Exhibit space, exhibitors, attendance, and revenues: These key indicators of the exhibition industry’s health all dropped in 2008. No big surprises there, but the Center for Exhibition Industry Research’s 6th annual CEIR Index report has some great new stats on which industry sectors survived (even thrived) last year, and which took the hardest hits.

A small group of Massachusetts politicians and event industry leaders gathered for a breakfast meeting last week to discuss how meetings and events can be part of the economic solution—and how to get the message out to corporations that it is safe to invest in events.

“U.S. Travel has done a great job of showing the economic impact of meetings and events,” said David Rich, senior vice president of program strategy/worldwide for George P. Johnson, who led the meeting. “Now we need to focus on the business reasons for holding events and their ability to help companies grow sales.”

Here’s our report from the meeting, held during NEMICE, the annual conference sponsored by the New England chapter of Meeting Professionals International.

If you don’t know, you can’t give it to them. That’s why Association Meetings asked exhibitors to tell all for the April issue’s cover story. Here’s what they said they wanted, and how you can give it to them.

Also in the April issue of AM:

Hotels are making unprecedented concessions these days, including no-attrition guarantees. But what if you negotiated your contract before the market turned in the buyer’s favor? If you’re facing attrition now, is it too late to get in on a deal?

That’s what an attendee asked panelists at a session at NEMICE, the annual conference sponsored by the New England chapter of Meeting Professionals International last week. To say the least, discussion ensued.

Twitter seems to be one of those things that you either love or hate. But even those who really can’t stand the 140-character updater need to know about it—and all the ancillary applications that make it such a useful tool for meetings and events. To make it easier to sort through all the options, here’s a link to a list of the top Twitter applications for events, along with some pointers, on face2face, the MeetingsNet blog