Glass Packaging Institute 2012 Annual Meeting
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS
In November we travelled to Naples, not just for the perfect weather, but for the 2012 Glass Packaging Institute s Annual Meeting. This was our first year planning this event for GPI and it was a successful event as well as a successful meeting for the members.
According to the Glass Packaging Institute, it is
The trade association representing the North American glass container industry. Through GPI, glass container manufacturers speak with one voice to advocate industry standards, promote sound environmental policies and educate packaging professionals. GPI member companies manufacture glass containers for food, beverage, cosmetic and many other products. GPI also has associate members that represent a broad range of suppliers and closure manufacturers.
Members went on a golf outing at the beautiful Naples Grande Golf Course and their accommodations were provided by the Waldorf- Astoria Naples. Members attended meetings regarding the upcoming trends and topics within the glass industry, cocktail receptions by the pools, and dinners all hosted by the outstanding banquet staff at the resort.
We produced the event from start to finish. We developed, maintained and monitored custom online registrations for the members. Decibel also designed graphics and gifts given to attendees, including custom USB drives for the members. We coordinated all of the banquet needs for the meeting, and facilitated all guest accommodations.
Next November we will be travelling to Sonoma, California for the 2013 GPI Annual Meeting.
Sesame Street Event
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS
Just finished a great event for CL Productions and Sesame Street in Washington DC. Follow the link for some fun photos. We were thrilled to help out Chris and the entire CL Production team onsite for the load in and show. Decibel was onsite to help facilitate the computer and iPad demos, as well as call the show. Thanks to Abby Cadabby and Gordon for the photos!
National Small Business Week 2011- Registration
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS
Registration for the 2011 National Small Business Week is up and running. You can register for the event by visiting the NSBW registration page here. More info after the jump.
If you are in DC the week of May 16-20, this is a great opportunity to network with other small businesses, learn about SBA programs from the source and hear from some fantastic speakers. Every year since 1963, the President of the United States has proclaimed National Small Business Week to recognize the contributions of small businesses to the economic well-being of America. As part of National Small Business Week, the U.S. Small Business Administration recognizes this special impact made by outstanding entrepreneurs and small business owners. In 2011, National Small Business Week will honor the estimated 27.2 million small businesses in America. Small businesses are major contributors to the strength of the American economy. More than half of Americans either own or work for a small business. They also create 60-80 percent of new jobs in the country. Small businesses drive innovation, create 21st century jobs and increase U.S. competitiveness.
Nomadic Display Instand Pop Up
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, TIPS & TRICKS, TRADE SHOW
We just heard some great news from Nomadic Display and wanted to pass it along. They are reducing the price of some of their most popular Instand Pop up display units for Q1.If you are in the market for a new Instand, Pop up, or table top display, this is a great time to pick one up.
It looks like the prices will hold until April 30, 2013. We love the 8 Fabrimurals, and many of our clients use them for small events, press conferences and fund raisers. There are actually three of these fabric ones included- the 8 , 5 and a table top version. Take a look at the models and pricing below and drop us a line if you are interested.
Decibel Online Event Registration
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, EVERYTHING ELSE, LIVE EVENTS, TIPS & TRICKS
Over the past few months, we have been hard at work on our new custom online registration system, and wanted to share a quick behind the scenes photo of our IA process flow. For the past few years, we have been using our current online registration system for a number of clients and it has absolutely served us well on some very unique and intense registration scenarios. As we began to build a new site for one of our clients, we decided it was time to also build a more functional and user friendly system. We decided for the new version it was time to start from the ground up. This involved intensive planning with our design and development team, as well as heavy IA work and prototyping.
IA (Information Architecture) has been a major focus for the new registration system. Our goal is to make a very intricate and complex system as user friendly and simple as possible. The more time we spend planning and developing the IA, the easier it will be to navigate an intensely complex registration function. We have also included a very unique and inventive process for buying a companion ticket to the process. This may just be the best feature that we are including.
Once we complete the development and testing and it is ready for launch, we will post additional information with more in-depth details. We are looking forward to using this for our upcoming events in 2012. Stay tuned for more info!
Dialogue On Diversity In The PR Industry
LIVE EVENTS
We just wrapped up production on Part 1 of the Dialogue on Diversity at Fleishman-Hillard in DC. The event and the discussions were a success!
We loaded in this morning at 6:30 am, the event was from 3:00 5:00 and we were out on the dock again by 7pm. Quite a whirlwind, and we are looking forward to the next part in the series!
The Ultimate Guide to Audience Response Systems for Event Managers: A Talk with Scott from Vistacom
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
A few months ago, Decibel published a post on Audience Response Systems, but spectacularly failed to profile Vistacom, a worldwide leader in audience response for nearing two decades. Scott Casey, owner of Vistacom, is an audience response guru and author of his own ARS software, VPOLL. We sat down to chat about Scott s experience in the ARS industry, asking him what event managers can get from ARS, and what they need to know to ensure setup and install goes smoothly.
First, the basics. Tell me a little story about Vistacom: how did it get started?
I was actually working for another audience response company before venturing out to start my own enterprise; I was only six months into my marriage when I left, so it was kind of a hair-raising time. Fortunately, my wife was working and we were able to live off her salary as I spent the several months preparing a business plan and shopping it around to the banks to get the financing necessary to start the company. I also had an angel investor in the form of my father-in-law. Now that s love!
You guys offer both hardware and software-based ARS do you build your own hardware? Develop your own software in-house?
The industry has evolved quite a bit over the last 15+ years. When I founded Vistacom in 1997, there was really only one hardware manufacturer, and they had a reseller network that I was required to go through to purchase both hardware and software.
Today, in terms of hardware, I still represent those keypads which I find to be superior to the others in the market. Interestingly, as of just this week, there is a new reseller network of which I m now a first tier reseller. It s global in scope which allows me to serve my existing customers and/or try to build new relationships in other parts of the world where I don t already have a presence of my own.
The software-based ARS, called VPOLL in my case, I m happy to say is my own creation. Since it s unique to my company, I have the flexibility to customize and develop according to my ideas and the feedback of my customers. I can have new features built to meet a need for an upcoming meeting, and since the product is mine, I m not restricted by the whims of some other developer that may or may not share the same ideas as myself.
What s the most interesting way you ve seen your products used?
Audience Driven Meetings. We once supported a company meeting where the management (i.e., the speakers) asked the employees (i.e., attendees) what issues were most important to them. Attendees ranked the issues, and then the speakers addressed those issues in order of importance. So in a sense, the meeting was half-scripted and half-dependent on what the audience wanted to hear about and learn/discuss, which may have been different than the preconceived notions of management. I do think it takes a courageous management and meeting planning team to be able to adjust an agenda like that, but it demonstrated to the company s employees how important their voice was to the future success and direction of the company and probably went a long way towards maintaining employee retention.
I know a lot of event producers could certainly use custom ARS for their event, but aren t even sure what they can get: what are some examples of customized ARS software solutions you ve created, and how were they used?
This is a wonderful question. Today s software can already do so much that it isn t necessarily a matter of having to customize software. Some examples:
Reveal later You can ask a question, get the responses, and not show the results until later on, which is great for panels. For example, you ask the audience and panelists a question, poll the audience and collect their responses, then allow the panelists to weigh in and provide their response. When they are finished talking, display the results from the audience and see if their answers agreed or disagreed with the panelists.
Custom Chart/Comparison If you have poll results from a previous meeting, you can ask the same question of your current attendees, insert that data into the result slide, and compare the results from the live audience from the previous period/meeting, showing how moods/attitudes/perceptions changed over time.
Elections I personally think this isn t done nearly enough. ARS software can handle ballots with multiple seats for a position, weighted voting, simple and more complex majority voting, and much more. You get fast, accurate, confidential (if necessary) voting with real-time results. Why not use this for association committee meetings, shareholder meetings, and the like?
Tell us how your products work in terms of facilitating multi-location events
Multi-location events are handled much easier through mobile polling technology. All you need is an internet connection, and anybody can participate regardless of location. You can have the ARS technician operating from the host location. When it s time for an ARS question, the tech simply pushes the question out and everybody who has logged into that session will get the question and be able to reply, whether they are located in the host location or anywhere else in the world.
Keeping in mind that many of our readers are event planners who need to make sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed, is there a checklist of things managers should verify to ensure that ARS deployment will go smoothly at their event?
As ARS providers we are pretty self-sufficient, but there are a few times in which we are dependent on others at the meeting site, particularly the AV vendor. So it s often a good idea to allow the ARS vendor and AV vendor to get in touch and coordinate their needs, or at least relay those needs through the event planner. There are couple areas to focus on with the AV vendor:
Questions Probably the most important thing to consider are the questions that are to be asked. The sooner your tech can get them and program them in, the less chance for error of any kind, whether it s typographical or worse, like overlooking the selection of a particular software feature in haste and then not showing the results in the manner in which it was desired. Also, the more thought that is given to question development the better the overall outcome of your meeting. Garbage in, garbage out. This is often a difficult task because the content developers are not necessarily the event planners, but if they can use their diplomacy and get questions sooner it makes for a much better experience overall. And don t be afraid to enlist the help of your ARS vendor we are eager to lend some advice based on our experience as to best practices.
Meeting logistics Please also provide additional meetings logistics so the techs are better prepared once on site. Things like the agenda, floor plans, shipping instructions for the equipment, rehearsal times, and contact information of onsite personnel.
WiFiAnd on the mobile polling side, in addition to the above, WiFi is the big issue. It s imperative that WiFi is available first of all but also that it is adequate for the job. That means the proper amount of bandwidth and good network connections. Is the hotel s system adequate? If not, can your ARS vendor be allowed to create their own wireless network in your meeting space? Not only WiFi but it would be recommended to have a dedicated hard line (i.e., not a shared line) running to the operator s computer to guarantee a connection.
Video The ARS questions and slides need to be seen on the projection screen, so the computers running ARS need to connect to the projection system. Depending on whether the ARS system is a stand-alone system or a PowerPoint plug-in, you may or may not need to have a VGA switcher available that allows multiple inputs to a projector. In other words, you may need to switch from the computer running the PowerPoint presentation to the one running the ARS system.
Audio Similarly, if music is being played through the ARS system, then an audio line needs to be connected from the computer to the soundboard.
Power Please have a power strip available to plug in the laptops.
Tech Table Please, please, please remember to allot some space for us at the tech table, or wherever you would like us to be positioned, in the meeting room. All too often, that s overlooked and we get a tiny corner of the table for two laptops and ancillary equipment.
When would a software solution be chosen over a hardware solution?
Assuming that both solutions can be provided at a meeting site (i.e., WiFi is available for a mobile solution) then this is a very subjective question and one left to the customer. But there a couple of situations in which a software solution out-ranks a hardware solution:
Quick turnaround time. If your meeting is one in a series of meetings run by other agencies, such as a satellite symposia, and you have 30 minutes between meetings then a mobile solution would be better. It much more difficult to set up and tear down say 500 keypads in 30 minutes than if you have a mobile solution and keypads are not needed.
Very large meetings. Keypad systems can handle some very large meetings, a few thousand attendees competently, but they do have size limitations. However, with mobile solutions you really have the ability to scale your meetings even more. Arena anybody?
Indoor vs. Outdoor Again, assuming connectivity is available, I would think that a mobile solution would be better suited to an outdoor event than a keypad system. Again, keypad distribution, and collection, is more difficult than not having to bother with keypads at all.
Multi-site meetings See my blurb on ARS and multi-location meetings above.
How far in advance of an event should someone contact you? Is there a comfortable planning window?
Wonderful question again if for no other reason than the planning window has continually shrunk over the years. I look at two things to consider in judging what a reasonable planning window would be.
Question development This may not necessarily apply to when to contact the ARS vendor but just a reminder to allow enough time to develop good audience response questions that will help meet your meeting objectives. Perhaps as a meeting planner you, or your client, are pretty knowledgeable about ARS features in general and can craft good questions. Well, you can start developing those before contracting with an ARS vendor. But if you would like some advice along the way it might be better to get your ARS vendor lined up sooner rather than later.
Price/Logistics This is really the crux of this question. In addition to the rental fee, the customer must pay for equipment shipping (if using keypads) and the travel expenses for the technician. Not that airfare is always logical, but if you contract with your ARS vendor early enough, you might realize some expense savings which could be significant.
Having said that, I would say a month out from the meeting date would be a nice, comfortable window. Enough time to book flights and handle logistics (remember, your meeting may not be the only one for the ARS vendor and they have to coordinate equipment and personnel to other events either right before, during, or immediately following your meeting).
Of course, at my company we are very flexible and are prepared for last-minute requests. In fact, as of this writing, I m still waiting for an answer to use our services for a meeting one week from today. No joke. But I m able to be flexible because I have resources in terms of personnel and a large inventory of keypads to meet most meeting requirements (or more precisely, the needs of several meetings at once).
Best Event Registration Software: An Interview with Asaf Darash, CEO of Regpack
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
It s not an uncommon complaint in the event management industry that you never get everything you want out of your event registration software it seems like you re always heavily compromising somewhere. But there s an up-and-coming event registration system looking to change that by taking an innovative, research-driven approach to the technology. We sat down with Asaf Darash, CEO at Regpack and an all-around smart dude, to talk about how his software is changing the face of event registration.
What s the Regpack origin story? Who s behind the software, and what motivated them to create the platform?
Regpack was founded in Oct 2010 in order to commercialize the 7 year research I did in my Ph.D. My research focused on how computer languages and computer networks are able to function in a way that there are only variables and no constants. I also wanted to see if it was technically even possible to build a database that would work that way. At the time I was working with a number of educational institutions advising their IT departments, so I went to them and started to discuss my idea. From what they said, I gleaned that the whole field of registration, client management, event management, onboarding processes and workflow practices in general really really needed this type of flexibility but it was never offered. That s when I knew there was a real problem that needed to be solved and that maybe I had the solution.
We really wanted to make a platform that would be so flexible that it can always meet 100{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of our client s needs without any programming knowledge needed on their end. We constantly heard people talk about finding systems that meet 65{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of their needs, or 70{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of their needs. We thought that was wrong. The system should meet 100{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of the needs all of the time. That s what motivated us, and we also knew we had the technology to do it.
In the beginning we were only 3 people working from a small office in San Francisco trying to make a technology that worked for research[ers] into something that would work for real people in real situations. It took us nearly a year and a half to get something ready that we could present to clients.
Today, there are more than 3000 organizations using Regpack, and we re adding about 40 new clients every month. We register 100K people a month in the low season and 3 times that during high seasons. Our clients claim we have saved them at least 60 hours a month, which means we re saving the world more than 180,000 work hours a month. We re really proud of that, and of our contribution to helping people enjoy more free time doing things only humans can do (like think).
Where is the Regpack team based?
Regpack has two offices: one in Oakland and one in Jerusalem. In the Oakland office we have the account management team, the sales team, and accounting teams. In Israel we have development and account management for European clients.
Tell us a cool story about somewhere Regpack has been used successfully.
There are a lot of these stories! Here is a list of some client spotlights that highlight how Regpack has helped them.
I see that Regpack supports payment plans for registrants that s unique. Can you tell us a little bit about how that might be used and how that works?
Yes, it is unique, but like everything in Regpack it is something that came about as a result of client demand. We have a lot of organizations that are using Regpack for programs that are expensive. For example, we have a lot of educational tourism clients that offer various organized educational world tours. These programs can last for 5 months and can cost upwards of $20K.
We also have a lot of organizations that open registration for their events or programs 6 or 8 months before they begin. For these organizations there is an issue: people come in, register, complete everything, and then they need to make installment payments or need to pay the full amount only 3 months down the road. They found themselves needing to remind people to go in and pay, and that process wasted a lot of time.
That s where payment plans or scheduled payments came in. They allow an applicant to select a plan that is best for them, and then the system will automatically charge them in intervals determined by the plan. Basically, it makes the whole issue totally go away by completely automating it.
We tend to find that most third-party software not just registration software but all software packages have to walk a line between customization and usability. In other words, the developers have to decide whether they re catering to non-techies that need a plug-and-play system, or they re making the software extremely flexible so that developers can get their hands into the code. This is the biggest issue we ve personally run into with registrations. What s your outlook on this? For example, we see you have a robust form builder can we also tweak at the code level?
As explained above, Regpack works in a very unique way, and because of its flexibility, this questions is a little moot. You can stay with the Regpack defaults, or customize every little thing.
When you build your forms, the system is automatically creating data points that allow you now to set triggers based on answers in the forms. This means you can ask a simple question like What color are your eyes? and then you can create a totally different flow for people that have blue eyes as compared to people that have brown or green eyes. You can do that for any question you like, and for as many combinations you can think of.
This basically means that there are very few situations that you really need to get into the code, since you can control what happens through the triggering and meta programming system the triggers enable. That said, Regpack has an extensive API that allows users to create custom code just for a specific form, or just for a specific action in a form (submitting, completing etc ).
I think that we have found a happy medium between our software being programmer oriented and being a system just for the layman.
Regpack also offers all of our clients a project manager that does the initial system structure setup according to their needs, making it easy for our clients to start editing. We have found that people are much more comfortable with editing and altering something that already exists, even in a rough or draft format, than starting with a blank page that allows them to do *anything*.
For the nerds among us: what language is Regpack written in?
Regpack uses the following languages: Python, PHP, Javascript, Node. I would say that 70{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} of the system is built in Javascript. The most important part of Regpack is the conditional logic engine and the triggering meta programming language that allows its flexibility. That is written in C++ and interacts with a document base database structure that is unique for Regpack.
What s the Regpack approach to mobile registrations? Is the interface mobile-friendly?
Yes. Regpack is mobile friendly. We have a unique presentation for phones and tablets that is different from how the system is presented on a desktop.
We ve run into situations where we have to gather sensitive personal data as part of a registration process for example, when we re signing people up for an event at the White House, we re required to gather social security numbers. Is Regpack equipped to handle secure data transfers like that?
Yes. All the information passing through Regpack is SSL encrypted and then we use a dual database mechanism where the key of the value is stored in a different place than the value. Even if an unauthorized party gained access to the Regpack database, they cannot extract protected information since they need the conditional logic engine and algorithm in order to connect between the two.
We have clients that gather SSN, health information, legal information etc We are in the process of becoming HIPPA compliant and we are already PCI compliant. Getting these certificates is pretty easy for Regpack since the unique structure of the database makes it very very hard to manipulate any data outside of the system (we have not found a way to do that yet 
What s next for Regpack in terms of expansion and upcoming features?
In the last year Regpack added 560 new features into the system. I always try to explain that it is not important what features a system has but actually what real-world problems the feature solves. Our next goal at Regpack is turning it into an overall onboarding system . After all, registration is a private and complicated case of onboarding. So we are seeking to go after that area come June 2015.
Anything else you want to highlight?
I think it s important to note our pricing structure since we strive to be incredibly budget friendly to seasonal and small organization s without compromising the quality of the product all of our clients receive. A custom built system can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and maintain. Regpack costs hundreds of dollars a month, if that! We are trying to bring the latest technology, the best in customization and fulfilling the needs and solving the problems of ALL of our clients 100{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} for a price that is affordable for all. I think the quality of our product and the price we charge make us stand out amongst our competition.
Thanks for taking the time to interview me and learn more about Regpack!
Graphic Design Inspiration for Event Planners: 6 Gorgeous Printed Menu Designs
EVENT COLLATERAL
So, we just realized what a ridiculous treasure trove of event management creative lovliness Behance is. Brace for insane influx of blog posts about event design and signage. What caught our eye initially was a series of nice banquet menus, cuz event branding is so rarely done well, and it really is in the details, isn t it? And then we realized that there s no reason that event menus can t be as pretty as restaurant menus, and we started looking for inspiration in restaurant branding hoo boy.
The Foodie Dinner Menu
Anisa and Michele Wedding, Georgia Smiraglia
Casa Virginia Menu, Savvy Studio
Tamarindo Menu Design, La Tortilleria
Kinoya Menu, Veronique LaFortune
Microbrewery Menu, Jessica Fecteau
4 Great Mobile-Ready Single Page Event Website Templates
LIVE EVENTS
There are a billion-zillion reasons you might be asked to handle the website end of your event, despite not being in the tech business: the client s web designer is unavailable, and the site needs to go online pronto; the client doesn t want to spend the money on a web design agency or make a big deal out of the event website; the client doesn t want to deal with a ton of different vendors and would rather have you handle everything the list goes on.
Without the time or budget to get a fully-customized site structured, designed and coded, your best bet is to opt for a ready-made site template that you can lightly customize and drop online.
The main advantages here are cost and speed. Pre-designed, pre-coded and imminently affordable, you can purchase these, add your client s event logo, title and content in place of the dummy content, and you re ready to rock. You ll need someone with a basic grasp of HTML to edit them and you ll still need to find hosting, so these don t get you completely off the hook in terms of hiring a web designer, but buying a pre-made template means your event site can be up and running in 8 hours, zero-to-done.
And since everyone s using their phones to these days, it s crucial that you choose a template that is optimized for phones and tablets. We scoured the internet and found a few of the best single-page event-themed templates available. Check these out:
Event Landing Page $11 HTML Theme
This basic but very functional theme is not a WordPress theme, but rather a responsive HTML-only theme with three color options.
OnEvent $11 Special Event Landing Page
Created by Dezine Themes, this landing page offers a full-screen photo background, event count-down, speaker list, and more.
EventMe $11 Special Event Landing Page
With multiple color options and all the basics, this mobile-ready single-page theme is perfect for corporate-style events. The unique stand-out feature is an animated event schedule timeline that you can fill in with your event s roster of speakers or workshop times or what-have-you.
VentCamp $11 Event Site
VentCamp is probably the prettiest of the themes we list here. This theme also features a full-screen photo background, lovely thin fonts, and an interesting callout area where you can highlight numbers that focus on the key reasons potential attendees should pony up for a ticket (example: 4 stages! 72 speakers!)