Our report from PCMA’s great convention in Pittsburgh

©Jacob Slaton Photography

Hackaton: the star format for creativity sessions was present, in which delegates could participate in teams to create fully engaging experience in upcoming PCMA events. Crowdsourcing your events is the way!!

©Jacob Slaton Photography

The opening reception on Sunday night was complete with food, entertainment and a creative decoration of the convention center, the right way to start the conference with good networking. It also included entertainment with a live musical show with special effects.

©Jacob Slaton Photography

The maestro has spoken! One of the most famous marketing gurus today took center stage for the first session on Monday, explaining the need to differentiate rather than compete on price or just effectiveness, and to play on human deep yearnings, especially tribe-belonging. It may be a sacrilege to summarise so much such a cool session, sorry about that… The session took place in a cool setting, with the public split in two by a catwalk-style setup.

Local talents, with a soul. Another learning is the opportunity for destinations to use their local talents: Magician Lee Terbosic and TV star Joe Manganiello came on stage and expressed their passion for their city, in a very authentic and quite moving way. Then came marketing guru Seth Godin’s opening keynote. A graphic recorder sketched the session for an artistic flourish. Also worth noticing, is that at the introduction and end of the session, music from Funky Fly Project, a funk/jazz group made up of local kids, added to the local dimension and the good mood to start the day. Very local…

©Jacob Slaton Photography

Throughout the day, many sessions have a graphic recorder, who captures live the main messages in a visual way; these summaries are gathered in the access corridor, so you can easily get the most relevant messages from each session… A good way to reinforce the learnings.

©Jacob Slaton Photography

The PCMA Foundation’s Hospitality Helping Hands volunteers created newborn packages for the Itty Bitty Birthday Cheer program run by Beverly’s Birthdays and to welcome some moms-to-be for a baby shower.

Of course, the morning run took the early birds and fitness freaks by the city’s sports facilities. On the first day, a 5K run, and on the second day, a morning yoga session. The wellness craze goes on!

The tech exhibition area includes a tech bar at the entrance to answer all your questions, stands of many tech providers, and an area for small conferences. To manage sound properly, this area has no sound amplification, and delegates can just pick their headphones and listen to the conference.

In various places of the convention center, especially in the tech area, big boards for people to contribute their ideas are displayed, adding to an atmosphere which suggests all participants can contribute. And an easy way to get some fresh ideas. Oh, and by the way, GOAT means (how can your event be the…) greatest of all times!

And also, with no photo yet, the activation areas of the many sponsors are truly cool, including experiential spaces, VR animations, and more. Stay tuned…