Inspiration Hub

The quarterly business review is an important part of the supplier-management process. QBRs are periodic meetings between the client and supplier partners to review performance metrics, revise priorities, and examine industry trends. Below are seven tips to help meeting professionals ensure more effective QBRs.

Some people may think that empathy in business is extraneous. That it’s irrelevant in a cutthroat world where only the most cold-hearted tycoons thrive. Many even mistakenly believe that empathy means being “soft” or unable to make hard business decisions. Yet, in reality, empathy is a business skill that is absolutely critical to IACC venue operator's success. Empathy enables the best venue sales person to understand, or even anticipate, another event organiser’s needs – to be able to identify the factors that will motivate a person to select a venue and connect in a way that instils trust. And it creates leaders in hospitality who inspire teams to better performance.

There’s something killing intelligent conversation these days. And the irony behind it is that people think using these words makes them sound more intelligent. It’s time we put an end to these overdone buzzwords. Join us in our quest to identify the 35 most annoying buzzwords in the event industry.

I often hear my association’s meeting professional members say that they would like a “seat at the table,” especially when it relates to organizational strategy. In many cases, meeting professionals are not valued or respected enough within their companies, or at least not to the point of getting that proverbial seat. Our industry can do better.

It is easy to assume that conference delegates know what to do when they attend your event. Of course some attendees do know how to make the most of their time, however, most of our attendees could do with some more support from the event planner. Even good delegates need support to be “great” delegates.

How do you become an independent meeting planner? In many cases, if the five veteran independents who participated in a recent Convene virtual roundtable are any indication, it happens partway through your career and somewhat accidentally. Some of our participants went out on their own for personal reasons, while others were interested in the professional opportunities it presented. But all five agree that it was one of the best career choices they ever made.

For an event organizer, there are never enough hours in the day. No wonder that Forbes named “event coordinator” the fifth most stressful job of 2017! Prolonged exposure to stress isn’t just bad for your work performance and personal life, it can also be detrimental to your physical and mental health. So what can you do?

“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” It’s one of the most clichéd pieces of advice. That’s because it’s true — especially if you are job hunting. Research shows that recruiters typically only give your resume a six-second glance, and some people say the first seven seconds of meeting someone are the most important, so you don’t want to squander that initial chance to shine in person, on paper or online.Here are some common ways job hunters undermine that crucial first impression — and how to avoid them:

Competition is inevitable and fierce, especially among businesses and associations wanting to maintain their leading position. Existing and new players are constantly trying to evolve their services and products, stressing the need for offering more personalised experiences to achieve maximum business results and attract more audiences.

Pat Wadors, Senior VP of Global Talent for LinkedIn, believes that three factors – Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIBS) – are the key drivers of employee engagement. A sense of belonging, in particular – the feeling that you can bring your authentic self to work, that you are valued and are an essential part of your team – is the critical piece to the equation.

Are you ready to increase your value to your clients and boss, reduce your stress level, and achieve your strategic meeting planning goals? Here are five strategies that’ll get you there

When it comes to describing your leadership style, it’s easy to demonize “managing” and put the idea of “leading” up on a pedestal. However, when you look at the root of this idea, you may come to our conclusion that being an effective director requires you to wear both your leader and manager hat in order to succeed. To help clarify the difference, we’ve highlighted three scenarios on how to break through the standard stereotypes of leaders versus managers and show how integrate both into your leadership style for your association.

The best events make meeting the core energy needs of attendees as important as  the content of the event itself. The research of Anders Ericsson [a psychology professor at Florida State University] on the role of practice in expert performance makes clear that great performers characteristically focus for periods of no longer than 90 minutes, and then take breaks to rest, renew, and refuel. By inserting breaks every 90 minutes, you’ll have an engaged audience throughout the day.

Do you generally prefer emailing, texting or talking on the phone? Do you love it when people write their whole message in the email subject line or does it make you cringe? How do you feel about voicemail? Emoticons? Infographics? What these types of questions reveal is commonly known as your “communication style,” that is, your preferences about how people ideally should communicate with you. And understanding other people’s communication styles is essential to building successful working relationships with them. But, oddly enough, it’s a topic we rarely discuss.

Email is useful communication tool that any event professional cannot live without but it is easy to be swamped with emails and dealing with your inbox can be a time sucking task. According to the Radicati 2017 email statistics report, around 269 billion emails are sent per day and this is set to rise by 4% each for the next few years as companies embrace more email marketing and with communication technology is on the rise, this is not surprising. What is however, is how much of this is not actually useful. Around 49% of this figure is considered to be spam and unimportant while 2.3% of emails contain malicious content, viruses and malware. With this in mind, we consider the inbox zero trend and whether it is a practical solution for eventprofs?  

Most conferences offer some type of learning opportunities for their participants. From informal peer networking to roundtable discussions to formal expert lectures and panel discussions. The education opportunities abound. Traditionally, the goal of conference education is to deliver as much information as possible as fast as possible to as many people as possible. Today, many meeting professionals focus on distributing content through traditional and unusual formats—TED style, Ignite, deep dives, talk-show, monologue, panels, etc. Well, we succeeded at delivering information. We’ve excelled at designing shallow, surface learning experiences. However, we’ve failed at fostering deep learning—learning that results in changing mental models, attitudes, behaviors and skills.

If you’ve ever taken a college philosophy class, you’ve probably heard of Aristotle and his modes of persuasion. He believed that there are three key strategies, the modes of persuasion, that can provide any speaker the power to influence others to understand their personal perspective. Since we believe one of the biggest challenges with effective marketing is establishing a real connection with your audience, we thought that we could all take a brief lesson from Aristotle. Take a look at each technique to see how you can best persuade potential members to join your association.

Every once in awhile, a difficult board member comes along. And that can make your job HARD (and not to mention, incredibly unenjoyable). So what do you do? How do you handle the situation when you’re both clearly invested in your roles? Here are a few tips

More planners identify attendee satisfaction as the key indicator of an event’s success than financial gain, engagement, and number of leads generated, according to a recent survey of 239 event planners worldwide conducted by global event management and venue-sourcing cloud company etouches.

But figuring out how to use today’s event technology to increase that satisfaction rate is still a little painful for many planners, the survey found. Here are some specific areas planners find most painful pre-, during, and post-event, along with suggestions on event tech that can help.

What does the future hold for meetings and events? It is paramount that event professionals understand and foresee how the social and economic dynamics can influence the industry and be open to new opportunities for attracting and activating new audiences.

Ten things to keep in mind in your efforts to attract participants to your events.

As a Special Events Coordinator, I take concepts for new event initiatives from my manager, break them down into actionable items, and communicate logistics to all of the pieces of the puzzle that will bring the event to life. I specifically work in the municipal sector of the event planning world, meaning that my end game is to promote, brand, support and unite local businesses, the community, city officials and anything else that makes us unique. Generally, our “special events” are large festivals based around music, arts, holiday traditions or food and are intended to cater to as many people in the community as possible. The latter half of that sentence is what I absolutely love about my job, but it’s also what makes my job challenging.

The rise of neuromarketing, a field of research that studies consumers’ cognitive and sensory responses to marketing stimuli, is challenging the status quo.