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!

What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 28 September 2015

Welcome to another week and its another manic one here at Cloud 9 Towers. We've two big awards events looming and launching another three whilst we also have various other events on the go, plus our free venue finding service is also a little popular at present but we'd rather be like this and busy and buzzy than wondering what to do next!

With training courses, new business meetings, websites to update, social media and the endless stream of emails (and yes we are still being invited on endless fams despite Paula's Blog on the CHS Group website last week), 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 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's why we ban anyone looking at emails until 9.30am in the morning. 

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, 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?

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.

This is photograph A 1699 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.

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!

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