Primarily known as the home of Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia is so much more than just a college town. Rich in history, plentiful in the Arts, fruitful in agriculture, and abounding in adventure, there truly is something for everyone to enjoy.
If you’re traveling to Blacksburg for a meeting or conference, plan plenty of time to wind down and process all that you have learned. Here are just a few ideas of things you don’t want to miss when visiting.
Event meetings are a thriving trend with solid footing to continue upward growth. From teambuilding exercises, TED-style talks, to destination meetings, companies and organizations are striving to stay on-trend while zeroing in on the return on their investment. Sure, a cool business trip can temporarily satisfy a worker’s short term need for refreshment but similar to having dessert for dinner, if there is no “meat-on-the-bones”, their satisfaction will be short-lived.
Extracting the most value from a set meeting budget is an extraordinarily important task. Meetings and conferences are an organization’s chance to connect deeper, to inspire new ideas and projects, and to continue cultivating a powerful work culture. Suffice it say, wise meeting planners recognize the crucial task at hand and are open to new ideas on squeezing out more value.
Communication, teamwork, and creativity are critical for the success of any given business, organization or department. One such way to foster all of these things is through meetings. For meetings to be as successful as possible, they must be engaging. It’s not always an easy task to hold the attention of others in this fast-paced attention-grabbing society, yet that is exactly what must be accomplished!
Anyone who has planned a conference or corporate experience knows that finding the ideal venue is vital. There are a variety of absolute needs to execute a successful conference, and not every conference center is equally equipped.
Although the term ‘event engagement’ has become widespread in the industry, it still resonates as an essential component to your meeting’s success and its future. Our industry is flooded with engagement methods to leverage DURING the meeting. But, what about building excitement before the meeting even begins?
Or, continuing to keep your content top-of-mind long after the event is over?
In recent years, we’ve learned a lot about the serious impact that traveling has on the environment. With travel becoming cheaper and easier than ever, global tourism now accounts for 8 percent of total carbon emissions.
We’ve all experienced wanting to duck out of a conference session that seemed to never end. Or watched tiredly as a meeting speaker recited the bullet points from their PowerPoint presentation. Yawn!
No matter how compelling and valuable your event programming, modern attention spans are hard to keep. Avoid seeing eyes glaze over or the tell-tale blue glow from a cell phone. Strive to shake things up with every event.
As a meeting and event organizer, an instrumental part of your event strategy is to facilitate relationship-building and networking to give attendees the most value.
After all, most attendees will remember your event for the connections they made and the conversations they had.
