It's been two weeks since The Motivation Show wrapped up and I'm just getting feet back on the ground.

First of all, it was a blur for my team and me. We formally launched the ROI of Engagement partnership and were involved with presentations, a press conference and more. You can see some of what we were up to here:

• To Meet or Not to Meet
• Holistic Strategies that Turbocharge Loyalty Programs
• Press conference (Compliments of Paul Hebert of I2I)

The prevailing attitude at the show was puzzling. Actually, there was no consensus. I heard dramatically different opinions from people. It didn’t make sense… we were all experiencing the same event!

Some lamented about attendance. Actually, attendance was pretty good with only a 13% decline year over last year which, all things considered, seems pretty darn good.

Some whined about lack of traffic while others raved about being jammed with high quality attendees. What’s up with that?

I think perspective is one big variable. If you look back, and many can’t seem to get the rearview mirror out of their focus, you see an industry that had the stuffing kicked out of it. Politicians ranted, media monkey-piled, an uninformed public pointed fingers, and programs cancelled. And did I mention umpteen months of consistent economic decline? We lost the battle if you look at it that way.

The perspective I chose was looking forward. In fact, I wrote about it in Incentives and Meetings International Magazine. In the article I discuss how the rules have changed and how we can successfully fight back with the use results measurement. I believe that if you can build the business case for engagement programs we will win the war.

Nope, the war is definitely not over. In fact, I say…

Game on!

You can follow Paul Hebert at http://twitter.com/Incentintel and Incentives and Meetings International at http://twitter.com/IMIMedia