In terms of jobs, the meetings and events industry creates more direct jobs than large manufacturing sectors such as automotive, chemicals, and food. The industry also employs more workers than the telecommunications sector or oil and gas. MORE

Last minute event planning is a bad idea for so many reasons. It’s tougher to find venues. The client’s preferred venue will likely be booked. Clients will end up paying more for hotels, resorts and airfare. Planning at the last minute increases the likelihood of errors. MORE

We are excited to announce that Capterra named Regpack the #4 most popular event management software on the market today! We also ranked in the top 10 for most affordable! MORE

Bizly in action. In 2014, venture capitalist Ron Shah was deep into a month of internal meetings when the pipes burst in. his building. The office’s conference space was flooded and unusable. He worked the phones in a rush, trying to clinch local hotel meeting rooms on short notice. MORE

Teamwork starts at the top, according to Martin Lanik, author of The Leader Habit: Master the Skills You Need to Lead in Just Minutes a Day , which will be released on April 17. MORE

Family-friendly events can be a challenge for event planners. Often times planning events with kids feels out of our realm or at least out of our comfort zone. Family-friendly events are unknown territory that sometimes we just don’t know how to navigate. That changes today! MORE

Over the weekend, Paul Somogyi went on a 40-mile bike ride, finished a book, took a few long walks and spent time reflecting. And on Monday, for the first time in more than 30 years, he didn’t have a set agenda. MORE

Ganttic is an online platform for resource planning, scheduling, and management using a Gantt-chart overview. Here is our review. Ganttic: What Is It? Ganttic is a high-level planning tool for anyone that has a ton of resources to keep an eye. MORE

Photo Credit Adobe Stock. Why is April 10 Equal Pay Day? It’s not arbitrarily decided to earmark one day each year in April to spotlight the gender pay gap. The date reinforces a point: It takes women nearly four months longer to catch up to a man’s annual salary. MORE

With more than one million people expected to attend this year’s New York International Auto Show, running through April 8 MORE

Since I started EventMB 11 years ago, the most recurring question has been: ‘When is Event Manager Blog going to do its own events?’ I’ve been hesitant. We are a content company, not an event company. Yet, so many of you asked through the years to connect with other readers live. MORE

San Francisco, CA, April 6, 2018 – Certain, Inc., an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) member, announced it will be a Gold level sponsor at Modern Customer Experience 2018 , Oracle’s annual conference dedicated to helping customer experience (CX) professionals advance their careers. MORE

During my 20+ years as an IT consultant and developer, I fell in with a delightful international crowd of software testers: those all-important people responsible for the impossible task of making sure that software works the way it’s supposed to. Fun fact: the testing community often uses my term “peer conferences” for their get-togethers, due to a chat about meeting design I had with tester James Bach at the 2004 Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference.) MORE

Do you know what happens when you stretch a rubber band? After it’s stretched, it never quite goes back to quite the length it had before. Read the full article at Conferences That Work No related posts. Facilitating Change active learning elastic band implicit learning rubber band stretch stretching MORE

Over the last five years I’ve heard increasing concern from the meeting professionals community about the deterioration of the quality of our national industry conferences. A recent thread on the MECO community (a great resource for meeting professionals since 2006) describes numerous recent basic logistical failings, and points to what I see as symptoms of fundamental problems with meeting industry associations at the national level. MORE

Mobile apps for conferences are becoming staples. If you don’t have one yet for your future events, it’s high time to give some thought to if an event app is a fit for you. The upside is convenience and providing quick support to attendees. MORE

This week's roundup includes FX's Legion video installation in Los Angeles, a floral dragon display at the Macy's Flower Show MORE

On April 14, two African American men were arrested and removed by police from a Philadelphia Starbucks, after an employee called to report that the men had been asked to leave and refused. MORE

The go-live date for upcoming European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is right around the corner. After May 25th, U.S. MORE

Getting work done on the road is hard. Most event profs have experience trying to balance travel with their everyday work and sometimes the two can be difficult to mix. How do you stay in communication with clients? What do you do to keep the work from piling up? MORE

The success of visual pop-up "museums" such as Refinery29’s 29Rooms in New York and Los Angeles, the traveling Museum of Ice Cream MORE

Attendees are easily bored. Even with the best content, you want your stage set to look engaging. The last thing you want is for your audience to switch off and turn their gaze elsewhere. MORE

I think we can all agree, an event with no attendees is going to flop. You want every event you produce to be a sell out. Or at least get a respectable number of registrations through the door, in line with your targets. But how can you attract more attendees, even if you have no […]. MORE

This is a case study sponsored by Meetings + Conventions Calgary. More information about Event Manager Blog’s case studies. MORE

This is a sponsored post written by Lori Esposito, Chief Marketing Officer, MeetingPlay. More information about Event Manager Blog’s sponsored posts. Today, it’s not enough to create great content, fill your event with vendors, and feature an expansive venue. Your event attendees expect more. MORE

Don Neal, founder and CEO, 360 Live Media. How do you get more bang for your buck when hiring paid speakers and recruiting unpaid speakers? The investment is significant for both — paid or unpaid, speakers cost serious time, dollars, and resources. MORE

The series format: a happy hour and panel. The marketing team members at Event Farm — an event-marketing software company headquartered in Santa Monica, with offices in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Los Angeles — spend their workdays writing about events and thinking about events. MORE

A daylong conference about financial volatility doesn’t typically feel like a day at the beach. But that’s exactly the atmosphere MORE

Many attendees are becoming more and more health conscious and event planners are keen to offer healthy ideas and alternatives that appeal to them. MORE

Tucked between SoHo and the Hudson, Hotel Hugo is a stylish and sophisticated newcomer in Manhattan’s emerging West SoHo neighborhood MORE

South by Southwest is abundant with activations, parties, film premieres, and other events, which means marketers and event producers have MORE

With the fairytale-inspired theme of “Once Upon A Springtime,” the annual Macy’s Flower Show kicked off spring in three of MORE

EU GDPR is the “Talk of the Town” presently and it is a big step towards giving EU people the right to their personal data. The European government has taken this measure to ensure security measures in today’s digitalized era. MORE