LinkedIn group, make sure there’s something in it for the attendees/exhibitors (give them free VIP passes for participating, or something). Getting people to participate is the hardest part for many who are just getting started.

Pay attention to your evaluations, and let people know what you learned, and what you’re changing as a result of their suggestions. No one wants to participate again once your comments have fallen into a black hole once already.

Do a staff post-mortem on everything about the show, where everyone on staff makes comments anonymously. One person said her organization does this and gets about half of its best ideas this way.

Also, talk to temps and get their feedback on the show. Recruit the best temps to be your spies and find out the answers to some key questions for you through casual conversaton with attendees. Attendees will tell them things they’ll never tell you, like what your competition does better.

I felt sort of obligated to go to a session on negotiating convention center contracts, since it is I’m sure something our readers would want to know more about, even though I really wanted to start off the day with the “Making the WOW factor relevant” session, which sounded like a lot more fun. But I’m glad I did drop by to hear the latest on negotiating with centers from Mark Roysner, attorney at law with Roysner & Associates (though I did hear terrific things about the WOW session, too, which was led by Mike McCauley with ProActive and Red7Media’s Jim Alkon).

First off, we did an audience response system survey of the audience, and a full 60 percent were anticipating a decrease in attendance in the next six months (20 percent expected a 6-10 percent decrease; 40 percent anticipated a greater than 10 percent decrease). So, looks like everyone’s bracing for some rough weather ahead.

Anyway, Roysner talked about a bunch of things, but a few stand out to me right now:

*Read your contract, every word, even if you’ve read the same contract from the same center 10 times before. Because even if the contract language hasn’t changed, the situation probably has, and you’ll need to consider what that language means when applied to how things are now (and what you’re anticipating). Plus, they do change the language every now and then, even though it may be hiding under the same old headings. And read it in the beginning of the site selection process, not after you’ve already contracted with your hotels and will basically be stuck with no other options.

*They might be more willing to negotiate certain things nowadays than they were in the past, such as minimums on exhibit space. Check to see if your] minimums are guaranteed per hall or in aggregate. He said that most contracts will make you pay for unused minimums in one hall even if you sold out in other halls. Can you go with an aggregate minimum? Then work with the center to keep it reasonable. “Try to get them to modify to take off minimums that have you don’t think you can sell out so they will just charge for the square footage you actually used,” he said.

*Exclusives also are a little different these days, he said. While centers used to just have exclusive agreements with telecom and utilities, nowadays it can be security, cleaning, all sorts of other services that they will force you to use. This gets you into trouble with any long-term exclusive contractors you have on your own, since they’ll likely raise their rates if they don’t get all your business as contracted.

Put in your contract which exclusives are specifically included as of the date of execution of your contract, and put in a clause that you’ll only accept exclusives in place at a certain date. And on your contractor contracts, include a clause that excludes you if the center forces you to use their exclusive contractor. “You have to do it on both ends,” Roysner said.

Also watch out for new commissionable issues—some centers are adding DMC commissions (if you use our preferred providers, you don’t have to pay commission, but to bring in your own who have worked with you for years and knows all your group’s quirks, you pay us a commission). He said a fair thing to do is not to charge for bringing that DMC or production company in, but if the facility has to supply support for that company, you pay for that service.

I know the new coolio teleprompters that are clear and posed on either side of the speaker are all the rage these days, but at IAEE’s opening session last night I felt kind of bad for the speakers, most of whom looked like they were trying to keep up with a tennis match, their heads sproinging wildly from side to side. While Bob Eubanks, the emcee of the evening, did a much better job with it, even he looked a little challenged in trying to make it look more natural.

I don’t know the answers, but unless your speakers are pros, you might want to rethink using these things. It was really kind of distracting for the audience, and I can only imagine what it must have been like for the various speakers.

Let’s see if this works: It’s supposed to pull in all the latest Twitter posts and flickr updates tagged “IAEE.”

If this does work, thanks to Maddie Grant for leading the way with an ASAE 2008 Twitter Fountain.

Here’s a direct link, just in case.