Fedra – Pagina 25 – Fedra Meetings & Events

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Fedra Meetings & Events

Event reminders: how many is too many?

Posted on 1 Giugno 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

Our audience is being bombarded by email marketing and email reminders. So how much is too much? And what email campaigns really capture attention? Here are a few tips.

Engaging content

It’s no secret that the key to our audience’s heart is content that engages.

Think about the value that your email marketing brings to them. Not only are you pushing an event, but what can you give to them in addition?

Perhaps a recap of helpful articles from your website that they may have missed, a summary of trends that will be interesting to them, or other ways of providing value so that your audience clicks and engages.

Engaging subject line

You can have great content, but if no one opened your email, you only get so far.

The art of subject lines is more complicated than ever, but definitely an art worth learning.

You can try personalizing the subject line so that your attendees first name is in that prominent location.

Segment

It’s very important to email people who register for your event frequently. The key is segmenting and specializing.

Don’t send the same confirmation email over and over to the same attendee.

Take them through a pipeline – ask them to download your app, highlight some of your speakers, introduce them to other people will be attending. And, segment your list so that the content they receive is customized for them.

Perhaps you have one email confirmation going to speakers, a different one for sponsors, one for longtime supporters, another for people who are coming to your event for the first time.

This, of course, is a lot more work on the writing side, but it allows your emails to be much more personalized and will help your attendees find the value in repeat communications.

How To Use Lighting At Your Event

Posted on 27 Maggio 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

Lighting can make or break your event experience. If the lights are too bright your event may seem stark and cold. If your lights are too dark guests may miss important elements of your event and design. Well placed lights can create ambience at your event. Great lighting will allow you to get more impact from other items such as floral arrangements and other decor. You can also use lighting to direct your guests attention to events going on within your event, or to grab their attention.

Uplighting At Your Event

Uplighting is a great way to create an atmosphere at your event. Rooms can look bland if you do not use perimeter lighting. This is especially important for a simple more basic venue such as an empty ballroom, gallery, or conference center which can tend to be bland if you do not add in lighting and color. These venues do not have a lot of character to begin with you will need to build ambience with more lighting and decor. It’s a great way to tie in a color that goes with your theme and create a wow factor upon guests entering the room.

Using Gobo’s

Gobo’s are a great way to add an element of design and depth to your event. Simply stated a gobo is a beam of light with a metal stencil over it that creates a pattern. Gobos can project any design or pattern including abstract shapes, patterns, pictures, and company logos. You can project gobos onto ceilings, floors, and walls, they are a great way to add visual interest.

While gobos are great for transforming your event by giving it a dynamic atmosphere and feel, they can be used to promote your brand. Seeing your brands logo in bright crisp lighting will create a visual impact that surely will not go unnoticed.

Gobos can go almost anywhere and are highly flexible, work perfectly with many types of events from conventions, to galas and even weddings. Below is a photo from a corporate event we did where we projected their logo onto a venue wall.

Create A Light Show

A light show is a really fun way to grab your guests attention. Light shows are often combined with the first two lighting techniques. However, unlike the first two lighting options these lights will be constantly moving and flashing because a lighting engineer designs a custom show specifically for your event.

Lighting shows are often used at corporate events before an awards ceremony or speeches to quite the crowd and build excitement for the main event. We also use them to create an amazing dance vibe at galas and high energy concerts. Light shows make a very memorable experience and keep the energy high at events!

Highlight Design with Pin Lighting

Pin lighting is an excellent way to direct attention to certain parts of your event. Using a spotlight creates a dramatic effect that can transform centerpieces, decor elements and table settings into incredible pieces of art. Not only do pin lights add drama to your event lighting, but they also provide separation that is often needed between dark table linens and centerpieces allowing the centerpieces to pop and stand out. Pin lighting will make your event design a more dynamic visual experience.

How Event Planners Can Choose An Innovative Event Venue

Posted on 25 Maggio 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

An event venue can make or break the look and feel of an event.

While hotel conference centers are easily accessible, they often don’t feel innovative, and they are often expensive unless reserved well in advance.

This article is designed to help event planners identify venues that will inspire event attendees, without breaking the bank.

1) The Innovative Theme

It’s great that you are hoping to provide attendees with a space that inspires innovative thinking. But in order to narrow your search of venues, you should first try to determine what type of feel you are trying to create.

Often this will simply be based on the kind of event you’re planning. A launch event should feel different from an off-site meeting of a Fortune 500 company. Work with key stakeholders to try to identify what they are hoping to achieve with the event.

2) Time & Place

Just like the cost of a hotel room or the price of a plane ticket, event venues will vary in expense depending on when you try to book. The same venue could be had for below market rate if you decide to plan an event during an off-hour.

Of course off-hours will vary depending on location, so it’s important that you think about ways in which you might be able to find an event venue for a bit less by choosing to host the event in a location that is not in demand, or at least not in demand during your event.

If you’re planning an event on a low budget, try to think of a location that won’t be in-demand when you want to host your event, often venue managers will be much more willing to negotiate if you are interested in using the space when it would otherwise go un-used.

3) Mixed Use Venues

Airbnb and Home Away are two popular examples of how mixed use spaces can transform perspectives. Staying in a private apartment rather than a hotel room can provide travelers with a unique perspective.

Similarly, event attendees can find inspiration when going to events hosted in spaces that are outside of the norm. Consider hosting an event in an artist’s studio, a public space, an art gallery, or some other mixed use space that can still provide the logistical support you need.

By choosing to host your event in a mixed use space, you’ll likely save money in comparison to booking a traditional event venue, while also providing attendees with a unique experience.

4) Go Green

Sustainability is a trend that has already permeated the hospitality industry, and it will soon have an impact on the events industry as well. One excellent way to expose event attendees to innovative spaces is by presenting them with a venue that features innovative design in order to overcome environmental challenges.

Conclusion

Searching for and selecting innovative spaces might seem challenging. Finding an affordable space is hard enough afterall.

The famous innovator and leader, Steve Jobs, famously obsessed over the construction of a new headquarters for his company, Pixar. He wanted to build an innovative space that had the ability to encourage people to feel inspired and to collaborate. The result was a revolutionary building the encouraged employees to meet and solve problems.

The example of Steve Jobs highlight how a space can impact people, as an event organizer, your goal should be to find a venue that positively impacts attendees by inspiring them to solve problems together.

10 Tips to better manage your time

Posted on 23 Maggio 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

The reason time management gadgets and systems don’t work is that these systems are designed to manage clock time. Clock time is irrelevant. You don’t live in or even have access to clock time. You live in real time, a world in which all time flies when you are having fun or drags when you are doing your taxes.

The good news is that real time is mental: you create it. Anything you create, you can manage. It’s time to remove any self-sabotage or self-limitation you have around “not having enough time,” or today not being “the right time” to start a business or manage your current business properly.

There are only three ways to spend time: thoughts, conversations and actions. Regardless of the type of business you own, your work will be composed of those three items.

As an entrepreneur, you may be frequently interrupted or pulled in different directions. While you cannot eliminate interruptions, you do get a say on how much time you will spend on them and how much time you will spend on the thoughts, conversations and actions that will lead you to success.

Here is an infographic that will help you managing your time:

Why technology is not “the connection”

Posted on 20 Maggio 201618 Luglio 2017 by Fedra

The Social Age is about connections: within networks, through technology, to communities, with each other, over time.

It’s about co-created stories: knowledge built in the moment from multiple sources and filtered through the sense-making groups we belong to.

Co-created knowledge, fragments of spare thought, aligned to build our understanding of how the world is today. And how it will be tomorrow.

And yet agility may not lie down this route. Sure, we still need control, we still need formal structures and we still need formal learning. It’s just that we also need to recognise that it’s only half of the story.

The other half is what surrounds it: wisdom, ground truth, experience. Often not so easily identifiable, deeply grounded within our communities and hard to acquire except through engagement.

We are connected through technology, and yet the technology is not, in itself, connection – it’s what we say to each other that connects us, how we treat each other, support each other, challenge and enlighten each other.

Technology is the mechanism by which we are connected, but communication is what it enables the connection, and communication is about people. About you, about me, about the stories that we share.

Often organizations talk about engagement, as if it’s something mysterious, sought after, elusive. Engagement is, in fact, everywhere. You cannot buy or bestow engagement, you can only earn it.

Those organizations stuck in the past, constrained by old models of working and older mindsets of thinking can never truly achieve engagement because they never truly want it. They never truly want what it brings – curiosity, agility, impermanence.

Identify the people who engage naturally and do everything we can to support, nurture and recognize them, these are the first generations of Social Leaders, the connected strata who will form the foundations of our change community.

If we help these people tell our story, and shape the story, we may achieve greater connectivity with the story.

It will spread and grow under the power of amplification, rather than brute force. That’s the key to change – connection. So our role becomes facilitating, not standing at the top and trying to force the organization to become fit for the Social Age, but alongside it, nurturing and unleashing its natural potential.

It starts with reflection and grows to a community, connected around ideas, around shared values.

To change our organizations, we must create spaces and permissions to connect, and recognize those people who do so, recognize them socially. Celebrate the success that they bring.