Unconventional Facts About Conventions: Republican Convention

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The 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions look to be full of drama and historical significance. With the wild election cycle this year, we were inspired to look beyond the basics and find some interesting facts about how these conventions are organized and how they run.[Tweet "We were inspired to find some interesting facts about the GOP convention. #GovEventsBlog"]

Cleveland and Philadelphia will play host to the Republicans and Democrats respectively. For host cities, besides the revenue brought in by the influx of conventioneers, the convention provides an opportunity to highlight what their town has to offer to an international audience. Selection committees look at a number of factors when choosing host cities including available venues and infrastructure. In fact, Baltimore hosted many of the early conventions because it was an accessible port on the eastern seaboard. With the arrival of the transcontinental railroad system, the Midwest became a more viable location and has remained popular. In fact, Chicago has hosted Democratic and Republican conventions 25 times - more than any other city. Continue reading →

How Venues are Changing to Meet Event Needs

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Each day there is a new article out talking about how the meeting and event industry is changing. From use of social media, to the growth of virtual events, to attendee and sponsor budget constraints, the meetings industry has embraced change as the new normal. As part of the industry, hotels and event venues are also making some changes in what they offer to event planners and attendees.

Below we share some of the more interesting changes or enhancements venues are making to entice planners and attendees alike. [Tweet "Interesting enhancements venues are making to entice event planners and attendees #GovEventsBlog"]

  • Social Media Manager - The Hilton Anatole Hotel, near downtown Dallas, TX is offering a social media manager to support the social media efforts of event organizers. At the Hilton, this role includes doing social media for the property as well as providing social media strategy and tools to people using the property for events.
  • Light - This may seem like a really minor thing, but traditionally natural light has been hard to come by for events. Windowless ballrooms may be great for projecting to screens, but as events veer towards more collaborative sessions rather than power point- heavy presentations, the use of natural light becomes logistically desirable. New facilities are building meeting spaces with views that can inspire creativity or at the very least help attendees better gauge what time it is.[Tweet "New facilities are building meeting spaces with windows and views. #GovEventsBlog"]
  • Wellness - Hotels are offering more healthy and sustainable catering options including more spa-like food and drink choices. Water stations are being set up rather than offering all attendees bottled waters. Event planners can also add on extra perks for guests like the "Sleep Advantage Program" at the Crowne Aire Plaza in Bloomington, MN which offers upgraded bedding and aromatherapy kits for guests.
  • Technology - The network capacity of a venue is quickly becoming a discriminating factor. Hotels and conference centers alike are upgrading their technology infrastructure to offer fast WiFi that can accommodate all attendees using it on multiple devices.[Tweet "The network capacity of a venue is quickly becoming a discriminating factor. #GovEventsBlog"]
  • Flexible Spaces - Venues need to offer more than a massive room to house attendees for keynote presentations. More and more hotels and conference centers are taking care to build in smaller spaces designed to facilitate collaboration and small group discussion.

We'd love to hear from you what are some of the newer amenities you see offered by venues? How are they impacting where you hold events?

Defense in Depth: A Look at Defense Industry Events

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While the defense community is well acquainted with meeting and defeating big challenges, the dynamic nature of the cyber world is proving to be a daunting adversary for our military. From arming soldiers at the tip of the spear not only with weapons but also with data to fending off threats to cyber networks, defense professionals are in a constant learning mode while being on constant alert.[Tweet "The defense community is well acquainted with meeting and defeating big challenges. #GovEventsBlog"]

At GovEvents we are proud to be the defense community's one-stop-shop for finding training and networking events. We hope that our site takes some of the strain of this new tech frontier off their shoulders.

In this post we want to highlight some of the key events coming up for defense professionals through the end of the year.[Tweet "In this post we highlight some of the key events for defense professionals. #GovEventsBlog"] Continue reading →

The Complexities of Government Acquisition

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Acquisition-it's a complex topic for the government market. Private sector companies must navigate a complex system to make their solutions and services available to government customers. Federal acquisition professionals are working to ease this process and adapt decades old policies to meet the needs of modern technology buys such as cloud and as-a-service offerings. There are also new mandates and government-wide policies like FITARA that IT and procurement personnel have to understand and comply with.  Add to this the fact that the acquisition workforce is in an incredible state of turnover with older professionals retiring and new ones coming in without the guidance of procurement veterans.[Tweet "Acquisition - it's a complex topic for the government market. #GovEventsBlog"]

The ACQUIRE Conference and Expo that took place in June in Washington, DC was designed to help government agencies create, manage, and run successful programs. The conference program offered federal agency-led training sessions, and government & industry thought leadership panels and keynotes. At the event, the Professional Services Council (PSC) issued their biennial Acquisition Policy Survey that more definitively outlined the challenges detailed above. Some of the findings included: Continue reading →

Giving ‘Baby You Can Drive My Car’ a Whole New Meaning

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With summer road trips in full swing, many of us may be wishing that driverless cars were available today. The reality is the availability and use of driverless cars is not too far away.  The move to driverless cars may be more of an evolution versus a revolution say some industry experts.[Tweet "The move to driverless cars may be more of an evolution versus a revolution. #GovEventsBlog"] Each model year, cars are introduced with more and more "autonomous" features from self parking, to lane floating warnings, to automatic braking. Some industry experts say this slow inclusion of features is how we'll get to an autonomous fleet of vehicles on the road.

At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this past January, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that the fiscal 2017 budget proposal seeks nearly $4 billion over 10 years in an effort to accelerate the development and adoption of self-driving cars. While Detroit factories may be busy building the cars, cities around the country have to get prepared to host these cars on their roads. Continue reading →