In the 18th Hole Skybox

My good friend Danette, who I met during the IACP Conference, is the Pro-Am Coordinator for the Buick Invitational PGA Tour. So when it rolled into La Jolla early this month, I got a chance to be a part of it. My official title was "Hospitality Ambassador." I was a representative for the Century Club and acted as a liaison to patrons and vendors alike in the corporate skybox overlooking the 18th hole, where companies like Barona, Bank of America, and Grey Goose had reserved sections. My job was essentially:
1) make sure everything in the area was running smoothly, all issues were addressed with effectiveness and efficiency, and the area was comfortable and clean for both patrons and vendors
2) talk to people between pairings and make them feel all warm and welcome

My understanding was that the Century Club had Hospitality Ambassadors in all the skyboxes and a couple of chalets, plus the Enclave. The Enclave was an VIP lounge area, which named after the car model which I didn't realize until I was driving behind one two days before the tournament.

I'm not a big golf person either. I'm one of those frustrating people that's only ever heard of Tiger Woods. But I have to say, it's not the boring sport people make it out to be. People really cheer when a good shot is made. The crowd's collective breath-holding and consequent cheer or groan when the player is sinking his last putt on the green can really put a lot of energy into the game. And the 18th hole is probably the best place to possibly be on the whole course, especially on the last day when the whole tournament came down to just three players.

The security measures that the tournament had to take to protect the professional players were probably the most impressive part of being a part of an outdoor sports event. Although I wasn't a part of it, I know that parking and transportation was a big deal too -- shuttles were bringing patrons from Qualcomm Stadium and the Del Mar Fairgrounds, both equally about 30 minutes away from the site.

It got pretty rainy and breezy out on the golf course and I really admired the spirit of the patrons and the players who continued about their business no matter how heavy the rain got. Even though I was in the skybox, it wasn't completely enclosed so I was really glad I bothered with the 4 layers of clothing despite feeling so silly in the morning. And even though I was there to serve as part of the Century Club's hospitality team, it was a great networking opportunity for me personally and representing the Century Club and the Buick Invitational gave me a heightened self-awareness of how important a professional demeanor and image is and whether I was achieving it.

I have no pictures from the tourney, since cameras and cell phones weren't allowed on the grounds, but it was overall it was a great experience and a refreshing change of pace from the conferences and special events I've been working on. I don't think sporting events is where I want to be but there was definitely a lot to learn from it.

As I told my supervisor, I want to go back next year and be in the 18th hole skybox again!

Great Find: A Daily Reminder

Amy, from Fiancé Meeting You Here, writes an adorable blog about her journey of being a bride. She shared this amazing find from, of all places, Wal-Mart!



It costs $40 and can be personalized for no additional fee. For Amy's comments on the item, check out her post. Stick around for the rest of her blog too. I love her finds!

Elite Productions International

Last Monday, I had the privilege of working with Elite Productions International, an event production company out of Orange County. Yes, I hauled my butt from San Diego to Dana Point in the pouring rain for nearly an hour for a chance to work with the lovely Pawntra and Lili!

Here are a couple of the things I helped create during the day:


I hot glue-gunned these glass vases with metal eyelets fabric strips. Later, the colored water was added. This was for a rock-and-roll themed event the following night at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort.


This vase holding orchids and branches was the decor for the registration/check in table at a dinner in the Ritz-Carlton being held for Chinese investors. This was a great hands-on experience with flowers.


Three vases went on every table but they weren't really centerpieces since the lazy susan would be in the middle, the dinner being Chinese style and all. These lovely orchids are coupled with artificial glittery gold branches.

100 Great Wedding Blogs

Posted by Allison Hendrickson, this list is a repost from Jessica Merritt at Soul Mating.

http://www.nashvilledesignandphotography.com/2009/02/100-great-wedding-blogs/

Out of the 100, I found a handful of new ones that I fell in love with, such as Snippet & Ink and Cake Wrecks. And I can't believe I went this long without knowing that Etsy has a blog!

I was pleased to spot a couple of familiar names: A $10,000 Wedding, Offbeat Bride, Style Me Pretty.

Maybe one day I'll join the ranks of these wonderful blogs. A gal can only dream.

Cake Wrecks

I just found the most amazing cake blog ever -- Cake Wrecks! Jen collects pictures of the most hilarious cakes you've ever seen, everything from misspellings to distorted images to things that are downright amazing like the 10,000 cupcake mosaic of Obama and Lincoln.

The criteria for being a "cake wreck" is that it must be made by a professional, loosely defined as anyone who is paid to make the cake for someone else, and it must not be too gory/gross/offensive/etc. Likewise, dumb mistakes like the cake with the frosted text "underneath" will not be considered either.

It's amazing what "professional" bakers are putting out there!

Phun In Photoshop - Art for TSE After Show

As I mentioned before, the San Diego chapter of ISES is leaving it up to the students to plan the February program. We've decided on The Special Event After Show, which will consist of the usual networking and dinner session followed by interviews and a panel of San Diego professionals in the event industry. We're super excited about it.

I had the honor of being the one to design the art that we are using for fliers, table cards, etc. I took the art from The Special Event website (seen below) and modified it in Photoshop for our own use.

Here is the flier we are using, along with a couple of table topic name cards:

We picked our topics based on popular topics at TSE this year -- namely the economy, greening, and networking. More on TSE AS later!

The TSE Series: The Amazing People I Met and a TSE wrap-up

After tearing my room apart, I still couldn't find the program from TSE which I absolutely know that I have so I gave up after realizing that it was delaying my blog post and consequent posts. I learned a lot of things about being green, weddings, ad layouts, and most importantly BLOGGING. The classes were sort of hit-and-miss, since I think most of the titles weren't very accurate reflections of the content. For example, I attended one that was named something to the effect of "Driving Lead Print Ads" (something something about it being effective... I told you I needed the program) and the name sounded incredibly boring... but it turned out to be a really interesting analysis of what things are effective and ineffective in printed ads. (And print ads sounds dry too but it really means the type of ads you'd get printed in a magazine or what have you.)

Anyhow, I decided to scrap the remainder of the series in favor of new posts so I'm just going to write about a few really awesome people that I met at TSE.

Robyn Bomar, the writer at Mix Mingle Glow, taught the class I attended about blogging. She gave a great overview about what blogging means and what it can do, then moved on to tips on how to stay steady and increase traffic/readership. Her advice was inspirational but real, and really got me fired up about blogging. She also threw a really neat little mixer with her good friend, Marley Majcher, writer of The Party Goddess. Both are wonderful, fun blogs and you should definitely check them out.

And at said mixer, I met Cecelia Rose, who is the main "Creative Chick" at Eventurous out of Cincinnati, Ohio. She is just so full of energy and spunk that talking with her is like taking a new puppy out for a walk -- it was all we could do to keep up! Also, I met a few lovely ladies from Fresh Events Company, a full service wedding and corporate events company out of Los Angeles. We all went to dinner and took in Cecelia's amazing stories -- the amusement of how much big important corporate women love 99 cent favors, laughed about getting so many materials for gift crates that she barely had any room to walk, and bemoaning about not getting to plan Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson's wedding just because she didn't want to say anything.

On the exhibit hall floor, I came across a ton of beautiful things. Of course, I stopped at the USD booth to say hi to our program coordinator, Monica Phelps-Zambrano. Other notable mentions include the Hard Rock Hotel, TheKnot, and Amy's Orchids. Amy is this sweet Asian lady who reminds me a little bit of my mom (except infinitely less naggy, not actually being my mother and all). It's a family-owned business and they import their orchids from Thailand. These things are beautiful, especially the long 12' stringed orchids.

I also met Pawntra Shadab, an event producer from Elite Productions International, and will be working with them on an event soon.

TSE was, above all, an amazing networking experience. Seeing so many things together like that at one time really shows how every aspect of an event really has to pull together for it to work. I hope it comes back to San Diego soon and I'll be on the other side of the conference!

The TSE Series: All the Pretty Pictures

This was poor note-taking and memory on my part but I don't have all the vendor names/contacts for all the pictures here. I just snapped pictures of things that stood out to me. I'll make comments on the ones I do remember.


That girl walks around with that table around her! What a neat way to serve food.



Great uses of color.


Very cute


Beautiful apple/green theme.


More beautiful colors.

This series of pictures I'm going to talk about a little more in the next post, but these are all flowers from Amy's Orchids.






Dark settings:



Centerpieces:

The TSE Series: What I Learned From Working It

Getting to be a volunteer for The Special Event was a combination of networking, luck, and persistence. I was recruited by Anthony Bollotta, of Bollotta Entertainment (an independent entertainment booking company, who is one of the San Diego ambassadors for TSE. He teaches the Entertainment Event Management class in my USD Event Management Certificate program and was able to secure three spaces for USD students to come and be a part of TSE. The luck and persistance parts were... more interesting. I didn't hear for several months about what exactly my role was going to be and any details about my being a part of the event. So, for about one solid month before TSE, I emailed Anthony nonstop, since I was unable to get in touch with the two contacts he referred me to. I know they were really busy getting set up for TSE and not having time to reach out to your volunteers is one thing... but not responding to their emails and phone calls? They must have been really swamped.

So, in comes the luck part. Fortunately, I already had the pleasure of working at the convention center for IACP so I had an idea of how it might go. Right up until the day TSE started, I still couldn't get ahold of my contact so on the second day, I just showed up. I followed the signs toward the conference HQ and stopped the first person I saw with a radio to ask for Jasmine Brown, the volunteer coordinator for Penton Media, who put on TSE. My luck? The person I stopped was Jasmine! We walked to HQ together and hashed out my schedule.

I had a similar job at TSE to my job at IACP, albeit lesser some responsibility. I didn't get a radio but I did get a badge scanner. I scanned everyone's badge for the sessions I was assigned to, passed out evaluations, and collected them at the end. Again, I was also responsible for helping direct people around the meeting rooms, helping them find particular rooms, classes, bathrooms, etc.

Oh, and lesson learned from IACP -- I wore a watch instead of pulling out my cell phone to check the time. I look more like a professional and less like a technology-reliant teenager this way.

The other two students from USD chosen to be a part of TSE were not there. I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't done IACP and decided I probably knew enough about how this might go to just show up and expect them to have someplace to put me. My prior experience gave me the confidence that I would be able to jump in and swim even though I didn't have specific information about this event.

What I learned from observation of how Penton was handling everything is that it looks pretty crucial to have one person in charge of coordinating volunteers/staff because it really is a pretty big job. I think it was too much for her to handle along with everything else she was doing.

The Special Event Series

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being a part of The Special Event Trade Show and Conference at the San Diego Convention Center. It was inspiring and energizing to meet so many industry professionals. I learned a lot about a lot of things and I'm very excited to present (over the next few posts) a series about my experience at The Special Event. It will be titled, uncreatively, The TSE Series.

Photography: Creating and Using Bokeh Effects

I don't know a lot about photography so when I saw this post for using bokehs, I didn't know a whole lot about it. Fortunately, Jason Fitzpatrick, one of the amazing writers at Lifehacker, wrote this description for all of us:
"It's that oh-so-wonderful fuzziness in the background of photographs with a shallow depth of field and accompanying starry highlights."

i.e. this:

(This image is also from their link.)

Even I though I have next to no understanding about how to actually make this, even though they sent their readers over to DIY Photography for a walk through, I thought how cute would the little hearts be on wedding pictures??

And it wouldn't have to just be weddings. You could use little stars for a Hollywood theme event or snowflakes for a winter theme. The ideas are limitless!

Credit to Lifehacker and DIY Photography:
http://lifehacker.com/5142551/create-your-own-bokeh-for-beautiful-photo-effects
http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_create_your_own_bokeh

First Day of 502

Tonight was the first session of my USD 502 class: Best Practices in Event Management. I skipped 501 for financial reasons and am planning on taking it during the summer intensive, but I just couldn't skip the class being taught by DeeAnne Snyder. She is a wonderful lady who is like a mentor to me. She is also the Director of Convention Services down at the San Diego Convention Center and it was thanks to her that I have the biggest selling point on my resume -- the IACP conference.

Our class is split into 4 groups that are planning 4 different fictious events. My group is doing a destination wedding and right now we're thinking of sending our fictious bride and her 200-300 guests to either Australia or Hawaii. Some of the other girls in my group are more familar with Hawaii so they were thinking that would be easier but I thought that since we were planning a fake event with a fake bride and an unlimited budget that we may as well go as all out as we can. I'll try and get some pictures snapped of our presentation of the project in two weeks.

Twitter for Event Planners

I just found this guide that labels its a "quick and dirty" introduction to the benefits of using Twitter from an event planner's perspective. During The Special Event conference, there was a lot of talk about the Web 2.o and using the next generation of communication tools to market, promote, and reach new clientele. This mostly covered FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, and blogging. Now that I think about it, every event production company should probably take on an intern just to cover all their online marketing. I am available for hire, by the way. ;-)

http://resources.pathable.com/twitter-for-event-planners

Oh, and I'd like to add that I use Twitter myself but it's a personal account and has nothing to do with event planning. If you'd like to check it out anyway, it's http://twitter.com/schoung. I love all the cool stuff people link on it so mostly I just re-link things anyway.