B-to-B and social capital

by Ilse Genovese

Exhibitions have been held in the United States for around 100 years. Associations entered the field in a big way about thirty-five years ago, sponsoring, according to the Center for Exhibition Industry, about 67 percent of the more than 9,400 business-to-business events held annually by 2003.
And the reason for this move? Trade shows add value to annual membership meetings. Members learn about new equipment and techniques in sessions, then adjourn to the exhibit floor to see and operate the very thing they heard about at the convention. Yet, while the hands-on experience is highly desirable, convention planners have been quick to realize that face-to-face encounters with inventors, vendors, and peers creates social capital that's at the heart of what associations do.
So popular were association trade shows only a mere decade ago that the exhibition industry blew through three recessions. And now this, for many associations, precious asset, is struggling. Numbers are down in almost all categories.
What changed? Everything. The world and the people in it have changed, and so has the business of associations. "It's the economy," some people justify the sagging conference participation. It's budget cuts, my department will no longer sponsor me; post 9/11, terrorism and fear of contagious diseases have had an effect too.
But the economy and the fears are just a smokescreen that obscures the real problem: the traditional way of organizing business-to-business events is no longer effective with today's association stakeholders. Associations are taking a hard look at how their exhibitions are operated.
In that look, social capital looms large. The concept goes beyond providing opportunities for networking; it creates mechanisms that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit—that of the association and its stakeholders. And the beauty is, one can start anywhere.
Building a community at meetings means "allowing participants to really get to know each other," according to Scott Steen of the Center for Association Leadership. It means creating conditions which allow peers to engage around the most critical professional issues they face, and to explore together the critical trends shaping their industry. It means tearing down walls and making it easy for people to meet and connect with others.
"Virtually every activity can be used to enhance our social capital ecosystem," Steen wrote in the August 2003 Executive. "The ways we market, develop standards, design government relations activities, create stories for our publications, and attract, recruit, and retain members can be important elements of this system. The key is to be deliberate, focusing on the task of building social capital as an end in and of itself, not merely as a useful byproduct."
Associations with powerful social capital can take any issue, even a divisive one, and use it instead to build community at conventions and within their organizations.
The ACSM annual convention in Orlando in April this year will kick off with the 4th Annual NSPS Foundation Golf Tournament, and the ACSM Awards Reception on Saturday, April 22, will be followed by a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS).
The NSPS 25th Anniversary event is open to all conference attendees—Magnanimous? Certainly, but free access is the first step toward tearing down barriers—real or imagined. Desire to build social capital—although it may not have been called that several decades ago—is not new to ACSM.
"An enjoyable social event," wrote Walter Dix in the Recollections of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, "was a hayride to Rawhide, a restored town of the Old West, where the chuckwagon cooks served 2-lb. T-bone steaks. ... the steaks were superb, but rest assured that when surveyors and geodesists and cartographers get together there are always great social events and great camaraderie. Space has limited coverage of the good times we have had."