The Americas Incentive, Business Travel & Meetings Exhibition (www.aibtm.com) revealed today the initial schedule for its 2014 Knowledge Program taking place June 10-12 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, kicking off the three-day show. This day is dedicated to education offering many interactive experiences; these sessions are intended to encourage and inform meeting professionals about trends, best practices and issues that focus on giving them tools and techniques to generate greater ROI from the meetings they plan.

The opening educational sessions, “Strategic Meetings Management – Beyond the Basics”, is an interactive workshop led by Betsy Bondurant, President of Bondurant Consulting, who will briefly review the key components of a Strategic Meetings Management Program. The interactive portion will identify specific actions that can be initiated in order to determine things such as, current meeting volume, who is planning meetings, tips for program adoption, ideas for controlling meeting and event spend. At the same time, Jim Spellos of Meeting U, will give an hour-long presentation entitled “Apptastic! 60 Apps in 60 Minutes.”

Switching the focus of the show, AIBTM will also run a dedicated education stream examining the relationship between catering menus and participants’ health and safety. Tracy Stuckrath President and Chief Connecting Officer of Thrive! Meetings and Events, will lead “Serve This, Not That!”, which will educate attendees on making smart choices while creating catering menus. Concurrently, “What Your Event Planner CV Needs in 2014”, features etouches’ Steve MacKenzie providing a complete checklist of the up-to-the-minute digital trends that every event planner needs in order to market efficiently.

Following the morning sessions, the interactive “Future of Meetings: Talking ‘Bout Our Generations” session will give participants feedback about developing meetings with cross-generational appeal.  In “Innovation: Stop Talking About It and Start Doing It…”, consultants Carmen Effron and Andrea Simon walk participants through the Innovation Games exercise to transform ideas into innovation.

Another key theme for AIBTM this year is compliance, the session “Global Healthcare Compliance: Open Payments 2014,” sponsored by the International Medical Meeting Professionals Association (IMMPA) and moderated by Pat Schaumann, Founder and President of Meeting Compliance IQ/Present China (IMMPA), who will outline the disclosure of payments for Transfer of Value which is now a requirement in healthcare.

During one of the last sessions of the day, Jessica Levin of Seven Degrees Communications will outline how marketing and communications will evolve 10, 20 and 50 years from now in “Communication 2064: From Mad Men to Teleportation, A Look at Marketing Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”.

Michael Lyons, Reed Travel Exhibitions, AIBTM Exhibition Director commented, “We are delighted to be welcoming such a high caliber line up of speakers to the show this year, who will be bringing topics and subjects that are of real value to our industry. The high-quality content, presented by experienced industry leaders, will help provide our delegates with an all round volume of knowledge to help their business and further their careers, plus provide real value to help them better plan and execute their meetings and business strategies.”

“At the same time, our partnership with RecertTrack, the world’s first online portal for certification and re-certification is an essential tool for all delegates, giving them a unique opportunity to track their industry related professional development activities, including the credits they obtain by attending the AIBTM knowledge program so we urge our delegates to go online at www.aibtm.com and join up before the show. “