SPIN: The Senior Planners Industry Network

If we have at least 10 people interested, SPIN will coordinate a senior-planner group of Hosted Buyers for this show. Click here to email us if interested.

Visit  www.spinplanners.com/live-think-tanks.html to see dates and locations for the 1st Quarter SPIN Think Tanks.

If you wish to be a guest blogger and contribute an article, email sara@spinplanners.com

SPIN is participating in Hosted Buyer Programs all across the U.S. and overseas: click here to be notified when we head to cities of interest to you.

• Do you have a success story?
• Do you want to be featured as an In-Transition Member of the Month?

Send your story to Shawna at shawna@spinplanners.com.

If you have suggestions on how to make this newsletter more beneficial, please let us know.

Last month, SPIN introduced a crazy concept: an optional, elite level of membership that you can purchase if you believe in what SPIN does, want to support the association's ongoing efforts, and see value in what the Elite Membership offers.

Full Elite Membership details are available on www.spinplanners.com/join-spin.html but here's a summary: for an annual fee of $200, you not only support our association, you also receive discounts from a growing list of industry and non-industry companies, a $100 discount on SPINCon registration, free access to a growing library of senior-level educational webinars, and a year's worth of free Think Tank events. Definitely not membership just for membership's sake!

SPECIAL THANK YOU BONUSES:
If you become an Elite Member before the end of 2011, you receive membership through the end of 2012. You will hold the special designation of Charter Elite Member, and will receive a special Charter Elite Member logo that you can showcase on your business cards, email signature block, website, etc. 
If $200 is too much right now, but you still want to show your support for the association and help SPIN continue to exist, we're also offering a SPIN Supporting Member level at $50, which comes with some perks as well (visit the website for the full details).

Basic Membership will continue to be free.

To become either an Elite or Supporter member, please visit  spinplanners.memberlodge.com

Would you like to meet industry suppliers on your own schedule, without ever having to leave your office?  We’re launching a Virtual Hosted Buyer Program in the first quarter of 2012. The vendor-buyer appointments will be done completely online using one of the following technologies – Skype, Google Hangout, or iPad Facetime. It’s a very easy way to learn these technologies and meet the vendors right for you. 

Why participate? 

• Get timely information without leaving the office
  
• Meet relevant suppliers and destination reps for your upcoming events
  
• You have a full week to complete your appointments, scheduled at your convenience
  
• BONUS: For trying out this new VHB program with us, participants will earn a SPIN Elite Membership by completing 8-10 appointments (a $200 value that comes with a host of benefits).
  

After completing the application, SPIN staff will match planners with relevant suppliers.  Next, the suppliers schedule one-on-one appointments to speak with you during VHB (Virtual Hosted Buyer) Week.  Each appointment lasts at least 15 minutes; however, at your discretion, it could extend longer.  SPIN will follow up with each supplier to confirm each appointment has taken place.

The first SPIN VHB Event will take place February 6-10.  We will offer these events several times during 2012, so you may participate at any time throughout the year.

If you are interested and would like to apply for a future SPIN VHB Event, please visit http://www.spinplanners.com/hosted-buyer-app.html and fill out the brief application.  

These days, everybody could use a new client or two (or ten).  With new clients few and far between, and more independent planners than ever, how do you stand out from the crowd?  SPIN President, Shawna Suckow, will share the results of what she's learned from interviewing several successful SPIN indies.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• What other senior-level planners have done to market themselves and their businesses successfully
  
• What NOT to do unless you want to keep spinning your wheels with little results
  
• What you can do to market yourself or your business with limited time or money (or both!)

PEER MENTORING 

• Each webinar participant will be placed into a peer-to-peer mentoring group with other webinar participants afterward, as an ongoing resource for your unique marketing challenges going forward.

DATE

• January 18 from 3pm to 4pm (Central Standard Time)
  

COST

• Basic Members or Non-Members - $50 
  (BONUS: includes free SPIN Supporter-Level membership valued at $50 for qualified participants)
• SPIN Elite Members - FREE (registration still required)
  

REGISTER

• Visit www.spinplanners.com/planner-webinars.html
  

Since we will be gathering for SPINCon in Mountain Village, just up the slope from the town of Telluride, we decided the theme should be Innovation Village. The intent is to gather SPIN members and together figure out how to innovate our meetings, incentives and events to better serve the purpose and needs of our attendees. Be thinking of who could deliver a presentation, or better yet, what you could propose for a session

Technology remains the top item on everyone’s what-do-you-need-to-know-more-about response, so we’ll just start with that.  During the Technology Village the first afternoon, we’ll explore what SPIN members are really using and how technology has improved your work. During your events, how has technology helped you achieve your goals and objectives in a better way?

Thursday morning will be focused on using the old noggin to think through meeting planning’s toughest elements. Strategy Village will be brain and body exercise! Don’t worry; it will be a lot more brain than brawn.

That afternoon is a time to shine and share. The Solution Village will take a look at what you’ve done to solve your most pressing meeting and event issues. How did you innovate that sales meeting? What are you doing differently (with success) at the annual conference? How are you handling the scrutiny from your boss and the C-Suite? While you may not think you’ve done anything miraculous, it may be the one idea everyone else is dying to hear. We promise it will be fun.

Then Friday morning, we’ll take a look at new ways to get folks to notice your meeting (and all your hard work). The Marketing Village will not only cover ways to get more butts in seats, but also how to talk up what you do and, perhaps, save your own butt.

If you don’t want to present a session, but know a really good speaker within the industry (not a professional), submit their name (tracey@spinplanners.com) and we’ll follow up.  But, hurry! We need to get all submissions in by December 31st.

To submit a session in one of the above categories, go to http://spincon.spinplanners.com/speakers.html. Again the due date is December 31st. Oh, and if you present a full session, your registration fee is waived and SPIN will cover one night’s lodging. Can’t beat that!

I participated in my very first trip to China last month.  The deal was amazing: $2000 included round-trip air, 7 nights lodging in 5-star hotels, all meals, all tours, transportation and tour guides through four different cities.  Email me if you have an interest in joining the same trip next September or October.


There were four busloads of us, but we stayed with the same 24 people on the same bus throughout the tour, so it didn’t feel like a huge group.  Here are highlights about each destination we visited:

Suzhou (Grand Metro Park Hotel Suzhou), 75 miles from Shanghai, is known as the Venice of China, and it was beautiful! We took an amazing boat ride down a canal (the highlight of the trip for me), giving us a peak into households and regular Chinese life along the way. We strolled through a food market that was quite an eye-opener as well.

Hangzhou (Crowne Plaza Hotel Hangzhou Grand Canal), 111 miles from Shanghai, was memorable for its temples, especially the Lingyin Temple with its 64-foot tall Buddha statue, monks roaming the grounds, and Chinese people lighting incense and delivering oranges to the statues.

Shanghai (Renaissance Shanghai Putuo Hotel) is a relatively new city, with its waterfront highrises (called The Bund) built up primarily in the last 20 years. The view at night is spectacular, with entire buildings turning into moving screens with ads, pretty scenes of fish and butterflies, and more ads.  

1.  The Chinese people were very kind, and curious about Americans, especially the two blondes on the trip (myself included), and the two African American ladies. Between the four of us, we were subjects in at least a hundred Chinese people’s photos – both with our permission and without.
2.  Hardly ANYBODY spoke English, including the Concierges of our American-brand hotels (Crowne Plaza and Renaissance).  This made for interesting, frustrating, and often humorous games of Charades.
3.  The Chinese people call their country “The Sleeping Giant Awakening.” 
4.  On our entire trip, I counted two obese Chinese people among the millions we saw in four major cities. 
5.  The Chinese use their last name first, and their first name follows.  So the famous basketball player Yao Ming’s first name is actually Ming, not Yao.
6.  I wouldn’t recommend Air China. We flew on really outdated planes with NO entertainment except one movie, and it was in Chinese.
7.  WiFi Internet access was readily available at every hotel we visited, and was free in the lobby. 
8.  We could not access many web sites, such as Facebook and Yahoo, and one member of our group even had one of his emails READ and CHANGED by Big Brother, who is definitely watching everyone’s every move.
9. If we needed a translator, all we had to do was find a teenager or college-age person because they are required to learn English throughout school, unlike their elders, who were not. 
10. Visas are difficult to acquire and expensive ($140) and travel insurance is a must.