We are super excited about GROWCO 2012 and wanted to share this info other business leaders who want to take their business to the next level.  Inspired by the success of the Inc. 5000 community, Inc. now brings us GROWCO: Grow Your Company Conference, a three-day conference which brings together over 600+ entrepreneurs. GROWCO speakers include Guy Kawasaki, Daymond John, Eric Reis and other founders and CEOs of fast-growing companies, icons in the business community, and authors. They will offer advice, discuss proven strategies, and real-world solutions that will help your company grow and flourish!

The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans with room rates at $209. This is awesome as I haven’t been since the Jazz festival there in 2004! Reminder: Register prior to January 6th (just two days away) for #growco and save $300. This is a must-attend event for growth-minded leaders of private companies and we hope to see you there! Please let us know if you will be attending and what you think about this event. We love to hear your thoughts, so leave us a comment or send to events@abcey.com.

We’re super excited to finally attend the Event Solutions Idea Factory Expo this coming February 26th-29th, 2012 at Cesears Palace in Las Vegas, NV. This has always been on ABCey’s “Must Attend” lists, but our hectic schedule hasn’t permitted us to do so until now. This is regarded as “the” Event Industry event of the year, where creativity, success and connections are founded. Planners, producers, and marketers from across the country and around the world will come together to explore ideas and strategies that can help take you and your company to the next level. It’s a perfect mix of fun and informative events, educational sessions, a massive resource Expo, networking opportunities and more.

Here’s a recap from last year!

We are always up for learning and staying on top of current industry trends, so this is a great opportunity for those interested in the same. And, it’s in Vegas…how can you go wrong? Okay, just make sure not to stay out all night so that you don’t miss the morning sessions!

EDUCATION: Take part in more than 100 sessions, presentations and demos and keep your
business ahead of the curve and ahead of the competition.
EVENTS: Many included and optional events will bring the latest event and catering trends and concepts to life. Bring your camera
and take home ideas you can use.
TRADESHOW: The Tradeshow floor will bring you hundreds of essential resources for successful events and meetings.
NETWORKING: Connect with other event planning professionals to share ideas, discuss the issues and create solutions.

To register, click here! Make sure you get your pass by January 31st to save. The complete ES Idea Factory Brochure can also be downloaded on the website. We hope to see you all there!

We were really excited to hear that the AC World Series, Louis Vuitton Cup America’s Cup Challenger Series and the 34th America’s Cup Finals will be sailed in our hometown, San Francisco, Calif. in 2012 and 2013! This is the oldest trophy in modern sport and continues to build upon its rich heritage of leading-edge innovation with an event that is designed to showcase the best sailors in the world on the fastest boats. This will be the first time in 18 years that this worldwide event will be held in the United States. There will be approximately 45 race days, so that means that SF will be experiencing more days of competition than any other international sporting events ever held in this city. Arriving for the first time in the summer of 2012, the sailing will start with two back to back events, the first from the 11th to 19th of August and the second beginning a week later, running from the 27th August through the 2nd September.

The upcoming America’s Cup events in Newport, Rhode Island, San Francisco and San Diego, California are predicted to create thousands of jobs and over $1 billion in economic impact over the next two years. For the first time in history, the America’s Cup will be able to be seen from shore, creating tremendous public access for spectators as well as drawing large spectator crowds to benefit the port cities hosting America’s Cup events. The City of SF estimates over 300,000 visitors on peak viewing days and no tickets are necessary.   Additionally, the America’s Cup is predicted to deliver an estimated over $1 billion economic impact to the San Francisco Bay area, with more than 8,500 jobs that will be created due to the America’s Cup.

ABCey Events is looking forward to working on some of the many events that will be surrounding the actual races. If your company is involved and is interested in some outside event planning or production help, you know who to call!

Rough America’s Cup race day numbers & dates:
AC World Series 2012-2013 Race 1 (Aug. 2012):  7 race days
AC World Series 2012-2013 Race 2 (Sept. 2012:  7 race days
AC Opening events (7/4-7/7 2013):  3 race days
Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series 2013 (7/13-9/1):  32 race days over 51 days
America’s Cup Finals (9/7-9/22 2013):  9 race days over 16 days

Who would have thought that you could “collect people, places, and things with a touch”? Poken, is a small device that stores all of your personal information, such as, your name, business, and contact information. This information can be traded with other individuals at the touch of another Poken. This would be great for an event! Rather than trading business cards, you can simply exchange your information through the Poken, and in return, Poken creates a timeline of the people you met with all of their information. This is a great way to generate business leads and gather brochure information at your next event! Here are some of the benefits:

For You:

• Generate high quality business leads
• Simple and easy to deploy infrastructure
• Reduce paper waste and send a message of social consciousness
• Minimize printing and logistics costs of leaflets
• Track networking success with post-event analytics

4000 people were hosted in Orland, Florida and participants were allowed to collect information via Poken, click here to see the results. ABCey Events hopes to use Poken at our upcoming events!

Virtual events and Hybrid Events have been a hot topic for a while now. If you’re unclear on what a Hybrid event is, it is simply the extension of traditional in-person events with tools such as broadcasting and social media. For some special event professionals, hybrid events are not cutting-edge but commonplace. Every event now-a-days should really be considered a hybrid from the start, unless there is a specific reason for there not to be. The more people to get involved into a brand, a product or a communication message, the better their response will be in the form of buying decisions or recommendations. Hybrid events involve people even more than classic events did in the past, and at this point you can see that virtual and social media elements offer a lot of advantages for companies planning to use them. It’s not just regular “ROI” anymore, it’s Return on Involvement as well!

International event powerhouse Vok Dams Group, headquartered in Germany, was among the first agencies to integrate the Internet into special events back in 1998. And the company’s commitment to hybrid events is clear: “The future belongs to hybrid events, which pair live with MoSoLo—the use of mobile/social/location-based technologies,” says company leader Coja Dams. For Microsoft’s partner conference in Germany last week, the Vok Dams team turned to a mix of elements, including a custom event guide app, communication via Facebook and Xing (the German version of LinkedIn), Xbox Kinect modules at the event, and scannable tag codes at networking events that helped the 1,400 guests learn more about one another.

ABCey Events loves learning about the immersion of new and innovative technology and events. Several event pros who routinely stage hybrid events stress that complex technology is not a must though. Multi-source events can also be incredibly cheap, from Skype and Twitter, to most costly, satellite and interactive texting. We do think that putting a digital spin on a live event can make the event better. Technology is changing at light speed. It is time for the us, the event marketers of the world to assess their portfolio and align new business models to their event marketing strategies!

This post was adapted from “Hybrid Special Events–So ‘Now’ or Not Yet?” by Lisa Hurley of Special Events Magazine.

We’re loving Event Espresso over here, even though we haven’t had a chance to use this events registration and management plugin for WordPress just yet. One of the most important choices you can make for your meeting, conference, or event is the website design. The onsite registration and calendar module features make this a great choice, among many other reasons! They seem to keep adding new features too such as a custom form builder, early bird registrations, Groupon integration and Facebook, Twitter, and Mailchimp addons. This is looking like exactly what we need for some of our clients & their events!

Event Espresso has all the event management tools you need, from accepting payments to reports to promotions.

• Custom descriptions
• Multiple event dates
• Multiple event times
• Multiple event prices, surcharges, member pricing
• Event location and mapping
• Custom email confirmations
• Event categories
• On-going events
• Attendee limits
• Group registrations
• Make events a blog post
• and more!

This premium plugin for WordPress allows you to turn your existing blog or website into a fully featured event management website. If your organization offers classes, workshops, events, trainings or conferences for which participants need to register in advance, Event Espresso can make you a hero. This online event registration system can save your organization countless hours of administrative time, create a “green” and paperless event registration process, reduce costs and be available to take sign-ups 24/7. Everything from custom confirmation and reminder emails to payment management, and quite a bit more is all included and automatically handled for you.

The plugin even creates registration forms so attendees can sign up right on your website. Attendee information is also stored right in the WordPress database, allowing you to have access at any time. If you don’t have a PayPal or Authorize.net account, it’s okay. Event Espresso now offers alternate methods of accepting payments. Registrants can now download a PDF invoice or pay by Cash/Ckeck/Money Order, Bank Transfer, Authorize.net, and PayPal. There is even an option to pay by bank transfer!

Thanks Event Espresso. This is a great tool and we are sure to use it here at ABCey Events soon!

TechCrunch Disrupt has just wrapped here in San Francisco, and we’re excited to report on this groundbreaking event. There were over 2,000 attendees this year, 30+ newly launched startups onstage in the Startup Battlefield, and another 200+ people coming from India, Poland, Germany, and Korea! If you were unable to attend and interested in a recap of some of the hackathon, the talks, panels, launches, or startups that took place, you are in the right place. Startups presented a slew of new cloud-based services built to help small businesses and every team was truly inspiring to watch.

Out of the seven finalists which included Bitcasa, Cake Health, Farmigo, Prism Skylabs, Shaker, TalkTo, and Trello, Shaker won the true hearts of the audience, and, as we found out later, of the investors as well!  Shaker takes basic social gaming a step further by allowing users to meet new people (as opposed to playing the game with existing friends), which replicates the experience of being in an actual bar. Shaker looks at profile information to show what else you may have in common with seemingly random people in the room. Users from all over the world can go to a virtual bar, listen to the same music, meet each other’s friends, and even buy drinks, and all at the same time! The startup, which has raised $3 million in funding, is already seeing pretty good traction. The game received 80,000 MAUs in a matter of weeks, and had to block invitations.  You can view the TCTV backstage video with Shaker after their Disrupt victory here along with other footage from the event. Also, be sure to check out the the TechCrunch Flickr stream as well for more event photos!

ABCey Events would like to congratulate the winners and participants on all their success and hard work. We love you TechCrunch!

If you want to impress your guests, booking a keynote speaker to headline your event is a great way to encourage people to come. But how do you know which speaker to select? What exactly will he or she talk about? Will the people in attendance like the topic and the presentation? Will the speaker repeat messages from previous speakers?  What are other ways to improve the event without an expensive speaker? After you have asked these questions, it’s time to think about important ways to select your speaker.
Veer Consulting offers 3 tips to booking the right keynote speaker for your event.

1. Know what’s important: It’s easy to say you want someone to speak at your event, but the speaker needs a purpose. Create a list of priorities for your event and see which speaker’s topics and talents meet these priorities. Solicit feedback from team leadership about previous speakers and what did and did not satisfy the organization’s needs.
2. Don’t be afraid to negotiate: There are two sides to every story, and there are two sides to every deal. You know your priorities and the speaker knows his or hers. This is the time for negotiation and compromise. Does he or she need special equipment, handouts, travel costs? What is the anticipated fee? Talk with your speaker and learn what he or she needs to produce the quality experience you want.
3. Be fair in your negotiations: Reaching an agreement in which both parties are satisfied is not always easy. Be respectful of your speaker’s needs and keep your demands reasonable. Know what you want before negotiating with a speaker. Be clear in your understanding of the speaker’s talents and the audience composition.

A good keynote speaker can make a difference in your event’s success. Who has been your best keynote speaker? Do you have any tips for booking the right one?

For the full article, click here.

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) came back to Moscone Center this Monday. The WWDC showcases the latest innovations and the newest technologies in iOS and Mac OS X. Every year there are a variety of special events surrounding the WWDC experience. Thousands of developers from around the world will be in attendance, creating a unique setting for you to make new connections. You can strike up a conversation with other developers, create relationships that go beyond your week at WWDC, and gain inspiration from how your peers are using Apple technologies. Some of this year’s highlights include:

1) Keynote Speaker
CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple Executives kickoff the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference with a keynote address. The address (Monday) is now available to watch on podcast.

2) Mobclix & Groupon WWDC Mashup Cocktail Party
Last night on Howard Street, there was twice the space from last year, more awesome music from DJ Solomon, and networking opportunities. There were cocktails, the company of the creme de la creme of mobile app developers, and 30 of the hottest iPhone/iPad app demos.

3) Lunchtime Session with Pixar
Dr. Michael B. Johnson, a Pixarian since 1993, has been involved in all of Pixar’s feature films and many of their short films. In this talk, Dr. Johnson will discuss specific case studies about how the art drove the technology while the technology inspired the art.

4) WWDC Bash at Yerba Buena Gardens
As the week nears the finish line, it’s time to relax and enjoy great food, beverages, and entertainment. Yerba Buena Gardens is a short walk from Moscone West and offers a great setting for attendees to mingle with peers and have fun.

Over 1,000 Apple engineers guide attendees through five exciting days of in-depth technical sessions and hands-on labs. The special events are crucial to the success of the event as they help balance the sessions and labs.

What special events would you like to see at the WWDC?

To see more on the conference, click here

People hailing from all over the world arrived around 7:00pm at 25 Lusk in SoMa on Sunday evening, having just come from the 133rd Annual Meeting of the INTA, (International Trademark Association), Conference.  The convention spanned from May 14th-18th, and featured events such as an academic course on international trademark law, advanced mediation training, several receptions, roundtable events, and a Grand Finale at the California Academy of Sciences.

The host of Sunday’s event, CMS Legal, the European provider of legal and tax services, opened their doors to legal professionals who were in town to attend the main conferences.  Some of the attendees were representatives of EPEC from the Netherlands, Thomas Reuters of Belgium, Salans from the Republic of Kazakhstan, MAGS Law Firm of Lithuania, and Boss&Young of China.  These are only a few of the places visitors came from!

CMS members and their guests gathered for a reception on the lower level of 25 Lusk to network, share a delicious meal, and enjoy the soothing vocals of Betty Foo and her band.  Accomplished photographer Dan Blanchard moved about the spacious room to capture the event in its fullest.

ABCey Events was fortunate to have helped with such a wonderful and successful event, and extends a big thank you to CMS Legal and all their guests!

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