A name badge seems simple at first glance; it’s just a piece of paper with a name on it. But on that piece of paper is many hours’ worth of consideration, effort, trial and error done by a meeting planner. A name badge helps direct attendees, make registration simpler [...]

Event planners and event managers are often tasked with creating the food and beverage budget for conferences or meetings and it’s usually a very significant part of the total event budget. While at first this number may seem like a lot of money, it can literally get eaten up [...]

An event may last only a few days, but the planning process can begin years in advance. Many annual conferences begin their planning two or more years before the event date. For national conferences which move from city to city each year, the event planner and the event chair [...]

In our post-conference surveys we often ask delegates to tell us what their main objectives were for attending. One of the most common responses is conference networking. Of course delegates attend for educational purposes, but interacting with others who work in the same field, live the same day-to-day challenges, [...]

Have you ever wondered about the type of people who provide personal information in reply to emails from “lawyers” in Nigeria, or confirm credit card information in response to an email from an “alleged” bank or credit card company? Sending Credit Card and Debit Card Information by Email is [...]

We are the event planners for several association annual conferences and each group functions with a different format for their conference planning committee. There is no right way to do it, as long as the committee is well managed and the roles are well defined. As an event planner, [...]

A timeline is a key tool in planning a conference, as it provides all those involved (event planner, client, planning committee and others) with information about the key tasks. The timeline is your master “to-do list”. Building a timeline for an event, for the first time, can be time [...]

Providing exhibitors with a valuable and vibrant experience not only profits exhibitors, but is also key to gaining their loyalty ensuring they return for future conferences. So making their experience profitable, dynamic and pleasurable benefits both your exhibitors and you. Event managers and meeting planners can do several things [...]

As event managers there are so many parts of our job that are completely out of our control and we often have to make in-the-moment decisions based on little available information. I recently experienced that first hand, when an hour before our client’s event was scheduled to begin, the [...]

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. Your client read my article “Not Another Boring Conference Room: Bringing Your Event to a Unique Venue” and was inspired to choose a unique venue for their event. To an event manager a unique venue would be defined as one that uses a [...]