Talent Development

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Something serious? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, what's your any kids stories with, you know, with your guys? We are live. We are live. When I go ahead and share my screen. And we will get started in just a minutes. Give everybody a chance to, to get rolled into the session. Welcome, welcome. All right. Let's go ahead and get started at ten o'clock. Hello everyone and welcome to evolve TES M. Thank you all so much for joining us for the event, tourism, future trends, opportunities and challenges session. I'm Derek has shrunk whether lecture and the tourism, event and Sport Management Department at IEP UI. One of the very proud instructors of the team of students that meet this week possible. Before we jump in, I'd like to go over a few housekeeping items so that you know how to best participate in today's session. This is a live session for your questions for any of our speakers, please use the Q and a feature located at the bottom of the screen. You're welcome to peppered in questions throughout the session, but we do have a designated Q and a time at the end where we will go through those and you'll get answers. We also have a chat feature at the bottom, and you can use that for questions about the event this week. The questions not related to the topic or to connect with other attendees. This session is being recorded. The link to watch the recording will be posted in the session details on the platform by the end of the day. So if you want to come back and check out anything or re-watch certain sections, you can do that. At the end of this session, I will post the session evaluation link in the chat for every session IV out that you complete this week, your name is entered into a sweepstakes drawing for prizes. Lastly, a kind reminder, please engage in this session as a professional and adhere to the code of conduct that you signed in registration to ensure that everyone has a really great experience. So in case you're not familiar with T ESM, the tourism event and Sport Management Department is the host of this event of evolve. Dsm is a part of the School of Health and Human Sciences at IU PUI and has to undergrad degree options and many more certificates in minors focused around careers and Tourism Events, hospitality and sport. In addition, today you're gonna get a little bit of information about our graduate program. We're proud to be in the heart of Indianapolis and event and sport destination that provides us with the opportunity to teach our students the mini hands-on experiences, just like this week's event. So just hear a little bit about evolve. It is a week long virtual event that was created by 58 students focusing on not just helping students, but also alumni and those who are around the country and the tourism, event and sport fields to find their Path4 during this very difficult year and compete for the careers that they're so passionate about. The week will focus on career development, build tech skills, and understanding how to design more inclusive events. All week these tracks have been delivered through over 50 industry speakers, through panels, workshops, and employer exhibits. All right, next, I would like to introduce my good friend and moderator for today's session, Dr. Amanda Cecil. She is a professor at IU PUI and a colleague of mine and also the director of the event Tourism Institute. She teaches courses and event management and international tourism. Her professional career started in association and corporate event planning where she worked in business travel management, customer service, Destination Marketing, collegiate sport management and convention and special events planning. She has research interests arounds linking business travel and tourism trends to the convention and meeting market and scholarly interests in the development of competency-based curriculum models and the impact of experiential learning, specifically service learning pedagogies. She's also the Dean of Education, 4GB, ETA, the global business travel Association. And in 2012, we were so proud of her. She collaborated with the Indiana hospitality and tourism community to create the super service program, which we still use in our program to this day. That was launched to make sure that Indianapolis did a great job hosting the 2012 Superbowl. So I'll let you take it over from here and introduce the grad program and your students ink you Erica women just pop up my presentation. Very, very good. Erica, thanks so much for that kind introduction. What she didn't tell you is I'm the senior member of the faculty. I've actually been with T and C m Now for or TES m now for 19 years, I'm going into my 19th year on the faculty, which is hard to say. And Erica actually was one of my students back in my early days of teaching event management and just one of my proudest alumni and I'd just gotten a pleasure to work with so many great undergrads. And now I get to work with just an incredible group of graduate students. So I'm truly blessed. I also really enjoyed working with industry professions and bridging academia and industry is really my passion area. So thanks again for inviting us. We're thrilled to be with you today and we're going to share some of our ideas and forward-thinking with you as we work through this presentation today. Before we kinda kick things off, I wanted just to briefly talk a little bit about the grad program. Our masters or masters in science and event tourism has two tracks. We have a 1-year option, which is in sport event tourism. And we conclude that curriculum with the consulting project. We also the two-year option, innovate tourism, which is much more focused on research and has some additional hours and classes around some research methodologies and techniques. And that pro that two-year degree ends with a research thesis. Regardless if you're a first or doing a one-year or a two-year option. We also have graduate assistant opportu opportunities for you. And a lot of our students are either assisting in classrooms, working with a graduate faculty member and a research project, or working in one of our centers and even in the industry. So we've got lots of opportunities for you. The first class that all students in the grad program take, regardless of which track there on is the 500 foundations of event tourism course. I love teaching this class. It's one of my, one of my favorite classes to teach. Because we get to deep dive into several topics that are not only relevant, but we get to talk through examples and we talk to industry experts throughout the semester. This semester we talked about sports, business and cultural event tourism, how there are different yet Common. And we went through several factors with those three specific types of event tourism. We've also talked about economic, environmental, and socio-cultural impacts of tourism, both positive and negative, and how an event can impact a destination. Again, both positively and negatively. The Masters program doesn't necessarily talk about logistics, but it talks more strategic. And we've gone through the strategic process of events. And we talked about starting at the beginning with a feasibility study all the way through bidding, planning, executing, and evaluating. So we go through the whole process, but look at it much more holistically and from a strategic lens versus a logistics lens. We've also spent a lot of time this semester talking about the complexities of events. And you may not think about it from the standpoint, but events are very complex in terms of the politics, how to deal with community issues, funding, and how to market events moving forward. So you'll hear some of these themes throughout some of our student presentations coming up next. And lastly, we're wrapping up the semester. In fact, this is our last active class session today. And we're going to share with you some ideas we've come up with, with some challenges and opportunities moving forward for our industry as a whole. Before I kick it over and introduce some of our grad students. I just wanted to mention that of course, COBIT has had just an absolutely devastating impact on our industry. No question, hands down. The economic loss, the number of jobs has just been overwhelming for us in the industry. But hopefully we're seeing kind of a light at the end of this tunnel with the announcement about of a vaccine hopefully coming here in the spring. And that we'll see some changes here coming into early 2021. However, what has been refreshing about this last year is during this pandemic and crisis. It's also allowed us some opportunity to reflect and to think about some of those lingering questions. Some of those priorities need to change. And we can, and we have as an industry and begin to rethink, to redesign events and to evolve. So our press a notation really aligns well with this series theme. Because our students are going to talk about, as we thought about what's going on currently and as we're thinking ahead, there are some true opportunities for us as an industry to not only lead, but do things differently, think differently, and again act differently. So I'm excited to introduce our graduate students. We have a, we have six great students and a lot of great ideas. Rachel's going to kick it off for us here in a minute and she's going to talk about the destination portfolio and how to tie that to the community. Alexa is going to share with us some ideas, auto redesigning events and how to think about outdoor event tourism in the future. Rick is going to kind of work with one of those lingering questions that we've got. Now, attendees are going to decide do I stay at home or do I go to events and we're going to he's going to dive into that as well. Erica has a real passion around sustainability and responsible tourism. She's going to share with us again how to re-prioritize this as an industry. Max is going to get into a very practical event or a very practical topic, securing sponsorship and funding. This is going to be an area that all of us are going to have to address and events as we come out of this economic crisis. And lastly, Alexis is going to tie it up for us. Talk about engaging technology and again, how to connect in this new world moving forward. So with that, I'm very excited to announce our first speaker, Rachel, and she's going to kick us off with building your destination portfolio with the community in mind taken over Rachel. Perfect. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Rachel. I'm currently on the one-year sport event tourism track. I'm also a graduate assistant for the department. I graduated with my Bachelor's of Sports Management from IEP UI back in May. So this was kind of the next step taking considering all the sports events got cancelled due to COBIT. So I'm excited to be here and I'll be talking a little bit about the importance of diversifying event portfolios and how to involve the community when planing events. So for the challenge, it is refocusing on building imbalance in a city's event portfolio. So what this means is that event professionals are faced with the challenge of the costs and everything that goes in to build a new abet portfolio when their city may not necessarily be made for those type of events. So I kind of wanted to start out with the challenge of how new infrastructure to support these events has high costs. So this frequent prevent presents a challenge because enough land and money needs to be available in order to build that new infrastructure that can bring events in. So for example, Indianapolis is actually approved for up to a $155 million and bonds to expand their world class convention center. So imagine if a city has no convention center needs to build this from scratch, the type of money that would take for them to bring in new events that are supported by convention center. This can be a huge expense for the city and taxpayers. So it's important that the expense and cost are thought of well plane into diversify the portfolio. Now with this, COBIT has actually provided some opportunities for cities to begin diversifying their portfolio, which is important too. Take advantage of these opportunities now, one of these is that restrictions on event size has caused event loss. For example, Chicago has actually began losing events because Illinois has stated that they can't have large conventions until a vaccine is found. And so Indianapolis is gaining these annual events set up, never moved from Chicago because we're able the whole barge conventions. So although Indianapolis is already a convention city, other cities might be able to use the same strategy and optimize the opportunity with coded to bring new event so to city that previously were stuck in a different destination and were set on that destination. And so also hosting only certain event types can be heard in cities, revenue streams. This means that it's important to diversify because when you invest in all different types of events, if one market segment happens to decrease or decline, this gives the opportunity for another market segment to kind of step up and carry that burn. So there's a lot less risk for city at their diversifying their portfolio because then other events are able to take some of that burden off. And the loss is not as great as it would be if a city was only invest in, in one type of event. And this also will provide long-term security and sustainability of the investments. The city will be able to feel secure in their investments, and it will also make it so that stakeholders are comfortable continuing to invest their money and these types of events. And lastly, the challenge of not diversifying a portfolio is sometimes you can loose community support. So not everyone is going to rally around the same type of events. What this means is that diversify in your event portfolio and bouncing it can actually change the amount of community support you have. So if someone only wants two. Attend sporting events. But they but the city, all my host conventions. They're really not going to support any of those conventions because their main passion has to go to those sporting events. So by bouncing out the event portfolio, those attendees will now be able to support the events that are coming to their city. And it also gets the host community involved. So that kinda brings me to an opportunity that comes fervent professionals, which is finding new ways to send gratitude to the host community. Ways to do this include asking the community first. So not only is this an opportunity for event professionals to be able to gain community contacts and be involved people in their community already. But it also will result in a more successful project. So in 2012, for example, the NFL Foundation and kinda Indianapolis, we were hosting the Superbowl and asked, what do you guys need? And simply the city said, we need a new facility for Arsenal tech high school that they can practice in. And it served as a practice facility for one of the teams. So this project has continued to impact the community, but I want to be near a successful ah, that was if the Foundation when I came to Indianapolis and asked what they needed first, instead of just investing my money in something that may not have had the same type of impact. Another important thing to do when utilizing this opportunity is to really plan for it and set aside budget money. Infrastructure, as I said earlier, can be expensive, but also, and it's much easier to execute this type of thank you to the host community if it's playing them budgeted for. So an event legacy should not necessarily be a last minute idea to kind of offset the negative impacts from the event. That should be something that's thought of from the beginning and barren touched all to help think the host community and everything they've done. And lastly, this a lot of room to be creative in this. A lot of people automatically go to o. An event should just make a donation to this charity, or we should build a new building that will, for a school that'll help this. Which are all great things, but not all legacies necessarily need to be of monetary value or infrastructure. For example, the FFA Convention that in Annapolis hosts every year incorporates or organization mission by providing a day of service to the community and places where help is needed the most. So they go and ask the community, where do you need the most help? And then they execute their day of service there and their events. And that's their event legacy that continues on their organization mission, but is also outside of the normal monetary donation. You may ask, why is it important to Axin gratitude to the community? And the first answer is there is a lot of moving parts for large events, whether it's from volunteers to transportation and public services and all kinds of other moving parts that go into it. So it's important to appropriately thank those people in their support of the execution. A lot, a lot of people are. Using their resources to put on these huge events. So it's important to give back, give those resources back to the community when you can, and kinda playing for something that can leave a lasting impact on that community. This is also important because it can broaden the scope of your event. So instead of only impacting the attendees that are registered, whether it's for a conference or any other type of event. The event now can impact hundreds or maybe even thousands more people. The people who are either receiving the scholarships using the facilities that's built or event interacting where the place where the legacy has kind of taken place are now directly impacted from the events. And this can greatly broadened the scope of the event and how many people are supporting event in future years. And lastly, I just wanted to talk about the benefits that extend and gratitude to the community. Yield. So first of all, event owners can gain morbid options. What this means is that communities are much more likely to support an event if it's mutually beneficial. So this means more cities will welcome and a bit again, or be open to an event which increases the host community options for future years. So by providing an event legacy, it kind of sets a standard that we're very grateful that you're hosting our events. And because of that, we're giving back to you, but it also gives them more options in the future when cities are trying to host their event. And lastly, a legacy initiative can have a much bigger impact than anything out that the event is doing. Meaning they can continue for years to come. We saw in 2012, the Super Bowl impacted in ND greatly. It's still talked about pretty much every day in our classes and when bidding for other events. So yet, the arsenal tech legacy that came out of it has continue to impacts residents for almost nine years now post event. So this benefit is bigger that way bigger than hosting the Super Bowl was continuing to impact those residents that were so open tab in the Super Bowl when it came. So to close a bit, professionals should not treat legacy initiatives as just another box check there and planning. Instead of professionals should get the community involved and extend their gratitude. To impact the host community is long past the conclusion of their bet. Thank you so much Rachel. Excellent job. And just to summarize this up, connecting your portfolio and your community is critical and event tourism, your community can be your biggest cheerleader, CAN BE your biggest supporter. So finding ways again to make this connection is as a huge opportunity for us. With that being said, it's my pleasure to introduce Alexa. She's going to talk about some redesign opportunities for us and to rethink how we get back outdoors. So Alexa, take it away. Hi, my name is Alexa. I'm currently a graduate student here, IEP, why? I am focusing on the two-year research track and more focused on adventure tourism and deviant leisure research. So today I'm going to talk about the of that redesign for outdoor tourism events. Main challenge today is how to keep redesigning events so that attendees will come back. So why is this a challenge? Now more than ever, people want more and more with an event. This could be in terms of technology, new experiences, location, overall design and content and programming. I'm going to touch on two different aspects of this challenge. The first is that more and more events are being created and attending each year. In 2017, MPI estimated that there was over 1.8 million annual meetings and events in the USA. With that being said there is a lot of competition and the battle to get to gather and retain employee intake pertain attendees is ongoing. Once you get an attendee interested in near that, the next step is to then continuously have them come back by constantly evaluating each about assessing other events and conduct connecting attendees events are able to learn from past experiences and create better events in the future. Secondly, why is it important to address this? Now, as we are well aware, many events are unable to happen. An event organizers need to reevaluate and redesign how people will attend if it is via the web live, and how will they follow local, state, and national Coven 19 guidelines. Take This is of that as an example, traditionally the four or four class behind evolve would create and run a live event. Doing event, doing everything from the brainstorming, the planning and the execution on-site. But now they've had to go completely online and redesign the survey to cater that way. Leading the question, how will events be done next semester? We as a society, went from the massive crowded events to a global shutdown and now to redesigning events to be online are limited in many ways, from attendees to space amenities. And then how each person in addition, could possibly have an outdoor events. All of these require a new process of approval and a way of thinking. I personally chose this challenge because it is a challenge that has both prevalent to Coven 19 guidelines, but it also is relevant to the events in the future as more events fight for attendees time and money, and the ability to give them unforgettable experiences. Because now more than ever, people are craving a new experience and want to be apart of something. Which leads me to my opportunity of outdoor events. Outdoor events have many advantages nowadays. Firstly, they allow events to have more and more attendees in terms of space and safety. When an event is outside, the air circulation is better, allowing those with health complications to attempt. There is more room for social distancing. The ability to comply with local, state, and national guidelines as high. It gives attendees the chance to be more active in terms of adventure tourism. And lastly, it opens the world to give attendees those new experiences they have been craving for the sense of community so many need Now, I'm confident many of you have probably seen the rise and national park attendees and promotions, the increase in amount of families and individuals and joined by rides and walks around the city. And the shortage of outdoor equipment available. Just by looking at the rise and outdoors activities, it is clear that people want to be doing things. The opportunity for outdoor events allows individuals to create these new memories and be active while doing so. Basic Conference events entry shows can latch onto this opportunity by redesigning their events to be outside, either in open areas under massive tensor, small ones. And yes, there are challenges involving the weather, especially in Indiana. But these are just small obstacles that can definitely be overcome with the correct outfit and a plan. And so why should So many people act on this opportunity? Bottom line is that events so need to make many, many organizations rely on events profits to fueled the gears operations and keep the doors open. Many vendors themselves rely on events to showcase their products. Aside from economic impacts, communities really need events to create new experiences and had interaction with other safely. Outdoor events allow for organizations to make money and create those new experiences for attendees. From outdoor events, there are plenty of future benefits. Adventure tourism events are gaining traction, bringing a sense of activity and improving health along with it. Distant events outside have the opportunity to bring a healthier attribute to the event. For example, the tough mutter. It's an adventure tourism event that combines community, profit and intense activity all into one. Not all of these events need to be as intense as this, but even simple events like a walking marathon or a scavenger hunt to run the city brings an active component. Outer events can also impact the sustainability of movements among events in the future by promoting 0, which features which Erica, we'll touch on later. Lastly, the opportunity could assist the challenge of redesign by opening the door for so many future event locations by not being contained by four walls. Those are the challenges and opportunities that thesis. Thank you, Alexa. So I'm ready to get my tennis shoes on and head outside and get some activity today after that little pep talk. Fantastic. But this, you know, again, some key points here with a Lexus presentation as it is so important for us to get this events industry moving again, to be creative, to redesigning, rethink. We can do that at each of the industry in sports and business events and also cultural events. So thanks so much for sharing your ideas. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Rick and now we've got this lingering question. Do we do I stay or do I go? And he's going to talk about whether you choose to attend an event or stay home. And what are some challenges and opportunities as we move into this new world? Yes. So hello everybody. My name is Rick Mattathias Junior. I'm a graduate student at IEP. Why? I got my sports management degree here last spring. And I'm in the master's program, not for that tourism, but first sports data analytics. But this is one of the elective courses that I was able to have. So that's why I am in this class and I'm happy that I've taken it. So what I want to talk to you about today is about technology and attendance or what Dr. Cecil said to stay or to go. So why would we attend an event in person when the event is live, streamed or broadcasted? So that's the challenge that we're kind of facing today and what we're kind of seeing the effects of bright now. So in 2009, we could see that the average attendance for any, there'll be baseball game was around 30 thousand people and 2019 is dropped down to about 28,300. So we're seeing the effects of like if it's not a playoff game and the sporting world, attendance is starting to drop off more and more and more. So why is that? Well, a lot of these games are being live, streamed or broadcasted at a pretty convenient fee. And that's what we're starting to see, another classic example. And a lot of people like to make fun of them as the Tampa Bay Rays. They can win as many games as you could possibly ask for 199500 and they still have anybody in their ballpark. And again, we can kind of attribute that to how they're producing their events. It's being broadcasted. People are getting more, higher quality TVs, higher-quality sound system. So it begs the question, why do I have to go? Well, It's not going to get better naturally. And what Coven 19 is duns, especially in this year's expedited our sole reliance on technology, our world would not function if we did not have zoom, if we did not have phones, we did not have email. And what this has done is it's for, it's pushed us into a world where we have to continue to use this technology if we want to keep surviving. Also to go along with this better and more immersive technology is imminent. So there are different things that have been coming out in the last couple of years. So for example, 360 cameras where you can put a camera in the middle of the rim. You can spin it around, you can see exactly what's going on in the room. 5g is another big one that's happening faster download speeds, just general improvements to that. Virtual reality. And augmented reality is a big one where you can just put on a set of VR goggles. And all of a sudden it's like you're there. And that's only going to get better with time. Telepresence robots. You may not know what that is off what I just said, but I have a picture available. They're essentially just like little Roombas with poles. You have an iPad at the top and you can move them around and that's how you can kind of interact with people. And then they're also just unknown technologies that we don't even know about yet. So ten years ago we had no idea that virtual reality would be a thing. And now voila, here it is, and it's being used by more and more people every year. So what does this mean for the tourism industry? Well, it's sure it's convenient for the attendees. But what happens is if people aren't going, then people aren't selling rooms in hotels. People aren't attending events live. And essentially that's the worst thing that could happen for tourism, as if people aren't selling those rooms, people aren't going to those events. People aren't coming from city to city and people aren't getting that experience. Instead, they're just stuck in their rooms or in their houses and they're attending events that way. So what does this mean? Well, it's not always a bad thing. What I said at the top here, tomorrow's opportunities integrating exciting technology. Technology is not bad. There are some things that bring a negative effects, but overall, I like to think of it as a good thing. And I have this video here that's going to integrate its the Ravens, maybe it's a mixed reality or augmented reality feature. They were the first team in the NFL to do something like this, but I'm just going to play it and you'll see what happens. So that is a raven. At the Ravens game. It was the first major augmented reality service that has ever been used in the NFL before. And it's something that people could use their phones. And they could see the raven flying around the field during the course of this gain. So it's something that's super cool, it's engaging, it makes people want to show up to the games, especially if you can do that on a more consistent basis. So what I want to talk about a little bit as about not letting technology catch up to you. So the two things there always be learning and don't get left behind. So those are two very important things when it comes to technology. It's a lot, it builds on itself a lot like what they say math does. So you can't do calculus without knowing multiplication or addition. And all builds on itself so you can't get behind. So if you're three years behind on the newest technology, it's going to take longer for you to catch up. So always, you always want to be on top of that to start thinking of the best new technologies that you can afford that would also be exciting to implement for your event. But the main thing, why bother do this? Why bother integrating technology? Well, the first thing is to expand the global reach. So I know what happened in the Indie text starts to demo that happened this year. There are a bunch of different countries from around the world that were represented. Groups from Germany, Ireland, Israel, Mexico. And they're all able to meet in this one specific location. And they could have their family and their friends from their home countries and they were there and they could watch it live and they could chat and they could cheer them on. And that's just something that you can't always get width at events nowadays. Typically if it's a Techstars demo like that escaped cost a lot of money to fly from Israel to the United States. Just for this one 10-minute presentation, have to fly back. But now they can experience that with their families and they can cheer them on live. The second thing is better retention, stronger attention of experiences. So I can assure you that the people probably remember that we're at that ravens game, the bird game. That's probably something that sticks out in their head and it's something that, you know, they may look forward to in the feature. More experiences like that. Maybe not that specific one but one like that. So it's just something that sticks in your head more when you go to an event like that. And then third is a higher chance to Rio Tinto, the event. They may be excited to attend another event just like this. So they can see the different experiences, see the new technologies that they're rolling out. And it's just something to look forward to and end. People in the feature want to attend the event live and in person rather than virtual. So the most important thing though, is to find a balance. We can't rely solely on technology to do all the work for us because that's when the challenges start to arise of not having people in the event live and in person. So what we wanna do is we want to give the attendees a reason to show up in person. So live streaming events is not inherently a bad thing. Broadcasting them is not inherently a bad thing. But we want to make sure that we're working towards making sure that people want to go to the event and person rather than wanting them to stay home. Instead, we have to kind of beat that convenience barrier, so to speak. And what we've seen through Coven 19 is it is proven to work. I mean, we've seen different events held entirely virtual in the Coven world and I'm sure it will be different over time when it's no longer here, but we still may have that technology of broadcasting events. People know how to live stream, people know how to broadcast. And now, now that we have that understanding and that base knowledge for it, we can start expanding that out and we can make sure that everybody is able to experience the events as they please. So technology is good, technology is bad. We just need to understand how to use it properly. Thank you. Fascinating ideas wreck. Thanks so much for sharing that. And that's the first time I had actually seen the Ravens. So just a really, again, interesting topic and something that you're going to be talking about, non-stop and events world is how to embrace technology and how to bring that into a face-to-face experience. So excellent job. It's now time for Erica and for Erica to share some ideas. Eric is going to talk to us about something that people have been able to re-prioritize during this pandemic. And to really think about how to travel and how to participate both in a responsible way, in a sustainable way. So Erika, taking it over to you guys, I'm Erica McKibben, IMA, TES an alum of the undergrad program. And now I'm at a one-year sport event tourism truck, family about sustainable and responsible tourism. So bird, today's challenge, I chose to focus on eliminating sex trafficking in the tourism and events, the industry by recognizing the need for everyone to be a part of the solution. This is a challenge because large and mega events are widely known as attracting more than the usual amount of human trafficking to a city or event location. Human trafficking, also known as modern slavery, is the recruitment, transportation in harboring of an individual for the purpose of exploitation. Of the 40 million global victims, 24.9 million people are trapped in forced labor and 4 million and sex trafficking. Annual global profits for human trafficking are estimated at $150 billion, of which $99 billion comes from commercial sexual exploitation. The biggest driver of demand for commercial sex is large populations like sporting events, torus, business travelers, migrant laborers in the military. One previous studies surrounding the 2014 Super Bowl in New Jersey concluded that more than 83.7%, the ads across the city screen we're involved in sex trafficking victims. In 5% of those victims were minors. In recent years, the increased visitors and host cities tend to encourage those criminal activities of human trafficking and sex trafficking. It is often found that these criminal sex rings will travel from one location to another to meet the demand for large sporting events. And according to the Institute for sport and social justice, these type of large sporting events can lead to a culture of partying, drinking, and too often engage in paid sexual activities. Another example includes labor trafficking. The magnitude is often dramatically increased leading up to and during large sporting and entertainment events. For example. A report done by ESPN has found that more than 1000 people have died in Qatar as a result of labor trafficking that are building the new facilities for the 2022 World Cup. Another large factor to this challenges, the hotel industry. Traffickers often take advantage of the privacy and anonymity accessible through the hospitality industry. Hotels and motels can be especially attractive locations for these forms of trafficking. Trafficking networks often rely on these legitimate businesses to sustain their illegal operations and infrastructure. They use them to How's their victims while in transit or to sell their victims for services. Hotels have become the perfect place for this form of crime because their revenue streams and operations are increasingly being automated, such as like third party rentals for a hotel room. This is important to address and fixed now because we as the industry, have to start somewhere to get somewhere. And the meetings and events industry is a multibillion dollar, a fair, and we swing a huge act if we all come together. So one way that meeting and planning professionals can combat, combat sex traffic game is by integrating requirements about anti-trafficking policies and training your employees through your RFPs or your everyday practices. As Conference in event professionals, we are responsible for contracting venues and suppliers. So we have the opportunity to ensure everyone in our supply chain knows what to do when they see something and know how to handle it. I chose this as my challenge because I that no person deserves that life that some people are forced into. In as many as 100 thousand miners are trafficked in the United States alone. And as professionals in the industry, we can help persuade both travel suppliers and corporate managers to implement policies and programs to protect those children. Hotels must have policies in place that state a 0 tolerance of sex trafficking and they need to train their associates to see the signs. And then travel managers must also book those who, those hotels that have these standards in place versus hotels that don't. Now to focus on the opportunity, I chose to focus on evolving sustainable and responsible tourism by eliminating waste, reducing our carbon footprints and buy-in and supporting from our local businesses. According to an article done by MPI, sustainability has four main pillars. Environmentally, event can eliminate waste by using reusable water bottles, eliminating paper, and going completely digital. Economically, the event businesses, one of the largest economic sectors in the world. They have a direct spending of over $1 billion annually. And when we source from socially responsible actors and work with companies who pay decent salaries to their employees, and work with companies who also are trying to make a change. This pushes the economic impact in our, in a positive direction. The social aspect of sustainability is the area where event, an event planner can use their creativity. And culturally it is critical to never present any group in a stereotypical way. We must respect all other ways of thinking, dressing and acting, and themed parties and cultural presentations done in the wrong setting can bring more harm than Positive Exposure. Companies today know that they are not just working for the President, but they're investing in the future as climate change and other environmental issues take stage. They have impact in all areas of our lives. And there are several companies who have taken an initiative to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, United Airlines has invested more than $16 billion to replace all of its airplanes with more fuel efficient models. The Hyatt hotel company has worked to reduce water usage per guests per night by 25%, as well as increasing their recycling and building more sustainable hotels. And of course, Disney uses 0 met direct greenhouse gas emissions. And they have a Zero Waste Policy in all of their parks so that none of their waste ends up in the landfills. So those are just some examples of what people are already doing in the industry. But as an event planner or an industry professional, there are ways that we can make our events more sustainable. Some examples include finding a city or a venue with good transport links that is centrally located so people don't have to travel as much. We can up. Or smarter practices that favor socially and environmentally responsible local supplies. Obviously, local supplies are going to cost less than having importance applies to an event. We can also manage waste by keeping the three R's in mind, reduce, reuse, and recycle. We can organize team-building activities that contribute to responsible business goals and give back to our communities. And after our events, we can offset emissions. They were unavoidable by certified carbon offsetting projects that provide also a social benefits, as well as having the environmental and packed. We should act on the opportunity up suspect sustainable and responsible tourism, because obviously certain resources are dwindling, but we should want to move toward hosting Zero Waste events and harnessing those renewable resources. Cutting business travel omissions in any way that we can. Educating and engaging our peers and our employees just because it's simply the right thing to do. And then an addition research has found that customers prefer eco-friendly brands and has a linked positive impact on the planet with employee satisfaction. So the benefits of sustainable and responsible tourism can be endless. Erica a lot there to, to think about an unpack. But thanks for bringing this ethical issue and opportunity to all of us. We should all be thinking up. Some, you should all be thinking about new ways to be more thoughtful, responsible, ethical, and sustainable moving forward. So excellent, excellent thoughts there. Let's bring it over to Max and Max who's going to talk to us about some realities. We all know that events have expenses. And so moving forward, we're going to talk about how we can still continue to secure sponsorship. So maximum is turn it over to you to talk to us a little bit about funding. Thanks, Amanda. Hi, I'm Max. I'm from zines. Will I did my undergrad at Purdue in communications. And now I'm on the two-year track for T S M So I can get into the sports industry. So today I'm here to talk to you about sponsorship and why competition is such a challenge right now. Well, as you can see from these statistics, there's a lot of competition for sponsors. According to E g, The Independent Evaluation Group, nearly six out of ten sponsors are looking for an early exit for at least one of their sponsors and 2019. And in a survey of 1000 event creators, nearly nine out of ten said securing sponsors would be a top challenge in 2019. And now these are recorded in 2019. So just think how much more grand these challenges will be at the end of 2020 and throughout 2021. So you need to secure sponsorship now and manage the sponsors you still have during Coven 19. I do the the pandemic, many event professionals have had to postpone or cancel their events. So how do you go about managing the expectations of the sponsors that you had lined up? I'll fill you may need to start looking for new partners. So if that's the case, how do you put together and attracted sponsorship package will either way, there are some very important steps to follow, most of which are intuitive, you'd think, number one is being honest. Sponsors and partners are already aware of the huge impact of Coven 19 and how it's impacted the events industry. Say just stick to being up front and direct and indicate exactly what your plans are, including, whether you've decided to delay your event or move it online and always keep them in the loop as things develop. Number twos to explore alternatives, make it clear to your sponsors that your event isn't Ansel's permanently, but that it's simply postpone. So state how their contribution will be valued and appreciated further down the line and work together to find a future date that works for both parties. Number three is to highlight the advantage, advantages of the sponsorship. So this is a good time to remind partners. Take a step back and the sponsors of the benefits of working with you. For example, you can near event can give them, their brands more exposure and help them to generate more effectively. And so you need to keep the communication ongoing. It's very important to prioritize communication with your sponsors so they're aware of the situation and can voice any concerns they have as they come up. So why is this challenge important? Sponsorship can mean the difference between turning a huge profit or turning into a total financial disaster. Meaning if you don't put in the effort early on to create a true partnership with your sponsors or deliver on your promises, they will inevitably drop you. And if you tarnish your relationship with those brands, it could levy blacklisted among other possible sponsors because sponsors and companies and people do talk among, amongst themselves. So that leads us to our opportunities. You need to make a first impression on new sponsors before the pandemic is over. To do this, there are three qualities that sponsors are looking for in a partner. First, you have to be authentic. Sponsors are looking for partners and not gold diggers. So to keep sponsors coming back each area you need to clearly show that you're interested in the sponsors success. Just call renewal time, check and quarterly or monthly and give updates about the event. Number two is to be flexible because here is your sponsors or businesses too. And their objectives and teams might change throughout the course of your event. And if it's necessary you meet, it might need to pivot your strategy to achieve your sponsors calls. And you have to be dedicated. So from the initial outreach to on-site to post-event follow up, your team should have a dedicated liaison to address any of your sponsors needs. And that person will make sure the sponsors know where to load in the equipment, where to pick up credentials, and went to expect a post event fulfillment report. The why do events need the right sponsor while in a saturated market events or looking for new ways to stand out. The right sponsors can be a major draw for your attendees and can actually be the deciding factor on whether they buy or just pass you by. That means in the near future, brand partnerships could be the difference between building a sustainable business or having stalled ticket sales. And additionally, you could turn a sponsor into a strategic partnership and develop ways to expand involvement, for instance. And moving from a single event to a multi-year, multi-day event. And the, another opportunity that as breakdown during strange times are non-traditional partners. So something to think about. During strange times as the pandemic, New attractive sponsors have emerged as certain businesses and boom do the, due to quarantine, social distancing and sanitizing BIG texts. I mean, not no surprise. You've got companies like Amazon, PayPal, Microsoft, Apple, and zoom that absorbed expectations. But you've got other companies that you might not usually think about that are emerging or re-emerging. And these are companies like Clorox, Grub Hub, Shopify, Campbell's Soup, Dollar General, and many others that have done really well during the pandemic. So formulating relationships with non traditional sponsors can expand your on your current market, but also create new marketing strategies, reach new attendees, and helped formulate relationships with more nontraditional sponsors in the future. So a quick example of this, abuse it, utilizing non traditional sponsors in the NFL. Nfl teams have also worked with sponsorship to sponsorship partners to provide value added brand opportunities. For instance, in April that then the Denver Broncos and listed the alcohol delivery app, grizzly, to send sponsor products to their clients at US Bank. Another sponsor, just before a zoom happy hour. And also the Houston Texans bought breakfast from a local sponsor, what a burger. 500 breakfast talk Cheetos and have them delivered to 500 workers at partner Kroger croakers warehouse. So that brings us to proving your ROI and getting your sponsors to resign for the long-term. If for whatever reason your team can't deliver on what they promise, sponsors will walk out the door. So hopefully from your initial meeting, you learned what key performance indicators were most important to your sponsor. So now it's time to collect the data. And here are three ways to get data that will matter to your sponsor. Number one is surveys. Integrate your questions about your sponsors and their presence at your event into your post event survey that direct feedback from attendees to sponsor provides insights that show sponsors of the value of your event. Number two is social media. Social media is your ally when it comes to proving the ROI of sponsorships, you can provide sponsors with information such as how many users interact with sponsored messaging on your social feeds. Or how many new followers aimed directly after mentioning a sponsor and a post. And the third is RFID or radio frequency identification technology. So with RFID, you can find out things like how many people interacted with your sponsors station. And instead of having fans add manually entered their information on like an iPad for instance, sponsors can collect data and more with the swipe of a wristband or batch and RFID. And once you have that data, you put it altogether and send a fulfillment report to your sponsors, which is an extension of your proposal, proving that you actually delivered on what you promised. And that's how you put together a ROI package for your sponsors. Thank you very much. Max, awesome ideas. And of course, funding is going to be one of those things you need to think through as an event professional. Moving forward. Great job. Our last speaker, a Lexus. And Alexis, is gonna talk to us about engagement using technology and engagement is just key here. She's going to wrap this up with our last trend of the day and then we'll take some questions and answers. So Alexis. Thank you, Amanda. Hello everyone. My name is Alexis Hendricks and I am on the one-year track for the master's program. I am also worked for the School of Health and Human Sciences communications department. And I'm an alumni of IEP uy, where I got my degree in journalism and a certificate in a bid management. Let's move to the challenge. So the question I proposed is how can event tours and professionals include social interaction with technology advances? Before I kick off my presentation, I would first like to ask you all a question that you can ponder on silently. It doesn't require a verbal response. When was the last time you engage in meaningful conversation without the presence of your palm. The challenge facing a bit tourism professionals is to decrease in face-to-face communications from the advancement of technology. Today, our particularly focused on mobile devices. According to PV research, 96% of Americans own a cell phone. 2019. Additionally, 81% of Americans on a smartphone compared to 35% in 2011. This statistics backs the amount of Americans who have mobile devices now compared to later years. It is important to address this now because the advancement of technology is moving towards you like cell phones, more, add events. As you can see under this section or why it's important to address now, you see the top till a bit technology trends that seem it provided. Again today I'll only be recovery. The three trends that is pertaining to mobile devices. In particular. For example, mobile admin apps. As you see, as you, as you probably know Bob will have been after becoming increasingly popular amongst events. And mobile app helps events was the professionals engage with attendees, provide key information, list sponsors, and participate and provide Bing Maps. Next on our list is begins. This is another component of the, of the mobile app and it helps attendees connect, and it also helps exhibited, exhibitors Connect as well. Next one is a gamification. And this is also another component of the, of the mobile event app that encourage us to cities to network and engage with others vendors exhibit it also locations. If it can even help with icebreakers added to kick off the event. In exchange, attendees will receive points, rank an EVA, or rewards. Studies have found people who have conversations in the app and the mobile devices reported higher levels of empathy compared to dog with the President, a mobile device. It. Furthermore, people with mobile devices had trouble with closeness, connection, and Harvard conversation quality. I chose the decrease in face-to-face communication for the advancement of technology as one of the challenges, because a healthy balance is needed for human interaction without technology, as, as this does prior with the president of technology, is sometimes a hinders that closeness, connection in conversation quality with that person that you are having a conversation with. Now, let's hop over to the opportunity. The question I propose here is, how can a bit towards an professionals capitalize on beacon technology when creating the experience at USCA, as discussed in the previous slide, a big technology is advancing at a professional should capitalize on the opportunity. And today I will be current benefits of a fairly new technology, which is the beacon. Everyone can capitalize on the advancement of technology by learning the technology. After you learn the technology, you need a Stef, how it fits the needs and goals of, of your a bit. So when you assess the cells beneath and goals, figure out that why, why, why should you use that technology and what benefits can help for your bit? Next it goes to the implementation of, of the, of the technology. Furthermore, I will like to explain how the beacon technology works. As you can see an image that is provided on this slide. It can be worn on attendees layer. The technology Broca's is Bluetooth IE signals through, through adults in a Tannen. Smart devices in range receive these signals and transforms the beacon IT to the cloud. Then the cloud looks up the actual, actual user associated with the beak in IT, and transmits that back to the smart device, which can, which they give her bakery, which were important, a response I cannot cation or an action that the team needs to do. An exhibit when a beacon technology should be used. If add an exit exposition, an example, when a beacon technology man, I'd be uses maybe add a gala at a gallon. A bit. Professionals should Atlas opportunity because first, as I stated, many studies, many studies showed the negative effects of technology on face to face communication. However, during my research, I found that cell phones using public, it might make individuals more likely to communicate with strangers. A professional should capitalize on technology when it created a big experience, such as that became. Because as we all know, the world is going contact lists do to cope it. The beacon also provides direction to the maps were attendees, which alleviates the volunteer who helps with directions. The beacon also helps with advertising and promotion. No paper materials are needed. And also the bigger scope of that networking component where attendees connect, connect anytime, anywhere. And also martha network capabilities of the beacon. It provides attendees with information and conversation starters. So to kind of like a, you can think of this like an icebreaker type it big. It also alerted Sydney's when they're matches are nearby and it allows you to, to need to make quality connections. The benefits it can reveal in a future are it can fulfil stakeholders needs within your bit example, how Beacon can fulfill the needs if mash units Hindi with the appropriate exhibit or without any Have to go fishing. Also, which one thing we all know it's a bit professionals, security is important. So beacon allows you to track each person who was wearing the technology. And the last thing is productivity. The big it allows increase productivity and decrease in the cost of going from the employer. So we can, this technology has actually may use for an Amazon for example. So that is my presentation or the opportunities and challenges. Thank you for listening. Great job relaxes. Again, just another example of how technology is advancing and how we should be thinking about it in terms of new engagement opportunities. Want to take a few minutes, Eric, I'm gonna pass it over to you and see if there's any questions that we can answer for the group. Awesome. Yes. So please attendees use the Q and a feature dropping your questions. You can have questions for any of the presenters or Dr. seesaws. So go ahead and drop those then and we'll just go through them one by one. First question. Thank you all for your time and an informational presentation. This question is for Dr. see-saw, what are some important transferrable skills you hope to develop and students as we navigate the pandemic. Yeah, so probably the most transferable skill for me is just problem solving and critical thinking. I mean, those are always skills that we want to instill in our graduate students. But now those are more important than ever. So in the graduate program, I hope that I guide students along, but I want them to think for themselves. I want them to come up with ideas and solutions, recognizing problems, being able to recognize credible sources. So again, those skills for me are just so important in kind of moving with the grad class throughout the semester. And as you can even see from these presentations, they came up with these ideas. These are not my ideas, this is their ideas. And so those, those skills, problem-solving, critical thinking, I think are imperative, craved. Um, one question that I wrote down that I would love to know. So Erica hits so many of you guys talked on things that weren't so positive and hopeful, but I know that it's kind of a dark side of art industry, but I'm so glad that you spoke to it today. The sex trafficking piece, which can be such an important thing to be aware of, especially with large sporting events. And we attract a lot of those Indy 500. If somebody is trying to make sure that they are doing right by the topic when they are planning an event. Like, are there any organizations out there that you can partner with that will help you to know how to navigate that space. Did you find any research? I know actually MBI does a really good job with research on sex trafficking in the industry. I'm not sure exactly, like open resources that they provide, but I'm sure that they do in some way. I know they're other than mp either PCMHs committed to the cause as well. I know that was a big topic at the convention last year at PCOA was I went to two or three, I think, breakout sessions that were surrounded with people who spoke on planning events that are responsible in that area. So Erika, One of the biggest organizations is called EPC cat. It's EP CAT. And they do a lot of training. Maybe they weren't great partner when we started working on the Super Service Program. So that'll be a resource I would definitely recommend for for everyone to look at as well for each other. Yeah, I'm connected to the Super Bowl sends you aren't NES Super Bowl committee. Amanda, was that something that was discussed? Was the concern about that topic discussed from a city level? We're sure in fact it was incorporated into the super service training. We wanted to train cab drivers, anybody on the front lines with hotels, restaurants, entry points out welcome centers, things like that. If you solve certain signs, again, what to do, how to report it, how to make sure that we action that as a city. Again, we really emphasize that this is, this is a big problem and it's an ethical responsibility of all citizens in Indianapolis to be able to respond to this. So with part of our volunteer training as well, um, all of our volunteers were trained on to recognize the signs and to act quickly. So for sure was addressed. It continues to be a problem and it's going to continue to need to be addressed. I've got a question that's come through on the chat for wreck. How difficult is it or expensive to incorporate AR into an event? Yeah. So right now it's it's pretty expensive. I mean, it's a fairly new technology. Same with virtual reality. So it's not cheat by any means, but who knows where it will be at 510 years from now. I mean, Alexis said in her presentation that like only 35% of people on the smartphone in like 2011 and look at us now. So it's just, it may not be relevant for this particular year or maybe even the next couple years. But we never really know how fast technology is going to work, how it's going to evolve. And so five to ten years from now could be substantially cheaper, it could be quicker, it could be more reliable. So I would say that if you're a smaller event, not to worry about AR technology at the moment. That's more like the bigger events like maybe the Super Bowl, the Olympics. Professional sports teams, things like that could probably implement AR right now. But it's something to definitely be looking at as we move forward towards the future. The answer to that question has come through on the chat. What are your thoughts concerns with with other states shut down and we welcome people with open arms to Rachel, I think this one's to you. If they put is this the best idea I can I can see that they're saying that there's probably some pros and cons here. Yeah. So that is a good question. I mean, it obviously depends on numbers and goes into the government and what everyone is deciding there. But I think it's within within reason. I know in Indianapolis, Marion County Health Department actually asked to approve the plan for them to bring the event here. So the Large convention that was coming from Chicago. There were working closely with the health department to make sure everything is safe. And I'm sure I don't know if they're doing any virtual aspects of that event, but I'm sure they've cut down on the number of attendees that normally have due to the pandemic and people not wanting to travel. So definitely a great question. And I think we'll start to see if places start opening up. More of this will happen as other places continue to shut down depending on their government. But there are some regulations in place and people that EBIT organizers have to go through in order to see. But here, Yeah, it's a really good question. And especially with the the mayor's press conference yesterday with our numbers spiking right now and all of these concerns. It's like, yeah, it's a good thing that we're getting them. Litter talked about that in his keynote seven that we got because Chicago said no. But there's, there's a cost to it. So it's a good question. Dana has a question for all of you. As we all know, it seems like this is the start of an era of virtual events. Do we think that events could one day go back to what they once were. I'm happy to start here and then the students can jump in at any point. What I, when my book this is, is I truly miss face-to-face. I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I love being in the classroom. I love going to events. It's part of who I am and I think it's part of society. I think that hopefully this is a time in our history that in events that's pretty dark, but I do think that people crave being together and they like being in face-to-face environments. So yes, I think it will come back. I think it will be different. I think events will look different. They could feel a little bit different, especially in the next couple of years. So I think that we should be prepared to talk about what that event experience is going to look like. It may be altered. I also think, especially on the business side of events, is you're going to see a hybrid model, if not next year for many years to come. And it's going to depend on traveler, attendee competence and whether they feel safe and going back. So I think it is a bit professional that the hybrid model is going to be a key to success. Because you're going to have to offer both of both a live version and some type of virtual component. The challenge again is, what does that look like and how do you implement that? And that is going to require a new set of skills for event professionals. Again, to know the technology, to be creative, to think about engagement. And that for us is a short-term challenge that we're going have to quickly overcome. But my sincere hope is that people will have the confidence here. Once again, we get over this hurdle to go back to some kind of face-to-face component. I mean, I I maybe I'm alone, but I surely miss being in the classroom. I miss I miss the concert series this year. I'm Misko into the movie theatre. You know, I miss going to not only my kids sports events, but also, you know, being involved in professional sporting events and college sports. So maybe someone sees the different, I'd love to hear from a different perspective. But my sincere hope is that that will come back in a way that may feel different but will return. Anything to add to that students once maybe maybe just one more comment. I will agree with the amended that going to be different and have a different twist on it, just to piggyback off of what I said, I think that a bit professionals are going to have to capitalize on the new technology that is coming out. For example, making things contact list. And we have seen just at White River, just pi, it's just for social distancing and different things like that. I think there's just going to be a twist to it. Until a bit professionals can gain attendees, like trust, an NSA with everything that's going on. Breakpoints, points. All right. Thank you guys all so much. Why incredible work and amazing topics? All right. I mean, I'm happy to take it back over here. I have one quick slide. Yeah, go for it. I just want to encourage anyone on this webinar and any who's watching it on the life you want to be involved in our grad program. We would love to talk to you about the opportunity to join our grad class, our next graduate cohort. Definitely take the time to research whether you want to do the one or two year track, you can do that on our website. We've got a lot of information about our graduate program on the SH H S website. Take a look at it. If you are interested, reached out to Dr. Chrome. He's the Graduate Director. I provided his email address, be ready to discuss some interests and some questions you may have for him. I'm take this time, take it take the next couple of months to reach out and find a faculty mentor. I would love to talk to you. I know other graduate faculty members would be happy to talk to you about the work that we do and how we can work with students. We'd love to do that again, to get faculty profiles both on our school page and we also have them on the ETI, um, a lot of those and do event tourism on ETI website as well. And get started on your application. Now, if you're thinking about grad school, again, the process is open and we're taking applications today. And I sincerely hope to see you in my class next fall. It's always a great opportunity to share ideas. We've a great seminar and we've had great energy and synergy this semester with this group. And I really invite you to think about graduate school and potentially put this in your career path. Thanks erika. Alright, so just to kinda wrap, I've just got a couple of kind of closing notes in housekeeping items. I just want to make sure we're good. So you can connect with any of our speakers this week on the resource page, Amanda's LinkedIn profile is linked there. So if you want to connect with the man that learn more about the grant program, we also have links to the GSM and HHS website so that you can learn more if you'd like to continue the discussion on any of these topics, we invite you to join us in the evolved lounge. You can also get, oops, you can also get help on any issues or questions that you've got for the week. I did dropped the Session II bow link in the chat. So please complete that. Let us know how you felt about today. Every time you do one, you're injured again for our prize drawing. This session's recorded and we will post that recording in the session details at the end of the day for you to be able to access. Don't don't leave evolve just yet. Don't log off the platform. I know it's Friday, but we've got our closing keynote at three o'clock today with the incredible gearing bracket. I am kind of having a celebrity moment. I'm excited to see him as a big Colts fan. So, and he's going to join us and really talk about how to lead and be resilient and difficult times. So it's going to be a great presentation. Thank you to our grad students. Were incredible being he will be on the seesaw and thank you for joining us today. Have a great Friday. Thank you. Thank you.

Description of the video:

All right, for everyone just now joining us, this is the tech career paths and meetings and events. We're gonna give this another minute and a half waiver, all the attendees to shuffle in and then we'll go ahead and get started. All right. We'll go ahead and get started. Hello, welcome to our panel tech career paths in meetings and events. We're so excited to have you join us today. My name is Taylor. I'm a senior in the DSM, a bad production class, and I'm going to be your host for this session. Before we jump in, I like to go over a few housekeeping items. Just see you know, how to best participate in today's session. Questions directed towards the panelists, please use the question and answer the Q and a feature at located at the bottom of the screen. And for any general questions or questions about the DSM evolve or just a child, the other attendees, please use the chat feature located at the bottom of the screen. As a reminder, please, to engage in this in this session in a professional manner. And then here to the code of conduct that you signed and registration to ensure everyone has a positive experience. This session is being recorded and the link to watch the recording will be posted in the details on the platform by the end of the day. Go back and rewatch anything that you think you missed or you just want your again. Many resources connected with the session are also available on the resource page. At the end of this session, I will post a the evaluation link in the chat. For every value, every evil link that you complete this week, your name will be entered into a sweepstakes drawing for some prizes. So maybe you're unfamiliar with us. The tourism, a vat and Sports Management Department is the host of this event. And it is the students that I have planned this any event production class in the TES I'm Department. Tsa is part of the School of Health and Human Sciences here at IEP UI. And as two-degree options, as many certificates and miners all focused around careers and Tourism Events, hospitality in sports. Discrete Huang virtual event was created by a group of 58 students and designed to help students and alumni with this changing year to find the right path forward. This week you connect, you can connect to employers and industry resources along with Participate in over 20 education sessions that included over 50 speakers. At this time, I would like to thank all of our panelists for taking the time to be here with us today, as well as introduce you to our moderator. Lauren Andrews will be our moderator today. She's a consultant. And that Lodge and the Director of Women and high-tech, Lauren has over five years of experience in urban planning. And in the last few years has immerse yourself in the tech consulting world. She's currently serving or her second year on the Board of Directors of Nonprofit or Brittany's organization for women are high-tech as the leading light awards director or in women in liters in the stem fields with prestigious awards, scholarships, and grants. Now I'm going to pass it over to Lauren to give each of these figures opportunity to introduce themselves. Thank so much, Taylor. I appreciate your introduction and hello, everybody. Thank you so much for being here today and for having me I'm excited to moderate this panel today. So I will kick things off and handed over to Stephanie where you can introduce herself, share where you where you are, where you work, and your background, please. That's great. Thanks so much, Loren, and thank you everyone to having me here today. My name is Stephanie Macnamara. I'm a director of client success here at this event. And I actually set out over 20 years ago with the intention of being in the meetings and an event industry, one that I love. And for the past eight years, I've had the opportunity, I work here at C then to work with our enterprise accounts, specifically working with their adoption to support for the platform, to support their strategic meetings management program. An addition to that, we also focus on how to use a seed on technology to help support their individual event level needs. So if I take a big step back, I have actually the true and we'll talk about it more today. But I am a planner at heart. I spent over ten years working as a planner here in the Indianapolis area. And certainly that is a key to my career and my success. Turn it back over to you, learn so much. To me. There's wonderful to learn a little bit more about you. Now I will handed over to Jim's parents. Always helps if you un-mute first write NDK anyway, my name is Jim spell as I am President of meeting you. Meeting is a company that focuses on teaching people about technology applications and how to make themselves more relevant. How is a plan of 20 years? I ran an AB company, realize that AV is not the place I wanted to be, so became a planner again. But 20 years ago really realized that my focal point and what I wanted to focus on is helping people with the technology. So started meeting you in the interim. I taught for 25 years at New York University in the School of Professional and Continuing Studies. And really have really engaged or industry in focusing on what we're doing, how we're moving forward. And most clearly what the technology is all about and how it's helping everyone make the decisions they need to, to become more productive and efficient. And I'm just so thrilled to be here. So Lauren, thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity. Thank you so much, Jen. It was great to hear a little bit more about us. Well, and then last but not least, let's introduce Anthony evade. Thank you. Arne. I met innovate. I may experience architect that FMI V, which is a member of a PSAV, an encore family of companies based in Toronto, Canada. And I'm also the Canadian Director for the event design Collective. I've spent about 20 odd is in the events business. Starting off as a technician behind console was pushing faders and, and knobs in constant touring and music festivals ended up incorporates, went through a bunch of different companies are now fairly heavily focused in design and strategy behind how we deploy technology to create meaningful, live, virtual and hybrid event experiences. Great to be here with this amazing panel. I am, I am honored and humbled to be with the other speakers today. Well, thank you very much. And with that, I guess we can begin with our questions today. So let's kick it off. And the first question I have aimed towards Jim Anthony. And so what are the biggest trends that you've seen or experienced in technology related to the tourism in the end score industries and 20-20. Does zoom count? Or just want to ask that question? I'll take it first just because the trends are, we're seeing the trends. The trend is to move the move into virtual. This was not a trend that we had anticipated to be that prevalent eight months ago, nine months ago. Clearly though it's here to stay. I know Anthony, you and I were talking about this. That is no surprise this has happened. What's happened is the focal point of becoming. Now, what people don't realize though, is all the underlying technologies that we're sort of not looking at anymore, that we're moving forward arrow pushing us toward a Mixed Reality type of universe and how those tools are going to be able to integrate into hospitality. But for this moment of time, 36 more months, maybe a year more. I think what's going to happen is you can see a lot of the focal point becoming how the technology is going to a ball that's going to allow people to stay as connected as possible. And by the way, just one other statement. I don't believe in the term zoom fatigue. I don't believe that and I grew up watching the Jets ends and we all wanted a video phone conferencing solution. What I do believe is we're covert critique and we're really looking forward to getting back face to face. But with that said, This isn't going away. Anthony, from your perspective. Same thing. Yeah. I mean, very, very similar stuff, but then I've since there has been a lot of interesting things going on, if we look at tourism as well in the gamification of tourism over the last five years. And I think we're going to see with the tourism industry is more adoption with some of those strategies because human beings are ready to get into gamification a bit more than we did in the past. We've had a chance to experiment in the virtual space with gamification. So as we now come out of this, I think that's going to be heightened. And a lot of these more ad hoc and attendee curated type experiences using technology to cure rate those experiences are certainly coming up more and more to make things a bit more personalized in events and tourism. So it feels like that was created just for you, even though perhaps it wasn't on the backend. But to give that more intimate dealing that this is my experience, not just the experience. Everybody gets through that, sorry. All those technologies that build those communities and provide those unique experiences that allow us to connect with each other in different ways. And in that fatigue that we have around cove at 90 and a lot of that is around our inability, these restrictions that have that we can't have that intimate personal connections. So those technologies that are popping up now that enable us to develop some intimacy through digital experiences which is very hot, are going to be the ones that rise to the surface. And I'm excited most for those. Wonderful. Thank you both so much for your insights. And Jim, a little bit alluded to this already, which have been Next question, but our virtual events here to stay and I think that with what you both just said, I mean, it's it seems like it So does anybody else have any comments on, you know, or are these trends here to stay? And if you like, for our virtual participations, are so to speak, and verses like live event. So what trends do you think will stay and change either here to stay but not as rescue them right now. Every day. You know, I I think really that's the conversation that we need to have, which is how is the virtual event going to change? And there's also this sort of elephant in the room up the hybrid abet, which we've all talked about being the next big thing. But nobody yet has been able to grasp and maintain and be able to know, wrestled to the ground effectively. The hybrid event with the new technology that's being developed might making more seamless integration with this type of event next year from, from, from, from you guys can go on with a live component or virtual component that seamlessly integrates. I think 20-20 ones probably too soon for that. But I think made this decade, you're going to start seeing a lot of these tools rolled out, tested. And then we'll figure out the users will figure out the, the planners will figure out which ones are the ones most valuable. And I think what's going to enable that and empower that from that perspective is the data and analytics side of what we do in digital space. And that's not going anywhere because it's that it's both the collection of that data and then the human analysis of it. Because computers can kick and analyze data, but we can't. Computers aren't graded applying the fuzzy emotional logic behind things, they can provide very pragmatic logic. So it's a collection of data that we can then analyze as planners and then decide from that data which things do we move forward with? Which ones have impact and have positive outcomes that we need. And so that's going to stick around and I think you're gonna see video-on-demand becoming more prevalent and more used. You're going to see learning management systems that are designed better because we understand how the humans interact with those kinds of things. And to my point earlier about this community and intimacy, I think you're gonna see these platforms get refined or new ones pop up that enable small-group settings that have, have more personal connections compared to the kind of one-way stuff that we see a lot at the moment. And just imagine where you'll be able to put the VR goggles gotten experience at all that way. And that's common. Not there yet. But all the people to say. That's just for gamers. You're going to have to think again. I think it'll be very interesting to see the behaviors of the attendee dictate the future as well. In particular to the last minute, I think you're going to see more last minute decision by the attendees to participate, be it virtually or in person and give that choice. So making sure that your solutions have that ability to really address the attendee in any direction that they're going. And doesn't that make a plan of very uncomfortable minute range limit? And we're getting set for this because the attendees have become more and more last minute and their confirmation of being able to go, I think that's just going to be magnified. That's really going to have huge impacts on the hotel side because the hotel size not not ready for that risk. In so that the next question I have to ask Stephanie. And so what have you seen planners do this year to be successful with tech during this tough time, and especially in your role at c band. So a couple of things. Jim touched on it a moment ago. But just in terms of up-skilling what their own proficiency. And I was very, very front and center back the first week of March. And I said, we need to make all of our trainings available to people today for the first time they have time. And I think everyone can relate to when you're in the thick of things. You you just need to get across the finish line for what you're working on at that moment. So really making sure that all of our users can increase their own proficiency. Husband huge. We set out with a very ambitious goal to train a 100 thousand users this year and make sure that that content is available to them, whether they are a current user, past user. That the other piece and Anthony touched on this a moment ago was just the really a huge investment and integrations. So it's actually very difficult at the beginning of all of this. And I personally was look, my senior management kept coming to me and saying, why is your team so busy? No one's doing live events. And I said, because we manage customers in the enterprise space and their data's important to them. And with their data, they cannot make the value proposition to continue these events. So we saw an abundance of time, energy and resources going into making sure that inaugurations were taking place. So that as they move to virtual or different types of programs that the data was coming back in and see then as a platform, as a center for that, for that data to flow. The other pieces that I definitely see from our, from our client base as a whole. And they really wanted to focus on more adopting more of the platform. So for example, we are starting to see sourcing trends pickup over time. So and what's interesting, we may not be doing as many meetings at hotels, but we might need a place to shoot the video that's going to be displayed during the Virtual beating. And hotels are really putting themselves in that space. And as you all are aware, more and more of our hotels have fewer resources available. So what we're starting to see its interests in different parts of the technology like our RFP showcase. So that's where we're actually saying the clients are able to come in and say, this is the need that I need someone there in the hotel world to fill for me. I may not have used that technology previously, but it's important to me now because I don't have that contact. So those are a couple of things. I think a bigger picture, you touched on it today. It is going to be really mapping out the attendee experience for the hybrid attendees and giving, giving the attendees that flexibility for face-to-face versus virtual. One of the things that I frequently have talked about with clients is that they haven't had this many nights at home having dinner at their dinner table for a very long time, I was speaking to one of our sales gentlemen, said, I'm typically on the road a 150 nights per year. Guess what? I'm healthier, I'm playing tennis more. I got to attend different things. So I think those are all things in terms of the attendee experience that our planners are learning about and learning to map that R2 through technology. And that's why the virtual is not going away. Because people are realizing that this really works for my personal health. And once they make that connection, then you go, you know, I could do that meeting virtually in 30 minutes as opposed to taking two days of my time. And to your point about mapping the journey as well, I made my heart swell over the last few months to see so many planners adopt design frameworks and is trying to bridge this gap between the way that the tech industry thinks with different development strategies and Lean UX and agile development. And how can we apply some more intentional design parameters and systems and processes to help us navigate this new landscape, but retain that meaning and purpose behind what we're doing. And to give some structure to that messy creative process that is generally a little bit unpleasant to navigate because there's so much destruction. So and of course, event design collective, we love bringing a methodology in and allowing planners to build some structure around how and why they create. So I'm looking forward to seeing more of that as we deal with this collision between the tech world and the event well, who, who think differently about the products that they put out there as well? So finding that common language revise when I think a lot of design process enables that. Yeah, definitely great insights all around. Thank you so much. This is in green information for everybody to learn. And so next up, I have. So what are some different career paths in the tech industry and what opportunities exist now or maybe upcoming, and how can students find them? Sure, I'll go ahead and go first. Just want to see them perspective. You know, we, we tend to have a very thoughtful college recruitment process headquarters that's based in the Washington DC area. I happen to be based in Indianapolis. It's just kind of the way it goes sometimes. However, I think really the point of entry into technology tends to be through services or sales. It's that opportunity to understand the client-based, understand the product deeply. And it's from that, from that point in time, you're really able to start thinking about how does this fit into your career pathing. I think one of the things that I tend to see and technology. So we have a, we have a lot of lateral movement within career pathing. So we will see a lot of individuals that will go from client services to a same level position in the technology department B, it on product management side of the house, integrations, team, sales engineering, just different pieces because it is that opportunity for continuous growth and learning. The other piece that I'll say is really from the event planner world and thinking about our student population today, you are all excellent program managers and really managing projects. And I need that cannot be, that value cannot be underestimated in the tech space. So whether it is on the production side or the event planning side through third parties, audio-visual solutions, et cetera. There's just such a need for that project management expertise. Jim, Anthony, or anything else, you know, any high and Stephanie made a great point about a lot of the entry into the technologies and sales and services. But I think we're at a new point right now. You see the meeting side has always resisted having the tech person on-board. It's always been an outsource conversation. I think we're in an era right now where the technical producer isn't just a function of the large shows, it's going to be a function of every organization and they're going to need to have that tech resource. That's not the outsourced expert, but the internal expert who not only knows the technology, but knows the nuance, knows the real importance of the technology to that organization. And I really, really think that the next level of employee, if they don't have a strong tech side to it, they're not going to be marketable to not going to be accepted. And this is the opportunity for all of you who are listening right now. To enhance that project management skill you have with the tech, at least the tech comfort level and the tech awareness that you have. You don't need to know everything about technology shoot, none of us do. But what you need to do is have the ability to see what's happening and then go forward and learn about it. And it's a huge part of where it's going. Couldn't agree more and I don't want to be negative, but I was speaking to a planet the other day and they said that they had been applying for jobs. And they actually got rejected from the job because they didn't have any virtual event experience on their resume. That's really harsh and really hard for somebody who had, I think, 25 years experience in event planning. But to take on that, they'd be event technologist, which I think is going to be a title. You're going to see more within planning organizations to take on that row and understand the options and the products out there. And like Kim said, you don't have to know everything. But to know how these technology solutions think and feel about the world, get a bit of an understanding of the tech companies worldview and how you can interface with them to talk about the product and get a bit of an idea of what is development pipelines. What steps do you need to take to deploy that technology and what is realistic and what is unrealistic in timeframe and deployment is very, very powerful from a project management standpoint and managing the creative process I mentioned it before, but the UX user experience design element, automation and AI and computers do an amazing job at managing the everyday repetitious tasks like booking your calendar with Calibri or things like that. But understanding the brain and the way that the brain interfaces with that technology, computers aren't quite there yet. It's that soft stuff. So if you can get into that field, if you can get into some of the sociological elements, some of the psychological elements, some of the neuroscience behind it. You can be the one communicating that interface between the technology and the human experience is that there's such a huge issue though with the AI. And that is that we're leaning on a way to heavily for all of our decisions in a and you've been talking about this a couple of times now. I think one of the issues that you that we're going to be able to bring to the table. Is that okay? This is what the AI says. But in our industry it's science and art. It's about practicality, but it's also about the human experience of Stephanie's been mentioning. And quite frankly, if you start making the decision making process in AI process entirely what you're getting. And it was actually a meeting that's not going to have any soul. And if it doesn't have a soul, it's not going to have any attendees. Well said and kind of touching back to what Stephanie mentioned, having or just skills to have and maybe starting out in the sales type role can get you into the tech field, et cetera. But kinda leaning into that, what does it take to create XX, success, smoke technology career and the meetings and event industry. And what are some successes of your past that you believe got you where you are today? I can stop this one off. A curious mind, being willing to look, look for new solutions, look for new opportunities, and never getting stuck in that point being, being, being willing to explore and discover new opportunities. And not closing yourself off because things move so fast to appoint or you're gonna be reeducating yourself regularly throughout your entire career. But you want to do that with purpose and reason behind it so that you don't fall behind people that are doing that more often than you're Anthony. I so agree. I just I always think back and working with others throughout my career and saying what would happen if you click that button? I don't know, it never clicked that button. Try to click the button. That curiosity of what could happen, what are the possibilities. And I do think ultimately, and there's such a strong service thread it to everything that we do. And it is the ability to really listen to our clients, to our end customers. What is it that they're trying to achieve? And so often right now, they're not even sure. So it is really being such a student of what's going on in the industry. We were speaking before everyone got on today about how much content is really out there. So it's about narrowing it down and cheers to you all for having this week. I think that'll help you tremendously. But really focusing on what to client, what do the clients need and how can we respond. And we, we have actually been really promoting as it relates to the hybrid events that are out there. The NFL is actually a great reference point of what a live audience experience is like and what an at home a virtual experience is like and balancing those two things, I think AS going into the next phase. Jen, thank going. I think the term that we need to focus on is one that I've heard for years now. It's a content curation. You know, a number of years ago, I heard someone in this industry and I'm not gonna say who it was because I'm not happy that it was said indicated that content is no longer important at events and that can eat. Nothing can be further from the truth and that content is critical. The problem is the noise to content ratio's gotten really, really high. So you're stepping into a meeting planning organization, whether it's corporate or association, whether it's high end, whether it's a basic functionality, you're going to be able to do. Great your inherent knowledge of some of the technologies you've played with experience, and be able to then share it out in proper amounts to the people who need to buy into it in the organization. I've always remembered, I know as an aid in the 80 days that how difficult it was to get my boss, the head of the company to understand the importance of this a being a why it costs so much, why it's going to take this amount of processing and setup time to do so, you're going to need to be that successful curator to know that your ideas are going to be shot down sometimes, but at the same time, without them, your organization is not going to succeed. Great advice, especially to people who are interested in getting into the technology career in the meetings and events in history. So thank you all for your insights and input. And so next up, was there an experience that made you realize that you wish to work in tech, specifically Stephanie, in your rules since that's kind of you kind of plan to be an event, but then kind of transition to a little bit. Do you have any feedback on that shore? For me, it was going back about 15 years ago. I had the opportunity to work for a corporate client that was in the midst of actually transitioning from their from their agencies owned instance of a platform technology to their own instance of a platform technology, that company no longer exist. But it was a really good opportunity for me to observe the process and understand. And I really enjoyed seeing the platform power and understanding how a, how technology can really provide that experience for the company to show the business value and meetings. I am a huge advocate for why do we do meetings? We do meetings to provide value and whether it's to the attendees, to the company. It is all about value. And I really fell in love with that process. And at heart, I am an efficiency minded person. I cannot tell you how many nights I have spent years and years ago. Low value work. And what I really wanted to be doing something that had a much more higher output. So gone are the days of cross-referencing a rooming list by hand. I can't tell you how many dinners we had to have at the office because there were not something that would allow you to do that with automation. And so when I think back on it for myself personally, and I really wanted to get involved with technology because I believed that there was a better way to understand this business, to influence how service is done in this business. And I want people to have more time living, doing things that they enjoy doing. And I do think that that connection between technology in this industry can really help facilitate, you know, it was really great advice and I definitely can understand your perspective and that's really awesome story. So thank you so much for sharing. In the next question I have is directed at or Andrew. I'm sorry, Andrew is not here today, so give me 1 second. Anthony, are there transferable skills required for event planning that are relevant to the tech field, such as project coordinator or project manager rules and notice was touched on a little bit earlier and discussion. But lm, you think of any other transferable skills that somebody in the painting you might want to use to transition to a text field or kinda like, Yeah, I mean, obviously all the stuff we talked about early with managing pipelines and project timelines is super relevant. But I think also, you know, a lot of the time, events, businesses, there are many businesses that maybe they're only a short-lived business, but you need those basic business management skills and administrative skills to run an event effectively. And the same applies to product management in the tech sector. Let's say we take a virtual event, for example, a successful platform cella and manager. They need to understand that, that there is complexity to their business model that perhaps the event planner doesn't understand. So they need to develop the skills to communicate across the two different business models and the two different ways of thinking in sort of touched on this before, we need to find that shared language. And an example is, I, I was talking with a gentleman who just came out of planning and is now moved into a virtual platform and AR tech space. And we were talking about and he said, I just when you do a sales meeting with my team and they were all talking all this jargon and stuff and adored me that most planners wouldn't understand this jargon and it's a foreign language to them. And they talking about running a demo. And I thought to myself, why are we calling this virtual platform demo a demo when we shall call it a virtual site inspection, that planners understand what a site inspection in a venue is. Why we calling it a platform when it could be a virtual event venue. And we can apply some of the language and some of the navigation terminology that we would apply in a convention center to that virtual platform as well to help bridge that gap in understanding and get some of that jargon out of the way. So we start to talk the same language. Now that's great and that's relatable for me having my background in event planning and kind of transitioning into the tech field now that I'm in. That's great advice because that's definitely something that happened. It was a learning curve for me, so I definitely understand that. Thank you. And next, Jim, what in what is coming in the event tech in the next ten years that we don't know, we need to know. Gosh, Actually, before I get there, I just want to hop off of one thing. Anthony mentioned those three words with virtual site inspection. And I think people have to realize that that's going to be a huge component of what people do. And I've seen so many of these meetings the past eight months fail because they haven't done the site visit of the virtual, of how that particular platform works, what are its strengths and weaknesses? And more importantly, what does it do well, that we need it for our organization? And what does it not? Where does it not fit our goals? So I'm so glad you brought that up. In terms of the future. You know, what's coming, what is here, what's going to come even more is the mixed reality game. When we start talking about augmented reality, virtual reality and its integration into our industry. I think the transitional point for AR is going to be in about a year from now. And it's only because there's one company that's out there that has the breath and has the ability to create a product that everybody goes gaga over, whether it's good or not is really not the conversation. But that's going to be apples involvement in 2021 or 2022 is getting at the AR glasses. You know, we've been toying with this idea of AR in the industry, in sales and marketing components. I'm blown away that not every single hotel right now is, has gone to an AR approach to, hey, let me send you a picture and now you can interact with it using your phone. It is such a missed opportunity as the AAR cycle because we know would we know it from Instagram, we know it from Snapchat, we know from all the areas that's out from Pokemon Go. But integration into that experience is going to take one and make it more user-friendly for the attendee example, at the event, I don't know which session I'm going to go to. But if I had an app that told me a paragraph, probably not gonna be any good. But if my phone, I can hover over the site and you can get a 30-second clip, a speaker. Being. There we go. The understanding of the use of video and its integration into augmented reality is huge. We moved to VR. You got the conversation of true Virtual Reality headset. A lot of people to see by that. But you got the 360 video approach, which is where all these facilities right now should be leaning towards heavily in the anticipation of us coming back into at least a partially mobile experience. And apart, you're partially lab experience where I can sell my space better cuz I can allow the attendee anytime, anywhere, do the walk, be able to integrated AR VR. It's clearly very much up in the air in the next decade, which one's going to dominate? I lean toward augmented reality just because I think it has such a huge, huge head-start on it. But I would think that any organization out there that's planning a meeting right now has to have both of those components. As part of their conversation as to how do we consider integrating this now and what is our game, our game in the future to get that integrated because everyone's using it. Thank you so much, Tim, that was great advice and insight and it's just crazy. The world of the future and the unknown truth. And so here's the next ten years. And next, Anthony, how can event, technology or online events help improve diversity, equity, and inclusion within the events industry. It's a really good question and, and we do want to mix job at the moment. Let firstly accessibility. There. There are obviously great benefits to digital spaces, digital ecosystems that can, that can enable people to attend when they wouldn't normally be able to tame because of physical, economic, geographical constraints. So that, that's a great option. But a lot of platforms aren't being as as accessible as they should be, especially for hearing impairment side impairment elements like that. So they need to start doing some better jobs with various kinds of deployment, I think, and will become more, more as we get more comfortable with digital spaces, then I think we should push and accelerate that much quicker than we are now. Build that into your design plan to make sure that there are, that there are that there are accommodations made for people who do have limitations and how they can interact with your content. And as we look at more so the diversity and inclusion, there's something great about it that a digital interface that it gives you more of a high-level view of how diverse or how not diverse your content is. Navigating through that speaker list and starting to see the photographs of the people instantly recognize, hey, I've got too many white bold men with beards. A lot of us out there. And do I need, do I need to bring some more diversity into my programming? Because I tell you your attendees are looking at that and they're recognizing it. And many speakers, myself included and now working that into their contracts that I will, I will only accept speaking spots if there is a diverse range of speakers involved in that, so that I'm not the majority, so that I am balanced and equal with the perspectives that are coming in. So I think it's going to force us as we get this high level view, more optics around the programming to be very intentional in bringing those different kinds of contributors into the events that we design. Yeah, that's a perfect example. On my board of directors, we just had a piano and somebody perfect example of that, you know, didn't feel comfortable, you know, because they didn't feel like it was a diverse enough panel. So it's just something to really keep in mind, especially for organizations moving forward. So thank you Anthony Very much. So now everybody, what tech skills should everybody in the industry had or need? Moving forward? I start. Go for three words, 123 words, right? Learn to code. Now. Learn how to you don't have to be an expert data via code junkie. Understand what it takes to put a program together, understand an API, and how you're going to be able to work within what's called low code opportunities, which are going to be solutions that are not going to require a lot of coding. But you know what? A little bit of that knowledge with a comfort with the database and being able to take the information and customize it for the app or the website of the organization is critical because guess what? That skill no. And Boyd in the industry within the meeting planners themselves, where resides is was the Stephanie's in Anthony's your resides with the outsource companies. You've gotta understand how this information integrates for you to be able to make reasonable adjustments, suggestions, and solutions for your organization. So learn to code. Now play with it. Have fun. Did take go to or a Udemy course or any of the courses, learn at the half-hour an augmented reality. And figure out that it's not really that difficult with a wysiwyg environment to be able to learn how to do that. And then all of a sudden the ideas will come up as to how you can use it. And the platform can come tonight. And to, to your point in the, in the coding a web development. Well, we talk about front end and back end, with the front end being a lot of that user interface. It's the pretty pictures that the colors, it's all of that where the buttons are going to be so that I can navigate through the side and some basic coding and that stuff. And certainly there's big benefits to being able to code in that front end. Well, at least at that basic level, that backend is all code. It's the heavy coding, it's the heavy lifting. And that's a lot to learn that and get really good at it. But you want to part with someone out there who was good at that. Some of the highest paid careers at the moment is full stack. And full stack is front end expert, and backend expert. They code the whole way through that area. So if you can move into that full stack area, which is a lot of work to do it. That's a very powerful position. But to Jim's point, if you can get your head around that front end, what will that user experience? And a little bit of coding so that you're competent. And that's a big, big chunk of this is how you feel about what your work and how confident and how comfortable you are with it. So if you get that little skill level coding, just enough so that you can guide people around a pond with the right people by telling how much they can code and how much they can't, and how much they're pretending they can code. And that's really empowering for you and that'll get you around. A lot of this. Like I talked about earlier, you're not going to get the job because you don't know the stuff. Know enough to be dangerous enough. But then if you want to take it a step further, if you can head towards that full-stack ability encoding, then that's a very powerful skill. It's very aspirational, but I agree both of these gentlemen, especially on the coding side, there are not nearly enough people in this world that know how to code. So start early, start late, just start, learn how to code. And to Jim's point, it does not have to be You don't have to be expert level, but a little knowledge goes a long way. I think the other piece I'm going to give a non-technical answer to this in that I think it's really, really important from that attendee experience perspective, you really think about the technology that you are putting out there to your attendees and their ability to consume it. And making sure that is part of that design and architecture, that it is going to be successful. To really support their attendee experience. Can everyone learn? Yes, but make sure you understand your audience and it's so, so important. And really that's where it comes into the communication piece and mapping out how will we do we need to do around table of some of our attendees that are in different generations to make sure that we're hitting the right mark with each of them. And because there is nothing worse. And I think also when you put the global spin on it as well, it's very, very important to really think about that audience demographic. Let's create advice all around. Thank you very much. I think we're coming up on time here, so I'm trying to decide what the last question I'll ask is. So I'll kind of combine. So is there something that's on your career bucket lists? And is there something the most influential are exciting tech that you worked with yet? What is that? Anybody start? I'll start off stuff like Jamie talk though that augmented and extended reality technologies are going to be huge. Going to add to that one as well, motion tracking technology, because we gotta move into what some people have talked about is the low touch economy. We're going to move away from the ways that we interface with things physically because of all of the possible contamination situations. So I love this idea of both tracking your your van attendees to understand how they're experiencing the spaces that they coming into from a data and analytic standpoint, but as well, how can we allow them to interface with other technologies by just the wave of the hand as opposed to the touchscreens. That, and now we don't want to touch a touch screen anymore. So some of those motion tracking technologies are going to open up a whole realm of possibilities. I don't know my career bucket list is right here today. And I really, I mean, this is what we love to do. And I think you get lucky enough that I think all three of us have to really do what we love is no more bucket list out there. It's just doing every day and being open to learning. It's so cool. While we're about to see, well, we're back to C with extended reality and blended reality or whatever you wanna call it. What we're going to see with the 3D printing taken over some components of what we have. Where you can see with the useful AI integration plus what we don't know. If you think about a couple of years before the smart phone, nobody thought about a smartphone. There are people right now coming up with ideas that are going to blow this industry away. I just have no idea what they were. And nobody has we could guess. But the bottom line is, it's going to be so revolutionary what we're going to see this decade. And I think the excitement for me and for all of us is in how we're going to see this industry move forward, move out of this situation and utilize the technology. Literally grab on its back and be able to write it to a much better place. Because the technology has integrated effectively with the needs of the group and the needs of the attendees to really make a great synergistic opportunity. I might just add for myself personally. And I've had a very unique. Career, and obviously it's unique and that it's my own. And I've had the opportunity to work with most of the Fortune 100 in some capacity. At chop, I have traveled the world extensively. I've been everywhere I wanted to go. And I really, what I think in retrospect, looking back at the past six months is relate that deeper connection with my community. So I think as I take a look, I always believe there's a Steve Jobs quote out there that you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. And for me, it is knowing that everything that I've done up to this point leads me forward. And I really look forward to the opportunity to get deeper involved in my local community as well as the meaning industry community here. Or I can, I can, I just give you one final point of that because this community thing is so important to me and why I'm so excited to be with, be on this panel with these people. But community is everything in the events industry, in my opinion, like you build a network of people around you that bring about your success through that community. In my 20-year career, I've probably applied for 50 jobs on career websites, LinkedIn and all those different things of which I think I got one in that, in that whole time. And I've worked in seven different companies, all of which I got those jobs and made those career moves and the progression of my career because of my network, because of word of mouth and because who knew me and what what I could bring to accompany. So I would say, get out there and start building your communities today, tomorrow, the next day and just never stopped because your community is everything in this industry. You're here. Very well said and thank you all so much fear, insights and advice and you know, your deepen your experiences. That's been a really awesome to hear. So thank you so much. And with that, I think I will turn it back over. He wondered if she's ready for me to discuss the chat questions, I believe so. It was really wonderful speaking with all of you and thank you so much. Thank you all so much and has been such a great conversation so far. Um, and let's get into these questions for our panelists. So it looks like they sort of been answered a little bit, but also go hadn't read it off to you just in case you thought of something else you might want to elaborate at, elaborate on. So we've got one question that says, even if you are not super tech savvy, What is a program or easy way to learn more about technology? So many cool sites out there. I'll tell you how I do it. Best and thing anybody, anyone of us can do is to share our, our resources. I use a very simple app called Flip Board that I've curated with all the tech topics that I think are important. And that's my daily newspaper. And that's what I read every day. I don't pick up a physical newspaper and most people don't anymore. But I fine tune curation tools to be able to give me the information. And then as Anthony said, Anna, Stephanie has set, then the idea is about sharing it. Because once you get it out there and you create a conversation, that's when you start to learn more and more bad. So on using tools like that, I read, I would look at the verge everyday as one of my tech sites. I'm always looking at road to be are and stuff like that. So there's lots out there. But take a simple curation app focused on basic technology. Start using the artificial intelligence to identify the types of topics important. And all of a sudden you can have a stream of technology ideas and information that you wouldn't have been able to degas, you wouldn't have known what to ask for? All right. Anyone else want to add anymore? Or I can move on to the next question. I would just add, reach out to people, our whole community and network side of things. Don't be afraid to jump on LinkedIn. Connect with Jim and say, hey Jim, can I check out you flip board, Hey Anthony, tell me more about the tech that that your playing with and be instigate that bond. Don't wait for the excuse. Just do it because I know I'm sorry, j, but I want to speak for you. But I know anybody who came to me and asked me I I'm I'm ready to share, I'm ready to contribute. So please just don't be afraid of us. We're not, we don't buy. And what wasn't really willing to help them. Don't buy often, just so only when you need it. Alright, another question we got is, what are some of your favorite websites or technology that you think would be the most useful at this time for event planners? I I tend to follow the meetings that daily newsletter as well as the MPI briefs weekly. Those are kind of two really solid sources of industry information. And then honestly, I go back to my own university days and I will tell you, my professor said, read the Wall Street Journal daily and I still find that I follow the Wall Street Journal Online and it is incredibly helpful and predictive of what is going on in the world. So I'll take that in terms of the curation approach, which is find the MPIs and the PCMH and the meetings nets and all those great sites. Put them in one of your resources, curate them, have your own digital newspaper that identifies what they're all talking about. And there you go. There's your meetings newspaper every day, right? You right on your phone. And I'll give you something different. I'm I, I like reading. I like books, but I'm dyslexic. Really dyslexic. So for me, reading is a big challenge, so I'm a big fan of audio books and the different options out there. And in particular, I like Blinkx AST. That gives you 15 minute summaries of book. Yes. And I use blink has to decide if I'm going to invest in the book. Because if I liked the summary, then it's probably worth me getting the audio book to sort of get dig a bit deeper into it as well. So, so look at those different sites that look those communities who are recommending reading and I think read and stay up to date with that, with that technology as much as you can. Write the system grace of the suggestions that I personally marathoner. Our last question and we have so far and please feel free to submit any questions you have anymore. Um, I think I know the answer to this one. Next, I'm gonna go ahead and read it. What new skill, what new skill set is needed for future event professionals? Hmm, let's see which from what I talked about it. Well, I'll do the encoding. I think is the skill set is broad-based knowledge. It's a broad-based knowledge of the technology because you're not sure in which company you hit, you end up getting into where their focal points. So being aware of everything and understand than when you make that move to another organization, their focus is gonna be completely different. A lot of what happens in our industry is an automatically transferable because of your group. Because exactly what Stephanie has been talking about, understanding the needs of your clients. Cuz that's what's gonna drive where you're focusing the information with respect to what's most important with technology. So just be aware of what's out there is a changing landscape and that oftentimes with your help focused on is really very narrow based on the needs of your particular group, which is a great thing. For now. It's, it's difficult to touch on something we haven't already the one thing we haven't talked about a lot, but I put out there to the audience and increasing your awareness around being security minded, whether what the handling of data and PCI. And that is something that is very tricky as we continue to weave our future, especially with technology and do not underestimate that RFP question that you put out there to providers about security and how is the data handled. And make sure that that as part of your decision when you were choosing providers, because you're the security of the data of your attendees means everything. So still, I mean, that's, that's Pandora's box. And I got really just opens up the next hour. We're going to have this conversation. Just a little something we could put that on your box. That was intentional. We left it until the end, so we don't have time to get into that because it is a massive like where does that data live? Who secures it? Who is responsible for our questions? You need to ask your tech provider and if they can't answer the question, and you better start running. Or risky person to partner with. I think something, something that we don't often talk about as you start your career off. And it can be, it can be a challenge to take on board is also self-awareness and self-management, self, self guidance. A lot of the time we wait for the boss to tell us what to do, and we wait for that direction. And in a landscape that's moving as fast as it is, we don't have time for that. So you need to take that entrepreneurial spirit that you hear all the time and, and own the project that you're working on, take initiative and be proactive and less reactive, waiting for the direction. And so, and so if you can do that responsibly and understand the risks and communicate the risks with your boss or bosses in the future. And have that entrepreneurial spirit and really own the project. And then you have much more success than if you sit back and wait. You know, a point that was made earlier is about how do we learn what's coming down the pike and how do we stay abreast? I'm going to tell you one of my tricks. And it's one that I hate to do because I'm well, you'll understand why in a second. But if you notice when you're watching, whether you're watching videos, whether you're watching traditional TV, the technology, the commercials are talking about. Think about this. Accompany with huge multi-million dollar pockets is not going to spend all that money in advertising, mentioning or referring to a technology that they don't feel resonates with folks. And for the past ten years, whether it's from smartphones to social media to augmented reality. There's always been that sort of January first commercial. I all the sudden you see that's going to tell you what time this year, what was it? Was 5G now phi j and ready. And it's not going to be ready for a few years really. But the bottom line was there now willing to invest in the conversation. And if you look the past eight or 910 months, where do you see? You see Samsung, you see Apple all coming out with the 5G ready that can probably be used in 14 cities across the country and that's about it. But still, when they start making that conversation, when they start identifying it in the technology, in the commercials, in the advertising, you better be completely aware and use the resource to understand that the worst place to look about, look at technology is in our industry. You gotta look outside and then use your creativity to pull it in and go, how can that work? Within my meeting? That's where you're going to become that rockstar. Thank you. That is some great insight there. I'm going to go ahead and share the session evaluating, evaluation link with you right now in the chat. And I've just got a few more things before we go into our questions. Here we go. You can connect with our speakers on it through their LinkedIn pages. There links are on our resource page. And like we just said, there's still a lot of this conversation that we could keep halving. And if you guys want news, head on over to the evolve lounge and continue that conversation. Like I said, I just sent that eval link. And for every session evaluation that you fill out, your name will be entered into a prize sweepstakes. This session was recorded and will be available by the end of the day. And if you have any questions about any of the upcoming sessions or anything, and you can head to the help desk in the lounge. And we'd love to see you at our next career development session, taking back our finances. That'll be later this evening at 415. And I say thank you to all our panelists and are wonderful moderator again, who is an awesome conversation. Thank you all so much for taking the time to be here with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time the timeout.

Description of the video:

Hello everybody, welcome to career paths in designing and planning. We're going to give it a minute to hear. Just let everyone keep rolling in and then we'll go ahead and get started. Okay, Hello and welcome to our panel, career path designing planning. We're excited to have you join us today. My name is I'm a senior in the TES M event production class and I'm going to be arose for this session. Before we jump in, I'd like to go over a few housekeeping items, just see you know, how to best participate in today's session. Questions directed towards the panelists, please use the Q and a feature located at the bottom of your screen for general questions about T ASM evolve or just to chat with other attendees, please use the chat feature at the bottom of the screen. As a reminder, please engage in this session any professional in a professional manner and adhere to the code of conduct that you signed in registration to ensure that everyone has a positive experience. Also, this session is live right now, but will be recorded and should be available by the end of the day. Any resources connects you to the session are available on our resource page. And at the end of the session I will post a session evaluation link in the chat. If you complete that, your name will be entered into a sweepstakes drawings for prizes. You, for every evaluation link that you submit for throughout the event, that it has one entry. So you might be unfamiliar with us. The tourism event and Sports Management Department is the host of this event. The students, the plan the event or in the production class in the TES and department ts is a part of the School of Health and Human Sciences at IEP. Why? And as two-degree options, as well as many certificates in minors focused in careers and Tourism Events, hospitality and sports. This fleet mom virtual event was created by a group of 58 students in designed to help students and alumni with this challenging year to help find the path forward. This week, you can connect to employers and industry resources, along with Participate in over 20 education sessions that include over 50 speakers. At this time, I would like to introduce our moderator for this session, Ron Fox worthy. He is the director of operations as streamline events incorporated with over 15 years of leadership and practical involvement in the event industry, Ron understands what it makes. Experience, special and how to partner Close, aim and his clients to achieve it. Ron strongly believes in the power of face-to-face meetings. And his many strengths include fostering highly personal interactions in an infinity of for new technologies and relentless championing meaningful attendee experiencing. At this time, I'm going to pass it off to rot and he will allow each of our attendees to introduce themselves. Thanks, Taylor, on everyone. Glad to be here. We're just going to give some brief introductions here before we get into some great questions for the day. So we'll start with Jen. Hey everybody. My name is Jen Bachman and I work with Marybeth Smith and Associates. I'm the president and COO, been here for about ten years. And before that I had stops at the Indiana Sports Corporation in Indianapolis and also the RCA down and Lucas Oil Stadium. We are a small event planning company, probably about 30 events a year, mostly non-profit companies do a lot of fundraising events, galas, community events, conferences, things like that. So excited to talk to you all today. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Gerry. And we'll move on to disable. Hi, everyone. I'm stable Stewart. I'm a certified meeting professional here in Indianapolis, Indiana and I am an alumni of what was formally known as the TCM program. So I'm very proud of all the students who have pulled this together and I'm really excited to be part of the panel today. As I mentioned, I work for CNO Financial Group as an internal planar, so a corporate planner. And we fall within the meeting an inch or the insurance and financial market segment. I've been there 11 years. I've been really fortunate to work in several different aspects of being a planner. That's the only career I've known since I graduated. So I'm very fortunate to have done several different jobs throughout this industry. But currently, I work on event design and I play in an event from site selection, sourcing, contracting all the way through all of the pre-planning, vendor management, attendee management, travel, hotel, food and beverage, event, design, tech, everything you can imagine all the way up through on-site and execution. So lots of different aspects of of an event. But as I mentioned, I've been in the industry my entire career and I'm very fortunate to be here today to join all of you. Are there any variable about monica? Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Monica Richard and I went to Indiana University and I'm technically actually also a graduate of the program down in Bloomington. I am an adjunct professor in the fall semester, I teach the same class that I teach in the spring semester at in Bloomington. So in this spring's semester, you can add this course, and in the fall semester you can have the same course called weddings as a business. So I am the wedding girl. I2 social events including MIT suppose and celebrations. And I do weddings. I love social occasions. So I am a Social event storyteller. I plan the entire event from site selection and find the funder vetting process all the way through the event itself. I am very, very selective about the number of clients I take a year, typically less than ten. I do events all over the world, but mostly here in Indiana, except my clients are not necessarily from Indiana. They may be coming back here for some reason to their hometown to be getting married or NAT from Indy and doing an event elsewhere. I am very, very lucky. I have some really spectacular clients and really very fun events. I love teaching our students about that process. And I was honored to be asked to be part of this because designing events is one of my favorite parts of the planning process. And taking a client's ideal inspiration and creating it beyond their expectations. So thank you for having me be part of this county. Thank you, Monica. And about handy. Hey, I'm muted. Um, figure this out, I'm doing better. You know, I filmed the whole thing muted one time. So anyway, my name is adequate and I'm the Executive Director and CEO of the Indiana Funeral Directors Association. I'm a licensed Indiana funeral director and I'm a senior at IU PUI had turned 50 on Thursday and I'm in my 32nd year of college and I'm not kidding. I took a 28 year break there or a half-time, if you will. But when people think of events, they rarely think of a funeral in that context. But funerals have evolved into that over the last 35 years in our country. And part of what the role that I do is support Indiana funeral homes and putting on events and conferences that are really geared in our learning when we learned as its business to business. So it's rather a closed event kind of environment, not open to the public, but nevertheless it is an event in the things that I do on a daily basis. Profession supports a community and we put on events that range everything from learning to bringing people together, which really what events is all about is bringing human beings together. And we've all been challenged in recent months with what we're dealing with are the COBIT pandemic. And we were talking about this before the program. That I think a reoccurring theme that you're going to find that's happened across all industries is the fact that we miss having events in person that are, that are human nature desires to come together. And when you're a person that is in a position to plan that for somebody, you really can become the linchpin to a positive experiences enriches their life. And if we think of it in those contexts more times, Not so long as your organize your going to have a successful then it's just an honor for me to be asked to be here today, be a part of this because I'm playing a role as a palace, but also the students I'm looking forward to enjoin learning from all of you. Thank you Andy. Alright, so you can see we have a wide variety of folks and various aspects any event industry. So this is going to be actually kind of exciting even for me to hear some of our different discussions and some of these questions we have. So I thought this question was appropriate to start off with, but especially in the realm of who we're talking with and who's joining this call. But what are the different career paths that someone can take an event design and planning in each of your opinions. And obviously we all have various backgrounds and experience. So this will be an interesting to hear from each of you. How about jen? Alright, so I've had I had a handful jobs since I graduated and I've been very fortunate. I've tripped and every one of those opportunities. But I myself can, can advocate for there's there's jobs where you own an event, meaning you develop and create an event and you find partners and you bring it to life and you put structure to it. You can also work for a venue, obviously. So in my case, I worked for the RCA DOM, and Lucas Oil Stadium. Now I'm in the client business. So I like to say that I work for 30 different people every time I turn around. So there are a million different directions you can go. As Monica said, their social events. In my case, there's non-profit fundraising. I worked in the entertainment business for awhile. And he's obviously got a very different story. So I think that there's a lot of experience here on this panel, so I'll stop talking and let somebody else take a turn. But a lot of options. How about Monica you get referred to so show. Be interesting to hear your background in that area and how you think social comes into play in this industry. My students know that I start, I'll set my very first job out of college. I worked for Disney for several years. So that is thick in my blood. And and how I tell a story for a client that is rooted in me. It's embedded. So that was my first job out and then I ultimately did go into sports and re Compton you anyone knows in our city is a huge mentor of mine and he taught me that any, every single game is an event. And while we think of Super Bowl or an All-Star game as an event. So is any given Sunday. And and since my degrees and sports management, he he was he is right on that. So well, from a design perspective that brand, the coals or the Pacers or whatever your team is, is, is how you're going to design that brand. And so ultimately I took that with me from up to a social perspective. And so Disney is a, is a brand and the Colts are brand. And so I brand legs. I mean, and I'm not saying you stick the couples name all over everything. That seems a little to second birthday party ask to me. But I want to tell their story in some capacity. And so. My students know I send a dossier of questions That is pretty embedded. I mean, I know everything on their Spotify list. I know what what books are next to their nightstand. I know their favorite piece aren't their favorite piece of furniture. How they met their dog's name, how did they come up with their dog's name? I know everything about them so that I can brand at their entire event and their entire weekend. And so when people leave their wedding, if it's in their own home or not, people feel like they just left dinner at their house. Because for one night, their wedding dinner at their house, even if it wasn't at their home. And so if the lighting was for two people, which opens encoded or 200 people, they felt like it was just error with the couple and the two of them. And I wanted to feel that way. So that is design. Whether it's dinner for four or 400 or 4 thousand if you're at a sporting event or in Annapolis, interestingly enough, 400 thousand. So I wanted to feel that way. And you don't know that if you have another docstring, does that make sense? I agree that it's all about sort of the personal experience, no matter how large the audience, Exactly. Nd And your world, it's very different, but kind of the same. So how do you feel about the different types of career paths, but especially in how you evolved into your your current career. Is when I when I first saw that question was sent to me a week ago, I thought, wow, what a great wanted to kick off this event for. And if you stop and you kind of think about what we do in our daily lives and how we interact, where we go. You would be amazed how many events that you're a part of daily. Solar, very small, intimate, and others are very large and complex. But when I started off as a funeral director, I didn't think of things in the contextual concept of an event. I mean, but when you sit down and you think about what goes into planning an event, all the dialogues that occur from people specific to site-specific to accessories, what I call accessory, which are things that enhance the Havana can be Leydig, be sound, it could be video. What have you. If you think about everything that is wrapped up into that? Virtually everywhere has a career path that leads to an event. Even, even teaching college everytime we get onto a zoom class right now. And I've learned this because sitting right back here over my shoulder is a freshman at IEP UI and that's my son. And he's going through zoom events every day, his classes, his labs. And so when we think about the different past or almost infinite, if you ask me, that will lead you to an event. When I became a funeral director, I didn't think about becoming the executive director of a non-profit associations supported their profession. It just kinda happened back to Jim's point that they sometimes just kind of fall into these situations. I love it because it's about people and I love that anything to do with people is, is really up my alley. Funeral service just happened to be where I fell because of my family. But it it When you think, and then I go back to my comments. When you think of a funeral, you don't flagrantly then maybe you didn't think that way 20 years ago, but now you do it. And so Funeral Directors have had to learn to become event oriented thinking like event planners and designers because that's what the public demands, that what's people demand. So when I looked at that question, I was blown away by the possibilities of being in this field, this industry, and where it could Ligia and I'm living example of it, I believe. I agree a 100% sable. How about you? Wow, my, my journey has always evolved around travel. I wanted to travel. I didn't know how I was going to do that. And for majors later when I discovered this program three days before my junior year, it was a perfect fit. So learning about all the different aspects, I didn't know I was going to end up in the corporate world, but everything I touched sort of held that, that thread throughout it. So I started as an intern as small boutique incentive travel company. So they would be hired by companies to plan their annual sales incentives, which I thought was fantastic. There's budget, there's gifts, there's the events, there's the core, there's all kinds of really great events and it's always in some fabulous international location. So that was sort of the taste that I had. And then I, after I graduated, I moved on to American trends there, ATA airlines with Ambassador Travel Club, which was the nation's largest private travel club. So that was more of the larger groups we would fill charter planes to Cancun or to Maui or to wherever. And so I planned a number of different destinations for the travel club. So they're there at leisure, but you're still doing group movements, you're still doing activities, you're doing destination management company sourcing and transportation and gift items and marketing pieces. So that that kind of led to another path where I moved out of that world once the airline did eventually collapse, unfortunately, and I moved into corporate planning as a third party. So I worked for a company that did a lot of pharmaceutical medical meetings, very regulated, very strict. Everything had to be down to the penny. You you had meal outlines, you had hotel outlines, you had contracting and payments and, and you know, I was working with some of the leading physicians in different disease states around the world on these small Advisory Board meetings and national sales meetings for the internal core team from the pharma companies. So again, very different, different types of clients, different types of events, but it all kind of had that same fabric that makes up the event. And then I bound my most recent position as an internal corporate planner 11 years ago. And it's just been fantastic. And I've, I've touched so many different types of events from small advisory board, kind of bringing in our top partners and tapping their knowledge on how to better our insurance products and delivery to their policyholders and leadership events where I'm working with our CEO and all of our top executive leadership group on different corporate initiatives. And my favorite is planning the annual sales convention. So each year I plan for anywhere from 500 to 800 people. For a large international sales award trip and then a smaller top tier all in, in great international destinations. But you always get that, oh, you're job is so glamorous. You're, you're always on the go, you're always somewhere amazing. You get to plan all these fantastic events which we do and it's wonderful. But that's a lot of hard work. And everybody in this, in this panel can tell you how much hard work it is to pull something off that looks completely flawless. And it's just a fine balance of how you can manage yourself, how you manage others, how you manage an event. I manage all the details and bringing it all together. But yeah, lots of different experiences who kind of led us all to where we are in like January. You just kinda stumble your way into different things and it's all in who you know and how you network. And you just kind of get to where you end up and where you want to, to really shine in. Some of the people on this call and others may not know this, but the event industry is known as one of the most stressful industries out there up with police officers, military, it's quite challenging because of the the pace that we move that. So speaking of that, the next question would be, what's a typical day look like in the world of an event planner? Different everyday. Binders, spreadsheets. Is people assume exactly essay will said that it is about the critiques and travel and clamor. And it is the thing I just squelch and dispel on the first day of class, is nothing like a movie. There's nothing, especially because there's movies about my job. Lots of them. I don't know why big wedding planners as glamorous job to make movies about. So I always, since they're within reach when, especially and assume world, since I can teach unzoom, I pull out diviners and like this, That's 1.5 inches thick. That wedding isn't 15 months and can how fat it already as it is about math, so much math. So be really good at it. And it is about, you better know every law in every state and customs. If that, if that affects you. You need to know accounting, law, math, you need all of that. And you better know Excel docs better than anything in the world. That's what your daily life is like. And work-life balance is non-existent, especially if you own your own firm. And that's perfectly okay with AMP doing it for 20 years. But the rewards, the rewards are totally worth that. But it is not about the prettiest. It is not the stuff of Instagram. And that's okay. You do get the Instagram picture later. All right. I'm going to call it that the clients thank you's and accolades are worth that, I suppose. But the daily life or spreadsheets and logistics and elevator loading times because there's one elevator to get yup, 38 fourths and you've got to have that loading dock just so it's about permits and parties parking. It's not about the praise. That's a fact, grandfather. Degree. If, if you're a data nerd, kind of like I am in love spreadsheets in Excel and accounting. There's a place for you in this industry, procreative. And you're really good at those last minute coming up with those brand ideas that we just have to figure out for some of our clients. There's a place for you here and sometimes you can do both. Wow, you're like you're going to be the power rock star in this key. Over colorful spreadsheets, you geek out, alright? And you would think I geek out over this. You know, like when we gotta just us as a panel, Erica, chocolate, sing all night out your pictures from Saturday Night where suddenly default. Thank you. But did you see the spreadsheet that made that happen? Just like that? That is that's where I geek out as is the logistics. That's what our daily life is like. Students, are those coming into the industry, have no idea that permits and spreadsheets or the stuff that makes engine. How about the the hours most people probably don't know about when they get into this industry. And how would you describe that? Manoch is right, it's phone calls all day long. Whether you're talking to vendors or balancing clients needs. It, it's constantly troubleshooting and nobody wants their Client a to feel less important than Client B. So figuring out how to manage all that. And oh, by the way, I locked in with my own to-do list of 50. And what I wanted to do today that sometimes I don't touch any of those until after five o'clock at night by but it is possible. I mean, I I've done this career and I've got two little kids at home and a dog and a husband, and they all still talk to me, so it is manageable. I don't want to paint a demon glam. You all notice it's passion. It's, I am fortunate that I get home from work and still want to talk about my job. I know several people that they live work and they're happy to leave it there because it doesn't fuel them. So I mean, there's a trade off all day long. There's a tradeoff. Andy, how is your daily world a ball centered? At least listen to this because I have it. And this appreciation for all of you plan events daily and then take on other things beyond that, such as Teach eight and your families. And I know we have one marquee event a year is a profession here in Indiana, or annual convention, and we literally plan for that all year long in I I chuckle about that binder that's 4.5 inches thick and is 15 months out from the event because ours got basically cancelled, if you will, or push back a year. So our binder keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger because we didn't have our marquee event this year. And then we have a lot of smaller events throughout the year that we have an event planner here on staff full-time and we handle all of our own. Events because we have a captive audience. There's a, there's a limited number of people that are going to attend with limited topics. It's just easier for us to do it ourselves. But the interesting thing about all of this, and I go to the life of a funeral director in planning what they plan and they get it done very quickly in the span of three to five days and and working with multiple families. And and this goes back to the stress that all of you live with on a daily basis, right? Customer a could care less about what customer needs are, but you have to care for both of them. So when I think of event people who were successful, they are grounded, they're very organized, their detail-oriented, and they can multitask. And when I say multi-task, it's not just completing something, but they can engage with multiple people over multiple platforms with varying levels of needs. Because that's what really we're doing is we're satisfying needs, we're anticipating those needs, were fulfilling them before they even know them. In an effort to make the event significant and special. And while you or we may be operating on three or four different clients at one time. That one client could be the key to our future. All those clients are keys to our future and how that were able to remain organized. I think about spreadsheets. I'm a, I'm a macro. I'm terrible at it. I've tried. I I'm just not wired that way. But you get people around you that know how to use those to utilize them to help you fulfill the client's needs. And certainly have an astute understanding of all the dynamics of your individual client or are in the crazy. But I really from my perspective, we're looking at a few events a year. So we've got a lot of time on our side, but we have to be prepared and organized because it'll creep up on you really quick. So if there's a piece of advice I would give to anybody on here that's learning and going into this profession is do not procrastinate and do not put off tomorrow, which you could get done today because you'll have a thousand other things you didn't plan for tomorrow. And I'm with you. My to do list never gets done. I gave up. It's a good point. Reminded me something you just said that our world is to not be in the here and now we're supposed to know what's happening in there now, but we're supposed to be two days to weeks to months or two years ahead of where our clients and our stakeholders are. Thinking in that big picture, looking forward and being in that space so that we can be there for them and direct them to where they need to be because they're thinking in the here and now. So it's up to us basically to guide them. So leaning back into another question here and something a little bit more exciting in each of our worlds, what's the most exciting experience you had while working in this industry? Or give us an example of something that was really over the top and something that you're pretty proud of. Hey, I'll jump bang. I'll be, I'll keep talking. I, you know, the one thing that events is taught me as it connects me to people that I otherwise would not have met my daily life. I attended a convention out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and had the opportunity for one hour with the, the world renown leadership guru John Maxwell. And John Maxwell has ties to India. A lot of people don't know that he's been insignificant part of his career. Leading a church up in Marion, Indiana Wesleyan Church up there, which Indiana Wesleyan is there as well. And the interesting thing about the opportunity that was provided beam and the event itself was the national funeral directors actually put the event on and they invested a significant amount of resources to secure this person, to teach and share to the tube about $75 thousand for about three hours with a membership and provide value. And I will tell you as a participant, actually being part of that, our meet-and-greet, a one-on-one with him walking away from it. I had a greater appreciation for all that went end to give me that 45 minutes is absolutely amazing. Everything that went into that dynamic from his handlers to end FDA's handlers, to the event space that he and I met in, which was staged to the after event after that. And so I will tell you that being involved in event planning, we'll introduce you to some of the most unique and in really character depth People that you could ever imagine is all because I signed up to go to an event. And I think that's something that gets kinda lost in this whole narrative, is that you get connected to incredible human beings who struggled just like you do, who have challenges, just like you do, who are willing to help, just like your wind and willing to help with people with events. So I would share that that was the coolest event that I've ever been to was getting to meet with John Maxwell and and kind of sit down and have coffee with him for an hour, almost an hour, albeit at 630 in the morning. But hey, I'll take anytime a john maxwell I can get so I'll chime in on a little bit. In the corporate world. Again, being an incentive based primarily as my, my main focus and dealing with some of the larger corporate things and entertaining. And there's lots of, I mean, there's so many different experiences of amazing things that have happened. But to tie it to the corporate world, the trip that, that I produce every year. The agents come from all different kinds of backgrounds. Sometimes they've never been out of the country, sometimes they've never been on a plane. Sometimes they've never been to a resort. And so keeping that in the back of my mind, every time they've earned this trip, they've worked all year to produce an app to earn this trip, to take this experience of a lifetime. They take their wife, their, you know, it's, it's a family milestone for them to be able to go. And so when you get on site and you're creating all of the experience that they have when they, when they arrive from the different food and beverage events and speakers and activities and and just giving them these opportunities just to see how it all comes together and to receive the feedback on what that meant to someone and to see it from a financial standpoint. Because historically, when people return from that trip there back in the field, producing and the numbers spike because they're so energized and ready to get back to their teams. They're ready to. To, you know, share with them. You really want to make this trip next year. So you're getting the direct results from the sales because of the work that you put in. And yes, there's all different factors involved in it. But I often see that the work that I do in my team does to produce these events like there's a financial result that the company is experiencing as well. So, you know, it just makes it we can justify, yes, this event needs to happen. And I watched every penny and I negotiated cost savings and I saved this much money and buy you making this expense, you're going to produce x amount more of, of of production and adjust. It means a lot that yes, it means so much to the attendees and your you're creating that pizza, but you're also providing them the ROI. Did the company that this, what we're doing is benefiting so many people. I'll go. So this is, you know, 20-20 and it's an interesting year. And weddings, I think took a different emotional take that a lot of corporate events to corporate was like See you next year, piece out and weighing. Took the what do you mean we still have to get married, just make it happen. And Ron alluded to that we have in the top five most stressful jobs. Well, I got be the barrage of phone calls with you still have to make this happen for me. And what do you mean? What do you mean the government is going to tell me that I can't have my wedding. I still have to get married. And so we got a barrage of phone calls that went through the entire mourning process of anger, bargaining, tears, because it was not my fault that they could or couldn't get married. And what size could their celebration B, and quarantine to different things, to different couples. Some broke up, some decided to get married. And so I got I got phone calls both ways. And one of those phone calls was a couple who had just begun dating and they were of an age that if you know, you're not, you ought to get there. Let's just do it. And so they have not been dating very long. Coordinating together, decided this is it. And let's get married in eight weeks in a spectacular fashion. I mean, incredibly spectacular fashion. And so we had eight weeks to plan an event that would it was spectacular. What will it will leave the budget. And they wanted a national recording artist as their entertainment. And fortunately they wanted it outside. And the reason they wanted international recording artist was because they had front row tickets to the concert and the tumor was canceled. And she was, the bribe was devastated and the groom said, she was like, I can't see her until her, what are we going to do? And he said, I never say never. But I can make a call, see if she'll come just to one-shot, one show all year. It will be for the way. And the recording artist did not respond instantly. And it wasn't the money, it was her safety. This was in the middle of the summer and we just had a Broadway artists die of Kobe. And if the recording artist got sick. Her career could theoretically be over or her life could be over. And so safety was paramount. It was the number one thing. So I'm creating an event that was above all, saved was most important. And then creating the event of this client's dreams was important. So doing so in eight weeks from engagement to execution was important and done. And then also getting all of the professionals possible, many of which were furlough or completely laid off. And finding all of the tools possible to do this. Because some companies were shut down, some companies were closed or couldn't get the products because customs to me to get everything from the United States or get in and shipping times we're just nonexistent. So creating out of that. And then once the recording artist and her crew and the the staff, the sound texts, the roadies, all those people were there. They literally they cry for the 2.5 weeks of loading and set up an olive that they've been literally side. This is the only time this loaded and strike are the only times I'm not tiling for unemployment since March. This is the only amount I'm going to do. This is the only show the only time you're feeding my family. And the fear, the couple and their family realized how important this was, this concert and misleading word there only effect. So I've done a lot of cool events. I've done a lot celebrities, I'm done next and cool people travelling from places. But to realize, and I've always known, unless you're feeding lots of people, the exponential ramifications and their effects would be back industry are billions and billions of dollars. But when you have someone standing there holding a light, but they're about to hang up on some writing saying, thank you, I didn't have to file for unemployment. You're giving me self worth. What that needs, what the industry does. That's the best thing I've ever done. And not because it has some really pretty pictures because it does. But because of what it did, what it did. And when the family realized that they were like just whatever it takes, anything, whatever text, because they now realized what a bat. And it is it will it will always be my favorite. Sorry, I'm getting really much, although it has been a year, it will always be my favorite about. Sorry, sorry. We've heard that from Andy. We've Herpen sable Manoch and I'm sure generally able to tell us here, but we're hearing lots of human emotion, human interaction, human engagement. Where the pretty and the Instagram photos and everything that comes secondary and it's great that they come secondary. But all this amazing human interaction, human emotion that comes out of these events is really what's priority and our minds and probably what binds all of us together in that Pete's right. Jen or huge agree on that. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't have set me up on it better because events that I would Recall in the rearview mirror that have made me the most proud or the community events that we've been a part of. And where people come together and they're happy and they're celebratory. And just to pick it, if you, I've been fortunate when I was at the Indiana sports corporations, nothing brings people together more than sports. So things like Final Fours and Big ten tournaments where the whole community might be rooting for different teams. They're all celebrated. It's all positive. When I worked at Lucas Oil Stadium in the RCA down whether we were bringing down the dome and celebrating the deflation of the dome and all the great memories there, or whether we were celebrating a brand new building, lucas well stadium or welcoming home the cold Super Bowl champions and during the parade around the field. I mean, those are all great moments that incorporated a ton of people. Indianapolis hosted the best Super Bowl ever. We were handed the keys to what was the old vacant Nordstrom space in January and we were able to turn it into the huddle. You can only imagine the guardrails around how difficult that was. I learned DOS to be able to manage there, HVAC, their lighting in their security systems because nobody at them all knew how to do it. I hired the guy that ran it for Nordstrom for years and years. The NFL owners party, it's great to be handed, you know, decent money to put an event together. But that comes with a lot of rules and a lot of voices and a lot of opinions. And by the way, every single person is an NFL owner, so they're all BIPs. Probably the most proud. In 2016, Indiana celebrated their bicentennial. And this state tourism folks came to us and they said, We want to visit all 92 communities. We want to do a torch relay. Where do we start? So talk about a labor of love that was six weeks of touring the state and very physically walking all of those miles through 92 communities that we got to know. Personally. We build a museum. I don't know how to build a museum, but I learned how to build a museum and we hired curators and we put together great information and in turn to trailer in the museum and we hosted a gala. How do you come up with an invite list for the bicentennial gala for the state of Indiana. I mean, that's kinda tricky and oh, by the way, who were the celebrities that you recognize from Indiana? So that I have been so fortunate with my career and I know that there's a question later about what do you want to do? What are your dreams? I man, unfortunate that I've done a lot of them. So It's everyday is different. And this is why that totally makes sense to me. So we've got just four or five more minutes here, but I wanted to get into this. What kind of trends are you seeing that? Especially now, I mean, we were all face-to-face. Now we're all on the zoom call here today. World probably be, I'm assuming faith, faith coming back here fan and some are already starting to happen. But what kind of trends are you seeing in our industry that will propel us into the next millennium? I'll happen to spare some quick insights since as Monica mentioned, corporate is a little bit different world right now then. In social or or a smaller events and, you know, my entire calendar year has more or less been impacted as has next year. And what we've really learned is the adaptability and keeping those vendors as, as whole as you can. And we're having to move multi-million dollar events and I don't want to cancel it, I just want to advance it. So if you give me a little bit and I can give you a little bit, you know, the force majeure clauses and the cancellations and all of your penalties and things that were so strict in years past, we're just out the window, even if the contract outlined it and they did have to hold you to a penalty? Willingness that an appreciation that I've seen from my vendors, a lot of which are international. There, just so thankful that we're willing to consider. And if we need to advance to the next year or buy six months or whatever, working together and really partnering to ensure that they're able to keep that on the books. We're able to keep it. And no one's going to, no one wants to make money on the pandemic. So the flexibility with the contracting and just moving things as opposed to just cancel, cancel, cancel and really educating our CLI or internal clients on that. And how much you can save. And, and it's really helping people and it's helping companies stay in business and these small destination management companies that, you know, they're struggling. So to be able to keep that going has been real helpful. The virtual is, is not as impactful in my world we are, we're just kinda doing a few things, virtual, everything internalised, switch to zoom and in teams obviously, but I know that's been the way the world and sitting in on virtual conferences and seeing this whole conference come to life. It's been eye opening and that's that's not my forte. The logistics and doing everything kind of front of house has always been. And so the technology pieces is a huge trend as well, but flexibility has been key to piggyback on what people said. She alluded to. We're looking at contracts closely and being flexible and having adaptability to things have really emerged in the wedding and social world. By having all of that, the need and requirement of a planner is paramount. And families that did not have that realize sometimes too late, but that the necessity of that. And so a lot of professionals who are maybe dealing with a coupled it didn't. Now one are saying, I will not work with a couple that doesn't have one. Because if there's postponement issues or especially because this has lasted more than 30 days to flatten the curve. They're just saying you have to have home because Secondary post comments are happening. Or third, in some cases, the requirement of having a planner is just it's a requirement. And so it has actually helping planners get more business because the need to find tooth comb every single contract and act as an advocate for both the professionals on the team and for the client, is just so, so desired and such a requirement for everybody that planners are actually getting business. The other thing that's happening, because virtual weddings is challenging. You. The ceremony itself, couples are downsizing and the intimacy of the ceremony itself is, is becoming forefront. So the requirement for this huge party isn't as nasa is, isn't as desired, but the desire for a really beautiful, really important ceremony. And so what do we therefore are there for 20 minutes or an hour if it's Catholic mass. But the importance of the service that God is the most important part. And I used to joke, if we don't get this hour right, where does 20 minutes, right? We're only having a party. That's finally what people are focusing on. And so the importance of the service and having a really, really, really beautiful and intimate ceremony is the focus now. So those two things, planners and a really beautiful ceremony, NLP, beautiful necessarily decor, I mean, beautiful as an heartfelt ceremony are the two things that I hope stay for years and years and years and years to come. Because that's what we're here for. We're going to always remember your vows. So those I hope stay forever. Corner rep in debate with the fact that we have a number of attendees on the call. We as panelists, we see you, we know you're there, we we know that you're listening. And my trend that I'm seeing is knowing that and speaking to those people and finding ways to engage with those people. So it's not just a one-way conversation, uh, speaking out to you, but it's us listening to you and you're speaking back to us through this digital, Jen made a comment, virtual is not easy. It's very true. You can hug somebody, you can show human emotion and interaction with a live event. It's very, very challenging to do that in a digital world, especially with the funeral industry is Andy's in and weddings industry Manoch is n even corporate world more stable and I are generated. So yeah, challenging to say the least. But with that, I want to get back to Taylor who's got some question, and please feel free to drop your questions in the Q and a, so we'd love to answer them. Yes. Hello, what a grey discussion. We have had so much insight and everything so far. So I do have a couple questions already, but if you have more, please feel free to drop them into the Q and a feature. So our first question we have is, what advice would you give to your freshman self? Oh, don't be a Marine Biology aspiring student going after biology major. Like, do your homework and see what really fits. Find your passions. Which is hard to do at that time of year when you're coming into this whole new world of college. But maybe just take a little more time to figure out what makes sense in central Indiana and the Marine Biology is not it. But anyone else want to elaborate on that a little bit, or gifts or advice? Trust me, when I say go to class, that that was my struggle my freshman year as easy to sleep in, and I had virtual learning then my gosh, graduated in 1992. No, seriously. I sit here and think about this. Is this is I think, the best piece of advice I ever got. Actually came from my dad and my dad struggling right now with his health. And I'd think about this and it really is, is quite simply this. If you want to get everything out of your life that you want, you gotta help enough other people get what they want out of their life and a kind of circles back. Everybody that's on this panel and all of you that are watching us. We are creatures of humanity and we have to be able to interact with one another. And, and if you follow, and I've had this discussion with my son David back here, who's had to listen to me preach this more than one time in his life. Follow your passion, whatever you do, be passionate about it. People say, how can you be passionate about funeral service? You're missing the point of what funeral services, federal services, being engaged with humanity, albeit a very difficult time in their life. And you can add passion with that. You can have passion, how you live in your sports at a everything. I think about this with social media. I hear Funeral Directors complain about having to get ten hours of continuing education every two years. Think about what I just said. Ten hours. A professional continued education every two years. They bitch about it. But I will tell you this. They spent ten hours a day on Facebook. I'm quick to remind them that, hey, channel your passions, pour yourself into what you do. Because if you do, you'll never work another day in your life and you will be nourished, your soul will be nourished by it because you're helping to enrich other people's lives. So live life for Pashas. By what I would tell you, I already came, I'll chime in with some practical advice. So I think I wrote in the Q and a box, go meet people, get involved in the community, whether you're volunteering or you're networking in, or you're inviting somebody to coffee, looking for a mentor, whatever it is, get to the point that you know people and they know who you are. I also, this is a shout out to the TSR program or TCE. Well, whatever uranium sorry. Hires and I shouldn't say that, but, you know, somebody hands me a resume with chick filet on it in somebody hands me a resume. Housekeeping supervisor at a hotel. Those two things tell me they work hard and do whatever it takes. Work ethic is critically important in this industry and you can only teach so much in my classroom. So don't be ashamed to put those things on your resume. Don't be ashamed to go do those things. It is, it is important that you have real life customer service experience. Out of China as a mother, I'm a college freshman because I know you're going through I don't even have the worst Sr You're all time. And now I don't have the worst Freshman year of all time. So I'm talking specifically to the freshman because the question was for my freshman way, the way I understood it. I believe actually that I went I did the tour. He goes to Alabama, slide of the tour of the ICC. And for fun you did do you did go to or idea? So I will not say that I didn't hear as they, you know, the advice of course has to belong to three clubs. One, Where do you live, one that you love, and one where you learn. I loved him advice, I think it's fantastic. I also know there aren't any class, everything's virtual, so I know it's hard to do those three things. I get it. I know what it's like to be a college freshman who's here, my poor kit. I haven't seen him except on a zoom call or Face Time. So I know it's hard to do these three. Still try cuz it's really hard to meet someone NINR mentor and do all that. Try from a class perspective, what do you want to take and you want to be in my planner and about designer or work in our field. I'm going to tell you it is really easy to eventually learned design. It is somehow like we all tell you the spreadsheets and logistics or what you need. Because somehow you through Pinterest or through Instagram or through the clients inspiration, you can learn design. Best room can learn those because you can take classes I had through continuing education, through other thing. You can't go back and get an accounting class. You can take that accounting class, take that legal liability of what my favorite class they have. Now you've been around sports management? Not specifically about management. My favorite class I had my it was even a liability, a sport. I had to have it gradually. There is a legal liability of event management class in some capacity on all of your whatever the universe here. Because I was with opera nationally. Take it, you're going to need it. So take this legal class, take her business class, take accounting class. You need bees. So somewhere before you graduate, make sure you have it. Because a design class might be something that you take when you're gone. Take it if there is a weddings as a business class which is not wedding planning, to teach wedding planning, I think the business we talked contracts, we talk inclusivity. We talk talk a lot about law, risk management, all that, take those, that's what you need. So freshmen get all this done before you gradually. That's what's really important. That's what you mean. Marketing. All that's the answer to that question. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I'm just getting things, blah, blah. Okay. I answer the question. I'm sorry, I have to apologize. They're my zoom just crash. Soy has had a hop back in. Okay, well, we do have a question. Is this a good career choice for someone who is equally OCD and extremely creative? I really want a career where I can use my RT creative messy side, but also use mike organized logistical and contextual side. Yes, yes. Yes. That person. I can keep things to like to a t for an event and my my work life as a completely different way than I operate my personal life and I'm a little scattered, I'm very creative. I've always got ideas going in my head. I can take one tiny little idea and bring it to life in an event, in a trip, in an idea, in marketing, like anything. And, and you need all of those things. And I think those are the people that really thrive in this because it's hard to figure out how to, how to direct that energy sometimes. And you have to be creative and you have to know how to think 12 steps ahead. And like, like the panel said earlier, you want to be weeks and months and years in advance because you have to use your creativity to think through the scenarios and to think through those situations that you're going to have to manage at 1 or another. And you have to be able to understand how to create a solution to whatever comes your way. And, and then you have to have that messy side because that's how you thrive and that's how your brain recharges. And as long as it's not messy at work and for the final out of it, but I can speak from actual execution that that's how I am and that's how it operates. So I will add, I think that we're all probably wired a little bit like that because that's what it takes. But it's critically important that you remain calm because that's why people hire us like We need they will dock thing of paddling under the water and were the calm on the surface, every one of us have to convey calm at all times to our clients to keep them at peace on their special day. Awesome. Thank you so much. So I didn't know that I did. In deform, I zoom logged me out. I think it was somewhere along the lines of what is a or some good skills that can be either earned order's natural skills, that would be great for this type of career. I'll jump in here real quick. This is easy one for me because it's part of my hiring criteria when I when I was hiring funeral directors are funeral home and certainly as I coach people today that are committed to service because there's a regulatory angle here to be a funeral director in Indiana that you've gotta go get licensed as a state. I value people who can problem-solve. I absolutely value people who can problem-solve and I would give them scenarios as part of the interview and being able to do that showed me how they thought. And I want to see how you think. Other way is, is be, be really good with the written word, but also be able to communicate like this face-to-face. It's a law skill in the world that we live in today because we live in a virtual platform more than we do Interfacing platform, person to person. And I would tell you if you can communicate well with written word. And I hate writing to and spoken word, you'll have a leg up on so many people in this world. And you will open up your possibilities going further. So be a great problem solver. Learn how to communicate in the written word and spoken word and be a devil. And this is what I mean by it. The devil's in the details. Anybody can tackle the low-hanging fruit, but other people are going to roller sleeves up and take on that problem. And the little details that come along with it. Every one of our panelists here has talked about events. And those events, you can have a small mistake and it can run the entire event. And I'll give you a great example. And nobody thinks of this in a concept kind of way. You want to get a family at a funeral home upset, make a mistake on the obituary that goes into the newspaper to everybody, perhaps on the date and time of the funeral. If you're not let your family proofread the obituary, you're setting yourself up for failure. We're human. We're going to make mistakes. Be detail oriented, problem-solve, communicate, be detail-oriented, and you'll knock it out of the park. Because when you're an event planner, much like being a funeral director, you have to be on a 100% of the time. You can bet 3.3.3 for 20 years, the major leagues and you end up in the Hall of Fame. You bad 3.3.3 and event planning, you'll end up unemployed. So really be devils in the details. Problem-solve, follow, follow through, be a good communicator. Be a good human to you. I work with a lot of vendors and I've seen a lot of people mistreat vendors and I've never understood how that is possible. If you're running an event or you're running the show, does not give you permission to, to speak poorly to them or to just be flexible, be understanding, be deliberate and out clearly communicating, clearly outline. Here's what my expectation is, here's how this needs to, to execute and partner with that. But your kindness is going to get you so much further if you do run into any issues or if you do run into a situation they want to partner with you. They are so appreciative that you've taken the time to understand and work with them and you're not just barking orders at that. And so that's something that, especially in the corporate world that I've really observed that I've just never understood that and you just have to be kind and understanding and you have to listen. You have to listen to whether your clients are internal or you have 12 different clients that are all equally important to you. You have to understand and know how to respond to each of them in a, in a etiquette that it's, it's hard to learn. So you have to kinda religious hone that integer as you're going through this process. Alright, if we've got the time for, it looks like we have one more quick question. How do you find balance and stay passionate in your career? With the hours that usually come along with a career into that design of the long days, nights and weekends. We, we say word where the king makers, we take pride in the pretty things and the money raised in, in those details. We take pride in the fact that our clients are getting kudos for those very things. So luckily, in our career we get to see things like ebb and flow. So you get that repeat feeling. Making people look good in making people kings. So that's how we drive. I agree a 100%. If someone says that if a client is really happy at an event and they're thanking me, I always kind of laugh or smile less I remember all I do for a living is follow directions. It isn't really true. I think about it. All we do for a living is delegate or or give other people directions. Kind of in graciousness. You're saying that you're just giving the direction of the client to others. And so that is true, really all we do is follow directions but where the one giving the direction. But by passing off the compliment that they've caught you are getting what the client wanted. It's true. And that is how you kind of rejuvenate and by seeing them so happy. I have sat for years and years. My job is not to make the client happy. My job is to make their guests happy. So that is ultimately who I report to. Really I want there gets to be so happy that they in turn are happy and look so good. I'd write the client looks so good and they're getting all these accolades that they're super happy. And that if they are so happy and they're getting all the, you know, today's today's after a wedding. So the mom's calling me issue. So thrilled, everybody's drill, blah, blah, blah, that rejuvenate me. It gets me like, okay, now it's me. Now I can binge-watch whatever, instead of running three miles a day or five miles the x I have a little more time on my whatever it is. Everybody's gotta find their MY time. And I think this question with this diagram and Katie, So Katie, whatever it is, you or me time, if you want to exercise every morning, if you want to have your Netflix time, find it, you'll find it. You go on a date with your boyfriend every, you know, every Saturday, 5g it unwinding Saturday. So you're not going to have that time. You'll find your time to rejuvenate. And in the once you have an event that'll rejuvenate you as well, job well done will always rejuvenate to you. And I think we all we all have that doing a good job regardless of what your career path is, what rejuvenate you. It well. Thank you all so much again for this grading discussion. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. Ch4 You go. I'd like to thank again all of our panelists, our moderator, for this awesome discussion. I'll give you a few more things before we go. Definitely connect unlinked in with all of our speakers. You can find their links ends on our resource page. Also, let's continue this discussion, everyone. If you would like to keep talking and working on this topic, join us in the Involves lounge. There's also where our help desk staff can help answer any questions about the events or weak. The session evaluation link should be posted in the chat and your Sam, please share your feedback each out evaluation you complete this week is also another entry into our prize drawing. Again, this session was recorded and will be posted in the session details on the platform by the end of the day, if you would like to rewatch any portion. Make sure to join us for our next career development session. That is career paths in food and beverage management. Comment up here at three o'clock eastern time. Thanks again so much for joining us. We hope to see you in our next session. Thanks, Taylor. Thanks everybody. Sable. Yes. My husband wanted to kick in and say hi, nice. But nobody's within earshot Now. He's like, oh, symbols on look all sues, booster husband, all richard. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Cuz I like many of the ears like Pete.