Blog » Event Planning

Welcome to the Event Planning section of our blog! Here you’ll find all the articles we have that are related to Event Planning as a whole.  Obviously we’ll throw in some relevant info about Everwall, if it makes sense to do so.

Five Signs A Vendor Is A Total Flake

Selecting vendors to populate your trade show is often just as important as hiring people to help you run it.  After all, you can’t really run a trade show if there are no presenters on the show floor, can you? That isn’t to say you can’t afford to be selective with who you call on – quite the contrary, I’d recommend it. See, the thing is, hiring a bad vendor can be worse than bringing on no vendor at all. Have you ever noticed how a single toxic individual at a party can create a black cloud around the whole […]

Three Reasons Your Event Management Firm Should Hire A Lawyer

One of the most important challenges facing you as an event planner is the law. I’m not just talking about writing contracts or being aware of the legal environment in which you’re running your events – though these certainly do play a part. It’s a little deeper than that. I should explain a bit. It’s no real secret that many in the business world – and that includes event management professionals – have a deeply-ingrained distrust of lawyers. They fret about legal fees. They worry about being limited in what their organization can do with its brand. Most of all, […]

The Ten Most Catastrophic Event Management And Marketing Fails Of 2014

2014 has finally come and gone. As is the custom around this time of year, we’re going to take a brief look back before turning our eyes toward the future. More specifically, we’re going to take a look at some of the biggest blunders, mess-ups, and fiascos of the year in the dual world of marketing and event management. The catastrophes you’re about to witness are many and varied in nature. From Apple and U2’s decision to force a new album on fans to Paddy Power’s baffling decision to bulldoze part of the Brazilian rainforest; these gaffes all have one […]

How to Plan a Realistic Event Timeline

How to Plan a Realistic Event Timeline

While planning an event can be stressful, most agree that this can be exciting at the same time. After all, there is nothing better than watching your plan come together. As you get started, you need to plan a realistic event timeline. The key word here is realistic. In this article we’re going to offer some advice on how to plan out your event timeline. The following five tips will put your event timeline on the right track: 1. Start as far in advance as possible The sooner you have a timeline in place the better off you are going […]

5 Things to Know About Planning a Hackathon

Hackathons — show me a Silicon Valley organization that doesn’t frequently host one, and I’ll show you a business with next to no innovation within its walls. These events — which typically last anywhere from a day to a week — are basically what happens when a tech firm gets all its brightest engineers, programmers, and developers together into a room… then tells them to go nuts creating something cool. Sounds pretty cool, right? Of course, like any event, there’s a fair bit of planning that goes into a hackathon – particularly if it’s to be a productive one. What, as […]

Five Legal Issues You Need To Consider When Running A Fundraiser

You’re probably already aware that as an event management professional, there are certain laws you need to adhere to, and regulations of which you need to be aware. Ignorance of the law simply isn’t acceptable – particularly if you want to keep both your firm and your clients out of legal hot water. That’s double true for charity events, which tend to have certain legal strictures surrounding them that don’t need to be considered for other events. Although the laws of each country and region vary, they tend to share certain generalities between them. Today, we’re going to take a […]

Five Tactics Every Event Management Professional Should Use To Increase Attendance

In the past, we’ve talked a great deal about how you can tailor events for your attendees. We’ve talked about how to make guests feel comfortable, how to keep them entertained, and the importance of listening to what they’re saying. What we haven’t really talked about is how to get them to your event in the first place. Certainly, we’ve touched a bit on event marketing – avenues you can use to increase awareness, tactics you can utilize to get people interested and draw their attention – but we haven’t really gone into specifics. Today, that changes. We’re going to […]

Why Emotional Intelligence Is Important For An Event Planner

As an event planner, you’re expected to be charismatic, confident, and approachable. You’re expected to be a natural storyteller, capable of holding anyone’s attention for as long as necessary. You’re expected, above all, to manage people as much as you are events. For a job like event planning, emotional intelligence is a vital trait to possess. At its core, the term refers to our ability to perceive, understand, control, and interpret emotions. It’s about being in control of how we feel, and knowing why we feel that way. More importantly, it’s about being able to pick up on how other people […]

The Event Planner’s Guide To Guest Speaking

So, you want to be a guest speaker, do you? Believe it or not, as an event management professional, you’re actually uniquely suited to guest speaking (assuming you’ve knowledge of what you’re presenting on).  This is because, over the course of your career, you’ve gained a unique insight into what’s involved in the creation of a good keynote. You’ve also dealt with your fair share of speakers. Your working relationship with them has been distilled down to a science; you know exactly what to do in order to keep them happy and ensure they give the best presentation possible. This […]

Here Are the Six Signs of a Bad Event Manager

Event management isn’t a career for everyone. It’s a high-stress, fast-paced job that demands quick thinking, terrific organizational skills and a Zen-like sense of calm that would make a shaolin monk envious. While there are plenty of individuals who are capable of thriving at this profession, there are many more likely to crash and burn the moment their plate gets a little too full. Naturally, if you’re hiring an event manager for your staff, you want to avoid picking anyone from the crash and burn category, having the wrong management staff is a surefire recipe for disaster. Here are a […]

What To Do When an Event Partner Bails

It’s something no event management professional wants to deal with: a key partner or guest speaker has bailed out on your conference with little to no warning. You’re left high and dry, desperately seeking out a replacement (or, failing that, going into full damage-control mode.) While most veteran event planners have likely dealt with unreliable guests, an incident like this could easily seem insurmountable to a less-experienced planner. So what’s a good show-runner to do about a flake? Don’t Panic The first, most important rule is not to let this get to you. Admittedly, it’s next to impossible to address […]

Novices’ Guide to Event Management: Part Three

Hey there, folks! We are moving on to part three of our novices’ guide to event management. So far, we’ve covered what an event management portfolio should include and how to organize it so you’re putting your best foot forward. Today, we’re moving on and looking at how to use that portfolio to break into the event management industry. The goal: landing yourself a sweet gig as an event planner. First, you do need to decide whether you want to be an independent event planner or join an already-established organization as their resident event manager. If you’re going to jump […]

Cost-Cutting Techniques for a Tight Event Budget

Budgeting is probably the most difficult task for every event management professional – particularly if you find yourself coming up short. If tight, it can be incredibly tempting to cut corners, but that’s not an advisable course of action. Skimping on features is a surefire way to ruin an event, and it’s not the way to solve your event budget constraints. So…how can you save money? Get creative, there’s ways to cut down on an event’s overhead without causing quality to suffer too much. Here are a few cost-saving event management techniques that won’t completely water-down your event in the […]

Three Potential Event Disasters To Plan For

With so many details associated with planning an event, it is possible to overlook the fact that some sort of disaster may occur. While disaster may be unlikely, you must be prepared for the unforeseen. Some things are out of anyone’s control, but it’s your responsibility to have an action plan. Below are three potential (and somewhat common) event disasters you should plan for: 1. Medical emergency. The more people you have at your event the higher the likelihood you will face some sort of medical emergency. Aside from choosing a safe facility and not engaging guests in dangerous activities, […]

How to Tell if an Event Venue is Bad News

As any event planner knows, choosing the venue in which an event is hosted may well be the most vital step in the planning process. After all, your chosen venue impacts everything about your event save for the content: how many people can attend, what sort of amenities you can host, and even the general mood of your conference. Now, there’s a good chance you’ve already got the sort of venue you’re going to need for your event clear in your mind. That’s good, because that isn’t going to be our focus today. We’re not going to work out how […]

Novices’ Guide to Event Management: Part Two

Last week, we took a look at the components every novice event management professional should focus on to help build a strong portfolio. Today, we’re going to take a quick look at how you should format a business portfolio, fitting those component pieces together to best catch the eye of prospective clients. More importantly, we look at the language and presentation of your portfolio that will best ensure perspective clients hire you.  Not surprisingly, presentation plays a huge role in every aspect of an event professionals’ career. Putting together your event management portfolio for the first time can be an […]

Easy Steps to “Mapping” the Perfect Conference Layout

There’s a very good reason so many event planners tend to become control freaks. The amount of organization necessary to keep an event running on track makes such traits more or less necessary. If you’re an event planner, there’s a good chance you obsess over just about everything from keynote content to transportation needs to budget constraints right down to your event’s layout. That last one’s pretty important, by the way. “Mapping” of your conference layout design has a significant impact on how attendees will experience the event – and how much they’ll enjoy it. Now, most modern event planning […]

Event Planning: Top Five Tasks to Delegate

When it comes to the event planning process, it is easy to shutdown due to “brain overload.” In other words, there is so much on your plate that you don’t know what to do now, what to do later, and what to skip over altogether. If you are the micromanager type, this is not the time to remain stuck in your ways. Instead, it’s time to delegate some of your tasks to others. It may be difficult to relinquish control, but remember this: you are still running the show, but you’re just not doing everything on your own. Here are […]

The Importance of Attendee Satisfaction Surveys

No matter how skilled you become at your job, you should never stop looking to improve. To disregard the idea of self-improvement is the ultimate expression of laziness and apathy. Those men and women who are truly successful at their jobs never stop trying to find new ways to better themselves. No, I’m not practicing for a career as a self-improvement huckster. I’m just offering a bit of valuable advice which every event planner should take note of. No matter how perfect an event seems to have been, there’s always something you could have done better, always a mistake you […]

Incorporating Bar Science Principles into Event Planning

The other day, I happened to catch a few episodes of the Spike Network’s Bar Rescue. For those of you who aren’t much into the network, Bar Rescue is a reality TV series (bear with me here) hosted by Jon Taffer, president of the Nightclub and Bar Media Group and self-proclaimed Bar Science expert. The show centers on Taffer’s efforts to bring ailing bars back from the brink of failure; a process which often results in him butting heads with owners, managers, and employees, many of whom are completely unaware of their own incompetence. Much of the entertainment value, as […]