From all of us at Convention Insider and from the people at Conventions.net, we want to thank all of our veterans and thank them for their service.  From the many men that have served in the past and those that are serving now, thank you and bless all of you!

If you have a veteran in your life thank them for their service, for the freedom they provide and for the sacrifices they have made.

Tags: Veteran’s Day, Conventions.net, Convention Insider

I want to let everyone know why I have been absent for a while from the blog.  I have been in complete trade show and convention mode for the last 6 weeks and it has been quite an experience.  I talk about a lot of things that are part of our industry, such as travel, meeting venues and trade shows that are occurring but never have I given real life experiences that I have had.  That all can change now as I went through that process last week in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center.  We had a three day conference with a two day full on exhibited trade show at that location and I was in the heart of the show and its inner workings.  I have much to discuss as it relates to the real inside of a trade show and convention.  There were some good, bad and ugly stories and I want to share all of those with you.

I had to deal with vendors, exhibitors, speakers, attendees, location managers, and staff and everyone else involved with the show. From the planning to the inner workings, to the post show analysis debriefing I was involved from start to finish.  The good news is I have been invited back to do it all again next year, and for some that might even be bad news.

I want to thank the folks at Conventions.net for giving me the latitude for some real inside research and participation.  I am hoping to pass on some of that knowledge I learned, some funny stories, and perhaps a nightmare or two.  Stay tuned here as I go through the process.  I am afraid I still have one event left and that will be at the Marriott Waikiki in beautiful Hawaii.  It’s not a bad gig but still it is working on a conference and convention.

Tags: trade shows, conventions, Las Vegas Convention Center, LCVA, BlogWorld Expo, BWE09, Hawaii, Rethink Hawaii

Happy Labor Day!  This is apparently a day that I am not supposed to work.  The problem is we had to get up earlier than a day I normally work to get the brisket on the BBQ to begin smoking for a picnic party.  I must have forgotten the memo on that one.  Actually, I looked it up just to make sure it wasn’t against the rules of labor or something, and found tat you actually are required to work harder on Labor Day having fun than you do performing work.  Well to those of you that are relaxing ad taking it easy on this day, please enjoy and those that are out laboring at fun, please be careful safe and ave a great day.

Tags: Labor Day, Holidays, Conventions, Trade Shows

I wanted to quickly share with those that are on Twitter, our retweeting function here at Convention Insider.  If you like what you read or you want to share our blog poost with your network of friends, please feel free to use the retweet function on each of these posts.  The retweet button can be pushed and it will automatically open your Twitter account and you can then send out to your network the link to the post.  Feel free to do so!

I am in Seattle this week and I am attending a conference at the Bell Harbor Conference Center.  Enjoy your own convention, conference or trade show!

Tags: Twitter, Tweetmeme, Blogging, Conventions, Trade Shows

by Guest Contributor – Peter LoCascio

A key strategy for improving your overall trade show exhibiting effectiveness — and increasing your personal face value with your corporation — is to first focus on the single most important trade show you have and develop incremental tactics that deliver predetermined, agreed upon results.

Your most crucially important trade show exhibition will surely garner the attention of your top management team members and open doors to their acceptance of your ideas, strategies and tactics to maximize the show’s effectiveness and anticipated results.

Working closely with management well before the trade show to establish realistic exhibit goals and objectives, supported by tactics for you to develop and execute, will set the tone for future shows and help elevate the trade show function to new levels of sophistication and success.

Once the standard has been set and supported by management for your major trade show, employing the same focus for all smaller shows will become standard and easier for you to direct and manage.

Producing and distributing a pre-show briefing memo outlining the trade show exhibit’s goals, objectives, strategies and tactics will help set in place  your commitments to the show while establishing a solid benchmark against which results can be measured and judged after the show.

The essence of this strategy is that you become top management’s facilitator of new and innovative ideas designed to gradually advance the function of trade show exhibiting. In doing so, you’ll not only enjoy greater approval and improved management status, but better results from your trade show presence as well.

Peter LoCascio
www.tradeshowconsultants.com

Yesterday we had some down time here at the Convention Insider as we rearranged the furniture a little in our back side offices.  Well not exactly, we merely switched out blog over to a dedicated server for the purpose of better serving your needs.  If you can tell we are running a little faster here now there is a reason.  We are now back up and running and as you can see from my last post having a blog down did not stop those from commenting as my test worked with flying colors.  The companies with listening software were indeed listening and commented.  Now we get back to regularly, okay so they are not as regular as I would like, scheduled blog postings.

Update:  Just when I thought the problems were over we have some quirks here so be patient if something is going awry on comments or the like.

Update 2:  Feel like we should be playing a theme song from Jeopardy here.

Tags: Conventions.net, Convention Insider

I am the social media director for a trade show or convention in my industry.  I guess that means i am in charge of being social.  I know, it sounds like a pretty easy job and for the most part it is pretty easy as long as you stay on top of things, but don’t tell my boss, because he will cut the budget for marketing using social media.

Of course I am being tongue in cheek when I talk about that, but it does have some merit to it as well. Do you have a part of your budget that calls for social media marketing?  I have spoken to a number of organizers about social media and they all have said the same thing or something at least similar to, "We are waiting and seeing if it is a good return on the investment."  Not many are setting aside funds for this but I can give this tip.  If you are putting social media into your budget, make sure you start at a baseline.  make sure you have a beginning point to look back and see what returns you are getting.  We can help you with those ideas, just let us know. 

Tags: social media, return on investment, marketing, trade shows, conventions, events

Today we are hearing about all of the trade shows and conventions having their troubles with attendance and sizes dwindling and many other doom and gloom type stories.  This is what makes it especially nice to hear about the cool stories and the good news that takes place in our world.  Trade Show Week has now published its list of hottest events and shows in its TSW Fastest 50 Winners.  The announcement was made today listing the top 50 fastest movers in the business.

Shows from the United States and Canada will be recognized during the TSW Fastest 50 event Nov. 13-15 in Houston, which also hosted the inaugural celebration in 2003.

This Fastest 50 event registration opens on August 10, 2009. To register and for more information, go to www.tswfastest50.com.

Conventions.net and we here at Convention Insider would like to offer our most heartfelt congratulations to the winners as they all deserve to be recognized as leaders given the difficulties they have faced in accomplishing this great honor.

Tags: Trade Show Week, TSW Fastest 50, Houston

Now I am going out on a limb here to make the offer just that much better.  If you sign up for the Annual Premium Listing before the deadline on Friday I will feature you and your company here on Convention Insider!  Shhh, don’t tell the boss, he doesn’t have a clue that I am offering this but if you read it here and sign up for the offer, just drop me a line and I will make sure you get included on the blog as an added bonus. Okay here endeth the pitch. Tags: Conventions.net, Online Marketing, Trade Shows, Conventions, Meetings, Events

In case you have not been paying attention, we have been seeing a few blog posts here in Convention Insider from some different authors.  The authors I am speaking of are guest contributors.  These contributors as some of the top experts in their fields as it relates to convention planning, event planning and trade shows. 

They are going to be providing us with their knowledge, their tips, and information that helped them become the best of the best. I am completing their introductions but you can see their bio and pictures all soon on the guest contributors in the navigational bar at the top of the blog.  Pay attention to these writers and the information that they provide. I can assure you as a convention insider myself, the nuggets of information they provide is worth your time.