As event industry professionals prepare for a busy new year, they’re taking stock of their top priorities and goals. With terrorism and climate change in the news, some cite those topics as major concerns for 2016, while others consider issues like technology, globalization, and sustainability to be the most pressing.
“As I look ahead to 2016, my focus will be on maintaining a global perspective while activating on a local level. The recently concluded Paris Climate Conference brought together cross-sector participants from governments, businesses, the United Nations, N.G.O.s, and activists to set out a framework for action aimed at keeping global warming below two degrees celsius. The focus on sustainability is at an all-time high around the world, and the events industry has the opportunity to bolster business innovation and implement new strategies for positive change."
Lizzy Paulson, events director, corporate brand and reputation, Time Warner Cable, Los Angeles
“Especially now, on the heels of the recent landmark agreement, climate change is the biggest topic on my mind for 2016. This goes beyond choosing vendors that are environmentally conscious; we need to really push to rethink every part of our experiential programs so that we are not only not leaving a footprint, but perhaps we can leave our event locations better than we found them."
Noelle Provencial, director of experiential marketing and events, Groupon, Chicago
“Terrorism risk on soft targets such as a hotel is a huge concern. Keeping our events relevant and drawing new attendees is always a challenge. Rising food and beverage and hotel rates continues to affect our bottom line.”
Kristen McDonough, vice president of conferences, Association of National Advertisers, New York
"In 2016, our top priority is ensuring our chefs and staff are highly educated on the food we are serving. We have all of our staff go through a gluten-free training course to understand the diet that is increasing in society. Our guests are becoming more and more aware of food each year. They are interested in more than just what's being served. We have noticed guests want to know about the ingredients being used: where they are from, how they were prepared, and the health benefits of each."
Adelee Cabrera, regional director, Starr Events, Miami
"My top priority for 2016 is to make sure we use social media to make our events more widely available to an international audience. From Periscope to Twitter chats, we're exploring every possible tool to make sure users from the U.S. to Korea have access to the content we're producing in New York City every week."
Ashley Gallman Williams, U.S. community team head, Wix.com, New York
“If there is one thing we hope to accomplish in 2016, it would be augmenting how we measure success to include a new set of key performance indicators, ones based on measuring how effective we are in the exchange of information.”
Jay Weintraub, founder, Grow.co & Contact.io, New York
“We have had a good deal of success with our farm-to-table events. We have had less success of implementing the use of local, sustainably grown items through our corporate drop-off division. The number-one hurdle that we face in that area is that the corporate budgets generally do not allow for the additional cost that local sustainably grown items incur. Our goal for the next year is to find a way, working with our farming partners, to be able to make some of our day-to-day items affordable to our everyday corporate clients. Our objective is to find four to six menu items throughout the year that can be available on a daily basis. Should we be able to figure this out and can have these items making use of locally grown items available to our clients without incurring an increase in cost, we will put ourselves in an advantageous position with our competitors.”
Dave Evans, president, La Prima Food Group, College Park, Maryland
“I see an overall movement toward more frequent, more casual entertaining. Dinner parties don't have to be the standard three-course meal anymore; potluck or family-style [affairs are on my mind for 2016]. After all, the point of entertaining is getting together with people, and having an interactive element to the meal just brings everyone closer together. We are doing many family-style dinner parties at our newest restaurant, the National in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the guests are loving it.”
Geoffrey Zakarian, chef and restaurateur, New York
“I am focused on the growth of our Thanksgiving Parade, which will be 70 years old. We have grown rapidly in just three years since we took the production over from a failing organization and have seen immediate success both in sponsor support and audience participation. Specifically, we utilized location-based iBeacon tech this year to push sponsor marketing information to our audience. We became the most interactive parade in the country with an integrated app and this new notification process offering Black Friday discounts, coupons, and even opportunities to win prizes. I really think this will be the biggest growth area in the industry as we see this technology being used more and more to connect with the customer or attendee. I know we will be utilizing it more with our other events.”
Robert Krumbine, chief creative officer, Charlotte Center City Partners, Charlotte, North Carolina
“[What’s on my mind is] making sure that more and more bloggers and social media influencers are in attendance. I’ve added to my checklist a clearly marked and equipped charging station. The last thing I need is someone's phone dying, leaving them unable to capture and service their own real-time images.”
Will Armstrong, owner, Will Armstrong Public Relations, Los Angeles
"People are always drawn to something when there’s a story behind it. While there seems to be new apps and technology almost daily that make events more creative, unique, and highly stylized, the concern is that the story behind it at times gets lost to the spectacle. So the challenge then is to create an event engaging enough to have guests get out from behind their mobile screens, be in the moment, and discover the story."
Adrienne Johnson, president and C.E.O., Spellbound Creative Concepts, Washington
Editor's note: Some of these comments were shared by readers on our social media networks. Join our discussions on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.
