President and CEO Paul Van DeVenter discusses how the events industry organization had to find ways to remain viable during the pandemic — lessons that resulted in a new structure and focus.

Staying relevant to members was not a problem for MPI over the past two years, according to president and CEO Paul Van DeVenter. More difficult was finding a way to stay financially viable. In this podcast discussion with Northstar’s Sarah J.F. Braley, Van DeVenter describes how the association's structure was redesigned, how pandemic lessons learned are being applied to MPI's in-person events and how to achieve the goals that have been set in the group's five-year plan (among them, bringing the community size to 250,000 people by 2027; having a 40,000-person customer base; bringing in 20 percent of the association's revenue from outside North America; and having more than 20 affiliate partners). The association is now focused on creating a stronger meeting professional community that isn’t solely based on membership.
 
Among Van DeVenters insights are:
 
How Covid underscored the importance of organizations like MPI (1:20)
 
How MPI restructured in order to stay financially viable over the past two years (3:38)
 
Challenges Van DeVenter faced at MPI and as volunteer chair for the Events Industry Council (9:15)
 
How lessons learned during the pandemic are being applied to MPI's in-person events (11:09)
 
How attendee desires have changed (13:24)
 
What associations took away from the pandemic (15:40)
 
Reaching MPI’s 2027 goals (16:35)
 
Bold predictions going forward (19:33)