GUEST POST by Shawna McKinley When I grew up I wanted to be a park ranger. What could be cooler than being in nature, teaching kids about pond ecology to bears? Somewhere along the way I took a summer job as a community event planner and the rest, as they say, is history! Today [Read More...]

I’m teaching a class right now on Customer Service, Sales and Relationship Building. A topic that came up was how to deal with racist, sexist, homophobic, and other prejudice comments made by clients. I would love to be able to say that these types of behaviours and comments have now been completely eradicated from the [Read More...]

GUEST POST by Heidi Thorne Mention “sales position” to most newly-minted college grads and you’ll likely get an “Eeewww, I’ll never be in sales!” I find this a bit amusing, especially when you ask them what they want to do. The response is usually marketing, event management, advertising, etc. Well, guess what, you’re really in [Read More...]

GUEST POST By Nadine Zrinzo A tip for Event Management Students… A lot can be said for how an Event Manager handles a crisis. Let me warn you from now, you will be putting out fires all over the place, especially whilst you are onsite and actually running the event. As event management students you [Read More...]

Do you ever do weird things as a parent like rock an empty stroller out of habit, or hum kids songs at work? Here are some of the things I've done... [Read More...]

“I’m so dumb when it comes to tech stuff”. If you’re one of those event professionals that constantly puts themselves down, has a fear of technology, refuses to learn anything about tech, or if you are a supplier that has experienced these types of clients - then this article is for you! [Read More...]

The following is an excerpt from a guest blog post that I wrote for Jenise Fryatt’s Sound n’ Sight Blog… What would you do if your linen supplier suddenly disappeared and closed up shop? What about your décor, lighting, staging, rental, or audio visual suppliers…or perhaps your favorite florist? Would you be able to conduct [Read More...]

Mike Granek is looking for #eventprofs guest bloggers that can provide event industry stories which can be used as case studies by students. [Read More...]

GUEST POST by Jenise Fryatt Imagine:  you’ve landed a new client during difficult economic times. Your first event with them sets up in 4 days, 2,000 miles away. You’ve paid the “Good Deal” (not their real name) trucking company 10 days in advance to pick up your gear on Sunday. It’s Saturday and Good Deal [Read More...]

One of the most valuable marketing tools for a company, product or service can be a exhibiting at a trade or consumer show. It can generate a great amount of interest through product or service demonstrations as well as allow you to reach a targeted audience. Trade and consumer shows put you directly in front [Read More...]

Over my many years in the special events industry, I have encountered a few different event producers, meeting planners and suppliers that have had some sort of paranoia when it comes to accepting responsibility for a supplier’s mistakes. For some reason when there’s a problem, they think that it will save their reputation to explicitly [Read More...]

I asked Event Management Professionals on Twitter to answer the following question: #eventprofs – If u could give an event mgmt student one big tip, what would it be??? Please reply, I’ll pass it along to my students!!! Here are the responses that I received… virtueevents @mikegranek work with vendors that you trust and build [Read More...]

Our family went camping up to Salmon Arm last week. We really had a great time, but as you may have read in my previous post, the drive up tested our strengths as parents. The night before, we stopped at a campground in Penticton and discovered that there was a problem with the water connector [Read More...]

My daughter was upstairs for a minute so I yelled out “What are you doing?”. She yelled back “I’m just drinking some…some…some… from the contact bottle?”. “You’re drinking from my contact solution bottle?” as I ran upstairs in a panic thinking that she would have to have her stomach [Read More...]

While we were camping this week, my daughter Charlee asked me if I could take her to climb a mountain. (I’m pretty sure she got this idea from watching a Dora or Diego episode ! haha) So I called Cliffhangers Richmond to see if a three year old could climb, and they told me that [Read More...]

I absolutely love being a dad and having a family, and I especially love taking them RVing! This week, we had the ultimate test by taking a three week old infant and a three year old toddler RVing to the Okanaghan. Lucky for us, both kids are very well behaved and travel well. Our youngest [Read More...]

I recently discovered a national company that has an internal policy that directs staff to not respond to customer complaints. This is a pretty big company that has locations all across Canada, and I was privileged enough to come across this information during a meeting with them. A little confused, I asked them to elaborate [Read More...]

After some encouragement from my Twitter followers over the last year, I have finally decided to make an attempt at creating my own blog! About a year ago, I met Lara McCulloch-Carter at an ISES Canada national board retreat where she introduced me to Twitter. It took me almost six months before I really understood [Read More...]