Inspiration Hub

You’re a week from the event. The caterer wants to change the menu. Sponsors are requesting data that will take hours to pull. And your boss wants you to pitch the theme for your next event — today. You need to learn the art of saying no — whether to chaotic vendors, over-eager attendees, or your own staff. Giving in to every request can end up with you stretched too thin, making careless errors, or burning yourself out.

Along with the numbers that we crunch for the annual Convene Salary Survey, we ask a handful of open-ended questions. Including this one: What do you like least about your job? Although readers singled out problems including attrition and room blocks, cuts to hotel commissions, managing shrinking budgets, and dealing with inefficient work processes (“So. Many. Emails.,” was one response) the overwhelming majority of the answers to the question weren’t focused on logistical challenges. 

If you are an event planner it’s safe to say you’ve been stressed out a time or two. But how do manage event planning stress? Dealing with stress as an event planner is a part of our every day. Event coordinators juggle so many jobs under the main job title of “event planner. One minute you might be dealing with pressures from your clients, maybe because of a budget restriction or a last-minute change. Another moment you might be traveling across the country to your next event. Perhaps it’s the actual day of the event that stresses you out, with the timeline not on schedule or unexpected problems that pop up. Regardless of the reasons you are stressed learning how to manage event planning stress is crucial to your success in the industry!

We’ve all heard the term “work-life balance” thrown around the last couple of years when it comes to figuring out our daily grind. But what does it really mean? Using the word balance can be a tricky move, as it can make us feel like we’re falling behind if we’re not poised exactly on that work-life line. And let’s be honest: Nothing is ever perfectly 50-50!

The seats were empty, there was tumbleweed in the aisles… we’ve all had that one disastrous event where no one turned up.

It’s an excruciating experience, especially if you have other stakeholders to answer to. You probably wished the ground would just open up and swallow you, but don’t let one bad experience put you off from organising events.

Here we look at 10 positive steps you can take to bounce back from an unsuccessful event, how you can recover both emotionally and financially, and get everyone back on side.

At MeetingsNet, we know the countdown to the holiday rush officially begins now. You are busy finishing up your 2017 meeting rosters, and are diligently preparing for your 2018 meetings and beyond. To support you, we’re partnering with mindful leadership expert Holly Duckworth, CMP, CAE, LSP, to bring you seven weeks of Mindful Monday mini-messages in our MeetingsNet Today daily newsletters. In these mini-lessons, you will learn what mindfulness is, why it matters, and one technique each week you can use to bring more mindfulness to your life and work.

The reality is that my job comes home with me and can interfere with many of my best-laid plans; after all, issues may arise at any hour in the event technology world. However, they say you have to give some to get some - and it’s true. What we’re willing to give may differ for each individual, so it’s important to know what you ARE NOT willing to give. The solution to my personal success was to learn what these are for me…

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?  

Nothing ruins a productive workday like rushing around at the last minute. You’ve worked hard all day long, done a lot, and almost reached your daily goals. Then you glance at the clock and realize only 10 minutes remain. A panic sets in and you begin to rush through tasks. You find yourself attempting to finish your to do list without staying late. As a result, mistakes are made and details forgotten. You sacrifice your best work to the constraints of time.

Originally published by Lindsey Pollak 13 June 2017 Is there anything more satisfying than checking things off of a to-do list? I didn’t used to think so. But I recently decided to kill my to-do list obsession—and here’s why you might want to ditch yours, too. A Love Affair with Lists I’m not sure anyone…

Your stick men and scribbled stars may actually help you to become a better event professional. Here are 11 reasons why you can justify your doodling.