Extraordinary events blog

Need inspiration, as well as hands-on planning tips for that extraordinary event? Check out ready 2 spark blog! Really my kind of stuff! :)

Boot camp for event planners (Canada)

If you live in Canada you might want to check out the Special Event Boot Camp, a series of workshops for event planners.

Billionaire wedding by Swedish agency

The Swedish event agency Initiativ were in charge of the billionaire Charles Simonyi's wedding in Göteborg last november. One of the guests invited was Bill Gates. Security was massive. Read a Swedish article about it here (at Resumé).

I wonder if any private agency will be asked to help out with the Swedish Crown Princess' wedding?!?

Swedish Guerrilla Marketing blog (My Quest)

Yay! I found this blog: Icke-traditionella medier (translates: non-traditional media) that has posts about, yes, you guessed; non-traditional media, such as guerrilla marketing and ambient media. The blog is in Swedish, but contains lot's of pictures and film clips. It's hosted by a communication agency in Malmö; Crowd, and from what I can read on their webpage, they do quite a lot of guerrilla marketing campaigns. Me like!

Well, Crowd did a mini campaign together with one of my favourite agencies; Miami. It was during Eventdagarna, a Swedish fair for, amongst others, event agencies. The fair had the subject of "Event Marketing", and neither Crowd nor Miami attended. They sprayed water logos on and around the fair area, stating "Guerrilla and ambient are not events", in order to make a statement that they would have liked to have representatives from guerrilla agencies there, and that maybe the fair should not have been called Eventdagarna (The Event Days). Read an article about the campaign, from Dagens Media here.

I do agree that guerrilla and ambient are not events, BUT I do firmly believe that you might need to incorporate many different parts of different media in order to get a campaign that reaches your target group to a full extent. It is normally not enought to just buy an ad in a magazine or newspaper, you need to follow up with TV, maybe radio, a few events and maybe som attention-creating guerrilla actions.

Sassy!

Need some sassiness in your life? Check out America's sassiest life style guru, Steve Kemble's website! I sooo wish I could work for him, it seems like his events are so much fun! :)

Looking for an event job?

Check out this site: event-jobs.net. Mostly jobs in the UK, but you can find the one or two odd international jobs as well!

Event manager blog

Sometimes I check out Nicole Jensens blog. She is an event manager from Brisbane, Australia, and she has useful tips for event management in her blog posts.

Kreafon

A few days ago, when browsing the internet, I came across a nice blog. The blog is hosted by Swedish PR and communication agency Kreafon. I checked out their website and found it very interesting. They claim to be a full service agency, but I feel some things are missing. And by some things, I mean events. Events are a great way to enhance brand experiences, and combined with traditional marketing, a strong graphical profile and social media, a brand can gain great success with the target group consumers. So I think I will send them an email, offering my services! :)

So, this morning I did a normal Google search (normal for me anyway). I entered the words "advertising pr marketing" (but in Swedish; "reklam pr marknadsföring"). And I was a bit impressed to see that Kreafon, this relatively small agency (with only three full time employees) came up as the number one hit (after the sponsored hits)! It must be a sign! ;)

Though, I can't stop wondering why an agency who claims that they are good with social media and can help their customers build a stronger (online) profile, doesn't seem to have neither a Facebook Group nor a twitter account?!?

Event Secrets...

A quite useful site: eventsecrets.com, which is (according to their own website) "one of the web’s leading event management and event planning websites". It has lot's of good tips for event managers, but doesn't seem to be updated with news that often.

Event management tip of the day

Make sure you read the specifications and conditions in the order confirmation thoroughly (!) if you are going to participate in a fair/congress or similar... Otherwise you might end up spending money on things that don't give you any value (such as having someone come to spray flame resistant liquid on your paper poster wall, charging 3 dollars per square meter, due to the paper itself not being flame resistant...)


And before you ask; no, it didn't happen to me ;) but to one of my colleagues...

Quote from the previously mentioned article

In the article "Kultur som kassaklirr - så skapar upplevelsebaserade evenemang nya värden åt turismen", by Niklas Gustafsson (University of Stockholm) and Staffan Holm (EMA Telstar) (link to my post about it) there is another interesting quote:

"Upplevelsen skapas därför genom komplexa, ofta ickelinjära och ickesekventiella nätverk av företag och individer som fokuserar i tid och rum på eventet och dess omgivning. ... Dessa komplexa nätverk är i högsta grad intressanta att studera både för akademiker och för praktiker."

My translation: The experience is thus created through complex, often non-linear and non-sekvential networks of companies and individuals, who focus in time and in room on the event and its surroundings. ... These complex networks are of highest interest for being studied, by both people with academical skills and by people with practical skills."

I wish I had more time, so that I could really study these things that interest me so!

The future of event management

I read this very interesting article (Swedish): "Kultur som kassaklirr - så skapar upplevelsebaserade evenemang nya värden åt turismen", by Niklas Gustafsson (University of Stockholm) and Staffan Holm (EMA Telstar). I have unfortunately not been able to find the article on the net, I don't know here it was published, nor when (I only got the article as a printed copy), but the article writers belive that event management has a brigth future, lucky for me :)

They have an interesting quote in the article: "Experiences have become the hottest commodities the market has to offer. No matter where we turn, we are constantly inundated by advertisment promoting products that promise to provide us with some ephemeral experience that is never, better, more thriling, more genuine, more flexible, or more fun than anything we have previously encountered. In turn, consumers themselves are increasingly willing to go to great lengths, invest large sums of money, and take great risks to avoid 'the beaten track' and 'experience something new'." By Odell & Billing, 2005.

So I will have to check out this book: Experiencescapes: Tourism, Culture and Economy. Written by Tom O'Dell and Peter Billing. But maybe I will also look into other works by these two gentlemen...

Other "gurus" within event management

Haven't had time to check these authors out yet, but I will:

Joe Goldblatt

Craig Wilkinson

Oh, and it turns out I can borrow Getz's book at school. As soon as I get a little more time, I will try to borrow it and read it.

Donald Getz

Today I learned about "the father of event managemenet"; Donald Getz. (Click here for his info page at the University of Calgary.)
I would like to read one of his books; Event Management and Event Tourism, but it is quite expensive. $74.50 at Amazon.com! Too expensive for a poor student as me :). Maybe I could borrow it at school?

School...

Second day of school. Project Management. A bit interesteing, but mainly repetition for me. I attended a programme at IHM Business School this spring, Project Management. The programme was arranged by IHM and the company that I work at, and was extremely useful. It gave me konwledge of a lot of tools that come in handy when planning a project.

In the IHM programme we discussed and learned about how to create background, scope, goal. Time plans, mile stone plans, gate plans. Timing, budget, risk mitigation lists, stake holder lists etc. We also got to practice on a "live" project from our company, and of course I also got to practice on the project where I was project manager in my "normal "every day job.

So, this course will probably be mostly things I know, but it can never hurt to repeat stuff you once learned.

Tomorrow: Event and tourism. Stay tuned for the next exciting report ;)

Carsonified and moving

Oh boy, would I like to work here! 4-day week but full time paid! The guys at Carsonified seem to be working mainly with computers and web apps (none of which are my strong sides), but anyway, one can always dream ;)
What I found interesting on their site is that they recently moved all their email to Gmail. I m very much in love with Gmail and I really like the idea of companies having Gmail as their standad email program.

Anyway, I have had some holiday time and I used it wisely. I packed all the stuff from my apartment because I'm moving up North! I have been accepted to a one year school program that deals with event management and event producing. I'm really looking forward to it and I will hopefully have more time to update the blog with relevant stuff!

Books

I bought two books the last time I was in the States:

Entrepreneur Press and Amy Jean Peters: Start your own Event Planning Business
and
Susan Freidman: Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies

I haven't had the time to read any of them yet, due to a very intense period at work, but soon... Reviews to follow!

Event management education and sun

What else could you want?!? ;) This is an Event Management Programme in Brisbane, Australia. (Actually "Diploma of Business with major in Event Management")

IBS Event Management (site in Swedish)

I wish I could apply for this school, but it's not really possible. I mean, apply; that I could do, but to actually go through with the education; not so much. Family issues and other things make it kind of impossible for me to move far away, even for a year. There are other schools though, and some of them in Sweden. Not as much sun as in Brisbane probably, but I have applied, so we'll see what happens with that. (To be continued...)

To be or not to be...

I am.
And I am interested in lot's of stuff.
I am also changing careers.
I am a project manager.
But I am much more interested in planning event projects rather than other projects.
I really am.

What this blog is all about

Ambivalent is NOT what one would normally call me, but when deciding to start this blog I had no idea what to call it.

The purpose of the blog is to gather information on diverse subjects that interest me, subjects that I would like to learn more about. These subjects consist of, but are not limited to;
event management
marketing strategies (such as "guerrilla marketing")
branding strategies (such as "lovemarks")

Since I couldn't settle for one interesting subject and/or name I combined them: "Love" from lovemarks and "Event" from event management.