 With a stress score of 49.85, Event Coordinator lands the #6 spot on the list of most stressful jobs, according to the 2012 CareerCast.com Job Stress Report, an annual survey of 200 different professions that measures work environment, job competitiveness, and risk.
"An event coordinator is responsible for planning all logistics and activities associated with the events for which he or she is responsible," the CareerCast.com report states. "Though they may conduct many events through the year, any event may be a once-in-a-lifetime special occasion for the people involved. Therefore, events often have very high visibility and high stakes for the coordinator involved."
Enlisted Military Soldier earned the top spot as the nation’s most stressful job, while Medical Records Technician ranked as the least stressful.
photos courtesy Brandon Williams Midwest Meetings took five with Dave Serino, Founder of the Social Media Tourism Symposium, at the Explore Minnesota Tourism Conference to discuss social media engagement, strategy, and more.
 Dave Serino, SoMeT Founder Here at Midwest Meetings, we’ve been hearing all about how anybody who’s anybody in tourism should be at SoMeT - that is, the Social Media Tourism Symposium, which took place in Tunica, MS in November.
What’s SoMeT? Just another conference about social media marketing in the tourism industry? Not even close - it’s way cooler than that. For starters, SoMeT is an actual product of social media marketing in the tourism industry. In fact, the whole thing is practically planned on Facebook.
Once we got a grasp of just how all-encompassing this event experience is for tourism, hospitality, and destination marketing professionals in the social media space, we started wondering… from a planning and logistics perspective, how on earth do they pull this thing off? So we got founder Dave Serino on the phone to tell us all about the vision, process, and community behind SoMeT, and why this is probably the conference model of the future.
by Amanda Jasmine Williamson
 What’s the Wi-Fi password? You asked a doorman who doesn’t know, who asked the lighting technician, who also doesn’t know, and now you’ve been told to look for Jean, who’s wearing a red top and walking around with a folder, but you don’t see Jean anywhere.
The joys of uninformed teams. They waste our time and don’t leave a good impression on our guests.
Our lead developer went to a very classy event last week. Despite all the branding and the free giveaways, patrons weren’t impressed. Why? Because they didn’t have the information they needed to get the most out of the occasion. Attendees didn’t know where they were going, what time the speakers were starting, or even where the bathrooms were located. The well-intentioned workers couldn’t help the guests because the organizers hadn’t told them anything to begin with.
by Mike Thimmesch
 The tradeshow world is a large and complex ecosystem, and it took me far too many years to understand the many players involved in putting together a single show. Just when I thought I’d figured it out, someone would peel the next layer of the onion. Why should you wait? Here are the top ten players involved in bringing your tradeshow to life.
1. Attendees
Over 80 million attendees a year visit US tradeshows. Attendees come to tradeshows to see and touch new products, network and build relationships with their industry peers, get training, keep up to date with changing industry trends, and evaluate multiple suppliers at one time. Perhaps they even come to have some fun, too.
by Robert Ware
 Project managers and project team members, like all business professionals, attend numerous meetings of various types, purposes and durations. Examples range from status update meetings, which generally last 30 minutes to an hour and are focused on reporting on the current status of a project, to performance reviews, on the other hand, which last from one to several days.
For project managers, meeting planning falls under the more general domain of project communications management. Meetings, like other forms of communication, are evaluated in terms of the degree to which they facilitate the efficient and effective achievement of project objectives. Consequently, the costs associated with holding meetings are weighed against the benefits derived from the meetings. The project manager must consider not just the direct costs of staging the meeting, but also the costs associated with having personnel attend the meeting instead of doing other project-related work.
by Cindy Shanholtz
 5:00 a.m. Alarm goes off. 5:15 a.m. Out for a run. 6:00 a.m. Answer the 27 emails that came in from 11:00 p.m. last night to 6:00 a.m. this morning, including the following: - Email from mini-cupcake supplier informing me they cannot fulfill the order for this weekend’s wedding due to plumbing problems at store.
- Email for this weekend’s other wedding vendors; answer logistical questions.
8:15 a.m. Leave office in the suburbs for meetings in the city. While in the car:
by Midwest Meetings  Anna Thill, president of the Greater Mankato CVB Once upon a time, a marathoner came to the Greater Mankato CVB and said, “You know, Mankato should put on a marathon.” The conversation went to the Chamber of Commerce, then to the City of Mankato, and from there, the CVB took the reins to bring that runner’s vision to life. Working from the very start with Final Stretch, Inc., a Nerstrand-based race management company owned by Mark Bongers, the Greater Mankato CVB team dove into the challenge under the direction of bureau president Anna Thill. Two years of planning later, in 2010, the inaugural Mankato Marathon took place, and this year, it came back with a bang. How did it all come together? Midwest Meetings followed along as Greater Mankato CVB staff members put on their planning shoes and worked to bring a bigger, better Mankato Marathon to the city in 2011. Here, Thill takes us through the final stages of the planning process as her team tackles the final weeks before the event. The course has been set, lessons have been learned, and challenges are yet to be overcome before the Mankato Marathon takes place on October 22, 2011.
 Anna Thill, president of the Greater Mankato CVB Once upon a time, a marathoner came to the Greater Mankato CVB and said, “You know, Mankato should put on a marathon.” The conversation went to the Chamber of Commerce, then to the City of Mankato, and from there, the CVB took the reins to bring that runner’s vision to life.
Working from the very start with Final Stretch, Inc., a Nerstrand-based race management company owned by Mark Bongers, the Greater Mankato CVB team dove into the challenge under the direction of bureau president Anna Thill. Two years of planning later, in 2010, the inaugural Mankato Marathon took place, and this year, it came back with a bang.
How did it all come together? Midwest Meetings followed along as Greater Mankato CVB staff members put on their planning shoes and worked to bring a bigger, better Mankato Marathon to the city in 2011. Here, in Part I of a series, Thill recounts the stages of the planning process leading up to the final weeks before the event. The course has been set, lessons have been learned, and challenges are yet to be overcome before the Mankato Marathon takes place on October 22, 2011.
 ** Individuals who are quoted in articles or who have had their own articles published are typically viewed as experts in their fields. If you are looking for ways to elevate your professional image, consider writing for publication.
** If you’re in the market for a new job, check out some of the resources developed specifically for the meetings industry. Recruitment and placement services such as TheMeetingConnection have been created just for planners and hospitality professionals.
 Particularly in the corporate sector, much of the content of a meeting or event can be proprietary and critical to an organization’s operations and success. The disclosure of such content can result in disaster.
While this may seem obvious, a confidentiality agreement between attendees and the organization can help to solidify expectations and direct behavior. Most organizations already have such agreements in place for employees, but if one does not exist - or if the agreement does not address meeting and event content - an organization could be open to risk. There are those who just may be ignorant to the fact that meeting and event content should not be repeated outside of the organization.
|
RSS Feed