Meetings & Expositions

The Committee on Meetings & Expositions (M&E) reported that the final number of attendees for the ACS national meeting in Anaheim was 14,059. The exposition had 418 booths representing 217 companies and exceeded projected revenue.

M&E also reported that the meeting attendees surveyed after the fall 2010 meeting in Boston gave an approval rating of 86%. For meetings in 2021, the committee made two recommendations to the board: San Antonio for the spring national meeting during March 21–25; and Boston for the fall national meeting during Aug. 22–26.

M&E reported on its collaboration efforts with DAC regarding implementation of the Electronic Dissemination of Meeting Content (EDMC). M&E took action on two recommendations from the Task Force on EDMC:

M&E proposed to the board that a subscription model for access to the electronic content be developed and that the model should have different rates for ACS members and nonmembers.

M&E recommended that after the 12-month period expires where ACS controls the EDMC content, the technical divisions be allowed to download the content to their websites. Divisions that do this will be responsible for all costs associated with this initiative.

The EDMC Report can be found online at www.acs.org/EDMC.

To support regional meetings, the committee voted to suspend indefinitely the implementation of cost sharing for abstracts. This action will eliminate the approximate $10 fee per abstract that was anticipated to take effect for regional meetings in 2012 and beyond. The committee did not suspend the implementation of the $4.00 charge per attendee for registration services for 2011 and beyond.

M&E, which continues to advance efforts to “green” ACS meetings, conducted a sustainability audit of the Anaheim meeting. The audit ensures that the facilities and vendors that ACS uses maintain their green contract commitments.