According to a Crowne Plaza Hotel and Resorts survey of 2,000 employees, some people will go to great lengths to avoid attending unproductive meetings. The most common excuse used for opting out was a heavy workload, which nearly a third of respondents (30 percent) have admitted to blaming for their absence. Heavy traffic came in second (15 percent), and six percent of respondents even admitted to calling in sick.

For the longest time, the ”breakout session“ felt like the forgotten stepchild of event marketing. Throw in a stage and a projector, invite a category expert and hope for the best. Because all the killer keynotes were on the plenary stage, a decent breakout was considered a bonus.

December 31 seems to creep up faster and faster every year. While resolutions aren’t for everyone, I think we can all agree that a new year is the perfect time to start fresh with something, whether that’s a new initiative at the office or working on something a little more personal.

Smartphones have technically been in existence since 1992, but in the last decade they have become an indispensable part of the planner’s on-the-go life. That is why optimizing use of all the helpful apps popping up every week is essential for event professionals today. Speaker and productivity expert Audrey Thomas, CSP, recently shared tips with attendees at FICP for making the most out of those powerful pocket computers. Here are her top tips for getting phone smart.

Event planners are notorious for being hyper-organized. But there is one unspoken chaos in your life that few people know about — the overflowing state of your email inbox. You know the feeling — with every notification, you see the giant pile of unread messages getting bigger. Some persistent emails clog every event manager’s inbox, languishing unresponded (or, worse, unread) for days then weeks at a time.

One of the most daring and complex high-wire acts is organizing a citywide event. Spanning multiple hotels, thousands of rooms and millions of square feet of event space, a citywide requires a planner to manage a long list of responsibilities to make it successful. According to recent Smart Meetings webinar hosts Elaine Williams and Sallee Pavlovich, however, the answers are right at planners’ fingertips.

If there is one thing that event planners from all over the world love EventMB for it would be current trends in event planning. Since 2010, we have published some of the most successful research ever done on trends. Join over 60,000 subscribers that use EventMB to stay on top of How to's, Trends & Event Technology.

A whopping 91% of people check their email every day, but that doesn’t mean using email to promote your event is a sure thing. Hundreds of messages vie alongside yours for potential attendees’ attention. That means your standard newsletter in a busy inbox may languish unopened — or, worse, be marked as spam. 

Event Design is constantly evolving, and participants are starting to expect a lot more from the design of an event. There needs to be a synergy between all event design elements. Coming directly from MCI Germany’s finest, Dr. Christina Buttler and Thomas Wüthrich, here are some insights into what participants are expecting:

Engaging your members is one thing. Engaging your young professional members is another, entirely. They’re at a different point in their lives and careers, and thus, should be approached differently. So how should you approach YP engagement? Below are a few tips - plus a few concrete ideas!

Have you ever wondered how other successful meeting planners use the newest event tech? This series takes you behind the scenes to see how your peers use features like gamification, augmented reality, and facial recognition to take their events to the next level.

Events are a great member benefit but can become a huge expense without proper planning. Here are 30 great ways to consider saving money:

It is becoming exponentially hard for associations to survive today’s competitive landscape without a good strategy for growth. Change management initiatives are worth the investment to instill new life into your association and ensure it remains relevant for the ever-changing communities.

It’s been gratifying to see the evolution of the concept of Event Design over the past decade. Where once “design” was restricted to the province of aesthetics, now event planners all over the world understand that events must, yes, delight the senses, but they must also motivate, engage and move individuals and organizations to action.

If you're an event professional, chances are you've heard about augmented reality — it’s been an emerging technology in the event space for the past few years. If you’re not sure exactly how it works, or feel out of the loop, don't worry. Most of your peers are in the same position, wondering if or how they should be using augmented reality at events. Let’s take a look inside some of the conversations we’ve been having with planners about AR, and see some augmented reality events in action.

Great conferences aren’t created overnight. Wildly successful events like SXSW or Wisdom 2.0 take a year or more to plan their remarkable experiences — and decades to build their reputation. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t manageable steps you can take today to make your upcoming conference legendary. Keep on reading to discover five simple ways to deliver an iconic conference experience today.

It’s important to have social media pages for your business. A $20 ad can bring in hundreds of likes and sharing photos—and hash-tagging correctly—can guide Instagram users to your photo to see what you’re all about. But an under-utilized, yet very necessary, social media network is LinkedIn. It’s the “professional” version of who you are and what you do, yet it’s often neglected and left un-updated.

Planning at least three months ahead could save as much as 10 percent on the bottom line, according to a new 2019 Meetings & Events Future Trends study from Carlson Wagonlit Travel Meetings and Events (CWT M&E). The optimum time for booking meetings for small groups was pegged at more than 30 days; for large groups, that window expanded to more than 75 days. Outside of these booking windows, potential savings dip by 5–10 percent, the report found.

Meeting automation is potentially positioning itself as the next technology to shake up the planning game. While apps and meeting management systems have been grabbing headline and topping lists of “tech to watch,” more complete meeting automation could take those principles another step forward.

What a year it’s been for the event industry. If we look back, we can see that there has been continuous movement forward towards bigger, better, and yet, more sustainable events. New destinations are joining the fray and experiences are becoming more holistic and robust. And that’s great! Event planners and managers know how important event experiences are. They ask themselves the questions:

It goes without saying that event security and data safety should be at the top of your event team’s minds. It takes just one small breach of information to make your attendees vulnerable to hackers, phishing and ID theft. This makes it highly important to have the right security protocols in place- but without taking away from the attendee’s experience.

With the announcement of The Ideation Studio at Park MGM, Senior Vice-President and Chief Sales Officer Mike Dominguez notably said, “We’re not just building space; we’re building the right space.” That is the mindset more than a few venues are beginning to adopt in the ever-increasing race to entice groups and redefine expectations. High tech—or “smart”—conference rooms, and the advances that go into them are giving new shape to the future of meetings and events.

The world of entertainment has been thrilling audiences with augmented and virtual reality for two decades, from early theme park “dark” rides like Spiderman’s journey up and down buildings at Universal Studios, one of the first rides requiring 3-D glasses, to the VOID’s Star Wars, Secrets of the Empire immersive virtual reality experience. For meeting planners without the kind of budget available to the makers of roller coasters and video games, VR may not seem like a viable tool to engage and educate event attendees.

Generation Z is entering the workforce, and its eyes are on the hospitality industry, according to a new study by American Hotel & Lodging Educational Foundation. Gen Z, defined as those born between the years 1995-2010, is the largest age group in the United States, estimated at about 61 million.

The holiday season is officially upon us, and with that comes a certain level of increased social media visibility. (People are on their phones a lot more, after all.) But how can your organization really leverage that visibility to increase online member engagement? We’ve got a few ideas!