EVENT DETAILS

July 12–16, 2015
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando 

CHALLENGES

JAM 2015 is dealing with financial issues — including the cost of free Wi-Fi for attendees as well as catering. “Food-and-beverage pricing is higher in Florida than in the Midwest, where we held the 2014 meeting,” said Cara Tharp, CMP, JAM’s coordinator. “Overall, I feel we are getting a great value in Orlando, and our increased attendance numbers reflect that.” Another challenge is balancing programming to reflect attendees’ interests. “We have three-and-a-half days to pack in all of this science,” Tharp said, “and our biggest challenge is trying to make sure it is spread out well so that no related content is overlapping.”

INITIATIVES

JAM 2015 will feature the Poster in My Pocket app, which allows attendees to use their mobile devices to view presentation posters, connect with authors, and seamlessly share the posters over email and social-media channels. The meeting will also intermingle vendor booths and posters on the show floor. “We place our trade shows and posters together to get maximum exposure for vendors,” Tharp said. “We anticipate that having Wi-Fi available in the exhibit hall will really aid in exhibit-hall traffic this year as well.”

Convene’s Pre-Con/Post-Con series asks meeting planners about their challenges and how they intend to address them (Pre-Con), and then circles back around after the meeting has occurred (Post-Con) to see how well they worked out.