Fusion Productions - Integrating Meetings, Learning & Technology

Organization

Produce Marketing Association (PMA) is a not-for-profit trade association serving over 2,500 members who market fresh fruits, vegetables, and floral products worldwide. Its members are involved in the production, distribution, retail, and food service sectors of the industry.

Challenge

• Create an online version of the Exposition portion of the annual Fresh Summit PMA International Convention and Exposition.
• Organizing and displaying information for the 600+ exhibitors to be useful for visitors to the live exposition.
• Managing a large number of exhibitor changes that occur prior to the live exposition.

Solution

• Custom built a search interface to allow users to search for exhibitors by Company Name, Booth number, State, Country and Product Category (with 180+ categories from which to choose). Users can also view alphabetically or by the entire exhibitor list. From any of the search results, users can view the exhibitor's profile and add/remove them to their personal floor plan and exhibitor planner.
• Created interactive floor plans with clickable booths where users can view exhbitor profiles and add/remove to their personal floor plan and exhibitor planner. The graphics for each year's floor plan are custom built into multiple pages for legible printing on a single sheet of paper.
• Set up an admin area to allow exhibitors to update and modify their profile. This included adding a brief description, selecting from over 180 product categories, and uploading an image or logo.
• Set up a master admin area where PMA staff can edit exhibitor profiles, add and delete exhibitors, and change booth assignments, as well as view a visitor's stats including first visit date and number of visits.

Results

Users found the VTS to be extremely useful in gathering information on the exhibitors that best fit their interests. Conference attendees were able to better navigate the huge exposition hall and find the exhibitors they wanted to see most. Exhibitors get increased exposure as the Exposition Online runs year round, increasing the return on investment for participating. Fusion created the first VTS for PMA in 1999 and in 2000 and 2001 added enhancements and developed the floor plan. For 2002 PMA's IT staff managed the Exposition Online in-house.