Meetings Mean Business Canada Continues Outreach with Visit to St. John’s

Members of Meetings Mean Business Canada’s board paid a visit to St. John’s, Newfoundland on June 28th as part of its ongoing mission to advocate for the power of face-to-face meetings.

MMB Canada board members had a productive, two-hour meeting with more than 20 executives from St. John’s economic development, city council and the business events industry. The meeting, hosted by the St. John’s Convention Centre, was the last stop in eastern Canada for the board, which has held meetings across the country.

“We had some great discussions including the importance of air access and recognizing concerns specific to smaller cities and their respective businesses. We are committed to keeping this in mind in our future stakeholder discussions,” reports Heidi Welker, vice-president of marketing, Freeman Audio Visual Canada and current chair of MMB Canada.

Since the coalition relaunched its rebrand from BEICC to MMBC in January 2017, it has raised more than $100,000 of initial funding and counts over 130 industry executive leaders among its supporters.

The 2018 goals of MMB Canada include the following:

• To be the advocacy voice/platform for the business events industry in Canada;
• to align its efforts and work in tandem with TIAC (its secretariat);
• and to continue growing its coalition through meetings such as the one held in St. John’s and to deliver updates to the industry.

In addition, MMB Canada has formed four committees to research and recommend:

• a sustainable financial model
• curation of unified data for our industry
• executing a plan to tell our story
• development and implementation of a Global Meetings Industry Day (GMID) strategy that provides consistent and aligned messaging for the organizers of these events in all cities.

It is also working on a board of directors’ succession plan that will include national representation.

To learn more about MMB Canada, view the current supporter list, and add your organization to this growing coalition, visit https://www.meetingsmeanbusiness.ca/supporters.