It’s that time of year again: More financial considerations for not-for-profit meeting planners. I’m not sure what it is about this time of year, but at the end of the summer season my financial concerns are always top of mind. It might be due to the timing of client budget planning for 2019, or that I’ve overextended my own budget from summer weekends trying to make the most of this nice weather (as I tell myself), but in past years…
Event Operations
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Mindful Planning: Minimizing cognitive fatigue in event design
By Ben Moorsom Sleeplessness. Overeating. The pace of change. The stress of everyday life. Information overload. It all contributes to fatigue. Fatigue is the collateral damage of our time. Whether chronic or non-chronic, most of us have experienced it. So how do we design events that optimize energy and minimize physical and cognitive fatigue? The Cognitive Quotient First you need to understand what it is. When we say fatigue, we really mean brain-tired cognitive fatigue. Imagine your brain is a glass…
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Alcohol-focused team-building events: Is it time to rethink them?
When planning meetings and events, it is our job to step out of our own preferences and think about the perspectives of all attendees. This can be challenging as the majority of event planners fall into the same demographic and it can make seeing different perspectives even more difficult when most of your peers see the world through a similar lens. Meeting professionals have a real opportunity to bring diversity and inclusion to life, which is a strategic priority for…
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Bringing it Together: How Business Process Management can help hotel operators
By Mark McGregor More than ever before, hoteliers need ways to increase their productivity and leverage technology for staff, customer and client communications. Events are getting more complicated, hotel guests more demanding and everything is getting faster. Business Process Management (BPM) can help hotels and airlines sustain innovation and optimize their operations to ensure the consistent delivery of better customer experiences, ensuring ease of use for everyone involved. Business Process Management brings hotel operations together, simplifying things for staff, stakeholders and customers while also offering actionable insights into the…
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Speak Easy: How presentation management sets your conference up for success
By Andrew Tyne Your presentation starts in 10 minutes, while frantically trying to find the room where you’ll be presenting you look down at your hand and see the USB key that contains your talk. You whisper a quiet prayer to the conference gods that whatever laptop is waiting for you in the room has the correct version of QuickTime installed and that you’ve embedded those videos properly. When we design an event experience, we very often think of ways…
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Skip the Plan, Embrace the Pop-Up
Spontaneity is anathema to a well-planned event. Spontaneity isn’t planned, which means it’s probably getting in the way of something that is, which means attendees’ sacrosanct schedules are being upended and taking the planner’s reputation with it. Planners might be forgiven, then, for wanting to smother the impromptu — something they’d plan for, surely — under the weight of timetables, clear instruction to staff and precise allocation of resources. Trade show attendees are counting on them. Right? Turns out, they might…
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The Hospitality Connection: The dish on industry F&B best practices
By Michael O’Doherty While technological advancements have reduced the amount of face-to-face time we spend with each other, there truly is no substitute for being together at a live event in person — among your peers, your colleagues and your friends. And yes, I am biased, but let’s talk today about one of the most important yet overlooked parts of a successful meeting or trade show. I’m talking, of course, about the food. The food and beverage offerings are a…
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You Still Need Facebook: The best practices of marketing on the largest social network
By Dan McCarthy Despite the rise of Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, even in 2018, Facebook remains king when it comes to event marketing. In EventMB’s State of the Events Industry Survey 2018, nearly three-quarters — 73.3 per cent — of planners said social media is their most important tool for marketing their events, while 88.1 per cent said they’re active on Facebook, as they should be. Facebook is by far the largest social network, with 2.20 billion active users as of…
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Networking Know-How: The keys to building a powerful network
By Jennifer Beale All successful people say networking is the key to achieving goals. Given today’s ever-changing, high-tech, hyper-connected world, it’s never been easier to find the right people. But because everyone is bombarded with information and requests, it’s hard to get someone’s attention. And when you do, it can be even harder to keep it. Live events remain the best place to connect with the right people. Nothing can replace an event for getting noticed and initiating lucrative, long-term…
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Bringing it Home: The ROI of the Sales Conference
By Ben Moorsom When the sales conference is over and your teams are back in the field, are they applying what they learned? Selling is one of the toughest jobs in any organization. It requires the right mix of motivation, personality and skill to persuade a potential buyer to commit to a deal. And it’s a grind — pursuing leads, relentlessly following up, making them the right offer, all while keeping a close eye on the competition. It’s not for…
