A professional meetings manager/coordinator since 1960

About The Author

Text reprinted from the original Dow Jones-Irwin hardcover edition of SMTW 1983)
Richard Cavalier has designed, written, produced, and/or run countless meetings and conventions of every size, type, and complexity for both corporations and associations on a national and international level.
In the early 1960s he began using techniques then considered innovative and advanced closed-circuit TV, multimedia, sociodrama in the meeting room, and exhibit games. His sales promotion and sales training techniques have included livecentral meetings, semi-packaged regional formats for managers, and semi- or fully-packaged meetings for individual field use in districts.
   For over five years, his regular column for Advertising and Sales Promotion and Sales & Marketing Management magazines created a new awareness of business standards and communications principles in what had been a complacent, glamor-oriented field.
(End, Dow Jones-Irwin cover blurb)
   Disclaimer: Richard Cavalier has NEVER endorsed a commercial product or service. That's especially true of similar-name electronics/tele-services that claim to offer 'conference service.' In his 70s business magazine columns (not meetings-industry advertiser-dominated freebie publications), he's made only generic recommendations.
   It's newly significant because of a same-name site threatened by a Chinese scam (.cn); plus a link (already ended) by a European facility; plus a similar-name electronics firm.
   Any generic- or trade-name of "Cavalier" in relation to any type of meetings/ conventions/conferences capability, other than our own, could be:
   --a) conceivably the legitimate use of a real, originating-person's legal name in a defensible overlap within the meetings trade; Cavalier is unaware of such until 2011; or
   --b) an intended, unapproved trade on this established authority's name and reputation, by implying an undeserved credence or skill level.

If you believe it's possible misrepresentation (item b), then decide to what extent, if any, 1) that particular use might reflect failed due-diligence; or 2) their given 'service' name reflects the legitimate name of the parent company; or c) the 'service name' might represent a purveyor's product or service of merely tangential value to meetings management--for opportunism and/or instant, undeserved credibility.
   Still can't decide? Then check complaints.com and search both the service name in question and the ultimate-parent and corporate names. Key: some telephone companies that offer electronic teleconferencing connections ONLY will list them-selves improperly as 'conference' service providers, although they lack even the least capability to help with meeting content, as 'conference' labels imply. Fraud-merchants do that in order to attract the unwary buyer. If any limited purveyor will hitchhike or cheat in advance of contract, what might happen later? Caveat emptor!
   Still can't decide? Then check complaints.com and search the service name in question. Key: some telephone companies that offer teleconferences services list them improperly as 'conference' capability in order to attract the unwary buyer. If any purveyor will hitchhike or cheat in advance of contract, what might happen later? Caveat emptor!

   Why hitchhike? Well, consider the credibility that can be borrowed although not deserved.

Cavalier has been a program consultant (for his personal and/or various producers' accounts): Motorola, Varian Electronics, Iberia Airlines of Spain, Mobil Oil, Norwegian- America Line; ITT, American Gas Assn, Linen Supply Assn of America; American Dairy Assn, National Coal Assn, American Meat Institute, Steel Service Center Institute, Automotive Service Industry Assn, American Dental Assn, General Foods, S.C. Johnson & Son (Johnson's Wax), Kaiser Aluminum, Centel Telephone, Haworth Office Furniture, Karpen Furniture, Signode, Diversey Chemicals, Wescom, Lloyd's of London/PRM/County of Los Angeles Health Care System. In addition, he has substantial credits as a magazine writer.
A professional meetings manager/coordinator since 1960, he was the leading published authority in the group communications field for several decades thereafter (including five years of columns in Crains Advertising & Sales Promotion and Bill Bros. Sales & Marketing Management magazines). Cavalier has constructed the majority of (imitated) how to methods that are now standard in the field. He moderated the nation's first travel incentives conference, sponsored by New York University, and he wrote (unannounced) for the first two and only special-advertising issues of Business Week on the meetings topic (which special inserts were not supported by the travel industry). He won an MPI award for his Tenth Anniversary address, which demanded standards and ethics in the profession. An award, but no action.
Dick Cavalier is a world traveled (40+ countries) professional writer and specialist in group communications--including meetings, training, and audio/visual presentations. He created insights into issues affecting ordinary people. Chief among his achievements: world's first consumerist format for evaluating travel tours and also, separately, second mortgages on homes; definitive article on Chicago's Deep Tunnel flood control (helped to unseat an opposing US Senator); nation's first how-to for second- mortgage planning; first totally unchallenged article re: health care industry's responsibility for continuing malpractice crisis; first challenge of city government involvement in race riots in Chicago-'69. He is a University of Minnesota graduate and former MBA student at Northwestern University Graduate School of Business, Chicago.

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