World Education Congress - WEC 2013 in Las Vegas!

On July 20 - 23, four lucky MPI BCIT students had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Las Vegas to attend MPI's annual World Education Congress. This four-day event consisted of networking, educational seminars, workshops, fun activities, and many more.

Upon returning home, Shivani, the President of MPI BCIT, and Jennifer, the VP of Events were buzzing with excitement and stories about WEC 2013. Here is what they have to say about this memorable experience:

"These past few days, I was lucky enough to meet and learn from members of MPI from across the world at the WEC 2013 conference in Vegas! Along with Jennifer Wong, Vivek Punwani and Wilfred Chan of MPI BCIT, we heard some great speakers, grew our international professional network and talked to people with the most interesting jobs. 

MPI member jobs spanned across tourism industries, but a lot of the people I talked to were involved in hotel sales, corporate travel, and event planning. 

Absolute highlights include talks from these powerful professionals, and I encourage everyone to check them out! 

1) Candy Chang, artist and urban planner - gave a heartfelt talk on designing spaces to make them more social and human. Check her out here. 

2) Jessica Jackley, founder of KIVA micro-financing corporation. She taught us great lessons on how to use business to solve poverty, and reminded us that we can pull business lessons from any source. Check her out here.

Conferences are great sources for inspiration, so I hope you get to dive into one soon!" -- Shivani

"The World Education Congress (WEC) 2013 in Las Vegas is definitely an event to remember. This was my first WEC I have ever attended and I was sure amazed! The keynote speakers and educational seminars were very insightful and interesting. 

My most memorable experience at WEC was the Helping Hands session. Together with Diane and Luke, two professionals I had just met, we were able to assemble a prosthetic hand. All the prosthetic hands assembled would go to victims of land mine accidents and amputees. After we assembled the prosthetic hand, we decorated the carrying bag and wrote a personal letter to the person that would receive the hand. It was very touching to know that we are able to change the life and build an emotional connection to a stranger across the world. In this one 2-hour session, we were able to assemble over 300 hands and in turn change over 300 peoples’ lives. Wow, now that is something to be proud of!" -- Jennifer

To read more about WEC 2013, you can visit MPI's events page here. Their MPI OnSite publication, WEC blogs and social media links at the bottom of the page give great details and highlights of the event. MPI HQ has already announced that next year's World Education Congress will be held in Minneapolis. If you were unable to attend this year, or would like to experience WEC again, WEC 2014 in Minneapolis is another opportunity!

Wise Words from Liz King

Liz King

Liz King, a sought after event planner from New York took the time to hang out in a Starbucks and Skype with some students from BCIT. Tina Nguyen and Albert Yee led MPI BCIT's February General Meeting and invited Liz to share her experience. Exceeding our expectations, Liz offered golden advice on both how to connect with people in business and the steps to creating a personal brand!



As students we always want to know… where do we start? How do we break into the industry? How do we meet people in the industry? The answer? Twitter. Liz King had some great (and simple) advice that anyone can follow – literally!

King talked about how following interesting people and following the people they are following is a great way to learn about what going on in the industry. Use hashtags specific to an industry to discover trends or hot topics. After sitting back and watching, Liz started to share content she was interested in and then started engaging and commenting on other peoples content. Eventually, Liz began to create her own content. She said, “it’s a great way to meet people!”

Wait, who are you?

Another specialty of Liz’s – as if she didn’t already do enough! – is discussing personal branding. Now, as a student at BCIT we’ve all heard the spiel from Tracey, but a personal brand really is important!! Liz’s tips are:

•  Figure out what is unique about YOU. Something simple but distinguishing.
• Communicate who you are quickly. Someone should know something about you after only 10-15 seconds on your page. Capture them.
• Be prepared to brag a bit! Now is not a time to be modest.

Use these tips in your LinkedIn profile, Twitter bio and other social media tools (Facebook is generally for personal use – check your privacy settings!) and you will be on the road to making a professional online first impression.

Technology, you move to fast!

Now the question came up from an audience member: how do you learn about all this new technology flying out into cyberspace? Her answer: techy blogs! Sites such as mashable.com and techcrunch.com offer information on the latest trends in technology. The latest thing according to Liz? RFID.

My new favourite tool? Word clouds.

From Student to Industry

A common theme of things to make sure you have when entering the workforce is experience. Thankfully, Liz considers education experience! Students are always wondering how to nail down that dream job even though they have no industry experience. Liz’s advice is always be learning. Although having an education and learning as much as you can is important, it’s not always what you know, but who you know.

Making connections is vital in business and easier to make than you may think! Networking and volunteering are two great ways to meet great people. Meeting them is half the battle, it’s very important that once you’ve met them you:

• Follow up!
• Add them on LinkedIn with a PERSONALIZED message.
• Ask them to meet for coffee. 

Now is the perfect time to play the student card and learn as much as you can from industry members willing to share.

The MPI BCIT team would like to thank Liz King for chatting with us and we hope to hear from her again!

Want to learn more about Liz? Check out her company page: http://lizkingevents.com

Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

IMEX-MPI-MCI Future Leaders Forum

-->

In mid-October, five members of MPI BCIT were given the opportunity to fly down to Las Vegas and attend the IMEX-MPI-MCI Future Leaders Forum at the IMEX America Exhibition. The lucky students who attended the conference were Jennifer Wong, Leslie Lessard, Vivek Punwani, Joanna Lam, and Albert Yee. All of the attendees from BCIT are either an MPI BCIT executive member or in a director position.

The MPI BCIT members with Jordan Clark

Day One

The first day of the conference didn’t have any activities for the Future Leaders Forum, but we were invited to attend the tradeshow floor and see what IMEX America was all about. The conference took place in the Sands Expo and Convention Center at The Venetian and The Palazzo.

We were all excited to the see the very prominent Vancouver booth on display. While, we ended up missing out on the bike powered blended beverages that were being given away, it was great to see Vancouver coming up with creative ideas to entice buyers to visit the booth.

Other memorable exhibitors included Meet Minneapolis, who had a Prince impersonator walking around and performing, and Korea who capitalized on the recent popularity of Psy by playing his hit song, Gangnam Style, on repeat.

It was a great opportunity to be able to walk around the exhibition and meet people from all over the world and discover their career paths.

The Vancouver booth at IMEX

Day Two

On the first day of the Future Leaders Forum, we enjoyed a Welcome Breakfast in one of the beautiful conference rooms at the Venetian/Palazzo Congress Center. Dale Hudson and Miguel Neves, from IMEX Group, and Charles Massey, from Synaxis Meetings and Events, were the moderators for the forum. They were all very personable and captivating. One of the first things we did was to scatter ourselves around the floor to make sure we weren’t sitting with anyone we knew.

We got to hear from a lot of different and amazing speakers throughout the first day. Each speaker truly brought something unique and different to the table. Some of the topics included a Visionary Showcase, The Future of the Meeting Industry, What Employers are Looking for, and Five Things Professors Haven’t Told You.

Hotel staff took us on a behind the scenes look at the Venetian’s “Heart of House,” where we were able to see the great benefits that the hotel offers its employees and how it makes it all run smoothly.

We finished off the day with a reception, where we were able to connect with the students who we had spend the day with and many of the presenters.

The MPI BCIT members on the final day of IMEX

Day Three

The final day of the forum provided us with more great speakers and topics. I really enjoyed the sessions on Social Media Etiquette, and How to Make Sustainability Happen. 

One of our last activities was a guided tour of the tradeshow floor.  We broke off into groups and conducted a scavenger hunt on the floor. It was a great way to push ourselves into talking to more companies on the floor and learn about what they offered.

The IMEX America Exhibition offered a shuttle from the event to the airport, which was a nice way to end the trip.

The Future Leaders Forum was an amazing experience and we are all glad that we were given the opportunity to attend the event. We hope to make it a recurring event and continue to send MPI BCIT members each year.