IN THIS ISSUE

Open Mic: Keeping Cool in the Hot Seat

The responsibility for providing a healthy learning and working environment for conference and meeting participants lies with the planner. But how can we as planners maintain a calm presence when working an event? How we handle our own situation...
Planning Primer: Adding Local Flair

When planning your next meeting or event, utilizing a few tricks of the trade to add local flair can really help engage your attendees or guests. Northern California is known for many things-food, wine and scenery in particular. Adding a localized...
Checklist: Hotel Contracts

Know how much your account brings to the hotel by providing a past revenue history including:
□ Meeting space utilized at past events
□ Room block and actual pickup
□ Food and beverage purchase history
□ Audio-...
Supply Wise: Know Your Linens

Walk into an event, and the first impression you get is a response to the table linens. The overall visual sets a mood, be it formal, casual, sizzling, subdued, or somewhere in between. Linens are the canvas upon which the other elements of an event...
Meeting Green: Leave (Almost) No Trace

What's not very green about meetings? Hint: It's not biodegradable, reusable and is beyond salvaging. It stinks and masses of it piled high look bad. Waste, the rotten factor in this distasteful scenario, conveys a ‘yuck' factor that's hard to shake...
Technology: Power Up Your PowerPoint

PowerPoint presentation have become a common part of meetings, rising to the level that we assume each of our presenters will have one. They also are second only to room temperature as a source of attendee complaints. Slides that are disconnected from...
Feature: Forever Golden

Not so long ago, Sacramento was perceived as an overlooked stepchild of a California city, its image sleepy and agricultural, its visitor appeal counched in dusty doses of frontier history.

But something happened on the way to the 21st century...
Tenting Terms: Know the Lingo

Tent: Temporary structure usually supported by poles or a frame and covered with flexible walls such as vinyl, canvas, or fabric.

Skin/Panels: Vinyl fabric, usually solid or clear, used for the canopy, walls...
Venue Report: Boutique is Sweet

The term "boutique hotel" crept into America's lodging lexicon in the early 1980s as a peculiar trend took hold. Led by Bill Kimpton in San Francisco, the movement saw dozens of smallish, down-at-the-heels properties, most in urban areas, transformed...
Hooked on Twain

Waiting out a hellacious Sierra snowstorm in 1975, McAvoy Layne developed a fearsome case of cabin fever that prompted a life-changing visit from the iconic American author and humorist, Mark Twain.

Photo courtesy of: McAvoy Layne...