6 Innovative Outdoor Summer Event Theme Ideas
TIPS & TRICKS
Tis the season for fun in the sun. We recently ran cross this inspiring summer party ideas pinboard on Pinterest, and we re loving it! In the spirit of the season, here are some more ideas for ramping up your outdoor summer shindig.
Image: bonvivant.co.uk
The Craft Beer Garden
Craft beer has become wildly popular in many parts of America, while beer gardens typically outdoor tented sit-down areas with either self-serve beer or table service are a traditional way to relax in most of Europe. Mix up the two by tracking down a couple kegs from your local craft brewery and throwing up a big sunshade. Easy to put together and often a big success (is beer ever not a success?), beer gardens are a great addition to your summer party.
BBQ Contest
Few things can bring together almost all event goers, but a love for tangy barbecue may be one of them. This is particularly great as a summer team-builder: organize a BBQ contest and watch every attendee worth their seasalt, from the CEO to the head of accounting, pick up a pair of tongs. Keep non-meat-eaters involved with veggie kabob or tofu BBQ.
Fairgrounds Theme
Elephant ears, fire-breathers and magicians, oh my! A mini-fun fair is infinitely scaleable for any budget, and isn t just for kids. Looking to go all-out? Rent out a dunk booth, hire some jugglers, and get a cotton-candy stand. On a tighter budget? Pop up some kettle corn and hang some streamers.
Image: 100layercake.com
Old Timey Down Home Picnic
Prop up the old fashioned lemonade stand, break out the fresh peach pie and set up your ice-cream bar. Don t forget the okra!
English garden party
The ideas above may not suit those seeking how to throw an event for the posh and well-heeled. But a touch of the Old Country might provide the inspiration you need. The Queen is well-known for her afternoon teas on the grounds of Buckingham Palace. A great white marquee tent, a skilled caterer, white-tie waiters, and naturally an open croquet green, and you have yourself the makings for your own garden party.
UK-Based Pathfindr is Blazing a Trail for More Accurate Event Wayfinding
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
Wayfinding is the art and science of ensuring that visitors to any location can easily and quickly get around. It s particularly important at large, heavily-trafficked locations, like stadiums, shopping malls and airports. Pathfindr is a new patent-pending technology that could help event planners make navigating large-scale events an interactive mobile affair.
You d think that indoor wayfinding would be after all, we ve all got smartphones and those smartphones come with GPS; but there are issues with GPS technology over small distances, notably that GPS is unreliable across small distances.
According to OpenStreetMap, The accuracy of GPS data depends on many factors. For example, the quality of the GPS receiver, the position of the GPS satellites at the time the data was recorded, the characteristics of the surroundings (buildings, tree cover, valleys, etc) and even the weather. And according to developers on Stackexchange, The United States government currently claims 4 meter RMS (7.8 meter 95{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} Confidence Interval) horizontal accuracy for civilian (SPS) GPS. Vertical accuracy is worse. Mind you, that s the minimum. In reality, best case scenario is usually accuracy within 15 meters or so.
In other words, GPS wouldn t be able to easily track which floor of a tall building your attendees are on, and it doesn t know exactly, to the foot, where attendees are standing it could only give an approximation. GPS is also influenced by air clarity, weather, and connection strength, so if your event was underground or if the sky was cloudy, the accuracy of GPS would decrease even further.
The alternative to GPS was the use of Bluetooth, WiFi, and other close-distance technologies, but these were equally problematic for a variety of reasons, specifically that loss of signal could result in inaccurate readings. Enter indoor wayfinding tools like Pathfindr, whose solution is best described by the company themselves:
Using the front or rear facing camera on your smart device, Pathfindr constantly scans for signature images (markers) on the ceiling or floor. These markers can be read incredibly quickly, and the user s exact position and orientation is then triangulated from this view. When a marker is not in view, the device s array of sensors are used to estimate and track movement. This position is then refined as soon as another marker becomes available.
From the markers we can also determine the user s orientation, unlike other platforms which rely on the unreliable indoor performance of compasses, offering an important advantage to wayfinding. No data is required to operate, meaning GSM deadzones provide reduced barriers to operation.
We think one of Pathfinder s most interesting features is intelligent waypoints, which could allow event managers to send mobile alerts to attendees when they were within a certain proximity of trade show booths, points of interest or activations. The tech can also be tricked out to provide guided mobile tours and customized directions.
This is much-needed stuff for large-scale events, and we hope to see it in wider implementation very soon.
The 5 Most Christmassy Christmas Events the World Over
LIVE EVENTS
Santa-hats off to the event producers responsible for these huge holiday productions, which draw annual audiences in droves.
Radio City Christmas Spectacular, New York
With all that seasonal weather, ice-skating, window shopping and tree-lighting, New York is the epicenter of the American urban Christmas. It s also home to the Radio City Music Hall and the world-famous Rockettes. Every holiday season, the Rockettes high-kick their way through dozens of seasonal dance numbers, drawing annual audiences of over 2 million. In terms of event planning, the Spectacular involves more work than your typical stage show: the beloved Radio City Music Hall is traditionally decorated from roof-to-foundation with eye-popping holiday cheer.
Winter Festival of Lights, Niagara Falls, Canada
For visual wow-factor, the Canadian Winter Festival of Lights takes it home. From mid-November to mid-January, 1.5 million visitors walking or driving the show route enjoy hundreds of stand-alone Christmas light displays, backed by the year-round lights that are projected onto the thundering mists of Niagara Falls after dark.
Hyde Park Winder Wonderland, UK
The annual Winter Wonderland is a 6-week fair of fun and shopping complete with frozen ice-sculpture forests, a Snow Queen, amusement park rides, ice bars, Christmas Markets, and duh, Santa s Village. This event gets our thumbs-up for their stress on sustainability: Winter Wonderland will provide suitable facilities for visitors, traders and operators to recycle their waste and all site waste will be sorted off site to divide out recyclable and non-recyclable materials. Cooking oil will be recycled as bio-fuel. Power, lighting and water usage is kept to a minimum by careful planning.
Cologne Christmas Market, Germany
The 4-week Cologne Christmas Market is actually seven distinct markets that spring up seasonally in the German city of Cologne, with the Cathedral-side market being the main attraction. Seeing 2 million visitors annually, the Cologne Christmas Market is one of the largest in the world. The wares are uber-Christmas as well, with vendors offering snow globes, music boxes, nutcrackers and bratwurst.
Grand Opening of the Christmas Season in Rovaneimi, Finland
For those of you who ve been living in a hole, Rovaniemi in Finland s Lapland, is where the real Santa calls home. Though the location is undeniably Christmassy year-round, at the end of November the big man officially opens the season with a public address. Visitors can see the Northern Lights, hang out with reindeer, or stay in a snow hotel.
Image Sources: Niagara Falls lights picture Copyright CAA Festival of Lights, Santa giving opening address copyright Visit Rovaniemi
Event Registration Software: What s Out There, and When to Build Your Own
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
Event registration is one of the most important processes in event set-up. Do it poorly, and at best, you ll have a ton of complaints. At worst, you ll see a significant drop in attendance as frustrated would-be guests decide they don t have time to bash their heads against your sign-up form. So what are the best tools available to event planners looking to get their online registrations rolling in?
cevent
Cevent is the industry s heavy-lifting event registration system, and its development team is clearly catering to high-demand events. Sadly, as with most big, feature-rich systems, Cevent s website and application design is starting to feel a little bit early-2000 s-trade-show dated, and the event website templates they offer leave your event looking a bit clunky as well. We re hoping they update their look and feel soon, because their feature list is nice and robust.
Eventbrite
Eventbrite is kind of a dual-sided deal. For event planners, it offers ticketing and event management tools. For the public, it offers localized event listings. This symbiotic relationship allows event organizers to publicize their shindigs while handling sign-ups. In terms of their event management toolkit, Eventbrite feels a little more accessible to plebs and smaller event organizers (though larger events are absolutely supported) and has more of a modern, usable interface. They make their money by charging a portion of your ticket sales (around 5{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3}, give or take, which includes the credit card processing fee), so if you re organizing a free event, Eventbrite is completely free. Eventbrite, however, is not very customisable, and if their suite of tools doesn t include one particular feature, there s no real way to get that feature added.
etouches
Etouches is much more than registration software: it also comes with a bunch of venue management features, a budgeting system, automated badge creation, travel management features, and a bunch of other goodness. Etouches has a clearly international bent, with multi-currency support a bunch of major international brands touted as clients.
Those are your three major players, and there are a ton of smaller management software providers out there as well. Not too shabby a selection, and one of those options should work for most situations.
When to build your own
The problem enters in when you ve got very specific event requirements not covered by traditional features. Example: when running political events based at the White House, the U.S. Secret Service typically requires personal information on attendees in advance in order to be able to run pre-event background checks. If you re looking to automate a registration process like that (we did that once!), you re gonna have to custom-build.
A word of warning: Building your own is not a process to be undertaken lightly, but if you have the budget, the time, and set of system requirements that can t be met by out-of-the-box software (security requirements for political event registration, for example), it may be the best way to go. Realistically, you re looking at a 6-month design and development period for your registration system, and that s providing you choose the right team. You ll want to ensure that whoever you choose has experience building secure systems that are user-friendly, and you should specifically ask to see examples of similar work.
In terms of budget, a very basic system is likely to cost somewhere in the $30,000 range (for basic registration management only, say), and prices for building complex systems can jump as high as $500,000 (ouch!), so unless you re swimming in time and money (and who is, right?), building something just for a single event isn t terribly cost-effective. The best idea here is to think long-term:
But I m not a techie where do I even start?
First of all: avoid part-time freelancing sites like Odesk, eLance and Getafreelancer. Producers on those sites are rewarded for getting in and out of projects quickly, and they often deliver cheap, fast, poor-quality code. You are unlikely to get any hand-holding or support for the product you are given. What you want is a reliable freelance team that can stay in close contact with you during the build, installation and deployment of your system.
You ll need, at the very least, a designer with experience designing websites and other interface, and a developer (coder) with experience creating database-driven applications. One of the best places to look is on developer- or designer-directed sites like Stack Overflow or Creative Bloq. Good luck!
Mobile Media Tour Inspiration: Great Vehicle Wraps and Mobile Billboards
EVENT PRODUCTION INSPIRATION
Vehicle wrapping is an artform. At its most basic, we re talking printing out a billboard on removable vinyl and cutting it to the shape of your bus, food truck, SUV, etc. Highly customized and creative work involves thinking with the shape and outline of the vehicle and using those shapes to create optical illusions or other attention-grabbing advertisements (Need something done? Give us a shout, we can wrap anything).
We re loving the stark, manly modernity of this Bacon Bacon food truck wrap, printed by Wraps1.com.
Hats off to the minds at YKCR / Y&R Advertising Agency, who came up with this genius wrap for a local Irish Music Festival. Using the natural structure of the vehicle as a canvas, YKCR created a natural accordion with articulated buses.
Printed at Australia s Graphic Art Mart, this clever mobile ad makes it appear as though the bus has backed into a street sign a sure way to attract attention.
This super eye-catching wrap concept was never actually printed, but was submitted to the (now defunct) 2007-2008 Rhino Rolling mobile ad awards.
Created by the vehicle-wrapping Einsteins at Vector Media, this whale bus isn t just wrapped on the outside: the inside was also painted pink like the inside of a whale s mouth, and the dangling passenger handle grips were shaped like whale teeth.
H&R Block Get Your Billion Back America Campaign
COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS
In early 2014, H&R Block launched an experiential marketing program that builds off their Get Your Billion Back America ad campaign. The tour puts the brand in the hands of consumers and rewards them with cash.
Developed in partnership with Ketchum, Decibel Management designed and created a custom, interactive kiosk composed of four computers, multiple touchscreens, cameras and ATM components.
The 20-foot-by-20-foot kiosk is set up in high-traffic locations where participants take a two-minute quiz which includes imagining what they would do with a billion dollars. As a reward, the kiosk dispenses up to $100 per participant.
This kiosk is definitely a first of its kind. It is part ATM, part photo/video booth and was built from scratch for the Get Your Billion Back events hosted by H&R Block. And it was built in 6 weeks, from concept to completion.
H&R Block Rewards Consumers With Cash
Marketing Daily
By Tanya Irwin
March 26, 2014
http://www.mediapost.com/
H&R Block has launched an experiential marketing program that puts the brand in the hands of consumers and rewards them with cash.
To build off the Get Your Billion Back America ad campaign, Ketchum, Decibel Management, M1 Interactive and CGS Premier created a custom, interactive kiosk composed of four computers, multiple touchscreens, cameras and ATM components.
The 20-foot-by-20-foot kiosk is set up in high-traffic locations where participants take a two-minute quiz which includes imagining what they would do with a billion dollars. As a reward, the kiosk dispenses up to $100 per participant.
The kiosk is definitely a first of its kind for us or for anyone, says Christina Lively, H&R Block director of brand strategy and integration. It s part ATM, part photo/video booth and was built from scratch for our Get Your Billion Back events.
The activation concept is based on a study H&R Block conducted last year that revealed that when taxpayers prepare their own tax returns, about one in five is leaving money on the table by not claiming all available tax credits and deductions, Lively says. These inaccuracies contribute to more than $1 billion in unclaimed money.
The kiosk program is available in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Kansas City and New York. The campaign includes four spots running on broadcast, digital and social media.
The reaction has been incredible, Lively tells Marketing Daily. We set out to surprise and delight consumers, and this activation did just that. Consumers can t believe that H&R Block is giving away real money and long lines formed very quickly in all of the markets.
About 600 consumers have gone through the experience, and thousands of others have been exposed to the brand onsite and through event videos, she says.
Lively said it has not been determined whether the kiosk will be expanded to more cities next year.
We ve had a lot of fun with this throughout the season and would love to continue surprising and delighting people the way we have with our Get Your Billion Back events, she says.
Look Behind You, Mr. President: 5 Examples of Political Campaign Event Backdrops
CAMPAIGN, EVENT INDUSTRY, LIVE EVENTS, POLITICAL
2012 Democratic National Convention
Campaign and Convention event production in American presidential races revolves around key themes that nobody ever strays too far from. In terms of substance, candidates may be far apart, but for style- flag and country are mainstays on both sides.
Let s take a look at the set design of the 2012 Democratic National Convention. This is actually a nifty piece of political event management. When the cameras are zeroed in on speakers, the backdrop of American flags is all the cameras will pick up. However, when zoomed out, the Obama campaign logo is placed at the center of an array of American icons such as the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore. The presence of the Washington Monument may not have helped the Democrats shake their inside-the-Beltway reputation, but all in all, a very solid piece from the team at Tribe, Inc. They are a mainstay for the DNC production design, as well as a ton of top tier concert and event design (SuperBowl, Ultra Music Fest, Etc).
2012 Republican National Convention
Another example of political campaign production gone right. The message here could initially seem far more direct. An American flag takes up the entirety of screens that make up the set, reinforcing the GOP s patriotic credo. But look closer and you will see the entryway beneath which speakers enter and exit. The entire ensemble has the air of a modern-day Roman archway, adding a subdued but powerful Hail to the Chief touch. This set was developed by the design team at Jack Morton, and was a great pairing of warm wood material and cutting edge video production.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff Campaign Event
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is in a tough spot as she runs for re-election. She first won by riding on the coattails of former President Lula, who stepped down with 80{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} approval ratings. Dilma has not maintained these levels of support, with accusations of corruption culminating in nationwide protests earlier this summer. But her political campaign this year has seen her reinvent herself in just the right way. By holding this sort of street campaign event, she maintains a leadership image while rebranding herself as regular folks . The use of just her first name and her face are enough to draw a connection to voters in Brazil who like to feel their leaders are not above them.
China s Politburo Standing Committee
How aptly named is the Standing Committee? This was how the Communist Party of China chose to introduce 1.4 billion people to their new leaders. While the CPC has never been known for its sense of political flair, this was actually a very finely crafted performance. It showed the world a unity of leadership and promised a continuation of political strategic planning, warning reformers that a break with traditions of the past was not on the cards. And get a load of that traditional Chinese art on the backdrop: a majestic touch of cultural heritage.
Marine Le Pen, Front National Campaign Event
A simple political message is easy to reinforce with a simple political image. While the policies of Marine Le Pen, leader of the French extreme right Front National, may seem repugnant, her populist image and firebrand rhetoric have galvanized millions. A campaign event backdrop of French flags and the Eiffel Tower rising into the sky are all she needs to hammer home the anchor of her political campaign image: she is Marianne 2.0, the revolutionary emblem of France reborn.
A Quick Intro to Social Seating Software for Event Managers
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
At the end of the day, events are all about people. Great food, fabulous entertainment, gorgeous location none of it really matters without good company. Problem is, everyone s definition of good company is different, and event planners have little insight into who wants to be where. Named one of 2014 s event trends, Social Seating allows attendees to choose who they sit next to based on data in their social network profiles, or allows event managers to assign seating based on pre-determined groups.
The technology has obvious event management applications, but it s also being implemented across a variety of industries. Dutch airline KLM, for example, allows passengers to choose their seat based on public Google+, Facebook, or LinkedIn profile data, increasing the possibility that they might make a career-enhancing or personally fulfilling connection during the flight. Very cool.
The Major Players
The leader in the Social Seating industry for events is a called Social Tables, which focuses on providing diagramming and check-in while linking up to catering at the back of the house. Social Tables features a drag-and-drop interface, allowing you (or the guests themselves) to see who s sitting where, and then place guests accordingly by simply dragging them into an open seat. It also allows you to group attendees by tags (for example, speakers ), so when you drag a single member of that group to a table, all other attendees with the same tag are automatically seated nearby.
Seat ID takes a slightly different and wider tack, targeting travel (like trains and planes) and venues (like stadiums). Check out their intro vid:
Another up-and-coming company in the social seating arena, recently nominated for the Eventex awards, is Seats.io, a flexible seating script that your web team can integrate with your booking and payment system. Seats.io is ideal for event, venue or travel managers who have an existing checkout process, would like to tie a selectable seating chart into their checkout.
Here to Stay
We don t think this trend is going away, and it stands to reason that social seating is set to become an expected must-have. Catch this one in its infancy and stay ahead of that curve.
Throwback Thursday: 5 Vintage Stage Designs & Sketches from the Good Ol Days
EVENT DESIGN
Stage design has come a long way in the last century. We dug through some cool online libraries and put together a collection of vintage sketches photographs showing stage setups and backdrops from the last few hundred years or so.
1620: Il Solimano
Designed by Jacques Callot for Act IV of the opera Il Solimano, this 400-year-old design shows where the stage stops and the backdrop starts interesting!
1815, Mozart s Magic Flute
One of the most impressive incunabula of the intellectual enthusiasm in the Romantic period for the Orient (and especially for Egypt) was [Karl Friedrich] Schinkel s stage design for Mozart s opera The Magic Flute. For the Queen of the Night it shows the Egyptian starry sky.
1873: The King Has Spoken
Look at this one! Property of the National Library of France, this image shows a beautiful stage design done by Charles-Antoine Cambon for opera Le roi l a dir ( The King Has Spoken ). This is right around the time that Adolphe Appia and other cutting edge set designers of the mid-1800s began abandoning 2D perspective backdrops for 3D.
1930: The Tsar s Bride
The stage designs of Ivan Bilibin are instantly recognizable for their Art Deco style with heavy Russian overtones. This set design was done for the play The Tsar s Bride , this particular set being The Tsar s Chambers . Bilibin s work is worth delving into a little more deeply if you re interested in antique set designs; here s a digital archive of some of his work.
1941 Anti-Nazi Rally
Here s one for the history books: Churchill and Stalin team up against Germany in the backdrop of this 1941 stage. Guests seated on stage in front of a backdrop of giant posters at the Aid to Soviet Congress, Brisbane City Hall, October 1941. Three thousand people attended the opening of the Aid to Soviet Congress, organised to support closer military, cultural, trade and diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. A collection raised 155 pounds. Speakers at the Congress included Mr G. C. Taylor, MLA, President of the Australian-Russian Association.
5 Inspiring Examples of Event Signage Design
EVENT DESIGN
We re loving this: Founded in 2003, Defqon 1 is an annual large-scale music festival held in the Netherlands and Australia. For the 2014 festival, the Defqon 1 organizers asked creative collective Wanprestatie to make a series of hand-painted signs for each area of the festival. They did a stunning job. Check out the making of video and the aftermovie:
Here are 4 more examples of beautiful, creative event signage to get your juices flowing:
National Innovation Summit Signs, Gleren Meneghin
Here s a pixel-perfect example of highly corporate design perfectly executed.
NYC Design Week series, Jous Lara
If you re doing the signage design for NYC Design Week, you will be judged. Designer here did a great job of creating a visual identity for this event that is eyecatching, meshed with the surrounding environment, and communicated the event message.
Extreme Barcelona Event Signage, Mark Brooks
Love this event signage design: right on-theme, though certainly extremely labor-intensive to illustrate.
Jewish Culture Festival, Studio Otwarte
For the 2013 Jewish Culture Festival, Studio Otwarte did a gold-trimmed-on-white series with vintage photography.These guys nailed it, and one picture really can t do this justice. Don t miss checking out the rest of this stunning series.
