What's Floating Around Cloud 9? May 2019

Welcome to another week and its another manic one here at Cloud 9 Towers, with all manner of client events on the go, and Janet out of action having broken her wrist!

Our Famtastic MICE lunches are starting to get booked up and our Fresh Adventures progranme is expanding as well. What with the script for CHS Awards and AIEA activity, it's a bit crackers to say the least! 

With event management,  venue finding, new business meetings, websites to update, social media and the endless stream of emails, it can be tricky to squeeze everything in.

So we could use this week's blog to wax lyrical about time management and also to save a bit of time  - we could just blatantly pinch the online offering of some training company. But instead and to keep it personal, we thought we would share our tips for keeping all of those plates spinning! 

Our first rule here is about the deluge of emails. There was life before emails and electronic communication which our younger team don't seem to fully appreciate, but we spoke to people, we telephoned them, we visited them and if needs be, we then wrote to them afterwards to confirm exactly what we had spoken about. This process could have taken a couple of days and factor in postage and weekends and sometimes it could be almost a week. Whilst we appreciate we live in a society where everyone, including clients, wants everything now, but the world really won't end if you leave your emails a little while. 

That first half an hour in a morning allows you to focus on what you need to do that day and catch up on anything you may have missed. We also use this time to look at our social media and make sure everything that should be up to date, is up to date. If anything really is that urgent, then call us. Or text us, tweet us, What's App, or message us. Just don't email us unless you really need to, and whatever you do, don't fax us. We're not sure how the fax even works any more!

Next up is sharing. No matter how experienced or knowledgeable you think you are, it's important to remember that you are still always continually learning and whatever you think you know, there is probably someone else who knows as much if not more. It doesn't matter if you have always done something in the same way for years and years. Getting a fresh perspective on how to work differently and more efficiently can be a really useful thing especially when you have a lot on. It may be sound obvious, but it's something that many managers often forget, especially when it comes to how they manage their time. In fact, some of our biggest time management mistakes are simply caused because you don't know any better and don't welcome outside ideas.

Also sharing skills can be a massive help. Assign tasks to those who are pretty good at that particular aspect of a project and ensure those that need some help with certain tasks or some additional training in that area, understand why things are done in certain ways.

That way everyone benefits...and even though every project at Cloud 9 has someone to lead it, every project, event and client we have are collectively discussed to make sure we are using each of our own particular skill set. Communication is also vital and it doesn't matter how great your external communication is with clients, if people don't understand what is happening internally, then you have no or little excuse when things go wrong.

Whilst we all might complain about the sheer number of emails we all get everyday, BCC has become our friend here at Cloud 9. Forget Blind Carbon Copy the original glossary of BCC, as here it stands for Better Clouds Connected. On a large proportion of our daily emails we BCC in at least another person or a couple of people in the team.

The couple of seconds it takes to do this, and to briefly scan an email that's been sent out, can firstly stop having to have unnecessary meetings but also means that if one of the team is suddenly kidnapped by aliens or worse still, run over by the No.47 bus, then as sad as we would be, at least one other person on the team has a fighting chance of picking up a project to ensures its successful continuation!

So knowledge is power and sharing key. We're also list maniacs here. One a week which we are collectively responsible for. It's amazing what you can do with the power of a few bodies all pitching in and a central reserve or platform like SLACK is a god send! 

 

Just ask any of our clients! So, have a great week, see you soon!

What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 15 October 2018

Welcome to another week and we are in major awards mode again this week with Fresh Fashion, Fresh Film, the VR Awards, The International Drone Awards and two new projects which are a little under wraps until early November.

 We're  big on awards here at Cloud 9 Towers and in addition to our free venue finding service, we like to think we're pretty good at them, but they are funny things.

 

Great when you are winning them, but less important if you are not. One of the great things about being involved with awards is the joy of seeing those win and even at the nomination stage, the air of expectation is enjoyable.

Awards themselves and we are taking actual trophies here can cause all sorts of angst amongst event planners. Something expensive and heavy shows a commitment to your brand, something creative and quirky means you are winning something fairly unique and something a little on here cheap side can make it seem as if you are running the event on a shoestring

Arguably, the most famous awards statue is the legendary Oscar Trophy from the Academy Awards and the stories that surround these golden figures are endless and epic but perhaps the most unusual is when they go missing. Once the winners have them, and we see the gritted teeth of the ones that lost, where do these trophies end up? Jodie Foster uses her two as faucets apparently but what happens to some of the others?

Well, a few have vanished or have been stolen, including Frances McDormand’s best actress statuette for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which was stolen briefly on Oscar night 2018. 

However, around 15 remain unaccounted for to this day and others have been the been the focus of intense legal battles and disputes. However, the vast majority of the 3,048 Oscar statuettes presented from 1929 to 2017 have had a perfectly ordinary post-ceremony life. 

The 13.5in (34.3cm) figure seems perfectly suited to a mantelpiece which is where the likes of actors Joanne Woodward, Anthony Quinn and Donna Reed placed theirs, and some prefer to stick them in the smallest room so they are not seen as show offs!

Several Oscars have simply vanished. Vivien Leigh’s best actress Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire was stolen when her home was broken into by burglars in the 1950s and Olympia Dukakis’s best supporting actress statuette for Moonstruck was stolen from her home by a thief, who called her and tried to sell it back to her, as if a ransom. Instead, Dukakis decided to pay the Academy $78 for a replacement.

So if you do ever get your hands on a trophy or any sort, do try and look after it and remember that here at Cloud 9, we are pretty good at Awards so shout us for your next event!

Have a great week.

What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 22 January 2018

Welcome to another week and we're gearing up for a trip to London for the judging of the Fresh Creative Awards and recovering from the excellent AIEA Event last Friday in Peterborough.

The AIEA is an Alliance of independent and privately owned event agencies working in the meetings, incentives, conference and events (MICE) sector. We are a group of unique and individual companies and as members of the AIEA we network and share our knowledge, experience and resource to enable us to provide the best quality service to our clients, and additionally the AIEA is a non profit organisation.

Hosted by the Holiday Inn in Peterborough (who were fantastic), we had our inaugural New Years Honour's which recognised the agency members in a rather irreverent way! 

The Crystal Clear Award for those agents whose briefs and RFP’s make working with them a pleasure for supplier was presented by Lafayette Travel and went to Lime Blue Solutions.

Here at Cloud 9 we won the Coffee Cup Award for making suppliers feel the most welcome so clearly we need to change our approach and only offer up a glass of tap water and no biscuits in future! Jupiter Hotels kindly presented us with our very expensive trophy!

The Buddy Award for those agencies who have partnered with a supplier for a specific project or pitch was presented by the Old Course Hotel Golf Resort & Spa, and went to Rede2 whilst the Welcome Award was also scooped by us here at Cloud 9 Towers.

Dawn from Accor presented the Bermuda Triangle Award to Ball Associates, who in form, were not there to collect their Award, and then we had the Willy Wonka Award for a reaction to Chocolate which went to our pals at Hatch Events.

Funky Office went to Chruis and the team at Purple Dog whilst we picked up our third gong - The Energizer Bunny Award for agents always on the go.

There were two Golden Cheque book Awards for both International and UK Business Growth which were scooped by Nexus venue and Lime Blue Solutions respectively, and then the Newcomer Award, which was for increased business presence rather than new agencies and was scooped by Matt and the Chew Events Team.

Then we had the Agency and Personality of the Year which went to Slyvain from Nexus Venue on both counts.

It was a great fun evening and also fancy dress to match the irreverent tone of the night !

So we might not be the biggest venue finding agency or the best, but we still win the odd award! Lets hope the photos arrive soon so we can share!

Have a great week everyone.