Market share and mindshare: A successful event can bring heaps of both kinds of attention to your business. The key is to plan it so that your execution is flawless. That's where the practical concerns such as insurance, safety, security, and logistics come into play. Many decide to hire an event planner once the scale of even a "small" event is understood.

This article focuses on getting the most marketing mileage possible. Let's look at three crucial time periods that can affect how the marketing is received: prior to the event, during the event, and after the event.

Prior to the Event

Major planning starts here. What will the event say about your company, service, or products? What is the desired mood you want to achieve? What will attendees learn, or what other benefits will they receive from attending? This is the time to craft the strong message that will be repeated throughout the event.

[ ] Comprehensive marketing plan

Direct mail, website, radio spots, TV, newspaper ads, film and photography, and other methods should be part of the planning process depending on the audience you want to reach.

[ ] Logo, colors, and style guide

Events with strong visual branding throughout the experience tend to be more memorable and feel more cohesive.

[ ] Press kits -- paper and digital

Plan to notify local and/or regional media prior to the event for the best hope of earned media. At minimum, you'll need a press release with photos, bios, and information packets ready to distribute.

[ ] Social media marketing plan

Word-of-mouth is still the cheapest and most effective marketing method; social media should be the centerpiece.

[ ] Pre-show emails

Whether a part of your existing newsletter or as stand-alone promotion, emails are an important way to build buzz.

[ ] PPC, SEO, and online advertising

Target keywords and phrases for advertising leading up to your event.

[ ] Create the agenda packet

This document is a potent sales tool to get attendees. Highlight the benefits of attending and the proposed schedule of events. There should be at least two versions, one electronic and one printed for the event itself.

[ ] Show giveaways

Order the giveaways you'll use during the show to encourage participation.

During the Event

Every part of the event contains a marketing possibility. A strong, consistent message should be seen and felt from start to finish. Plan activities that support this overall message and be sure that all materials designed for attendees to take with them also conveys your theme.

[ ] Creative materials at the venue

Consider distributing packets of information in a suitable format. This may include novelty tchotchkes or branded everyday items. It may mean digital materials, such as free apps or games.

[ ] Visuals at the venue

Marketing potentials include all signage, posters, banners, balloons, boards, name badges, tent cards, plaques, etc.

[ ] Filming and photography

Events are goldmines for marketing materials. Be ready with a professional photographer or videographer. Hire a pro to ensure quality images and good lighting setup.

[ ] Social media "live streaming," "live tweeting," or similar

Have a dedicated group of people creating social media updates for Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites to maximize and capture the real-time experience.

[ ] Collect testimonials

Video is the ideal way to collect testimonials since you can reuse this later (be sure to have attendees sign a release). Soliciting written feedback and photos also work well.

After the Event

Immediately after the event is a time to collect feedback, materials, and measurements. All of these data points can be processed for improvement in the future or used in upcoming marketing materials. Organize the post-event media and other information as diligently as you planned it for best results.

[ ] Measure and report on social media outreach

Use a site like Hashtracking.com to measure discussion reach.

[ ] Collect links to social media updates

You will be able to point to these again later since most will stay online for a long time.

[ ] Archive the event on your website or post again to social media

This archive can provide valuable social proof for future events.

[ ] Collect and organize feedback

Attendee testimonials can be organized for future use, as can post-event survey responses. Look through feedback for verbiage useful for marketing future events. Be sure to get permission for attribution.

For more detailed steps check out The Definitive Guide to Event Marketing produced by Marketo. It is a free download with email registration.

Featured images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source 

Katie McCaskey is a freelance journalist who covers event marketing tips and trends for Vistaprint, a leading source for address labels, invitations, and other products to help you market your next event successfully. Katie has written about marketing for 12 years and is co-owner of a neighborhood grocery/cafe outside of Washington, D.C. 

Photo By: Joe Shlabotnik

For most of us, at least 40 hours of our week is spent in the sprawling urban world, surrounded by the glass & concrete of office towers and bumper-to-bumper traffic congestion.

When it comes time to host a meeting, the venue of choice often ends up being in the exact same environment, even though most events are typically meant to act as a change of pace from the normal day-to-day working life. So why not shake things up a bit and host a meeting outside of the city instead?

Out in the countryside, you have nearly endless choices for unique and memorable meeting locations that are as far from the metropolitan experience as you can get, including everything from valley resorts, to forest cottages, charming hotels, and so much more.

For both event planners and attendees, hosting a meeting outside of the city has a number of benefits, including enjoying a relaxing & laid-back environment, taking in the fresh air and peaceful scenery of rural areas, and inviting the opportunity to take part in team building activities that you just can’t find in a city.

Enjoy A Laid-Back, Small Town Feel

Help your meeting attendees escape the chaos and bustle of city life for a little while by hosting your event in a small town, rural area, or secluded location. Outside of the city you’re guaranteed to find locations that offer a laid-back atmosphere surrounded by small town hospitality and charm that you just can’t find anywhere else.

One of the best reasons to escape the city for your next meeting is that it gives attendees a chance to wind down some stress from their day-to-day working lives. This can hopefully lead to a much more enjoyable & productive event, as well as a more memorable experience than having just another get-together downtown.

In fact, psychological research has shown that being in novel environments; from a quaint small town hotel all the way to something incredibly unique like a wine barrel room tends to lead to more pleasurable feelings and improved outside-the-box thinking. As a result, hosting your next meeting in these types of locations can have a hugely positive impact on the quality of the event.

Take-in the Fresh Air & Scenery of the Countryside

Taking any opportunity to reconnect with nature is always a good thing, and you can help your meeting attendees out by booking your next event far beyond the skyscrapers and highways of the city. The fresh air and scenery of rural spaces will do wonders to calm some minds, leading to a more relaxing and productive gathering.

In a city it can be easy to lose touch with the natural wonder of the world, and the constant buzz of urban life can be draining at times. Having just another meeting in the a city environment might lead to a less than enthusiastic crowd, so you’ll probably be greatly appreciated for taking a leap and planning an event that gets all your attendees out into nature for a change of scenery.

You don’t even have to go far outside of the city to reconnect with the natural world. For example, if you take about a 90-minute drive outside of Los Angeles, you’ll find the peaceful Korakia Pensione oasis villa in Palm Springs, or if you’re in Edmonton, Alberta and up for a short flight, you can experience the natural beauty of the Athabasca forest in nearby Fort McMurray.

Get Involved in Unique Outdoor Activities

If you’re planning a team building event rather than the usual conference or typical business meeting, consider doing it outside of the comfort zone of your team’s day-to-day city lives, and explore what the countryside has to offer instead. This change of pace can lead to once-in-a-lifetime experiences that can be a huge help in building longtime bonds and unforgettable stories.

While team building events in the city can often be meaningful and bring your team closer together, the impact of sharing a completely new experience in relatively unknown environments can really leave a lasting mark on how your team sees each other. The great outdoors of the countryside encourage a bigger sense of adventure, challenge, and fun that simply can’t be replicated in between office towers in the downtown core.

Depending on the destination and time of year, your team building activities can include a large variety of unique experiences. You can do everything from hiking in the woods outside of your hotel, sailing the waterfront outside of your cozy maritime meeting venue, to skiing the slopes alongside your mountain resort. The variety of countryside activities are nearly endless, but no matter what you choose to do, it’s certain that your team will never forget it!

Michael Smith is an Inbound Marketing Consultant at Powered By Search, writing on behalf of Quality Hotel Fort McMurray offering hotel rooms and meeting space in northern Alberta, Canada.

Facebook Events is a marketing tool that’s growing in popularity with small business owners. Even those who’ve just started a business or are on a tight budget still need to get the word out about the opening of their business or the introduction of a new product.

Since Facebook Events are free, it’s smart for them to be included in a small business’s promotion and advertisement campaign. To get the most out of a Facebook event, there are specific dos and don’ts a businessperson can follow.

Following is a list of Facebook Events best practices can help maximize their promotional benefits.

Facebook Events Best Practices

Dos

• Use Facebook Events Sparingly. Most people don’t throw parties for everyday occasions, and it wouldn’t be wise to host a Facebook event for every business occurrence. Rather than hosting an event to announce a new greeting card on their website, a paper goods business might host a Facebook event to introduce their new line of wedding invitations before peak wedding season.
• Promote an Event through Additional Venues. Promoting a Facebook event on Facebook only is not enough, even if it’s open to the public. The event should be promoted on a business’s website, as well as through Twitter, email, and on the company blog. Businesses shouldn’t overlook traditional promotional methods either, such as word-of-mouth and fliers placed in customers’ bags.
• Increase Communication for a More Successful Event. Good communication before and during an event can increase the sales a business achieves from their Facebook event. In addition to conversing with invitees directly on the event page, business owners can also use hosted VOip for real-time communication and email.

Don’ts

• Don’t Be Vague or Long-Winded. The overwhelming amount of information available these days means that consumers are looking for information that’s concise and to the point. It’s best to keep Facebook event information brief, to the point, and enticing. For example, it would be more effective to say “You’re invited to view and purchase our new line of handmade, nature-themed wedding invitations printed on recycled paper” than to say “Come see our new wedding invitations.”
• Don’t Forget to Involve the Community. It’s always smart to be community-minded. Anytime a business can get out in the public to meet consumers and benefit the community at the same time, everyone benefits. This can be achieved by supplementing an online debut of a new line of products with a debut at a local exhibition where 20 percent of all proceeds will go to a local food bank or charity.
• Don’t Assume that People Won’t Be Interested. It’s common for small business owners – especially those who are new in the business world – to make the assumption that certain people won’t be interested in their event. As a result, the business owner doesn’t invite these people. Avoid this mistake, and let everyone decide for themselves. The results may be surprising.

All Things in Moderation

Small businesses that are successful are run by people who know it’s wise to not put all their eggs in one basket. As beneficial as Facebook Events can be to the promotion of a new business or new business line, this marketing tool should never be used exclusively.

An effective social media marketing campaign will include consistent efforts in two to four different social media venues. Facebook Events should be viewed as an added boost to increase results from the current marketing campaign, attract new people, or announce a new addition to the business. Like anything else, if the use of them is overdone, their effect will weaken to the point of no longer being worth the effort.

About the Author:

Mary Ylisela is a writer and social media marketing manager who is passionate about helping other freelancers and small-business owners learn how to promote their businesses. She writes for companies such as Vel.net.

Photo Credit: Nigel Lamb

It turns out there are a lot of parallels between direct mail copywriting and the seduction techniques you learn while dating -- one major one being what you don't say can make you appear more intriguing and desirable. 

As Francine Prose writes in Reading Like a Writer, "[…] dialogue usually contains as much or even more subtext than it does text. More is going on under the surface than on it. One mark of [badly] written dialogue is that it is only doing one thing, at most, at once."

Although it goes without saying, you don't want your copy to be unethical. You certainly don't want to omit facts for the sake of misleading someone. In the dating world this would be like omitting such necessary facts as, "I'm actually married." In direct marketing, it might be lessening dangerous outcomes, such as, "This product is made of carcinogenic materials -- no biggie."

Direct Mail Techniques & Event Marketing Campaigns

Seduction is even more applicable if your direct mail piece is promoting an event. Event marketing with the right invitation or direct mail piece should convey just enough information to entice -- but not so much that it runs the risk of appearing formulaic. It should keep the prospect on familiar ground with just enough enticement to be compelling. 

You've got limited room to communicate in a direct mail piece, so it's just as important to consider what you don't say as what you do say. What are you implying? Where are you leading your prospects?

Are you irresistible? Or, as Sally Hogshead asks, are you fascinating?

How can you master the unspoken in your direct marketing for events? Here are some crucial areas to examine. Master these, and you'll harness the larger task -- communicating the unspoken.

Who Are You Inviting? Who Is Your Ideal Prospect?

Defining your ideal prospect is a fundamental, so don't make the common mistake of glossing over it and not taking the time to clearly define the best person for your event.

A friend of mine is on a mission to get married. She has compiled a list of ideal qualities in her mate, taking inspiration from Amy Webb's book, Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match. My friend has adopted Webb's system of scoring qualities for a minimum score to avoid wasting time with people who don't make the cut.

Similarly, you should be as granular as possible about the preferences and aspirations of your targeted customer. Narrowing your focus and writing to "one person" assists you in writing the best copy. To be seductive on a date, it works well to speak using the words they would choose; the same is true when you're approaching your direct mail prospect. Every Don Juan knows nothing is sweeter than the sound of your own name whispered in your ear...

Does Your Prospect Understand Your Reference?

In dating you might casually joke using a favorite line from a movie or music you enjoy, curious if the other person "gets it." If they do, you instantly have a common interest and shared experience. That begins the bonding process.

Similarly, in direct mail think of your ideal prospect. If you reference an event, a time period, or specific set of circumstances, where is this most likely to lead your prospect's mind? One small reference can invoke a larger, shared experience. The value of using this reference is to build credibility and familiarity, or, in another word, to bond.

Be clear about the references you choose and what, specifically, you'd like the reference to conjure up in the mind of your prospect. Will the reference underscore your seriousness? Will the reference spark memories of fun times? Be very, very selective. The right reference will skyrocket your response rate, while the wrong one will leave your prospect cold.

Are You Likeable?

As the old saying goes, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" -- which is to say, are you likeable?

When your direct mail or invitation copy contains an upbeat, friendly, and trustworthy tone, you, as the direct marketer, benefit in several ways. One of the primary benefits is that prospects relax. When they relax and find you trustworthy they naturally "fill in the blanks" -- which is to say, they'll start generating their own reasons for continuing a relationship with you, whether it is to continue reading your sales letter or opening your email newsletters.

Be likeable enough to make the pitch immediately, but, barring that -- after all, some people don't just jump into action right away! -- at least be likeable enough to start the conversion process. Research is the start of the process. Inspire your prospects to dig further for the facts about the event you're promoting.

So, brush up on your seduction skills. Mastering the unspoken in your event marketing campaigns is one of the most powerful ways to connect with your audiences and drive action. Connection is just a few hot breaths away from conversion.

Katie McCaskey is a freelance journalist who writes for VistaprintDeals.com, the official provider of Vistaprint coupon codes for customized direct marketing products for small businesses across the globe. Katie is also an author and co-owner of a grocery and café in Staunton, Virginia.

The Banquet Area for the 2004 Awards Gala (Source: eventproducer.com)

The very first event we’ll be featuring for eVenues show and tell is the Palm Springs International Film Festival, a star-studded gala event which Richard De Santis, President and CEO of Event Management Productions, helped plan as the Executive Producer:

What were the goals of the event?

In January, as has been the case for the past 13 years, we produced the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards Gala. It is one of the major fundraising events for the Palm Springs Film Society which is its parent 501 C3 Corporation.

The event is a black-tie movie awards show which is a major precursor to the Academy Awards. Every year for the last decade more than half of our award recipients have gone on to be nominated for an Academy Award and about two thirds combined for Academy and Golden Globe awards. The goal is more an issue of branding than of attendance or execution. The Palm Springs Film Festival Awards Gala has become an international brand rivaling both the Academy Awards and the Golden globes in its reach and stature.

The challenge is twofold. First we have to guess right on whom we are offering awards to. We know what quality and merit in filmmaking is but on many occasions quality and award worthy films and actors never received the recognition that they might or should. The challenge is to avoid selecting films that may be exceptional artistic successes but don’t necessarily reflect that in the box office. Our biggest challenge is cutting off ticket sales because even though tickets to this show can be extraordinarily expensive we are usually sold out in less than 3 to 4 weeks.

What did you feel was the biggest challenge for this event? How did you overcome that challenge?

This show began essentially as a homegrown celebration of film to promote Palm springs. It has largely remained that way for over a decade but in 2000 with new and invigorated leadership the scope and direction of the show became less a local party and more a very glitzy social event aimed at seriously promoting filmmaking as well as Palm Springs.

There was a refocused effort to kindle or in fact rekindle Hollywood’s love affair with Palm Springs. With the film society and the city working in partnership it became relatively easy to reignite the excitement that Hollywood had for Palm Springs. It was a little more difficult to redefine the quality of the show as a very serious cinema awards event but again, a new board in a rededicated effort was able to accomplish this feat in a fairly short period of time.

What do you feel was the most successful aspect of this event?

There are two parts of the show that are success stories. The first is that the event has grown into a strong international brand with sponsorships such as Cartier and Mercedes-Benz and many more. Palm Springs International Film Festival awards Gala is recognized virtually everywhere as a very serious path to other awards.

Model Astrid Bryan poses in front of a Cartier backdrop (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

This has also led to a Renaissance of Palm Springs itself with a new downtown emerging that keeps the flavor of old Palm Springs of its early Hollywood heyday and enhances some of the other phenomenal growth success stories such as the Palm Springs Art Museum, the desert air Museum, the Palm Springs Opera Guild and many other interesting cultural activities held within the city.

What were some lessons learned? How would you do the event differently the second time around?

I think the biggest lesson learned is not to look back. This has been a very successful branding effort and unless there is a major need as there was about 15 years ago to retool the entire event there is very little that we would do differently. The extraordinary growth of this event to an international brand suggests that the path we are on at least for the current period of time does not require a do-over.

About Richard DeSantis: Richard DeSantis is a well known producer of quality shows such as the Palm Springs International Awards Gala, Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards, Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, and many others. He is an instructor in the use of lighting for special effect and event management, and has won national awards for his productions. He spent years in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington DC developing his craft.

About eVenues Show and Tell

Over the past couple years at the eVenues blog we’ve conducted several interviews about putting on green events, political events, even social media war rooms. Each of these meetings had different challenges and goals. Considering how popular these interview posts have turned out to be, we’ve decided to make them a regularly occurring feature: The eVenues event planner show and tell.

To participate, you just have to tell us about an event that your recently helped plan by answering these 4 questions:

1. Describe an event you recently helped plan. What were the goals of the event?
2. What did you feel was the biggest chalenge for this event. How did you overcome that challenge?
3. What do you feel was the most successful aspect of the event?
4. What were some lessons learned? How would you do the event differently the second time around?

Feel free to send your submissions/questions to kenji[-at-]evenues.com and your event could be the next one featured!

Picture this: You work at an online non-profit. You reach out to your users asking them to put on events in order to celebrate your organization’s birthday with the intention of driving new users and activity on your website.

The result of your outreach? You raise more than $509,825 within the course of six days.

This was the kind of offline event success that Kiva, a website that helps its users make microloans to underprivileged entrepreneurs, enjoyed last year. Since April is the Month of Microfinance, and since writing about successful events is what we do, we reached out to Brandon Smith, the Community Marketing Coordinator at Kiva, to learn just how this was accomplished. We also speculate a bit on how Kiva’s success could be used as a model for other successful offline events for a largely online community.

Online Meeting Spaces Come First

Even before Kiva started actively coordinating with volunteer event planners across the country, its lenders were already organizing events. The Kiva New York lending team, for example, started out as a small, casually organized group where lenders within the city could meet for happy hour and socialize with other lenders. Since its founding in 2008, however, the team has grown to more than 2,600 members and has lent more than $1,144,000 worth of loans to entrepreneurs in need. The growth of the team and the number of loans was due in part to the many events held by the group–everything from wine tastings to 5k runs.

The New York lending team organized a 5k run independent of Kiva HQ.

All of this, however, would have had a difficult time getting off the ground if there wasn’t a place for Kiva lenders in New York to get in touch with each other. By providing this basic functionality, Kiva was able to facilitate the online meeting between some very enthusiastic lenders who, noticing that they had a lot of values and interests in common, decided they wanted to meet offline. From these casual beginnings, eventually the New York team created a website of their own complete with a blog and and events calendar.

If you have community of online users, do what you can to provide a space for community members to get in touch with each other. While Kiva does this by creating team pages whereby team captains can message members and make announcements through a message board, you don’t necessarily have to go this far for your organization. You could start out, for example, with links to a Meetup group or a Google group for each major city, where users can communicate and organize happy hours and other meetups on a regular basis. If your online users are passionate about what you do and who you are as an organization, they will naturally want to meet other people who are passionate about your organization as well. You just have to provide them with the means to do it.

Helping Facilitate Offline Events

Besides providing a space for people to communicate online, what can you do to encourage more events, events which help you reach some of the goals you’ve set for your organization?

First of all, while many people may want to organize an event, not everyone may know where to start. This is where an event resource page can come in handy. “There’s a site at kiva.org/events that we created as a launchpad for all of these offline events that could potentially happen around the world.” says Smith, “A lot of people really took to it and we started developing a community of people who were interested in offline events.”

Kiva in a Box: A Free Resource for Event Organizers

The centerpiece of this offline event launchpad has to be Kiva in a Box, a free resource created by Smith and the Kiva team last year. Inside this box is everything Kiva, from Kiva balloons to Kiva event hosting T-shirts to Kiva Cocktail recipes. Also, and perhaps most importantly, there’s a set of 10 free trial cards which event attendees who aren’t Kiva members can use as a way to experience the Kiva lending process without initially putting any of their own money in.

Not only does the “Kiva in a Box” provide a free resource for Kiva event planners, but it also provides Kiva HQ with a list of people who are interested in organizing events. Thus, when Kiva wants do nationwide event campaigns like the birthday loan-a-thon it did last October, Kiva HQ has a ready-made list of would be event organizers whom they can contact about the campaign.

Harnessing the Power of Your Community

While offline events may not be appropriate for every online community, it’s definitely worth looking into. The commitment you make can be minimal at first. See if you can’t organize your fans into a online group where they would be able to communicate often. From there you can gauge just how active your community can be. It may even be good to organize some initial meetups yourself to see if they’d be worthwhile. These meetups can be:

Social Events

A happy hour or wine tasting where members of your community can get to know each other. Be sure to encourage members to bring friends and also provide a “station” like a laptop or iPad with brochures and other material laid out so that visitors can learn more about your organization. Also, do what you can to have tie-ins to your organization at the event.

A Kiva New York Wine Tasting Event (Source: Kiva NYC Blog)

For the Kiva New York wine tastings, the team captain, Valbona Bushi, said that they chose wines from the countries where Kiva entrepreneurs happen to live. Not only that, but they often also sell some of the actual products created by Kiva loan recipients at the events. While the main purpose of the events are social, the tie-ins to Kiva are always there.

Cross-Promotional Events

A Book Signing Event in LA (Source: The International Book of Bob Facebook Page)

Kiva is currently encouraging their volunteer event planners to put on book club events organized around the promotion of the International Bank of Bob book, a personal account of Bob Harris, who went around the world actually meeting the recipients of his Kiva loans. In order to promote awareness of the book, Kiva sent out free copies to active members on the “Kiva in a Box” list, and suggested organizing book club events as well as to put the word out for when Bob Harris was in town doing a book tour.

Goal Oriented Events

Perhaps you want to organize some event like Kiva’s birthday loan-a-thon to reach a goal of raising a certain amount of money over a specific period of time. In order to make this work Kiva created a Loan-a-thon leaderboard showing the teams who lent the largest amount as well as the total amount lent during the six day time period. The page updated by the minute and served as a rallying point for all the teams.

The lengths that some event organizers went to help Kiva reach its Loan-a-thon goal was impressive. In just one of many examples, Miku Sakamoto, the organizer for the Austin Loan-a-thon event, assembled an event team, lined up sponsors for food, drinks, and raffle prizes as well as made event flyers. Finally she promoted the event through every conceivable channel including Eventbrite, Facebook, online community calendars, locals news stations, and finally through the Kiva Austin team message itself. The result was a well attended event that helped raise $2,575 in loans in just one night.

“Like-Minded People”

“I think there’s such value in having these small events where people can see other Kiva lenders face-to-face.” Says Sakamoto, “[The Austin event] was really awesome because I could see people talking and they light up when they talk about who they lent to and how much of a difference it made. It’s very exciting to meet like-minded people.”

And that’s what offline events are all about. While an inspiring online presence with videos and case studies and blog posts can go a long way. offline meetings can inspire volunteers to work extremely hard to pull off incredible events with no compensation other than the joy of working with like minded people for a great cause.

Over the past four years we've compiled the largest database of meeting rooms and event spaces on the web. We started in Seattle, then quickly expanded to markets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, New York and Washington DC.

We quickly realized that although we had a lot of venues, many first time visitors to our site found all the choices a little overwhelming. This is why we added a filter sidebar to each of our listings pages so that users could narrow down their search by the three criteria that mattered the most: capacity, price, and neighborhood. This definitely helped our users find exactly what they needed without spending an inordinate amount of time sorting through the various options.

As we continued to talk with and get feedback from our users, however, we realized that what they really wanted was a real human being to help them find the very best venue for a particular event. This is why we created the "Full Serve" option whereby our users, often first time event planners, would provide us with specific information about their event and we would get back to them with the best possible options.

While all these innovations have helped improve the user experience, we continued to look for other ways to help event planners find the perfect space.

After watching user behavior through our analytics data, it became clear to us that not everyone who visted our site was looking to book a venue right away. Rather, they were "window shopping" for an event that they may do some time down the line.

For these window shoppers, we have started to create venue guides for each city. These guides recommend the best venues for every conceivable type of event, from small meetings to large gala events. Furthermore, we single out the best spaces in the most important locations. In our Seattle venue guide, for example, we provide a list of our favorite venues near SEA-TAC airport, as well as venues near the Washington State Convention Center. In our San Francisco guide, we list the best venues in the Financial District as well as venues in Downtown San Francisco. In our LA venue guide, we list venues near LAX as well as venues in Hollywood.

So far we’ve only listed three of our most popular cities: Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. We will, of course, put together more venue guides in the near future.

We hope you enjoy the venue guides, and that you will find them useful! If you have any suggestions about them, please let us know in the comments or email us at team@evenues.com.

In any event, food is often the main attraction. The dishes that you serve can either make or break your event. You usually have two options regarding food preparation. For a simple sit-down dinner, you can choose to personally cook the food that you're going to serve. But for special events, like a wedding perhaps, these occasions often require the help of experienced caterers. Instead of worrying about whether or not the desserts are ready, you can focus your attention on the decorations, your guests, and yourself.

A Spread at TEDxLasPalmas

Choosing a caterer can be confusing because there are many companies that offer catering services, and all of them claim to be either good or the best in the field. So, which one are you going to select? Below are some issues that will hopefully help you in making better choices.

1. Budget

You need to work around your budget. It's no use going for an excellent catering company if you can't afford it. Although you have to allot a large portion of your budget on food, you should avoid going over the planned amount because you do not want to incur a large debt just because you want scrumptious food for your event. There are other caterers out there that you'll be able to afford.

Once you have chosen a particular caterer, ask for a quotation, which will depend on several factors, such as - the number of guests to be served; if there will be waiters or servers; and the sort of dishes that you prefer. If the price is too much, you can ask the caterer for suggestions about where you can cut back. But you have to remember that if a caterer drastically drops the price, then the quality of your food will probably suffer.

2. Certifications, Reputation and Word of Mouth

Choose a catering company that is recommended by people you know. A company that has a good name or that other people highly recommend is a good option. If you have attended an event and you were bowled over by the food, you can also get the name of the catering service. Moreover, don't forget to check if the caterer has certifications from the local health department. Companies that specialize in food service need to possess certain licenses that ensure that they are following state laws or regulations regarding food preparation. Through local government offices, you can also find out if the caterer that you've chosen has encountered problems about consumer complaints, failure to meet inspection requirements, and other issues.

3. The Specialty

What type of cuisine do you want served? For instance, if you are planning a Japanese-themed party, then choose a caterer who specializes in Japanese food. Don't forget to schedule a food tasting as well. Then, ask about what sort of events the caterer regularly handles. Can the company manage a posh event for 300 hundred people or is the caterer more at ease with small intimate occasions?

4. Contracts or Agreements

Be sure to sign a contract once everything is in order. Even though your caterer is your close friend, always have a written agreement itemizing what's expected of the service provider and the consumer. Contracts are legally binding and such documents will protect you in case the caterer fails to show up or neglects to satisfy the duties that are stated in the papers.

About the author: Claire Kendall is a freelancer, and her articles have been used by www.justcatering.net and other websites that specialize in food and beverages. Kendall regularly blogs about cuisine, entertainment, and special occasions.

Smart Work Center Mockup (Source: Cisco.com)

It’s easy to dismiss the recent chatter about the growing "mobile workforce" as hype. While the images of developers hacking away in the corner of a hip local coffee shop , or of 20-something startup founders teleconferencing from their one-bedroom apartments have become ubiquitous, this is the the exception rather than the norm. The reality for most people working at a traditional company job is still the commute, the cubicle, and the conference room.

That’s the reality now, but will it change? To answer this question we reached out to experts in the field of workspace innovation and got in touch with Gordon Feller, Director of Urban Innovation at Cisco. Feller provided us with some convincing arguments for why the mobile workforce is poised to become a much more significant percentage of the working population, and that this change will come about sooner than we think.

What's Holding The Mobile Workforce Back?

The fact of the matter is that today we already have the tools to enable a mobile workforce. The availability of mobile devices, cloud computing and cheap teleconferencing solutions make it not just possible, but easy.

The problem, says Feller, is that "Big companies have a cultural bias toward 'Let's get our people into a shared space which is secure.'" It's this bias that keeps employees chained to their desks, spending 1 to 2 hours each day on the road and in traffic jams while their vehicles spew an untold amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The reasons for this bias are easy to understand. First, there are concerns about the security of proprietary data. If employees could access sensitive data remotely, the chances of this data falling into the wrong hands would naturally increase. Second, requiring employees to arrive and leave work at predetermined hours guarantees a certain baseline of productivity. Finally, there's a certain amount of synergy that is lost when members of a team don't meet daily in the same space.

The Missing Ingredient: Smart Workspaces

A Smart Work Center Commons Area

These are valid points, and as far as a large company's needs are concerned, a local coffee shop with free wifi doesn't cut it. This is where the "Smart Workspace" comes in.

A "Smart Workspace," as Feller defines it, is "a space that could provide something that was uniquely suited to the hyperproductive worker who was dropping in sometimes at odd hours and wanted services available whether it was broadband connectivity, conference services, cafe services, child care services, or high definition video conferencing services that were affordable and accessible."

If enough of these smart workspaces were established in suburban areas, then not only would the daily commute become less of an ordeal, but the ability to share ideas freely with other bright professionals from different companies could lead to breakthroughs in productivity.

"There are companies like Google and Cisco," says Feller, "who have decided that 'we want to encourage our people to be in mixed spaces where we rub elbows with folks who don't have the same color badge…We want to enable [this]because we think that people are happier and more innovative and more intelligent rubbing elbows with people who are different and not in the same company.'"

One question that always comes up when it comes to smart workspaces is data security. Could employees in mixed spaces be a security risk? While this is a valid concern, there are ways to mitigate these risks.

According to Feller, in the case of Google, the employees are in workspaces separated by non-Google people. So while certain floors are secure and may require some form of ID, there are other areas that are shared spaces. The whole space, however, is designed for a more collaborative work environment. This is where people can bring work that’s not proprietary and not requiring a higher level of security.

The Push Toward the Smart Workspace

Of course, companies like Google with deep pockets have always sought out new and creative ways to keep their employees happy and productive. But, just because Google is doing something different, doesn’t mean that other companies will.

What makes the push towards having more Smart Workspaces different is demand. The talented millennials who refuse to be chained to a desk will naturally migrate to companies who begin to provide Smart Workspaces. And, it’s not just millennials either who are driving the change.

The commute, the cubicle and the conference room which, says Feller, "were once staples of our work lives…[are] going the way of the rotary phone. And companies around the world, not just Cisco and other technology companies [but] really every kind of company in the world are embracing the kind of technology that lets their employees do their jobs…from anywhere at any time and that means not just higher productivity but a different experience of work itself and a different work-life balance. And everybody wants that even if you're not 20-something."

Smart Work Centers: Early Successes

While Smart Workspaces have a ways to go in the states, they have already proven to be successful in Korea and the Netherlands.

Korea

"Korea had the benefit of some push from the top," Feller says, "The Prime Minister's office launched a national smart work strategy…and said to Hyundai and to LG and to Samsung and said to others that traffic flows in and around our cities are getting to be severely congested. Our people are being overworked by the commute, and it's not a productive use of our human capital." The solution then was to use the abundance of available real estate in suburban areas and to create smart work centers away from city centers. So far, the experiment has proven to be a success, and has provided a better quality of life for the employees who have taken advantage of it.

According to a report sent to us by Tony Kim, who has been spearheading smart work initiatives in Korea, so far 310,000 (10%) of Korean government officials did work (at least once a week per month) at 10 government smart work centers, and the target is 940,000 (30%) consistently doing smart work by 2015. This change alone should save 170M USD in business travel cost per year.

The Netherlands

Smart Work Centers in the Netherlands (via www.w-work.nl)

In the Netherlands, the growth was more "bottom up", thanks to the work of Bas Boorsma in Amsterdam, Feller's other key colleague. Bas and Tony Kim have been global spearheads for Cisco's rapid push forward on "Work/Life Innovation." The mayor of the city of Almeer, a residential suburb of Amsterdam, set up one of the first smart work centers. After the success of that experiment, the Double U network, a collaboration between Cisco and the city of Amsterdam, set about their goal of "Providing every professional in the Netherlands with a highly professional and socially conducive work place within 15 minutes bicycle distance." So far so good, as there are now more than 120 smart work centers and counting.

The Importance of Aggregation Services

If and when the Smart Workspaces movement does take off worldwide, one issue that will arise is fragmentation. A company that once only had to oversee a few buildings of employees would have to keep track of their employees scattered over a myriad of suburban Smart Workspaces. It’s aggregation services like Worksnug in the UK and eVenues in the US that are poised to help employers deal with the increasing complexity of finding and securing reliable work and meeting spaces.

"If I'm the employer and I have a distributed and scattered and fragmented workforce I'd like to be able to push my people to use that common platform for reservation and for rating and for site comparisons because I as the employer would like to know what's the uptake…[and] the benefit," says Feller.

Feller also mentions that these aggregation tools could provide analytics and reporting on "how many millions of tons per year of reduced greenhouse gas emissions or how many billions of miles per year of reduced road travel" can result when a company implements a smart work program.

The Smart Work Movement: Just a Matter of Time?

Smart Workspaces provide a "third place” - unique from either home or the office. They can offer a host of unique services under one roof like a luxury hotel, but also a social culture that makes them more appealing than being a lone employee telecommuting from home.

Changes that have already taken root in both Korea and the Netherlands offer hope and momentum. Highly sought after talent are continuing to demand Smart Workspaces and the companies that don’t cater to these demands are going to lose out. Innovative companies like Google and Cisco are already leading the way, and it’s just a matter of time before others follow. Finally, the tools that that make Smart Workspaces possible continue to be developed and refined.

Want to learn more about smart work?

If you want to learn more about the smart work movement, and the recent developments in Smart workspaces, check out the blog at cityminded.org. On the site you'll also find information about the "Meeting of the Minds" conference where smart work related topics will be discussed. This year the conference will be in Toronto from September 9th through the 11th. It's an annual invitation only leadership summit where debates related to the future of smart work and the smart city is taking place. The whole event will also be webcast live.

About Gordon Feller: Gordon Feller is Director at Cisco Systems, based at their global HQ in San Jose, California. As the Convenor of "Meeting of the Minds" he's bringing together in September a group of leaders to Toronto for discussions about such topics as smart work. The unique group of sponsoring organizations includes: tech leaders (Toyota, Cisco, IBM, Philips, Schneider, Itron, Jones Lang LaSalle); engineering / design leaders (HOK, Golder); a non-profit innovator, 1 university and 3 foundations (Evergreen, Ryerson Univ., Annie E Casey Fdn., Ford Fdn., Lincoln Institute for Land Policy), government leaders (Inst. On Governance); and publishers (Governing Magazine; IT in Canada Magazine; Renew Canada Magazine).