The Horns of The Dilemma

by William Todd on July 6, 2009 · View Comments

in events,news

Two interesting articles caught my attention this past week; one lamenting the gridlock in the US Senate over the Travel Promotion Act (S. 1023) and the other detailing the launch of IBM’s Sametime 3D virtual world. These pieces were interesting in their own right but I was struck by the way they seem to frame current events in the meetings business. [click to continue…]

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Preparing To Write Great Executive Speeches

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This is not a post about how to write great executive speeches; it’s a post about preparing to write great executive speeches. There are several things you need to do before you can actually begin writing. Herewith: 1. Immerse Yourself in The Culture Know more about their company than they expect you to know (which [...]

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Building The First Virtual Hospital

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The Dolphin and The Swan… anyone in the events business is familiar with these sister hotels joined at the hip by a long walkway full of topiary, statues and park benches . It’s Disney meets Versailles. Big swan, big dolphin, pastels, pink flamingos, you get it. It’s Orlando, Florida, one of America’s most popular corporate [...]

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And Now For Someone Completely…

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Several years ago while producing an event for a prestigious Japanese manufacturer, I chose to hire someone outside the creative mainstream to provide an energy boost to the project. We already had a number of technological firsts going for us (we were eventually written up in the trades), yet I felt we needed an additional [...]

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The Janus Syndrome

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Hey there readers! Sorry for the delay in posting but I moved my home and business within the past month so forgive me. But that’s the past. What about the present? Even a cursory look around the events business reveals that members of the profession are re-focusing their energies on finding innovative ways of doing [...]

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Is It Live or Is It Virtual?

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Remember Memorex, the cassette tape so accurate that it begged the famous question “Is it live or is it Memorex?” Well it seems that you can now ask the same question about your next corporate event. OK, so I’m getting bored with this subject too, but people keep talking about it. It seems the corporate [...]

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Will Your Next Meeting Be In Cyberspace?

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There’s been a lot of chatter out in the blogosphere lately about the declining state of the corporate events business and the rise of viable alternatives to face to face meetings. I’ve been blogging about it myself. There are certainly some interesting options out there. But before we get into that I think it’s time [...]

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The Devil Is In The Details

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The location: the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar, California, made famous by the hit movie “Top Gun” starring Tom Cruise. The set: the simulated flight deck of a US aircraft carrier, complete with landing lights and an authentic battle bridge. The event: Day One of the National Sales Meeting of a well known Japanese [...]

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It’s An Ill Wind That Blows No Good

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It was really cold in New York today. I snapped this picture just a stone’s throw away from where US Airways Flight 1549 was finally lifted from the icy waters of the Hudson River and it got me thinking once again about these challenging economic times and the evolving nature of the industry. My last [...]

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“Travel is a luxury. Communication is not.”

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The title to this post is actually the headline from a full page ad in the business section of today’s New York Times. The ad extols Adobe’s Acrobat Connect Pro Web conferencing software as the online product of choice for communicating with clients and customers in these challenging times. In addition to selling Adobe software, [...]

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Mozart Versus Monsanto

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In the corporate events business, there’s often a tug-of-war taking place between our desire to make a powerful creative statement and the need to honor the clients’ key business message. This dichotomy has been going on for longer than you think. Remember the scene in Milos Forman’s film “Amadeus” when Mozart asks the King what [...]

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