What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 4 January 2016

Happy New Year to all and welcome to 2016. Here at Cloud 9 Towers we're back and raring to go after the festive break - and straight back into a busy time with client events and forward planning our year ahead.

The start of a new year traditionally brings the onset of resolutions, be it to lose weight, stop smoking or start training for some sporting challenge or goal and here at Cloud 9 most of the team have some sort of plan or other for change this coming year. Despite the fact that we think we are a pretty creative lot here, it seems that we could all do with an injection of imagination as some of our aims this year seem a little dull so instead, we've had a rethink and here are our resolutions for the year ahead...

First up, we are all going to try a new food each week. Forget the diets and quick fix weight loss programmes, but instead we are going to attempt to introduce or try a new food each week - something green and healthy is a bonus and instead of sticking with the same old lunches and trips to the biscuit tin when the munchies strike, we are going to try to eat better. With this in mind, if you are visiting us, please ditch the biscuits, cakes and chocolates for fruit or something exotic for us to try. Not only will it make your visit more special but also be more memorable!

Next on our list is a really big clear up and clear out. As we set the theme for many events we end up with an overflowing stock room full of everything from scientific vials to giant martini glasses to lava lamps to feathers galore. We did send a work experience student in once to try and take a stock check and we don't remember seeing them again...... But we really should sort this out as no doubt, all of the items can come in handy at some point, and we don't know just how much stuff we have.

Resolution three is simply to be a bit nicer. We think we are a pretty nice team already but we want to pay that forward a little. Each and every day we want to undertake an act of random kindness. Some of them might be grand gestures and some of them much more simple such as smiling at a stranger or paying a compliment to someone -but each and every day we are all going to remember how fortunate we all are in comparison to others and try and spread a little cheer wherever we can.

Whilst we are on the subject of being fortunate, the invitations we get to fam trips and experiences is amazing and we do consider ourselves to be incredibly lucky to be invited. We can't always spare the time or the bodies to go to everything but we are going to make sure that wherever we go, we are going to take a lot more photos to share as part of an online album. So that's our number four objective for 2016.

Five is also fairly easy. We are going to ditch the same old same old. It’s easy to get into a rut where we do the same things day in, day out, so in 2016 we plan to shake up our routines. Every week we are going to try and do one thing differently. Use a different route to the office, have a new lunch (see resolution one), wear something special, read a book we wouldn't normally consider or try a new genre of films. Instead of saving things for best or special occasions, we are going to treat every day like a special occasion - because in a way it is!

Number six is for all of us to learn a new skill of some sort. Whether is mastering another language from French to German to Klingon, whatever it is, we are all going to try and learn something new. It might be a party or magic trick, how to ice a cake like a professional, how to get 180 when playing darts (not that any of us play darts at present) or something weird and wonderful. It doesn't have to be a practical skill but something that we can say, we did that.

The next one requires some participation from the event industry as a whole and is inspired by a conversation with a fellow agent. We are going to try and encourage visitors from venues, DMC's or hotels to stop bringing us lots of expensive and unnecessary

promotional items and brochures which sit on a shelf gathering dust. Instead, we'd like to educate visitors to bring us practical items that will make better here at Cloud 9 and will make a difference to the office. No, we are not talking about large expensive items but branded loo paper, or tea bags or something that we use daily will be much better received. One of the best things we had all year in 2015 was from DeVere who bought us boxes of tissues - they sit on all of our desks and have been really appreciated! Pens are useful but we really do have enough now to open our own stationery shop and our kitchen cupboards are overflowing with mugs so please think practical rather than promotional please! We promise you, it will make you much more memorable...

Eight is about education. We all have strengths and weaknesses and some of our skills are good in certain areas but not all. So whether its finding out how to code, how to tweet, how to use excel, how to programme our internal phone system or some other work related function, we are all going to identify once a month something we don't know how to do, or how to improve and work on it. It's not going to change the world but it should improve our skill set and our collective output. 

Our final resolution is simply this. To wish everyone for the entire month of January a Happy and Healthy 2016. 

We recognise that this normally stops a week or so in, but January can be a long and flat month and therefore we are going to keep the momentum going as long as we can and try and spread a bit of New Year cheer. If that means saying it as с новым годом (Russian) or gelukkig nieuwjaar (Dutch) to keep it interesting so be it!So there you have it, nine resolutions from Cloud 9, enjoy!