Welcome to Brazen Careerist!

About Me

Dan Parks has served as President and Creative Director of Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc. based in Dana Point, California since 1988. He has applied his futuristic, creative picture for CPU and the entire meetings industry, which has placed them in preferred position in the meeting, events and travel management arenas.

He is one of the founding members of MeCo, "the Meetings Community" industry listserv. With over 3000 planners, 50,000 posts & over 16,000 topics discussed, MeCo has established itself as one of the prominent worldwide meeting resources, attracting the most important and knowledgeable planners as members, who post daily their experiences, suggestions and general industry information. As their Monday Moderator, Dan has built a large audience of readers who also believe as he does, that positive powerful thinking with expanded knowledge, brings great success and fulfillment in one's life and career.

Dan first learned of Second Life® in September 2006. Soon after he was taking classes and learning everything he could about this new world, he developed the MECO mansion, for use by meeting and event professionals. The MeCo mansion is a "Virtual Educational Facility". The 16 amazing rooms within the mansion were designed to provide an optimal virtual environment and provide free resources for meeting and planning professionals. Every aspect of the industry is covered by dedicating rooms to the education, networking, entertainment, and information for all visitors.

In 2007, Dan launched the first in a series of "Chat Lessons" for the meetings industry at the MeCo Mansion, featuring industry technology guru, Corbin Ball. Then following in January of 2008, Dan successfully launched the first Virtual CMP Boot Camp. "We had the infrastructure in place and it seemed a natural evolution in our reach to provide the MeCo Mansion as a virtual meeting place for industry colleagues sitting for the exam. The cost savings (free) for this educational opportunity, preparing candidates to successfully sit for the CMP exam means some peers are able to glean meaty content without incurring the expense of having to travel as well as learning from some of our industry's best and brightest.

Following these successes, Dan's next creation was the Virtualis™ Convention and Learning Center. Virtualis™ is the largest and most meticulously-designed convention center in Second Life®. Mirroring lavish real-world convention centers with lush grounds, Virtualis™ is the only facility designed, owned and operated by real life meeting and event management professionals. Dan assembled and collaborated with a large team of internal and external consultants including Certified Meeting Professionals (CMP’s) and Certified Special Event Professionals (CSEP’s) to design a master plan for Virtualis™. It features state of the art meeting and event facilities with educational breakout rooms, a grand ballroom, a multi-set Creativity Center, plush boardrooms, exhibition halls, a giant Virtualis arena and multiple interesting special event spaces to be used for educational, networking, social gatherings or virtual team building events.

Dan is also a proud member of Meeting Professionals International, Professional Convention Management Association, American Society of Travel Agents and International Airlines Travel Agent Network