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Wednesday Buzz: Houston’s Convention Center Shifts Back to Events

After serving as a shelter during and after Hurricane Harvey, the Houston Convention Center returns to business as usual. Also: how to set the right goals for your online community engagement strategy.

During Hurricane Harvey last month, Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center opened its doors to people seeking shelter from the intense flooding.

This week, with the help of the Red Cross, the final 900 evacuees left the convention center for other shelter facilities. The center once held more than 10,000 displaced people, but it is now returning to regular business.

Transitioning the center back into an event space isn’t too challenging for the center staff. “We turn that facility frequently,” Mike Waterman, president of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the Houston Chronicle. “We have to because we have to maximize that building. So that’s a regular occurrence for the staff there.”

While it may take years for Houston to fully recover from Harvey, the city’s convention business is bouncing back. Just this week, the Texas Society of Association Executives hosted its New Ideas Annual Conference at the Marriott Marquis.

“The largest, most catastrophic storm in the history of the United States hit Houston three weeks ago,” said Waterman. “And because the way Houston is designed, because of the spirit of this city, the convention business is back up and running without any cancellations.”

Community Foundation

To show that your online community is effective, you need to have strategic KPIs to measure against, but figuring out what those goals should be can be confusing. But you can be confident in assuming you should start with engagement metrics, right?

Not so fast, says a recent Feverbee post. Many community managers believe that reaching a high engagement will get them more support from leadership, but that may not be the case. “The brutal truth is the engagement metrics will never be high enough to get you the support you need,” says the post.

Instead of setting all the goals themselves, engagement professionals should establish goals based on the needs of their colleagues. “It’s a lot easier to swim with the current. If you don’t want to fight every day to get support, begin with goals people already support.”

Other Links of Note

Are your members being turned off at their first chapter meetings? Smooth the Path provides several tips for better meetings.

Infographic of the Day: MarketingProfs reveals the most common SEO mistakes you’re probably making.

Planning an upcoming event? The Professional Convention Management Association shares a few unexpected things to consider during the planning process.

Some of the donations for hurricane evacuees being sheltered at Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center. (via Facebook)

Raegan Johnson

By Raegan Johnson

Raegan Johnson is a contributor to Associations Now. MORE

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