Emeritus CMPs
Terry L. Quick, CMP
Seattle, WA
I had never heard of using Special Events for general sessions or met a Meeting Planner until the early 1980s. Then Glen Ramsborg produced a meeting in Seattle and I was fortunate enough to be chosen as one of his suppliers. Glen won’t remember me, but seeing what he did was amazing. I had been organizing Special Events for companies, but watching how Glen organized Special Events for his meetings showed me a completely new way to use my talents and resources.
Starting a Special Events Company for meetings in 1986 was a new concept and there was no place to go for direction and assistance. One of my contacts suggested that MPI was where to meet professional meeting planners. So in I joined, got involved and networked like crazy. Progress, however, was slow. Real meeting planners were hard to find and the DMC companies did not understand what a “Special Event Company” did. Both usually saw us as direct competition. It seemed we were talking but using two completely different languages without the benefit of a translator. We had no common ground of understanding.
Then in 1988 I heard about the CMP, Certified Meeting Planner, in those days. The CIC set out to certify full time professional meeting planners and they diligently checked every applicant’s references before sending out the test study materials.
Their test was hard but thorough, covering all the elements a meeting planner would use in daily course of their job. When you met a CMP you knew they were qualified to plan and organize meetings and events. They were Professionals!
Unfortunately being a CMP did not change the communication issues. Everyone in the hospitality industry, planners, supplies and vendors still spoke different languages.
That all changed in mid 1996 when the CIC changed the CMP to mean Certified Meeting Professional and opened their certification program to anyone in the hospitality industry.
Unfortunately, we lost a way to identify those highly qualified professional planners, something that is still missing in our industry today. But we gained something much more valuable. Thousands of meeting professionals learned to speak a common language while earning their CMP certification.
Having a common language allowed the DMC Companies and Meeting Planners to recognize specialists, like event companies, were assets not competition. The door was opened for hundreds of new innovative niche companies to grow and thrive, all making the industry more interesting and exciting.
Language is constantly changing and evolving. Meeting professionals should retain their CMP designation because the re-certification process is an insurance policy. Its education requirements ensure you keep up with the latest terms, technology, trends and changes. It also pushes you to publish articles, thus ensuring you share your hard earned knowledge with the next generation.
Too succeed in business requires you to be fluent in the language of your profession. How else can you effectively communicate your creative ideas to the hundreds of clients, vendors and suppliers you work with everyday?
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