In the past year, we have seen hurricanes devastate multiple Caribbean islands, snow storm after snow storm along the east coast, volcano eruptions in Hawaii, and wildfires spreading across California. Last month brought Hurricane Florence to the Carolinas, and flooding continued for weeks even after the storm itself had gone away. Earlier this month, Hurricane Michael left a path of destruction in areas of Florida.

Photo Credit: Ed Newton for Live Nation

As many of you know, the Perfection Events team was part of the Wawa Welcome America team earlier this summer, and as many of you can imagine, a project like this is a massive undertaking. This was a project that involved a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (those of happiness, as well as those of exhaustion!) and we are so proud of the experience we helped to create for everyone who attended the event in-person and those who tuned in via TV and device screens.

Cvent recently released the 2018 Global Planner Sourcing Report, and while the information about total spend on event budgets, number of meetings, and destinations is interesting to read and good industry information to have, that’s not usually where my focus is when I review survey results.

My calendar was definitely managing me. And I didn’t like it. Not at all.

When I set out to solve my email challenges, I made a list of email problems I had:

Read emails.

Reply to emails.

It took just 4 emails to schedule a meeting.

Read more emails.

OK, inbox looks manageable. It’s lunch time, I should eat.

Read emails.

Reply to emails.

OK, time to get some real work done.

Oh, it’s 4:00pm already? Where did my day go?!?

Sound familiar?

I was tired of this email cycle and email completely overtaking my carefully crafted to-do list every day. I was also tired of the back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth it usually takes to just get a meeting on the calendar.

You didn’t know there was a fun side to data security, did you?

That’s because there isn’t.

It’s not one of the more creative or exciting parts of event planning and definitely doesn’t have the fun factor that other elements can have, but it is one of the most important. And, most overlooked.

Too many of us think that data security is the responsibility of someone else (like the hotel, or the airline, or the registration company) and we take for granted that they are doing everything they should be doing to protect attendee data.

Photo Credit: (c) 2017 Hilton Worldwide

Hotels often market unique or trendy room amenities to set themselves apart from the competition. As a seasoned traveler, rarely do the articles about new and innovative amenities catch my attention for more than a nanosecond. And when I read “4 Ways Hotel Room Amenities are Evolving to Suit the Modern Guest,” my sole purpose for reading it was to file it away in my mind as industry knowledge.

We all know what happened at the Oscars, right? Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were supposed to present the award for Best Picture, but they were handed the envelope for Best Actress, and no one noticed until it was time to announce the winner.

There were more than a few pre-Oscars interviews with the people who handle the envelopes and, according to multiple sources, they had an ironclad process.

Sunday night’s mistake proves it wasn’t so ironclad. But, with a few simple changes, it can be:

What is the best thing to do while visiting Philadelphia?

Check out what Mazda Miles, CMM (Perfection Events) and Kate Stockton (Stockton & Partners), event producers for the 2016 DNC Philadelphia Host Committee, suggest!

Hear from Mazda & Kate, both a #DNCBizPartner, about why they love to live & work in Philly. (Hint: Pack your ) pic.twitter.com/HWSQ8Dlq30

Packing for weekend getaways. Packing for summer vacation. Packing for a business trip.

I have been encountering articles about packing everywhere … but there is one article I haven’t seen: packing for a day of local business meetings.

It’s not a weekend getaway so I don’t need to pack versatile mix-and-match clothes. It’s not summer vacation, so I don’t need a sun hat and books for the beach. And it’s not a business trip, so I don’t need multiple business suits that all coordinate with one pair of shoes.