Business View Magazine | April 2019

99 it evolved into an association that allowed other professional and trade societies, such as the American Bar Association or American Institute of Architects, to join. In the 1990s, PCMA’s Board of Directors modified member- ship guidelines to be a community for corpora- tions, associations, and anyone in the business events space as the industry began to expand. Today, Chicago-based PCMA is a worldwide network of business events professionals oper- ating in three regions of the world: Americas, the European Union, and Asia Pacific. It has 7,000 members and an audience of more than 50,000 individuals in over 70 countries, with sponsored activities in 37 of them. PCMA has a multi-faceted role in the business events industry: to educate business events practitioners on how their events can bring together different communities to help grow their particular brand, how they can make their events more inclusive and diverse, how they can use their events as a channel to drive other outcomes, and how they can increase their impact beyond the walls of the conven- tion center. “For example,” Karamat says, “if the American Society for Architecture came to Chicago, event organizers might involve architectural firms in the city, connect with University of Chicago students on architectural design research, or collaborate with a start-up hub and venture capitalists that create new opportunities for architects.” PCMA SUPPORT PCMA offers a wide array of live training pro- grams and conferences, online programs, print products and other resources that inform and educate. Together, they focus, not only on help- ing business events professionals stage suc- cessful events, but also on how those events PCMA EduCon 2018 in Cleveland (by Jacob Slaton Photography)