Monday, August 30, 2010

Time and Energy: Only one is flexible

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

 - M. Scott Peck

As I mentioned, I've been reading The Way We're Working Isn't Working. So far, I've learned about the body's natural rhythms and how we have the most energy in the morning, and the least energy mid-afternoon. The recommendation is to exercise first thing in the morning and eat a substantial breakfast. Have a natural, mid-morning snack, and a healthy lunch. Then between 1 and 3, you should try to fit in a 30 to 90 minute nap and 10 to 30 minutes of exercise. This will renew your body and allow you to be at your ultimate level of productivity between 3 and 6:00, when you end your workday and are refreshed enough to have energy for your family in the evenings. A light dinner and a calming ritual before a regular bedtime is essential.

So... now for reality. There is no way I can skip out after lunch to take a nap. And unlikely that I can skip out to exercise. BUT, perhaps I could take an afternoon conference call on my cell phone and walk around the building while on it. Or perhaps I can at least stand at stretch in my cube during those afternoon calls.

My biggest challenge is the early morning exercise. I firmly believe that is the best time to fit exercise into my day, but I just can't get myself out of bed. So there's my challenge to myself this week. Roll out of bed and take a 20 minute walk at 6:15. Let's see if I can do it three times this week.

The challenge is on!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Integration of the whole person

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
 - Herodotus

I'm on a bit of a mission for self-fulfillment. While I absolutely adore the folks I work with every day, I think I'm spending a little too much time working with them... or more accurately, replying to them. Mornings start with the 6:45 email check and then the 7:00 conference call, then back-to-back meetings all day with the occassional break for a lunch away when it's not a lunch meeting, followed by more meetings and then a break at 5:30 to pick up the kiddo from daycare. 6-8 p.m. is Mommy Time - dinner, play, bath (as evidenced by my 2-Hour Mom Blog), then kiddo's bedtime and back online to do the emails that I couldn't do throughout the day at work, and then bed by 11. Good grief, that's like 13 hours a day! And I'm not even an attorney!
 
I'm currently reading a book called The Way We're Working Isn't Working, and I just finished this little snippet from HBR called "Don't leave your personal life at home."
 
Both talk about taking time to make a connection with your world at large, and making the time for self-renewal, even if it's just throughout the day. Before I had the kiddo, I used to volunteer with the local Humane Society, designing their quarterly newsletter and participating on the Board of Directors. I really liked feeling connected to part of my community and being able to use another side of my skills to help an organization. I know very well that as the kiddo gets older, I'll become involved in his school and whatever activities he wants to have an interest in. I love how the HBR article calls out that taking the time to be involved can even end up helping your career. I'm THRILLED to have been elected as Treasurer to the Corporate Event Marketing Association last month, so I now have a community engagement for the next couple of years (even if it's not my geographic community). Getting reconnected with my industry and outside of my bubble is super exciting and energizing to me!
 
My next challenge is to find the time to have mid-day renewals and not be ground to a pulp between 7 and 5:30. I found this article in Smart Meetings about taking a mini-escape during the day. #1, 3, and 5 take too much time away from the computer, but #2 and 4 are promising. Though I must admit I'd much rather have an engaging free-flowing lunchtime conversation than have to talk about a book... of course, those free lunch conversations inevitably end up being about work so perhaps a book conversation is a really great idea! A hobby during the day intrigues me... I do sometimes take 10 minutes to Tweet or blog, but that doesn't exactly get me away from my computer. I really love the photography idea (although that is not a hobby of mine, I do have a camera!). I think what I would really like to do is bring back some of our team fun - Laptop & Lunch (where we book a conference room for 2 hours, bring our laptops, order pizza, and watch a movie in a conference room). Or Game Time Lunch Break where we play Scategories or other fun games over lunch. The more team members we can bring in, the more renewal we can share!
 
More on The Way We're Working Isn't Working and The Energy Project in my next post.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Invite (the right) people to your event

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

 - Edward R. Murrow
 
So I read this little snippet of a post about patience needed in social media event marketing. The author explains that all you need to get people to your event is patience and some more invitations. Okay... But let's talk about how difficult it actually is to get the RIGHT people to your event. Obviously it all depends on your goal for event attendance - if you're just out for profit and you don't care who shows up, then by all means, invite away!
 
If, however, you have a thoughtfully planned and executed event, then you want to actually ensure that the people showing up are either the ones with the decision-making power to be influenced by your content, or they are the ones who will partake in your sponsors' wares so that your sponsors will continue to be attracted to your events.
 
So how are you targeting your attendees? Third party list rentals are one way to go. Pay for the names, do some mass/direct marketing, and hope for the best. Social media is a fantastic way to let the audience self-select and target their friends.
 
But how do you find the right attendees who are also influencers in social media? Consider opening up a few spots for bloggers or other media outlets. Offer them exclusive access to a person or a product, in exchange for their voice. Allow them to do sneak peeks before the event to help you draw attendees who are influenced by them. And don't forget to thank them afterwards.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Motivation

It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
 - Peter Gibbons, Office Space

I'd like to say I just wasted 10 minutes of my life watching some silly video, but I spent the last 10 minutes watching this drawing get created while some guy talked about motivation. You MUST watch this.

He mentions a company what allows its employees 24 hours to work on whatever they want. At the end of the 24 hours, they must share their results. There is no monetary incentive, but there is a nice little party with beer and cake. So what would you do with 24 hours to work on whatever you want for your company?

Maybe I would spend it documenting the playbook of our various types of events so newcomners would know the processes and procedures for getting decisions made. Maybe I would spend it planning out the next 6-months-worth of editorial calendar for our Twitter account and event blog. Maybe I would spend it creating the template for our quarterly Ops Review so we aren't reinventing the wheel each time. Maybe I would spend it brainstorming a ton of cool new remarkable Purple Cow things we could do at our events. Hmmm....

Saturday, August 7, 2010

MacGyver vs the event manager... it's like Jack Bauer vs. Chuck Norris!

Ah, yes, that's the handyman side of MacGyver; he likes to make clever little things out of odd bits.
 - Quayle ("MacGyver", TV series)

I was just over at the CVent blog and caught their post on Event Essentials: Fast Fixes for Little Event Emergencies. I truly did a "laugh out loud" at the last one, and then started thinking about my event emergency toolkit.

In addition to the duct tape, Scotch brand packing tape, and velcro, I also include:
 - Sharpie marker
 - A couple of sheets of cardstock (you never know when you have to make a sign)
 - Whiteboard markers (at least 2 - black and red)
 - Whiteboard eraser
 - Sticky tack, for when I'm not allowed to use tape
 - Post-it notes
 - Pens
 - if checking the bag, then scissors/swiss army knife for sure! if carrying on, a plastic knife comes in handy with taped boxes, too.

Of course, when a real event emergency happens, your true "fight" mechanism takes over and you have to get really ingenius.

Once, we had to fashion a taller lectern out of a sturdy box and a tablecloth because our keynote speaker (a politician) was 6'4" and wanted to see his speech without having to wear his glasses.

Another time, we had to locate an a doctor in the crowd because an attendee was cut by an armadillo during our armadillo-racing event.

And another time we unpacked our new gaming pods and started hooking up all the computers and monitors only to discover that the pods were not designed large enough to run an extension cord through. Our tech guy had to literally whittle off the "bump" on the extension cord to get it to fit through the pod.

A friend of mine told me about getting kicked out of an expo hall because they had a live animal in their booth which was not permitted (it was a themed booth, and I believe they brought a live goat).

I bet the rest of you have way cooler stories! Tell!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

How do you scale yourself and your team?

A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.
  - Kin Hubbard

I have 9 event managers on my team (more team members, but 9 that manage events). Last quarter (that's THREE months), we did 46 events. And that doesn't even include the little 10x10s that one team member managed. Those are full-on EVENTS. So at first blush, I like to brag that we scale like crazy.

But as I dig deeper, we're spinning our wheels. We're working nights. We're working weekends. We're doing things that our vendors should be doing for us. Next quarter, we may not have that many events (only 35!) but they are HUGE, mega events. High visibility, high manpower, big events.

So how we do we effectively scale to ensure that we can maintain our SLAs?

Love this article from Fast Company about scaling.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

If I knew then what I know now...

The only source of knowledge is experience.

  - Albert Einstein


I was just reading Dave Egan's blog post by the same title about what I wish I knew about events when I began my career. It's a thought-provoking question!

I wish I'd had a better understanding of budgeting... more importantly tracking and reporting to my stakeholders.

I wish I'd had the ability to ask for help. I did way too many things on my own, causing other people last-minute churn to fix my mistakes.

I wish I'd had coaching on how to not take things personally when a team member suggested I do something a different way.

Ah youth... it's wasted on the young!