Secrets of successful meetings: collaboration, bandwidth, and social media.

• Author: Harrington, Susan
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Conventions & Meetings

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"Collaboration is the secret to successful meetings," says Explore Fairbanks President and CEO Deb Hickok, adding: "It takes the whole community." Fairbanks is a busy place with statewide, national, and international draw. Explore Fairbanks is a catalyst for groups planning and hosting events in the city.

People continuously arrive in Fairbanks all winter long for the robust winter tourism and meetings season-the BP World Ice Art Championships; the international Arctic Science Summit; the North American Basketball Tournament; Doyon, Limited Annual Meeting of Shareholders; the GCI Open North American Sled Dog Race-to name a few of the events in March attended by thousands of people. Nearly every bed in town was bookedhotels, motels, B&Bs, lodges, cabins, spare rooms, dorm rooms. And all those people need food, transportation, and event facilities amenities as well. It does take a community.

This month Fairbanks is host to the Alaska Rural Energy Conference and a few other events, left with maybe a tiny wedge of a shoulder season to regroup for the onslaught of more than a million summer visitors who will be arriving for both business and leisure.

Number one secret to making it all work-collaboration.

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Connectivity

Another secret to successful meeting is in the facilities themselves--connectivity in particular. The explosion of social media (another secret to success) coupled with the propensity for attendees and presenters alike to uses multiple devices and platforms during meetings of all kinds h as resulted in the need for greater WiFi bandwidth and carrier signal capacity.

How much bandwidth is available? Does the facility have the right wiring to accommodate big bandwidth? How big is that pipe? Gigabits? Terabits!? Is there redundancy? How many carriers are boosting signals at the event via rooftop portable towers or other IT marvels such as mobile hotspots for WiFi offloading? Is there a distributed antennae system? How many access points are scattered through the facility? What capacity is included with the facility fee and is it possible to pa more and get more?

How...