If you find yourself needing an extra push to think creatively, work harder and educate yourself further, TED talks may be that dose of inspiration you need to make the most out of your day (and career). We’ve collected five of our favorite TED and TEDx talks for meeting planners looking to learn more about the art, psychology and importance of planning.

By now, you may have heard the good news about taking time off. The research that shows that employees who take vacations are more productive and creative is so compelling that some companies pay bonuses to those who take time out of the office. 

92% of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement. So how can you work with influencers to sell more tickets to your event? Enter influencer marketing: using influential individuals to promote events. But if you’re only looking at influencers with follower counts in the millions, the price may be more than your event’s entire marketing budget.

In the events industry, not all press is good press. Well-placed, positive press mentions remain one of the best ways to spread the gospel of your awesome event. But getting on a reporter’s bad side can drastically hurt your ticket sales.

The cost of education—from college all the way to professional development throughout one’s career—can be significant. Knowing this, groups throughout the meeting and event industry have banded together for years to help ensure knowledge and advancement is a reality. The result is that there is now an incredible supply of scholarships to be had, thanks to generous donations from your planner peers, industry suppliers and professional associations.

Tech continues to play a more significant role in events, from both a planning and experiential perspective. Excitingly, virtual attendance at events is not only possible but is now becoming a serious contender in the event world. We’ve reached the point of experiencing an event without actually having to be there in person.

Having a chronic illness while pursuing a career can be difficult to navigate. Every chronic illness manifests itself differently, and learning how to balance health with a full-time job takes time, effort, and trial and error. While it may feel impossible at first, juggling the two can be achieved.

What do delegates and conference participants mostly care about these days? A rather popular (and complex) theme is the quality of conferences. Just by monitoring the Web 2.0 world, tracking social media conversations and forum discussions, one can extract crucial insights on pressing association questions

It’s a harsh reality: No matter how skilled in event management you are, you won’t get your dream job if your resume doesn’t stand out. But when so much of your event planning work has to be experienced to be understood, how can you prove your prowess in writing? The key is to make the typical elements of an effective resume work to reflect your skills. Here’s a checklist of the essential elements that should be on your event manager resume so you can stand out from other applicants.

Meetings seem to be getting some bad press lately. The June 28, Bartleby column in The Economist called meetings, “a form of torture for office staff” and compared the average employee’s enthusiasm for a meeting to Prometheus awaiting the eagle to peck at his liver every day. Bloomberg News posted a video on July 8 suggesting that reducing the number of at-work meetings boosts employee morale and productivity, and quoting Harvard University research that indicates 4 to 6 attendees is the ideal number for an in-office meeting because it promotes more meaningful discussion than a larger one.

Crisis management planning is like life insurance; nobody wants it, but everyone needs it. Business owners must budget for risk management even when there is no sign of trouble ahead. Planning for hypothetical events understandably seems like a waste of resources. But, like a life insurance policy, not having one is far more costly.

Copywriting is a powerful tool. Words can entice emotion – whether happy or sad – and inspire or initiate change. They can also help grow loyalty and trust. It’s an impression of your company values and brand to your audience. But let’s face it, it’s intimidating. More often than not, people claim they ‘Can’t write’. Now sure, there are those of us who are word wizards. But before you say that you are unable to write, take a step back and consider all the writing you do daily: emails, cards, notes or lists.

Social media isn’t just a good place to promote your conference — it’s an essential part of the conference marketer’s playbook. Consider this: nearly 25% of traffic to event registration pages comes from social networks, and people who register after hearing about your event on social media are 3X more likely to share it with others. To increase the amount of people who learn about your conference and increase attendance, however, you need more than a presence on social media — you need a strategy.

Think artificial intelligence, or AI, will be yet another buzzword to add to the list? Think again. In a recent survey of over 800 conference and corporate event creators, an overwhelming majority of event professionals (88%) said they’ll rely on AI this year. That’s a 107% increase from their reported usage in 2017 (42%). What changed? From smartphones to smart speakers, virtual assistants, like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant have become a part of our daily lives.

Business travel, formerly considered by many as more of a chore than an enjoyable activity, is now viewed as a business perk by 75 percent of millennials, according to a recent survey by Hilton Hotels & Resorts.

Ever wondered why a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t quite work as well anymore? Well, the best way to connect to your audience and engage them is to personalise to their specific needs. Customer-centric focus and event personalisation is not entirely new, but it’s growing and becoming more sophisticated with the addition of refined data tools and increased social engagement; to help create the most memorable event experiences.

As we were designing the She Means Business conference for IMEX in Frankfurt 2018 with tw tagungswirtschaft, we had an inkling of the excitement that could be generated given the enthusiastic response to the idea, but we didn’t predict the full effect of having over 350 women and men together on the actual day. The group had enough positive energy to light up Frankfurt!

Cognitive science acknowledges the powerful role that emotions play in shaping our understanding, our ways of thinking, the decisions we make, and the habits we adopt. In fact, if logic and emotion are at odds, most people act on their feelings when making a decision. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio proved how critical emotions are to decision making several years ago in a groundbreaking study. He found that all of the subjects in his study — people who had damage in the amygdala, the area of the brain where emotions are generated — shared an inability to make decisions, even simple everyday ones.

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.

People spend roughly half of their waking hours — 47 percent of the time, to be exact — thinking about something other than the task they are performing, according to a Harvard University study. That means only 53 percent of people are actually paying attention at any given moment, according to Justyn Comer, cofounder of the meditation organization RWM Education, Inc. Skeptical? Comer suggests meditating for a few minutes: breathe in, breathe out, focus on your breath, and consider how frequently your mind roams to other subjects.

You do it all. As the owner of your own third-party planner business you are the captain of the ship—and the crew. To help you navigate the sometimes rough waters of running your own business, we put together this handy resource guide with tips for everything from marketing and taxes to technology and negotiating. Feel free to bookmark this page as we will continue to update it with new tools for managing and growing your company. Until then, we wish you fair winds, following seas and full agendas.

Innovation may be a tired word. There is no doubt that innovation has become an overused and confusing buzzword. It is riddled with an excessive number of meanings from authors, dictionaries, experts and our personal experience. Ask ten people to define innovation and you’re probably going to get a dozen or more responses. Innovation is change that creates a new dimension of performance said management guru Peter Drucker. Within the conference arena, innovation is the process through which new value is created and delivered to customers.

For many professionals, work/life balance is elusive. And even while off the job, people view leisure activities as a means to improving work performance — like practicing mindfulness or learning new productivity methods — instead of a way to genuinely relax and disengage. In fact, highlighting the professional benefits of leisure activities has become one of the only ways to trick people into taking up a hobby, according to Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time.

Creating sustainable events is hard work, and includes a variety of different challenges — not the least of which is managing food waste or maintaining active group involvement. But what about getting the commitment from management just to get started?