The Three Biggest Problems You’ll Encounter Running A Charity Event

Charity events are pretty awesome. Not only can you feel like a great person for serving a noble cause, a well-run event can be one of the most enjoyable experiences in the world. That said, they can also be even more stressful than a traditional conference or show. See, like any other affair, charity events come packaged with their own unique set of roadblocks. It’s important that you make yourself aware of the challenges you’re going to face. After all, it’s better to mitigate your problems before your event kicks off, rather than addressing them during. Engaging People In Your…

Why Every Event Planner Should Study Sociology

Today, we’re going to discuss a topic which might –at first glance – seem rather out of place on an event management blog: sociology. In one of my first pieces for Tweetwall, I made reference to Marshall McLuhan; one of the most brilliant sociologists of the 20th century. McLuhan’s insights about a concept known as the ‘global village’ were years ahead of their time, and he managed to predict the strange new society created by social media several decades before it came to pass. Sadly, he never lived to see his theories come to life – he died in 1980,…

Is it Possible to Run an Event without a Physical Venue?

It seems like an undeniable truth: if you don’t have a venue in which to run your event, there is no event. After all, you need a place for your keynotes. You need booths for your vendors, caterers for your guests, a green room for your volunteers, and… Honestly? I’m not certain any of that is even necessary. All you really need is the right software. I should explain. See, we’re living in a society that’s increasingly virtualized. Thanks to improvements in networking technology, what might have been impossible fifteen years ago is completely plausible today. I’m talking about more…

Top 5 Event Management Tips for Perfect Weddings

A wedding can be one of the most beautiful events known to man. Here are two individuals ready to swear their life to each other; two people who are ready to devote themselves entirely to one another. Attending one of these events, it’s hard not to shed a tear or two. Of course, for every wedding that’s an awe-inspiring testament to love, there’s also one that’s a complete and utter disaster. Those ones are memorable for entirely different reasons. If you’ve been hired to plan someone’s wedding, you need to do everything in your power to ensure that it falls…

5 Tips for Planning the Perfect Press Conference

As a corporate event manager, you may eventually be asked to plan a press conference. More so than any other event, a properly executed press conference can be one of the best things to happen to a brand. Similarly, a terrible press conference can severely damage a brand. You want to make sure any conference you plan falls into the former category, rather than the latter. Here are a few words of wisdom to planning the perfect event: Make Sure Your Speakers Are Naturals I’ve watched some painfully bad press conferences, and most of them had one thing in common: the speakers…

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

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 Signs a Security Team is Bad News

Security guards that you hire for an event should be thoroughly trained and certified and hold themselves to an incredibly high standard of professionalism. Unfortunately, not every security firm holds itself to such high standards. Occasionally, you might come across a firm which – should you hire them – will bring you nothing but trouble. Here are a few warning signs that the security firm you’re thinking of hiring is bad news – and should be avoided at all costs. They Aren’t Properly Certified The first thing you’re going to want to do when you come across a new security firm…

Five Reasons Your Event May Have Failed

For every successful event, there are at least three that fail – sometimes spectacularly. As an event management professional, you want to do everything in your power to ensure that your events are the ones that succeed. In order for your event to go right, you first need to determine exactly what causes those others to go south. After all, everything happens for a reason. Although I’ve never really been a fan of clichés, that phrase most definitely applies here. An event doesn’t simply fizzle out on its own. Today, we’re going to go over a few of the most…

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 Having Board Games at a Conference is a Great Idea

Today, I’m going to recommend something a little crazy. Not all of you are going to be entirely on-board with it at first, but bear with me here – I’m hoping that, by the end of this piece, you consider it as good an idea as I do. What about the next time you plan a corporate conference; why not toss a few board games into the mix? Hear me out here. How many of you played board games like Monopoly with your family when you were growing up? How many of you have used table-top games as a bonding…

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…

Use Technology to Boost Event Attendance

The thought of planning an event can be exciting, until you realize one thing to be true: you must do whatever it takes to reach your goal regarding the number of attendees. For some, this is a piece of cake. Others, however, have to implement every trick in the book to get on the right track. One of the best things you can do is consider the many ways that technology can boost event attendance. If you focus on this side of things from day one, spanning through the end of the event, it will work out in your favor.…

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…

3 Ways to Get Likes on Your Facebook Event Page

You’ve created a Facebook Event Page and now you need ‘likes.’ The only problem is that likes don’t magically appear by themselves (at least not usually). It’s starting to feel like a party where nobody is showing up. Every new ‘like’ is a promotion for your event by someone other than you! This type of authentic support is priceless, but you may need to work for it. There are many different ways of getting people to like your Facebook Event Page, but here are the 3 most tried and true methods on how to get more likes on Facebook. Promote…

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