4 Tips for Making Your Job Easier

We know as well as anyone that your job as a meeting or event planner is a tough one. You have lots of moving parts to juggle, and there can be a lot of pressure leading up to an event. But there are a few things you can do to make your job easier and create a more successful event every time!

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#1: CHOOSE VENDORS YOU TRUST

This one may sound obvious, but hear us out. When you have a hundred decisions to make, it can be all too easy to select your vendors out of convenience. Make sure to choose vendors that fully understand your needs and your vision - and be sure to select vendors that you can rely on for future events as well. When you have an established, trusting relationship, assembling your list of vendors gets easier and easier.

#2: INVEST IN A “WOW” FACTOR

Maybe it’s a fun ice-breaker, or an exciting introduction video. Maybe it's a performance element, or a jaw-dropping set design that elevates the entire event. Whatever it is, one standout moment or element can create a memorable experience that sets the event’s tone in a positive way, and takes some pressure off all of the additional elements you’re juggling.

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#3: PROVIDE VIRTUAL VIEWING OPTIONS

This is more important for meetings and conferences, but with any event, there are always people who end up not being able to attend. Instead of having to find ways to communicate the content of the event to those who were not there, you can live stream the event online, allowing those who could not attend to view the content firsthand - and cutting down on post-event work for you!

#4: DELEGATE, DELEGATE, DELEGATE

There may be more outsource-able components to your event than you realize. Take speaker management, for example. Why not let your AV or production company take care of helping your speakers get ready for their talk? We love helping our clients create a seamless speaker experience by providing rehearsal time, managing the event timeline, ensuring that speakers are comfortable with any technology & audio equipment they’re using, and giving them any guidance they need before sending them onstage. If your vendors are anything like us, they’ll be more than happy to take anything they can off of your plate. 

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We hope these tips have been helpful!

Need help producing your next event?

LED Wall Project Roundup

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of LED video walls, and that we love coming up with new and exciting ways to use them for our clients’ events! We’ve written lots of posts of the benefits of using LED walls over projection (here’s our most recent one: Event Trends: LED Walls), but today we thought we’d do a roundup of our favorite LED wall projects, to give you an idea of the breadth of options that this technology can give you!

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First up…

The Virginia Film Festival

This set is from the 2016 VFF Opening Night Gala. This was our first time really making use of the flexibility that LED panels afford, using them to build screens of different shapes & sizes to create a more dynamic backdrop.

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RWDevCon Conference

This conference space spanned three bays of a hotel ballroom, which needed to be able to accommodate both a fully open configuration AND separate breakouts in each bay. We configured our LED walls into three screens, the center one being double-wide for keynote talks. Beyond the configuration capabilities, the video walls also allowed us to keep the lights up in the space, which can be crucial for keeping attendee energy up during long days, without compromising the quality of the image on-screen.

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UVA All Sports Awards Ceremony

We designed this set to work especially well for ambient motion graphics & video content. Using custom modular panels to break up and add visual interest to LED walls & columns of different sizes, we created a jawdropping set that served as a dynamic background for speakers, and converted into a high-impact video display at the press of a button.

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National Association of College Auxiliary Services C3X Conference

This has been one of our most unique events to date! This stage set needed to accommodate a single keynote speaker with seating “in the round”, as well as four individual speakers giving talks simultaneously. So we devised a four-sided LED video wall that could be raised for single keynote speakers, with modular panel dividers that could be implemented when lowered so that the four speakers could each have their own space.

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Virginia Chapter of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management Annual Conference

For this event, we got to play with our LED panels’ curving abilities! We utilized two curved LED walls flanking on standard flat LED wall in the center, and used rain curtain and vibrant lighting to pump of the energy of this space!

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National Governors’ Association Conference

We really played up the modular look with this set using a blend of video wall panels & modular panels from Atomic. Because of the LED walls’ capability for high intensity brightness, we were able to use all kinds of creative gobos & lighting that would have washed out a projected screen entirely. 

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That concludes our LED wall roundup!
See something you like? Want to try our LED walls out at your next event?

Event Trends: Intelligent Lighting

If we’re talking ways to give your event a leg up and really make your attendees feel inspired and excited, intelligent lighting is high on the list.

Intelligent lighting is lighting that has automated or motion capabilities.

These kinds of fixtures are also sometimes called movers, or moving heads. They have to ability to change colors and patterns at the press of a button, and can be pre-programmed for different looks and movements!

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Intelligent lighting is often used to add impact to specific moments of an event, like entrances and transitions. They can be used to add effect to both the stage and the audience, and are especially great for flexible event spaces that have different focal points, like multiple stages or speakers placed throughout the audience. 

Intelligent lighting gives you more flexibility during an event, and creates a more elevated & energetic environment. Moving lights can even inspire movement in your attendees, if that’s a goal of yours.

We use a variety of intelligent lighting fixtures, including Chauvet’s Rogue R2, moving wash, and Maverick fixtures to allow for a wide range of effects. We also utilize hazers to enhance the effects of our spot fixtures, as the haze allows the movement of the beam to be seen. 

Intelligent lighting is becoming a favorite tool of event designers & staging professionals, and we're busy finding more and more ways to use them creatively and in a unique way! We look forward to helping you incorporate this staging technology to create more engaging events for you and your attendees! 

Stay tuned for more profiles on event trends in the coming weeks! (Check out our last trend profile on hard sets!)