We’re back and ready to tackle 2014! Alana and I had a blast at The Special Event Conference in Nashville this past week. We spent our days attending classes, visiting the trade show floor and listening to some pretty amazing speakers. Not only was it an exciting conference, but we also got to stay in the always beautiful Gaylord Opryland Hotel.
Chad Taylor from the Band "Live"
Opening Act: Extreme Beam
Categories for the class selections ranged from business and professional development to design. We got to dig deep into sales and marketing strategies and learn more about event management. With TSE offering a full range of classes, it was difficult to choose which session we wanted to learn more about! The first class we attended was called "Mastering the 4 P's (People, Proposals, Pricing, Profits)".
The class led by Tammy Forero of Forte Events, focused on ensuring you have a successful business by finding the right clients for your services, creating effective proposals, offering quality pricing, and of course, being profitable! We left Tammy's session feeling encouraged and empowered!
One of the next sessions,"Marketing Your Culture," turned out to be the pick-me-up we needed to make it through the afternoon after a full morning of classes. This class was all about creating a dynamic, modern and fun culture for your company and capitalizing on it in your marketing efforts. Matt Radicelli and Ryan Konikoff from Rock The House, out of Cleveland, OH, were the presenters and they made sure everyone was awake. We knew this class would be far from boring when we walked in to a room full of music (they are a DJ/event production company after all) and a very energetic crew.
RTH makes sure their 14 full-time and over 60 part-time employees feel appreciated and enjoy coming to work everyday. They have fun and creative ways to reach out to their vendor team (including pretty awesome t-shirts), host holiday parties for their current and previous staff and provide neat giveaways for their over-achieving team. This class wasn't all about rubbing in their awesome marketing techniques, but understanding that they created a culture that people want to work for and if someone wants to work for you, they'll really want to work with you!
We ended a day full of classes by sitting in on an open panel of industry
experts and attendees, who were from all over the world. Speakers included Dianne Budion-Devitt (President, The DND Group), Janet Elkins (President, EventWorks, Inc.), Kathy Miller (President, Total Event Resources), Sally Webb (CEO at The Special Event Company), and Christopher Gerstenblatt (Event Producer, EventWorks, Inc.). This session was filled with
event planners, DJ’s, rental companies, event production companies, venues, and
the list goes on. The topics varied from attracting leads, closing the deal and
even tackling difficult situations in our industry. It was a great way for us to
hear what other vendors in the event industry had to say about how they run their businesses day-to-day, their thoughts on upcoming
trends and the difficulties of working with events.
Brett Culp introducing his documentary "Legends of the Knight"
Finally, one of our favorite sessions we sat in on turned out to be an amazing reminder of how
grateful we should be to work in such a creative industry! Brett Culp, an event filmmaker
who works with some of the top event planners and producers, hosted a session
called “Find your Passion, Create your Story, Live your Dreams.” With a title
like that you know you are going to walk out of the room feeling inspired!
Brett turned the focus away from the event industry for the hour and a half
session and shared with us the story of a project he had spent what felt like
an eternity working on. Brett produced a film titled “Legends of The Knight”
which weaves together true stories of individuals who have “overcome
devastating obstacles, unselfishly given to the community and embraced the
inner superhero because of their love of Batman.” Through these stories, the
documentary explores the “power of heroic stories and encourages viewers to
find their own path to heroism.” The session was filled full of tears and
laughter as Brett led us through the heartache he faced that not only started
this project but also forced him to complete it. Words don’t even do it
justice, check on the video’s trailer
for yourself. (Just a warning, if you are anything like us, you’ll want to go
ahead and grab a tissue.)
If you can’t tell, we had a very busy, but fun-filled week! The experience and education we received at TSE is invaluable. Thank you to all of our industry leaders and legends for educating fellow members of our trade and further strengthening our industry as event professionals!
Have questions
about anything we mentioned? Ask us about it in the comment section! We look
forward to 2014 and hope to take the tips and tricks we learned at #TSE2014 and
put them to use!
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