Archive for August, 2010
Friday, August 13th, 2010
There’s a new iphone / ipad app on the scene that is garnering a lot of buzz…and for good reason. The Super Planner is an event industry app developed by Howard Givner, and is one of the most in-depth mobile tools on the market today.
It is a digital encyclopedia of industry calculators convenient enough to carry with you everywhere in your purse or pocket. Just as a good measuring tape, hotel directory, business calendar and frequent flyer miles are mainstays for the planner, so too should be the Super Planner.
What does this app include?
Room Capacity Calculator – This calulator let’s you both calculate the size of room you require to accommodate various types of seating styles and quantities or work in reverse and calculate how many tables you can have in a specific sized room. This calculator works in both feet and metres.
Catering Calculator – This calculator lets you know how many h’ors d’oeurves and drinks needed for various types of events. It also lets you know how many drinks you can get out of various bottles of liquor.
Staffing Calculator – Ever wonder how many waiters, bartenders or check-in staff you need for an event? Simply input your number of attendees and this app will do all of the calculations for you.
Projection Calculator -Lets you know how close the first and last rows should be based on the screen height as well as advanced projection needs like: focal length of lens and depth of projector.
Staging Calculator - It will let you know the recommended stage height based on the length of your room and provide you with a staging diagram for industry terminology.
Dance Floor Calculator – Based on the number of guests, this calculator will tell you the recommended size and layout of your dancefloor.
It also includes Pricing Conversions, Table Grid, Place Setting, PowerPoint Design Tips, Projection Tips and Speaker Prep Tips.
Who could benefit from the app?
- Any planner responsible for hiring a staffing, AV, catering or rental company or handling these elements themselves
- New employees who require training on industry standards
- One-time event organizers – i.e. brides, unconference / tweetup planners, internal meeting organizer
Overall, it’s extremely comprehensive, easy to use and even if you know it all, I challenge you to be able to calculate it as fast and conveniently as you can using this app. For $9.99 it may just be one of the most used tools in your event planning arsenal.
Full Disclosure
I was not paid to write this review nor was I provided with free services or downloads. I paid for this app myself and reviewed it on my own accord.
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The following is a guest post from the fabulous Brian Slawin, Principal of Busy Event. I first met Brian in the Philippines at a conference we were both presenting at. I was so impressed by his humor, his Belinks product and his great presentation, I asked him to create a blog post for me on the topic of Social Sharing. The following is his take on the subject…
For most of us, sharing came naturally. Sharing food or fun or experiences was a part of who we were as we learned how to become social. But then, as the world changed and siblings encroached, sharing became part of a zero-sum game; If you have, then I don’t.
That of course, is when adult society got involved; “Go on, share that with your friends”, or the dreaded “So, Mr. Slawin, do you have enough to share with the rest of the class?” From its natural beginnings, sharing became a societal norm; albeit controlled.
With the advantage of hindsight, we can see that sharing isn’t driven by technology. Instead, sharing is driven by people’s need to be connected and accelerated by their ability to use technology to do it themselves, if they have to.
So, how can event professionals take advantage of social sharing for their events? And most importantly, what’s going to happen if they don’t?
First, some assumptions, which you’ve already seen at your events:
1 – The core reason that events, tradeshows and conferences were developed has stopped being a problem: If The Old Events Model Is Broken – What Will Work In Its Place?
2 – Not enabling people to share beyond the 3 days and 4 walls of your event will result in lost opportunities, reduced event revenues and dissatisfied participants Will A Hybrid Event Cannibalize My Face-to-Face Attendance?
3 – If you don’t provide and manage a variety of face-to-face, virtual and hybrid channels for communication and information distribution, your event participants are going to do it themselves without your ability to monetize and profit from that conversation.
How to take advantage of Social Sharing for Fun and Profit!
- Never mistake Shiny Objects with something that will truly impact the quality of the event and improve the outcomes for your attendees. As an example, if a new mobile application requires your event attendees to do much more than sign up and show up or a vendor’s tools require them to access the venue supplied WIFI to get an app to work, people would rather just use Twitter (An Example of How to Integrate Twitter, Into an Event).
- People do what they’re used to doing. Asking your event attendee to change their behaviors to work within your system, typically won’t result in anything successful. Instead, focus your offerings by leveraging what people are already doing and grow their capabilities.
- Create experiences and content that are meant to be shared. Encourage the use of social sharing applications and foster their use by promoting them broadly because social sharing becomes the ultimate form of distribution and word of mouth (Why Social Sharing Is Bigger than Facebook and Twitter)
- Listen to what your event attendees are thinking and give them easy and immediate access to share their thoughts with you (What Your Attendees Are Thinking, Aren’t Telling You and Why You Should Care)
- Make sure that every attendee, sponsor and exhibitor has the opportunity to participate in whatever systems you create. If they don’t, or can’t, then you have already eliminated a potential source of revenue.
- Know what matters most to your attendees and exhibitors. Is it content? Is it contacts? It is leads? (Changing the Equation for Organizers and Attendees)
- Focus on actions, not what look like actions (Are Your Event Attendees Lying To You?)
- Don’t forget about email. With all the focus on Facebook and Twitter and event specific social networks, email is still a major source of shared links and click-throughs. Email is the original social network, leverage it with enticing content and useful information.
- Use tools that do more than a single thing. 5 vendors and 5 different tools means your data is spread into 5 different buckets and there’s no real way to create seamless information in that way. Plus, monetizing that disparate data is nearly impossible.
- Know the power of data and leverage it. Social sharing is the simplest form of public approval and feedback, think of it as a feedback loop that allows you to evaluate who your event influencers are, what their influence is and how to best engage them in real time.
About Brian Slawin
For more than two decades, Brian has been working in the events industry, managing programs for clients such as H&R Block, Maritz, Hewlett-Packard, National Geographic Publishing and Domino’s Pizza, among others. After graduating from Saint Louis University, Brian helped turn around the financially struggling Parks College Aviation Science Department into a revenue producing program with students from across the United States and contracts with Korean Air Lines, United Air Lines and Trans States. At the same time, utilizing his capabilities in both marketing and technology, Brian co-founded the Toyota AirSports program which helped generate more than $50 million of new car sales. Recognizing that technology could provide unequalled access to learning, Brian helped develop one of the first online learning systems and eventually took his new found skills into the dot-com world as part of the founding team at StreamSearch. Working with clients like NBC and the US Olympic Committee, Brian created a $5 million business unit supporting NBC’s desire to create entertainment events while monetizing their valuable content. After he met his business partner David Schenberg, they began developing a business model focused on a re-usable Software-As-A-Service platform, which evolved into BusyEvent. With a keen interest in connecting people with information, Brian writes extensively on how the use of technology can enhance relationships, connectedness and drive opportunities, in ANY economy.
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A number of years ago the word on everyone’s lips was ‘stickiness‘. When it came to your website you wanted people to be so engaged that they stuck to your site like flies to fly paper. Last year at the Ad Age conference, the VP of Marketing for Pizza Hut, introduced the term ‘slipperiness‘ into our website vocabulary. His notion was that in his business, the ideal is to create an online experience so fast and convenient that visitors literally slip in and out of a website lightening-fast.
Two polar opposites. So, which is the right solution?
Both.
The key is to understand what action you want people to take when they go to your website. Do you want them to purchase a product, download information, get to your phone number, fill in a request form…? In the case of Pizza Hut, they want customers to purchase food items. Make the process to get to this information slippery…in other words, simple and seamless. Get your visitors to the goal as quickly and painlessly as possible. The longer you have them trying to find where to go the more frustrated they’ll become.
Your site should also contain information that supports why people should care about what it is your trying to get your visitor to do. Usually this includes information about yourself, your people, case studies, blog posts, testimonials, social media status updates, etc. Look at this information like layers of an onion that visitors can peel back at their discretion. Make it engaging and valuable (or sticky) so visitors can spend as much time as they want discovering information about you.
Is your site sticky or slippery or do you have the perfect balance?
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Tags: website design
It’s that time of year again! The Eventprofs Blog Awards are back for their 2nd year and will celebrate our community and the thought-leaders who help to propel it forward.
I’m thrilled to share that the Awards will be presented this year at Event Camp Twin Cities, taking place in Minneapolis, MN on September 8th and 9th, 2010. The winners will be announced LIVE on the 9th at 5:00 pm CST for event professionals all across the globe to see.
Do you want to submit a blog?
Submissions are now open! Feel free to submit your own blog or another blog you can’t do without. Submit as many blogs as you’d like provided they serve the events community.
If the submission form does not appear above, please follow this link to the Awards Submission Form.
Please note: Judges and the administrator (Lara McCulloch-Carter) are not eligible to win the Eventprofs Blog Awards.
View 2009′s award winners
The Awards Process
Call for Submission
Submission are open until 9am EDT on August 20th, 2010
Nominations
All submissions will be reviewed by the judging panel. The panel will:
- ensure they fit the criteria for the #eventprofs blog awards
- are in the right category
- if required, re-categorize an entry
Nominees will be announced on August 23rd, 2010, then voting will be open
Voting closes on September 9th, 2010
Winners Announced
Winners will be announced LIVE at the Event Camp Twin Cities 2010 on September 9th, 2010 at 5:00 pm CST.
Good luck to all entrants!
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This morning I was running through some of my LinkedIn connections and was rattled by what I saw…person after person claiming to be a Social Media Expert. Roles like: Event Planner / Social Media Consultant, Real Estate Agent / Social Media Coach lay littered throughout my contacts pile along with ‘new’ one-man-shop companies magically replacing their previously listed as unemployed counterparts.
It’s a proverbial gold mine out there. Lots of promises of future riches.
For the same reason that social media has democratized business and news – it’s free / low cost, anyone can do it, all you need is a computer, you don’t need a degree, it allows you to experiment at minimal risk – it has also democratized education and expertise. Add to this a large number of companies feeling pressured to deploy social media + a lack of understanding about what social media is and how to use it + fear + an overflowing pool of ‘experts’ and you have the perfect chemistry for potential disaster.
For those looking for a social media expert
- The fact that someone is a friend, because they use social media all the time, because they’ve done a good job promoting their own brand, because they have social media in their title or because they know more about social media than you is not a good enough reason to pay them to help your business.
- There are a tremendous amount of great, free resources available to businesses looking to better understand what social media is and how to use it. Here’s a great place to start. Spend some time getting familiar with the space before you engage someone in a dialogue about how it can help your business. You don’t need to be an expert yourself, but you do need to know how to speak the language.
- Before you consider hiring someone, know why your business is considering social media, know what you’re looking to achieve and know how you’ll measure success. This will help you determine what kind of expertise you need.
- When you interview potential consultants, ask the right questions (for a good list of starters: 10 Questions to ask a Social Media Expert, 8 Questions to ask your Social Media Expert or Questions to ask a Social Media Expert before you give them money).
- Recognize that social media is not an isolated communications activity…in fact, it’s not even just a marketing activity. Social media touches every aspect of your business from sales to operations to HR. All of these departments should in different degrees involved in the process.
- Take a good look at your corporate culture. Culture clash is one of the #1 reasons for social media upstart failure. You can hire the best consultant in the world, but you have to keep the social media engine running. If your culture is closed, hierarchical, non-transparent, siloed, etc you will have a much harder job of making it work successfully in your organization. Understand what it takes to make social media successful and ensure these values are echoed within your organization.
What would you recommend to others who are looking to implement social media into their business activities?
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We’ve seen crowdsourced graphic design, crowdsourced recruiting and, yes, even crowdsourced sales forces. Is it so hard to believe that we’ll be seeing crowdsourced event, wedding and meeting planning some time very soon?
What is crowdsourcing?
The idea behind crowdsourcing is that tasks, normally done by employees or contractors, are outsourced to a community of people. I blogged about how Event Solutions magazine used crowdsourcing to plan elements of their Awards ceremony. I also talked about how Event Planners could use the crowd to create elevated event experiences. But to date, I haven’t talked about how crowdsourcing may challenge the shape and scope of our industry.
The reality
Every one of the industries I mentioned in my intro had a large number of practitioners who said that their job couldn’t possibly be crowdsourced. Having come from the branding & design industry, which has seen an explosion of sites dedicated to helping you find a logo, name or website for a few hundred dollars, I can tell you that there are many who still fight the idea that these sites can survive. But they do and, some might even argue, thrive.
For many clients the idea of crowdsourcing is mouth watering, because:
- it’s inexpensive when compared to hiring an agency; not to mention, you set the price
- it can show companies a supplier’s creativity before having to commit to giving them the project
- it gives companies a breadth of ideas to choose from
- it helps companies connect with suppliers they might otherwise have never heard of – either because they’re not on the company’s radar or they’re located in another city or state or country
- it’s an easy process
Project segmentation
For companies that have seen budgets shrink, timelines dissipate or for small businesses that have limited supplies of both, crowdsourcing can seem like the holy grail. But it’s not for every company. Many companies want a supplier that knows their business inside and out, they want consistency in creativity, strategy and customer service. They want assurity that the supplier they’re dealing with is experienced, respected and trusted. They want to know that if anything goes wrong they have someone who can resolve the problem. They want someone they can call anytime and anywhere. They want peace of mind.
However, before you think that the type of clients you work with may not be into crowdsourced solutions, ponder this. Some projects warrant high spend – perhaps they have more on the line, perhaps they’re more challenging, or maybe they simply have a big budget assigned to them. Some projects don’t. A client may segment their projects accordingly. Even if you have a great relationship, even if you know the client inside and out, you may find a client saying this project is just too straightforward for your expertise. Even very large companies are using crowdsourcing for some projects, agencies for others.
How to prepare for crowdsourcing
Ask yourself whether…
- The types of clients you have may be tempted by the benefits of crowdsourcing
- There are parts of your job that could be crowdsourced
- You are offering desired value to your customers that is hard to duplicate
- You can take advantage of crowdsourcing yourself (in other words, consider whether you can use these services to amplify your offering to your customers)
One of the most important questions to ask yourself is if crowdsourcing becomes a competitor to your business, how will you respond?
Weigh in
Do you think that crowdsourcing will impact our industry? If so, how?
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There once was a time when reaching a highly targeted audience required significant investment. When building credibility within a community required a workforce and proprietary content. There was a high cost of entry to build a conference which minimized options for those seeking relevant education and networking.
There has been a movement for years now towards communities of like-minded individuals organizing, congregating and networking online. As members understand the needs, wants and desires of their community, non-traditional alternatives to conferences have exploded. There has never been a time in history where we’ve had more accessibility to choice than we do now. Webinars, unconferences, e-books, online communities, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, hybrid events, and the list goes on.
Large conferences need to beware of the growing number of alternatives to their event. Conferences are fighting for share of wallet and time – not just with other large conferences, but with the exponentially increasing group of options that fall under networking and education for their target.
What are you doing to stay relevant?
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