Keeping Warm: 4 Neat Ways to Incorporate Fire into Your Event
TIPS & TRICKS
It s hard to lure attendees out of doors once the February chill sets in, but the promise of a roaring fire might galvanize your audience to bundle up and get outdoors. Here are a few ideas for (safely) incorporating fire into your next event.
Safety first, kiddos
There s the snuggly warmth of a toasty bonfire, and then there s the raging inferno of horror as you stare at the pile of rubble where your venue used to be, bracing for the influx of lawsuits. If flames are in any way part of your event, cross all your t s: Ensure that your event location is up to code, that fire extinguishers are readily available, fire exits clearly marked, and that there aren t any combustibles around. You may also need a permit do feel free to contact Decibel if you need help with those arrangements.
Fire Dancers for Hire
Fire-based acts, like world-famous Flambeaux, can really turn up the heat. Headquartered in New York, Flambeaux gets booked by A-List clients like IBM and Heidi Klum, and their act is a mix of acrobatics, dance, fire-breathing, and fire-eating. Being among the world s best may put Flambeux out of your price range, but most major cities have a few fire performance troops available for hire.
Fire pits
Fire pits can be a real hazard, and they can severely limit available venues. There is, however, such a thing as an electric fire pit, like this rental unit from Talk of the Town:
Fire Writing
Professional pyros like Lancework, Add Fire Inc. and similar vendors can render words, images, or any logo in sparkling flames, as a stand-alone piece or as a great complement to a traditional fireworks display.
Fire-Themed Venues
Hold your event in an old fire station, at a fire museum, or other fire-themed venue. The Aurora Regional Fire Museum in Illinois, for example, is open for meetings and event rentals, and includes an indoor theater. Many cities, like Houston and New York, have similar facilities.
Unique Team-Building Exercise Ideas: The Good, the Bad and the Very, Very Ugly
TIPS & TRICKS
A clients workplace recently organized a team-building event over the course of an afternoon during their annual meeting. The meeting itself was held in a swanky Denver hotel, each guest reveling in luxurious surroundings. All seemed well, until HR decided that the best way to complement all that awesomeness was to follow it up with a group obstacle course in the sweltering summer sun.
The full, unvarnished horror of this mistake was realized when a number of staffers simply quit and returned to the hotel. So much for team-building.
Team-building exercises suffer from an unfair reputation among many companies, in large part because hapless HR managers or even external corporate training consultants pick the wrong activities, or at least don t seem to view the big picture. Badly done, a team-building activity can actually be more demoralizing than unifying but, done the right way, it can be a welcome addition to a conference schedule.
More than that, a shared experience outside the humdrum routine of a conference can be a bonding experience for staff who don t see each other regularly. Having your Austin IT team face your Chicago sales team at laser-tagging may not be an obvious productive boost but it will help create a real sense of unity despite working from disparate locations.
Listen to suggestions
Sure, sometimes it takes a little tugging to get everyone outside for a game of handball, but if your team-building activity announcement is met with groans or oppressive silence, you ve probably crossed the line from they ll-thank-you-for-this-later into they ll-never-forgive-you territory. People know what they like put together a list of suggestions and take a vote. This can absolutely be included in the online registration system as a required field, so no excuses!
And it sounded like such a good idea on paper
Original and unique team-building exercises win out
People tend to enjoy learning new, interesting and useful skills. Doing something creative and unique not only gives your crew something to brag about later, but it brings your team together under the banner of an experience they probably haven t shared with many others. It can also bring new skills and experiences to a team. At the most recent PRSA Counselors Academy Spring Meeting, they had a very unique experience that did just this. During the first day of the conference, the organizers brought in the team from Banding People Together. The entire conference divided into four teams and in an hour we had four original songs that we performed. The winning team had bragging rights for the conference, and we had something very unique to share and discuss for the rest of the conference. Here s a few alternatives to the norm, as well as the original song videos from first and second place:
- Song Writing Workshop
- Photography Skills and Creativity Class
- Cocktail Creations and Mixology
- Drawing/Painting Tutorials
We Love PR by the Brazen Squirrles (Second Place)
We ve Got the Power by the Sh!tkickers (First Place)!
No one has to get dirty
Team-building isn t about punishing people, it s about promoting cooperation. And though we could probably all benefit from a little more time outdoors, rolling around in the dirt boot-camp style isn t everyone s idea of a good time. Organizing a sweaty event also limits your logistical options in terms of how, where and when the event can be held. But getting messy isn t the only way to bring people together. Your people could also:
- Take a challenging, team-based cooking class
- Build a complex gingerbread house
- Build a derby car or electronics kit
- Hold a PacMan competition
- Compete at team darts
- Dragon Boat Racing
Dragon Boat Racing!
Want to incorporate unique team-building exercises into your event?
Call Decibel, we d be tickled pink to help you out.
How to Drum Up Good Volunteers for Your Event
TIPS & TRICKS
Need more helping hands than you ve got? Don t have the budget to have your paid staff picking up litter? No matter what your event topic is, there s someone out there who desperately wants to go but can t afford the ticket. Even better, there s someone out there who loves your theme so much, they d be thrilled to have back-stage, hands-on access in exchange for a couple of perks. Here s how to catch and keep these lovely unicorn-people.
The Big Leagues: Call in the Heavy Hitters at the Work-Exchange Team
Running a massive festival or concert? The Work-Exchange Team by Shimon Presents is one of the industry leaders for large-scale event volunteer recruitment (there s also a pool of volunteers with Oxfam America, but they are typically only available to concerts featuring Oxfam-supporting artists). The major draw is WET s vetted database of potential volunteers, many of whom have worked festivals before in exchange for free tickets.
Some crucial deets: Our website has been specially developed for the management of volunteers for events. It is secure, easy-to-use and has over 50,000 registered users. Our online application will go live, and our marketing team will begin sending out branded HTMLs to our lists of over 90,000 past WETs to help you recruit your volunteers. It is very important that your event also provide marketing services to recruit your volunteers, as your volunteers will ultimately come from your group of fans. As applications are submitted, we continue discussions with your event and begin deciding on volunteer hours and placement. The event deposit will then go live, at which point volunteers will lock themselves in with a ticket-price deposit that secures their spot on the team and their services for your event.
DIY Recruitment
Plenty of festivals do their own recruitment, and interested people will check your site for volunteer opportunities. Knowing that, this one s a no-brainer: your call for volunteers should start going out on social media, on your website, and via your newsletters and collateral shortly after the event dates are announced. Putting your volunteer opportunities on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks allow people help to catch that I can t, but my friend might be interested crowd.
Got a Good Cause? Use Allforgood.org
Allforgood is a great platform to hook willing volunteers up with volunteer opportunities. Unlike other volunteering sites which focus more on long-term, repeat organizational volunteering, the Allforgood platform is more conducive to posting short-term opportunities.
No cause? Then perks are everything.
If you aren t giving volunteers the chance to serve the community, what are you offering? Free tickets, naturally, but what else? T-shirts? Goodie-bags? Backstage access? Meal tickets? Unless your event is highly exclusive, very expensive or super-famous, you ll need to entice the best help with the best incentives.
Make work hour expectations clear
To avoid misunderstandings (hah!), it s crucial that you let potential volunteers know exactly what you ll be asking of them. Here s a good example of volunteer pre-wrangling done right: Bonnaroo Volunteers page does an excellent job of outlining the volunteer experience, including how many hours volunteers will be expected to work, who can volunteer and what to bring. You may also notice that quite a few major festivals require volunteers to pay a significant deposit (up to $400 for some) as part of their application, refundable after the volunteer discharges their duties (all too well can we imagine the situations that lead to the need for that rule).
I ve got volunteers: Now what?
This astute post on the When I Work blog notes, Good volunteers are attracted to good organization and bad organization repels almost everyone who might otherwise give you their time. Show them you re organized by explaining your mission, the work description, and time goals in detail and be sure to communicate effectively. We couldn t agree more: nothing drives away present and future volunteers like trying to help someone who doesn t have it together. So, get organized, and make sure you have a management strategy in place for your volunteer team.
If you ve got a large pool of help to oversee, call us: Decibel s pretty darn good at herding those cats.
How to Screen Celebrity Speakers: Booking Tips for Your Event
EVENT INDUSTRY, TIPS & TRICKS
It s a tough wake-up call for readers of Perez Hilton or the Daily Mail: all those famous people who make headlines and sell newspapers don t always make engaging speakers at events. Sure, big names are great at getting butts in seats, but it s easy to forget that expertise or fame doesn t necessarily relate to engaging stage presence unless the celebrity is familiar and comfortable with the in-front-of-a-podium format. Here are a few things to remember when booking a celebrity guest at your event.
Run their talk through an approval process (just like everyone else)
Most conference planners would blanch at the idea of a keynote speaker being allowed to go on stage without casting a glance at their presentation materials, and without making sure the speech fits into the theme of the event as a whole. This should not change if your speaker has a face known to millions ask to see the goods before anyone takes the stage.
They re on the clock too
Celebrity speakers are often hired to appear at dozens of various conferences and events, and one can easily blur into the next. To ensure your to-do is not seen as yet another payday, ask your celebrity speaker to spend some time discussing how you can best tailor their speech and presence to your event s needs you deserve it.
A performer does not always a speaker make
You wouldn t ask an air-conditioning repair guy to fix your fridge. Same deal here: Well-known news anchors, singers, actors and media personalities may be dynamic on screen or on the air, doing what they love best, but that magnetism many not translate when facing a rapt audience of strangers. They may not have experience writing their own material, or they may be used to another performance format that bears little resemblance to public speaking. Similarly, famous subject experts may really know their stuff, but may not be used to explaining it or discussing it with laymen.
If possible, look to book celebrities with speaking experience. While booking agencies can get you the talent, it is important to utilize YouTube and other social networks to search for videos and examples of past speeches, if any, for a preview of what you can expect.
Michael Douglas could make a killing if he appears as Gordon Gekko
Give them a safety net
Some celebrity speakers, particularly on the political lecture circuit, just have it. From a lifetime of media training, they can take the mic in any packed conference room and deliver a speech that will enthuse and motivate a crowd at an annual meeting for chartered accountants. Others do not. If an event manager feels that their speaker will flounder alone, arranging to have them as the guest star in a panel discussion may be the best solution. This allows them to shine in specific moments, giving the audience their money s worth while taking away much of the pressure.
Screen for (and do your best to accommodate) divas
In addition to appearance fees, many celebrities will provide a sheet of requests called a rider , a list of additional instructions for everything from which snacks they d prefer to have available in the green room, to, in Kanye s case, requiring all chauffeurs to wear 100{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} cotton fabrics. It s a good idea to get your hands on a rider before the booking actually occurs. If someone is going to require seven bottles of Dom in the green room, it ll be good to know that as early as possible.
Where to find some celebs!
APB: Speakers International A large listing of A-list speakers, including sample speaking topics, videos and biographies.
WSB: Washington Speakers Bureau The Washington Speakers Bureau brings audiences quality speakers and experts whose ideas are changing the face of business and inspiring the world.
Booking Entertainment A large agency with some great names
Holiday Event Production: 5 of the Best Christmas Rentals for Large-Scale Events
EVENT PRODUCTION INSPIRATION, TIPS & TRICKS
December is upon us, and with it, the yearly infusion of last-minute holiday parties, winter fairs, holiday concerts, and all things Christmas. It s pretty easy to track down decor and extras for small-scale get-togethers, but the must-haves for commercial-level shindigs are a whole nother deal. Here are Decibel s tips on where to get the best holiday rentals for your end-of-year events.
Carolers a la Dickens
It ain t no Christmas without Christmas carols. If you happen to be in the New York or Tri-State area, you can call on one of the longest-standing Dickensian carol performance groups, who show up in full period-appropriate costume and Christmas the heck the out of everything with their fa-la-las. Their clients include Macy s, Bloomingdales, the Waldorf-Astoria and other seasonal heavy hitters, plus they get invited to the White House like, every year, so you know they re super legit. If they re all booked up or you re not near New York, check out The Christmas Carolers, a nation-wide caroler-booking agency.
Snowflake Backdrops
Need to add a Christmas vibe to your indoor or outdoor stage? Atomic Design, one of America s best stage design companies (and naturally, a Decibel vendor), brings the winter spirit with their Yeti Flake backdrop, a modular holiday special solution that can be assembled into panels, columns, or superwalls. Add backlighting for Christmas win! Not sure what to ask for? Call us we ll help you sort it.
Fake Snow / Winterland Environments
When you need a LOT of snow like, industrial-grade Christmas-in-July style snow you call Snowmaking by STURM. Snowmaking by Sturm sports an impressive portfolio of projects that includes work on major motion pictures, commercials and town-center events, so you know they got the chops to pull off just about any idea. They do clean-up free simulated falling snow, massive snow-fields, ramps and winter environments for marketing campaigns.
Rent-a-Santa
The big guy himself has his hands full this time of year, and event producers have to rely on temporary stand-in Santas to help spread all that joy around. The biggest Santa-for-hire agency in the US is actually a popular sub-service of the temping website Gigmasters. They offer Santas for just about every location in the US, and their website includes a great search feature where you can find the perfect Santa for your sleigh.
Ginormous Trees & other City-Center Decor
Epic department store trees, commercial properties covered in twinkling lights, giant plastic ornaments hanging from four-story ceilings yup, you will be needing a specialist. The Christmas Decorators have a lot (no really, a lot look at their portfolio) of experience decking the halls of restaurants, hotel lobbies and town square.
Post-Event Follow-Up: Why it Matters and How to Do It
TIPS & TRICKS
You ve planned it, it happened, it was a huge success. But that s not quite the end of it. A good event includes a framework for event-wrap photo, video and news.
Why it matters
Getting sponsors excited If your event is an annual or repeated happening, having a strong follow-up gives lets current and potential sponsors know that their advertising dollars will be utilized well, with promotion continuing even beyond event completion.
Creating a community Events are little worlds unto themselves, and the people who attend them feel connected to each other. Good event follow up can strengthen this sense of community.
A good overview Your attendees can t be everywhere at once. Good follow-up gives attendees an opportunity to enjoy the bigger picture and see who was doing what while they were networking.
It makes you look good Everyone s a diva, and attendees, speakers and sponsors love to dig for and share good photos and video of themselves. Great event follow up draws more potential clients for event managers as participants use social networking to spread the word.
Follow-up Channel Ideas
1. Youtube/Vimeo
Any event worth its salt should have its own branded Youtube or Vimeo channel. If you have a flagship event once a year, create a specific channel for it. Flattery will get you anywhere, and putting up your speakers speeches or presentations up for all to see does wonders for both your marketing and your clients.
2. Storify
Posting different content to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn is great, and works very well for mid- and pre-event updates, but it can also diffuse the picture. Storify allows you to create a one-stop page for audio, video, photo and text of your event and share it at once across all your social networks.
3. Your Company Blog
Any event management company or communications consultancy will ensure its blog shows off its successes. Easy to find and benefiting your own SEO, a blog is a must-do.
4. 48 hour time limit
For best effect, post-event content needs to start going out within 48 hours of event close, and ideally some of it will start to bleed onto the website while the event s still running. Whichever manner you choose to publicize your event once it s done, get it out there fast. Ensure your event photographers, AV crew and note-taker give you their content as soon as possible and are on standby until materials are out.
How to get an Audience Response System for your Next Event
TIPS & TRICKS
Audience Response Systems (ARS) have been around for a very long time, but it s only recently that I ve started seeing them treated as must-haves by event industry writers. In this post, we introduce you to a few companies that can get ARS set up at your event.
What is an ARS, exactly?
Audience Response Systems allow you to gather live data from your audience, such as opinion polling during a speech or class lecture, for example. The benefits are obvious: increase audience engagement while collecting information, and help your audience feel more connected to the data that they present. Here are a couple of ARS Providers:
Poll Everywhere
Introducing Poll Everywhere from Poll Everywhere on Vimeo.
Some ARS systems actually involve equipment, but Poll Anywhere allows attendees to use Twitter or their mobile devices to respond to presenter questions. The results can be seen live online, or they can be piped directly into a powerpoint presentation. The cool thing about Poll Everywhere is that they allow for open-ended questions. You can ask the audience, for example, What are you doing this afternoon? and the text-messaged answers get posted to an answer board that either just the presenter can see, or everyone can see. Great stuff!
Keepad
Keepad also offers app-based ARS systems that send data to Powerpoint, but they also rent out dedicated hardware keypads for voting, and a little gadget for receiving votes as well. If you re not confident in the wifi or technology available at your venue, or otherwise aren t confident that your audience will have the capacity to vote, getting dedicated equipment may be the way to go.
5 Fancy-Pants Ways to Serve Plain ol Water
TIPS & TRICKS
I don t know what it is about serving specialty water, but people love it: there s something about it that feels decadent. And yet there s really nothing so easy as tossing a handful of fruits or foliage into a pitcher. We ve all got the lemon gig down, but it doesn t cost much to kick it up a notch. Even better? You can match your water to your color palette.
Lavender
Visually arresting and strongly fragrant, tossing a few sprigs of lavender into your water pitchers creates a rural, musky floral scent. Lavender oil is strong, so you won t need much maybe 2 sprigs per pitcher. The water and lavender should soak together for a few minutes prior to serving, so it s good to have multiple pitchers on rotation. (Pro tip: Lavender also does wonders in a pitcher of lemonade).
Cucumber
We couldn t get enough of our first try of cucumber water. Cucumber is famously hydrating, and when we toss it in a pitcher and let it soak, the effect was deeply thirst-quenching: a wonderful mixture of freshness and savory. This one is probably best served in summer, and, unlike lavender water, feels a bit more gender-neutral.
Mint
Too early for a tipple? Let plain ol water stand in for morning mojitos. Muddle up at least 10 sprigs of mint before soaking them in your pitcher.
Goji Berries
Another eye-catcher, toss a handful of brilliant red goji berries into a pitcher of water or at the bottom of each guest s water glass. When the glass is full, the delicate berries slowly float and sink from the top of the glass to the bottom. As they soak, they fatten slightly and a acquire a soft raisin-like consistency. Goji berries are a visual addition only: they impart almost no flavor to the water at all. Bonus: anti-oxidants!
Ginger
Ginger water is excellent in both cold and warm weather, and pairs well with Asian-inspired cuisine. Peel your ginger first, then cut into spears or rounds. Half a large root will flavor a pitcher.
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!)
Your A/V Questions Answered: What is Pattern Projection, and What are the Possibilities?
TIPS & TRICKS
At its most basic, pattern projection and mapping is a stage lighting design technique in which a decorative pattern is washed over a large surface area to create a visual effect. In the past few years, stage lighting technology has developed so drastically that s its now capable of lifting cartoon characters out from behind screens and beaming them into real-life.
While your simple projectors might include a couple of gaudy, pre-programmed star or floral patterns in basic rotating laser lights, suitable for a dingy dance floor, more up-market varieties or clever use of mixed-method techniques, can produce stunning effects when handled by experts.
Your standard low-budget version, available for less than a couple hundred bucks, might toss out some basic patterning a la Windows Media Player, 1999:
In stark contrast, here s an example of some of the beautiful abstract patterns you can achieve what happens people who know what they re doing play around in their own studio with with a dual-lens:
These guys created a complete environment using music and pattern projection:
Curious about the future of pattern projection? Look to the East.
Following in their own glorious wait, what? tradition of giant robots and underwear vending machines, a few years ago Japan rocked up to the light-mapping party already packing a double-dose of next-level weirdness. In case you missed the uproar about it at the time, meet Hatsune Miku, an AI rock star with a synthesized voice and a body rendered entirely in 3D holographic light projection. Hitsune Miku s virtual self, backed up by a live band, performed her hit World is Mine to screaming, sold-out crowds:
Wanna play with the technology yourself on a smaller, miniaturized scale? You ll need an iPad, a mosquito screen, a miniprojector, and this video:
Neat, huh?
Image sources: Featured Image by Kevin Dooley