The Chicago art museum celebrated the opening of its new exhibition, "Van Gogh's Bedrooms," with a 450-guest gala on February 20. HMR Designs handled decor, and worked with Frost to create projections of the artist's works that surrounded the dining area. The idea was to let guests feel as though they were dining inside a Van Gogh painting.
Perez Art Museum Miami's March 4 gala drew some 800 guests. With an overall concept from Lee Brian Schrager, the evening included a "Chef's Table" seated dinner, a "Supper Club" lounge, and a "Remix" after-party. In the Supper Club lounge, interactive artist stations included a floor-to-ceiling coloring book, which invited guests to doodle on the wall.
Evolero is an event website and management system that launched in January and is focused on creating an engaged community of attendees before, during, and after an event. The system invites attendees, speakers, and sponsors to link to their social networks and content they have created in their personal profiles. In addition to links for registration, programs, speakers, and sponsors, an Evolero site also includes a Pinterest-like display of relevant tweets, blog posts, and other content connected to the event. The content continues to update after the physical event ends so planners can maintain communication with attendees leading up to the next event.
Chirrpy is an online platform created by three event professionals. Planners can use Chirrpy to manage ticketing, promotion, and check-in for their events. The system provides a self-service tool to create an event website that can include custom fonts, colors, text, photos, and videos. Details can be instantly shared through email, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and organizers can track ticket sales, revenue, and other data in real time. Chirrpy can be used for both paid and free events, where ticketing may be necessary for crowd control. In addition to the Web interface, a Chirrpy app for iOS offers the same functions and adds mobile check-in capability.
Attend.com is a full suite of event planning and management tools that released several updates this summer. The new interface includes Event Plans, which contains registration forms, email invitations, surveys, and reports; Event Plan Wizards, which links information from multiple smaller events within a larger function; and updated contact tools that sync from both online and in-person registrants. Also this summer, Attend.com added a wireless name tag printing feature to its mobile check-in app: hosts check-in guests on iPads, which triggers the printing. The system also offers text-message alerts for V.I.P. arrivals, online surveys, and post-event reports.
Eventgrid is a cloud-based system to manage registration and ticketing for conferences, trade shows, concerts, tours, and festivals. In addition to standard tools such as customized event websites, multiple pricing levels, and social media integration, Eventgrid recently added the capability for planners to create custom seating charts and for purchasers to choose their own seats. Additional advanced features include the ability to sell event merchandise with Eventgrid’s store functionality, integration with Salesforce and other customer relationship management programs, and a mobile app that can automatically check in people using iBeacon technology.
Wizathon is tailored to nonprofit organizations that host fund-raising events such as walks and runs. The system automatically creates personal fund-raising pages for each participant during the registration process. Participants can customize their pages with graphics and text and share them on social networks or via email. For the organizer, Wizathon creates an event website customized with the organization’s logo and colors. The site manages registration and sponsor integration and offers tools such as an event clock countdown and leader boards. The company also provides a written guide and personal consultation on fund-raising strategies.
