Used Event Stuff: Bring it On!

 This post is by Julius Solaris, your Editor in Chief. He is @tojulius on twitter . Meet the rest of the team!

We just discovered usedeventstuff.com and we loved it.

Better late than never, we stumbled upon Used Event Stuff (thanks @carmenhere for the tip).

Well we all know we produce an awful lot of waste with our events, specially the big fat exhibitions.

Here is their take:

We have seen the waste that is endemic to the industry: beautiful, usable goods thrown out at curbside at the end of the night. Nobody wants to waste all those goods, but designers and clients can no longer afford to keep or re-use materials because the price of storage is so high.

It is not just a waste economically, but is an environmental burden, as much of these usable goods wind up in a landfill. From beautiful event to garbage heap, taking decades or centuries to break down

Start thinking about it naughty boys and get involved!

Convention Industry Council (CIC) tackles Green Meeting & Event Standards

Anyone who has worked in the meetings and events field for any length of time will admit there is a great deal of waste and trash produced by events, in particular trade shows. There was a Price Waterhouse report issued several years back citing trade shows as the second most wasteful industry. In the summer of 2008, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) through its Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX) formed a Green Meetings & Events Practices Panel to write standards to make our industry more “green” and environmentally responsible.

Photo by janusz l via Flickr

The Results

During the past year, there have been many conference calls, meetings, and emails to produce drafts of standards in nine (9) different areas of event management. The 9 drafts that have been produced are: Destinations, Meeting Venue, Transportation, Accommodations, AV, Communication, Food and Beverage, Exhibits and Onsite Office. (Disclosure: I was a member of the subcommittee that developed the Meeting Venues standards.) Copies of all these drafts can be found at http://wp.apexsolution.org for your review. There is a lot of detail in these drafts so think twice before deciding to print out all of them!

What can I do?

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We love #eventprofs

We have been postponing a post about #eventprofs for too long.

It is a great idea of Lara and powered by the community.

Lara also had the idea to create an award for all the blogging #eventprofs and we were nominated in the Education Category .

You are more than welcome to vote for us if you wish, but most of all get to know other event blogs and their opinion. Some great peeps in there.

5 Wrong Moves that Could Derail Your Corporate Event

This post is by Anne Thornley-Brown, President, Executive Oasis International, corporate event planning. Meet the rest of the team!

Many corporate events are derailed when committees or representatives from the client organization refuse to heed common sense advice from event planners.

Photo by badjonni via Flickr

Some of the requests that corporate event planners receive can make us feel as if we’re entering The Twilight Zone. What is disturbing is the lack of a practical focus. Some client organizations appear to be particularly resistant to following the advice of professional event planners who are familiar with specific destinations. Instead, they seem to be interested in engaging firms that will work as order takers to implement their plans no matter how flawed. Even if they are considering an event in the wrong location, during the wrong season, with the wrong geography, and the wrong timeframe, some client organizations are not open to modifying their plans.

As the recession deepens, this seems to be increasing. It will become easier for prospective clients to find your competitors that are hungry enough for business to deliver exactly what they request. As an event planner who is interested in growing their business, it can be a challenge to walk that fine line between pleasing your client and giving them your best professional advice.

Here are 5 wrong moves to avoid no matter how much pressure you are facing from clients or prospective clients.

1. Wrong Location

A prospective client from the USA insisted on staying at an airport hotel. They then proceeded to request an activity that would take place in downtown Toronto. They simply would not listen to advice that, given traffic patterns, it would have been more prudent to stay downtown, even if it were just for the night before their planned activity.

Despite the fact that they wanted to explore the heritage areas, a prospective client from the USA insisted on staying at a beach resort for the duration of their time in Dubai. They would not listen to advice about where to stay for that part of their itinerary to avoid traffic gridlock. The company booked an event planning firm with no experience in Dubai. They had a terrible time and received numerous complaints from employees who were stuck in traffic for hours at a time.

A company from Quebec was interested in dog sledding during their January sales meeting. Although they were advised that it would take 2 hours to travel to an area with enough snow for dog sledding, they insisted on staying at a downtown Toronto hotel instead of at a resort in the Muskokas.

When planning an event, transition times and traffic patterns have to be taken into account. No group will thank you if they end up stuck in gridlock or stuck on a highway because predictable inclement weather has caused a 30 or, heaven forbid, 200 car pile up. It’s much better to encourage clients to plan their arrival and movements for low traffic periods. It’s also a good idea, to split the itinerary between hotels in different areas to give the group more comfortable access to certain attractions and activities.

2. Wrong Season

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Linkedin Group – What’s Hot – Week 16/08/2009

This post is by Anne Thornley-Brown, she is the Linkedin Event Planning & Management Group Manager. Her company Executive Oasis International specializes in team building and incentive travel. Meet the rest of the team!

Number of Members: 10,545
Member of the Week: August 16 – 21, 2009 Chad Rothschild MBA, Marketing & Branding Expert, Author, Speaker
August 9 – 15, 2009 John Gibb, Marketing Executive, Greater New York CIty
New Members: 100+
Newest Member: Alice Sydow, Freelance Travel & Event Manager, Promotional Model, & Stylist, Volare Events
New discussions: 23
New news articles: 8
Most active thread of the Week: Conference Online Registration Site. Does anyone know of a company offering a similar service to ‘Survey Monkey’ for simple online conference registration? – 12 Comments (Posted by Rosanna Spataro)
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