Liz King Events is the leading social media meeting and event planning firm. Use social media and technology to better brand your organization, engage your attendees and increase efficiency.
Yesterday, I was catching up with a friend who plans international events and she asked me, “What are you excited about right now? What do you think the big trends will be?”
Lucky for her, I am in the midst of cool-hunting for our 2013 PYM Annual, so I’ve been ruminating about those very things since August.
There’s a million things I could have told her (and you). But for this column, I’ll boil all of of my thoughts on the topic down to two big ideas.
I love, love, love all things events and technology. If you can’t tell by my tweets, Facebook posts and all my other social media interactions, I love to talk about events and the tools that help us do what we do better. In June 2011, I partnered with an organization called imbookin to bring you PlannerTech – an event technology showcase. This weekly blog series is going to help continue to expose you to new tools you need to be aware of as an event planner. Also, in case you missed it, PlannerTech could be coming soon to your area!
Your name: Ciaran Delaney
Company/Tool Name: Meetingsbooker.com
Website: http://www.meetingsbooker.com/
Twitter: @meetingsbooker
Facebook: www.facebook.com/
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
We help companies find conference and meeting venues around the world. So if you need a conference venue in New York or Paris you can find them on Meetingsbooker.com. We give you control, you can pick and choose the best venue for your event and send them an enquiry and wait to recieve bids back into your online account.
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For most event planners, writing a proposal is one of the most challenging parts of your job. When it comes to executing an event, we can do it with our eyes closed, but writing it up in a way that sells a potential client is quite a challenge. Today, I wanted to share my perspective on the most important components of your proposal. If you have other things you like to include, please share them in the comments section and we can use this as a resource for our industry.
Layout Goals
When a client looks to hire an event planner, many times they need your help setting goals and laying out what can be achieved in this event. Whether you are setting potential goals for your client, or reigning in lofty goals, use the proposal to give your client a good idea of what they can expect to accomplish. Of course, ensure that you deliver against these goals and show how you have done that in the program evaluation.
Show Your Unique Value
Why would someone hire you over the thousands of other event planners? Knowing your brand and unique value is the key to securing new business. When you are writing up your proposal, make sure to include this information throughout. Be very straightforward about why hiring you is going to give the client higher value as compared to all of your competitors.
Demonstrate Your Work
Explaining the atmosphere, culture and feel of an event is very difficult using only words. Make sure to leverage images, videos and testimonials to beef up the visual demonstration of your work. If you are pitching an event that you’ve never done before, make sure you show visually what the event can look like. Of course, you need to deliver above and beyond anything you show in your proposal so make sure that the images are true to who you are. Doing this helps the client get a great picture of what you are going to do for their events, and makes their decision to hire you that much easier.
I love, love, love all things events and technology. If you can’t tell by my tweets, Facebook posts and all my other social media interactions, I love to talk about events and the tools that help us do what we do better. In June 2011, I partnered with an organization called imbookin to bring you PlannerTech – an event technology showcase. This weekly blog series is going to help continue to expose you to new tools you need to be aware of as an event planner. Also, in case you missed it, PlannerTech could be coming soon to your area!
Your name: Susan Abrams
Company/Tool Name: IML Worldwide/IML Connector
Website: www.imlworldwide.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/imlworldwide or @imlworldwide
Facebook: www.facebook.com/imlworldwide/
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
How to measure and prove ROI from your meeting or conference.
Have you ever conducted a site inspection for an upcoming event and only realized after it was over a few important questions you forgot to ask? We’ve all been there, but thanks to a new product by QuickMobile, Jim Spellos and Corbin Ball, it never has to happen again! Launched just this week, I had the opportunity to interview Corbin about TechSpec – the new app designed to be your buddy at site visits to track all the important details you need to remember. I asked him about what inspired them to create this app and how it will be helpful for planners. Be sure to check out the full interview below, the press release and the website. Best of all – the app is FREE!
What inspired you to create TechSpec?
[Corbin Ball] Jim Spellos and I were speaking at a conference together about a year ago. In our conversations, we discovered that we were both independently developing a technology site inspection list for help planners assess hotels. It seemed natural to combine efforts. It was then a short step to develop an app to do this. I have worked with QuickMobile and when I asked them, they agreed convert our checklist into and easy to use app.
I love, love, love all things events and technology. If you can’t tell by my tweets, Facebook posts and all my other social media interactions, I love to talk about events and the tools that help us do what we do better. In June 2011, I partnered with an organization called imbookin to bring you PlannerTech – an event technology showcase. This weekly blog series is going to help continue to expose you to new tools you need to be aware of as an event planner. Also, in case you missed it, PlannerTech could be coming soon to your area!
Your name: Anna Sergeeva, Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Company/Tool Name: Planana
Website: http://planana.com
Twitter: @goplanana
Facebook: http://facebook.com/
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
We’ve found that most event organizers struggle to sell out their events. This problem occurs largely because traditional marketing strategies like paid advertisements and email blasts are no longer effective. People hear about events through their friends; people attend events with their friends. That’s why we build Planana – to help event organizers leverage social media to promote and sell out their events.
Most meeting professionals probably agree with Patrick Lencioni, author of “Death by Meeting,” who says that a table is still the most important piece of technology for groups of people who want to get things done. “There is simply no substitute for the basic idea of people sitting down together around a table to resolve the critical issues around their business,” the mission statement of Lencioni’s consulting firm The Table Group says.
But does it matter what that table looks like? Does it need to be tall or long or come apart? Or should it be flat on the floor with beanbag chairs? Does one table facilitate better discussion than another?
Today Social Tables, Inc. is announcing the launch of Social Tables 2.0, the company’s second generation event planning software platform, built specifically for weddings, galas, corporate events, and meetings. The new version is a complete overhaul of the company’s first generation product, which was released last summer. To date, Social Tables has been used to add over 100,000 guests across nearly 3,500 events.
A few key features of the new Social Tables:
Check out the New Social Tables!
The launch comes on the heels of the DC-based startup closing a seed funding round of $500,000 led by Fortify Ventures (Jonathon Perrelli, Founding Partner) and including notable DC angel investors including Ed Barrientos, Glen Hellman, James Hunt, amongst others. Due to high demand, the round, which closed one month ago, was oversubscribed.
Don’t get stressed out from the nine to five grind in the office, take a break once in a while, learn to be social, have fun, laugh and smile. Our society has created a culture of work, work, work and work some more all the time. We are required to stay connected and put in longer hours. Studies have shown being social and disconnecting from the daily grind makes us more productive.
People think that it is wasting time chatting with co-workers or taking a break here and there is seen as goofing off. We are naturally social so why would you want to put yourself in an introvert scenario in the office where you don’t communicate and have fun?
A MIT group lead by Alexander Pentland, Ph.D. created a way of tracking true social engagement. They created an experiment with a Bank of America call center that placed “sociometers” on badges of employees. These “sociometers” were Bluetooth and infrared devices that measured which employees the test subjects talked to and for how long. The experiment lasted one month and then again for six weeks. The results, employees that took time to chat and be social with each other were more productive, got through the calls quicker, received better approval ratings from peers and felt less stressed.
Several weeks ago, we featured Perfect Table Plan as one of the products in our Event Technology Resources list. And, like all good startups, they have continued to innovate. This week, we sat down with them to learn about some of the recent upgrades they have made to their software and the feedback they are receiving about the product from event planners.
Andy, can you tell us a little bit about PTP – a brief intro to those who haven’t heard of it before.
PerfectTablePlan helps you plan seated events, such as gala dinners, fundraisers, award ceremonies and wedding receptions. Anyone who has tried to do this using post-it notes or a spreadsheet knows what a nightmare this can be. But seat assignments are really important – if you get that wrong then people aren’t going to have a great time, no matter how good the food or the decor. And I probably don’t need to tell you how embarrassing it is if you make a mistake, e.g. forget to assign someone a seat. PerfectTablePlan helps you get the seating right and can save hours per event. It handles: managing your guest list, creating a floor plan, assigning guest to seats, printing charts and place cards, creating reports, checking your guests in and much more. Some customers have even told us it makes the seating planning fun!
We know that you have recently made some upgrades to the system. What feedback were you hearing from planners that inspired the changes?
We get lots of feedback from customers. Sometimes they are suggestions for minor tweaks that could improve the usability. Other times they are suggestions for major new features. Currently we have over 400 ideas for improvements in our ‘todo’ list. Most of the improvements in version 5 were suggested by customers.
