Inspiration Hub

Let’s face it unless you’re an AV pro, your quote may look confusing to you. Do not be afraid to ask questions. Make sure the AV company walks you through your quote! AV companies should be able to justify EVERY piece of equipment on the quote. They should also explain it all in layman’s terms. Far too often, AV companies just send you a quote and expect you to understand it (or maybe they hope you don’t and just go with it). Unless you have a lot AV experience under your belt, it’s hard to understand what every line means. It’s even harder to understand how it impacts the overall vision of your event.

If you hire speakers for corporate events, you know that choosing the right one for your audience is just the first step. As a 30-year veteran of the podium, working as a corporate put-on comedian, I’ve learned plenty of lessons about the what can go right and wrong on stage. Here is some of my favorite advice for ensuring that speakers have the best chance to succeed.

Green energy and innovative sustainable solutions have been in the event industry’s spotlight for quite some time now – the latest paradigm being the recent EXPO 2017 in Astana. It is evident that our world needs to move away from the ever-increasing power consumption and its severe environmental repercussions, with events spearheading this massive effort.

You spend a lot of time - and money - planning your association’s events. So naturally, you want them to be successful and for your attendees to be engaged. But how? How do you make sure your attendees are having a good time and engaged in your sessions/activities?

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.

This is a letter I’ve wanted to write to you, but never have gotten around to doing. Now that I’ve written it, I might not send it. I’m not very visible to you for most of the year; you only see me at the annual meeting and perhaps a couple of quarterly meetings. I’m a meeting professional with your trade association, working year-round to ensure that your time and monetary investment in being a member pays off for you.

Engagement keeps attendees coming back, right? And that adds to the pressure of needing to create more interactive sessions. So what do you do when group interaction isn’t living up to your expectations? Here are a few ways to increase engagement and interaction in your breakout sessions.

Event planners work with lots of people. And finding the right vendors for your team can increase your ability to meet your client’s needs. Once you find a reliable vendor, partnerships are possible and often extremely helpful. But what if you don’t have something as essential as a good caterer? Or what if your best caterer is booked and you need to audition another one? How do you separate the talent from the wannabes? Here’s what you need to look for when hiring a caterer

AV Fees and infrastructure costs are things that you may not think about when planning your event. However, it is a must to keep on your radar! If you don’t find out venue capabilities ahead of time you may be in for a world of surprises in fees and additional costs.

When it comes to event planning, it is paramount to remember that your event’s lifespan is divided into 3 phases: pre-, during and post-event. Making sure that your goals are met and that you managed to create an impactful experience for your attendees is an ongoing process that goes beyond the big day. In an effort to ensure maximum impact and document the lessons learnt for future improving, event professionals should also lay a significant share of their focus on the post-event phase.

Your event is doing fine. You sell the same amount of tickets every year, more or less. You’ve got the production dialed. Sure, there’s competition, and you’ll keep your eye on it. But could you be doing better? It’s so easy to fall into a status quo of event operation. It takes gumption to make big changes. But in the hyper-competitive event world, “good enough” is no longer good enough. Today, people attending events of all types expect engaging experiences, memorable takeaways, and technology that always works.

Snag those attendees early with early discounts, right? Or is Early Bird pricing more of a pain than it’s worth? Here’s what you need to consider when deciding whether to use advance pricing incentives to drive ticket purchasing.

Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Five thousand Calgary residents were invited to one in downtown’s Olympic Plaza on June 15, no strings attached. On the menu: carrot soup, chickpea salad, Panzanella Greek salad, and potato salad, topped off with bread pudding with compote. The cost to feed the crowd was well below even the most constrained F&B budget: $380. 

When planning events, event planners and event professionals know the importance of generating ROI. However, whether it’s calculating the return of investment based on how much the event’s plates cost, or understanding the ROI of the mobile event app – there should never be any question as to what value your expenses bring back.

Imagine you could save your company millions of dollars every year. That’s the savings large companies let fall through the cracks by under-leveraging their total meeting spend. How to stop all the waste you’re probably wondering? The key is to think differently about an often-overlooked part of your total meeting spend – small meetings.

Post-event, if you did your job, everyone is high on love: Loved the program! The speakers rocked! You did great! It’s a Kudos Fest. But, let’s admit, it, not every single attendee is always completely happy. 

Event proposal often evoke mixed feelings among event professionals. Some see them as an opportunity to shine and share their brightest ideas to win a new business, others take a more cautious approach due to risk of copying ideas, and see them rather as time consuming and tedious. One way or another, every event business needs them to grow and prosper.

The room layout can have a huge impact on the engagement and learning at your event. Find out which are the best seating layouts for different events and some ways to mix it up with more unusual layouts to increase engagement in meeting design.

While the purpose of meetings and events is for knowledgeable speakers to share information with their audience, there’s another important reason why attendees go to events. Many of them are seeking to increase their network and meet valuable people to build connections with.

Let’s face facts; anything that speeds up the processes, like check-ins, at your event is going to make attendees happy. And smart badges are making things easier than ever. The old way of managing the process, which typically required manually logging who has arrived, was a time-consuming venture that resulted in long lines and, inevitably, some level of frustration. Even scannable badges have shortcomings, leaving plenty of room for smart badges to improve the overall experience.

Managing events has more than its fair share of frustrations and stressors. From last-minute changes to procrastinating clients, the profession isn’t for the faint of heart. Luckily, executing a successful event makes everything else (like the crazy long hours) worth it.If you’ve been feeling a little fed up lately with a certain aspect of the job, don’t worry — you’re not alone! Here are the biggest frustrations experienced by nine of your fellow event organizers.

Speakers are fundamental to any conference or event’s success. They are the primary sources of motivation and inspiration, the actors whose role is to stimulate conversation and spark attendees’ attention not only during sessions but also when the curtain falls. Therefore, you must always treat your audience’s experience as a priority when deciding on the best candidate.

If marketers, and more generally business people, have discovered anything over the past few years it’s that everyone wants to be unique. Some of us even want to be our own planet with orbiting satellites that are interested in our every move. We share what we eat, love, places we go, superheroes we are most like, celebrities we are most likely to date, and a host of other ridiculous things, but this egocentrism has created a new challenge for event planners.