Conventions

Fresh from a World Series victory, Anaheim is now competing in a high-stakes contest that could make the Fall Classic look like a warmup game. This week, the city is host to one of the most important and elaborately staged conventions it has seen in years, for a group of meeting planners most people have never heard of. And the economic stakes are dizzyingly high. If Orange County puts on an impressive show for the 2,500 or so members of the Professional Convention Management Assn.

"Are you tired of having to catch your mice by hand and have them escape? Then my super dooper mouse trap is for you." That was the pitch of second-grade inventor Arun Dharan, who, along with his classmates at Balboa Magnet School, was giving an audience of relatives and friends the hard sell Friday at the class' invention convention. The event was the culmination of six months of studying about inventors and their inventions as part of the Invent America! program developed in 1987 by the U.S.

BIG PAYOFF: With 1,900 companies at the convention, major firms will spend well into the six figures for their elaborate displays. But they say it's money well spent. . . . Publishers not only get to "interact on a personal basis" with nearly 7,000 bookstore representatives, says ABA head Rath, but there will be "people looking for movie deals and shopping for foreign language rights. Those kinds of payoffs you can't calculate."

It's halftime in America, as Clint Eastwood once said. Halftime, that is, for that part of America that's glued to the television set (or, now, the smartphone screen) whenever political conventions are underway. The Republicans have fled steamy Tampa, Fla., happy merely to have escaped Hurricane Isaac with their nominee and their message intact. The Democrats are streaming into leafy Charlotte, N.C., nervous about polls that show the presidential race tied and anxious to deliver a rebuttal before the GOP's pitch has a chance to set in. #DNC2012: Join Doyle McManus live from Charlotte Sept.

It's a local booster's dream. Tens of thousands of visitors flock to Los Angeles for a national convention, bringing a predictable multimillion-dollar burst of extra spending on hotel rooms, restaurant meals, parties and other entertainment. What's more, it spreads the word across the country that Southern California is back and looking good. A dandy place to visit and spend money. So is this the inevitable payoff for playing host to the Democratic National Convention? No way.

Until this year, the first impression created by the Anaheim Convention Center could be captured in one word: orange. Not the muted orange fashionable in today's Southwestern decor, but pumpkin orange, tangerine orange, screaming bright orange. To maximize Anaheim's identification with Orange County, the interior designers of the city-owned building decided to go all out, with orange walls, orange carpeting, orange chairs and orange signs.

Southern California has been accused of having a plastic culture. Now it has a trade show to prove it. PLASTEC West will debut Jan. 8-10 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Convention organizers say California was a natural location for the event. Over the last five years, the state has led industry expansion with a 24% increase in employment and a 38% jump in the value of plastic shipments.