Spice Up Your Event With Modern Dishes

Think back to when you were a child attending a wedding. There was dancing, there was excitement and laughter, and you may have been let down by the boring food. Cold briskets with bland vegetables that you have to sit down and properly eat were the worst, but you powered through knowing that the cake would come soon. Unfortunately, there was a plot twist because the fondant cake was also boring and unsatisfying!

Don’t let the food bring your wedding party down! Spice up your menus with modern twists that won’t weigh your guests down.

Comfort Food

No one knows how to eat and feel warm inside like Southerners which is why their comfort food is trending. Avoid basic roasts and serve up some fried chicken instead. It’s a comfort foot that can be quickly enjoyed by hand.

Also, put on a modern twist on a classic favorite, meatloaf. You can have your meatloaf stuffed with parmesan cheese and spinach for a delightful surprise inside, wrap it in bacon, or serve it on a sandwich.

Many types of meat are being served with updated sauces and glazes with hints of southern traditions. For example, salmon pairs great with a peach and pecan glaze, steak pairs well with spicy avocado sauces, and chicken goes great with an almond sauce. The creative possibilities to spice up the meats are endless.

Don’t forget southern sides! Nothing makes a person feel warm inside like hot, made from scratch macaroni and cheese. Plus, fried okra is always great to have around. No one knows asparagus better than southerners so check out their herb crusted and garlic recipes.

Everyone loves pizza and pasta, so consider serving up those dishes to please everyone on your guest list.

Keep it Light

People are healthy these days and don’t want to be weighed down, so serve them up a few clean and simple options.

A salad bar is always a good way to keep health conscious guests happy and snacking. They can serve themselves a variety of fresh and crisp veggies with an array of salad dressings to choose from.

However, isn’t salad slightly boring? Jazz things up with a fruit bar instead. Offer multiple varieties of cheese, nuts, and fruits to get the grazers happily nibbling on healthy items.

Also, you can stick with lighter meats like fish and chicken. Red meat often makes people feel sleepy and too full to function.

Keep it Moving

While being served plated food is nice and elegant, it’s also a little stale. Keep your party lively and fresh by getting people out of their seats!

People won’t mind getting up to serve themselves when you have exciting craft your own food stations. Taco and fajita stations are on fire right now. Guests can go up and request personalized entrees or serve themselves with their custom ingredients.

Baked potato bars, burger bars, and oyster bars are also tons of fun.

However, one of the most shocking food bars are the ones with breakfast for dinner! How exciting, people can have made to order pancakes, omelets, and waffles with personalized ingredients and toppings.

Miniaturize it

Guests don’t wanna be weighed down by huge meals anymore. How can they dance if they’re super full or bloated? Plus, big meals take a long time to eat, so consider making your food mini so people can quickly pick up a few items and eat them in no time.

Trending miniature foods include miniature tacos, mini burgers, mini mac and cheese bites, mini roasts on a bun, and even miniature bowls of ramen. Each of these items are fun to eat and can have personalized toppings.

Food Truck it

If you missed the food truck craze where have you been?! Food trucks have become increasingly popular and are popping up all over the city! You can have a few drive up to your venue and serve their local, creative dishes to your guests.

Each guest can pick which food truck they want to visit for delicious food creations from Korean BBQ to southern delicacies on a stick. They will really give your guests a fun memory from your event.

Stay Salty

You know what really kills a cake or nice cocktail? Too much sugar! Pair your drinks with something salty and delicious.

French fries are always a popular menu item. You can serve them cut straight, in curls, or even in a waffle shape. They can be placed in easy to grab containers like mason jars and enjoyed. You can even include healthier sweet potato fries! Regular ‘ole potato chips also pair really well with sweet beverages.

Pretzels and popcorn are salty treats with endless possibilities because they pair with excellent toppings like cheese, jalapenos, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry sauce, powdered sugar, and more!

Update Your Dessert

Big, fondant cakes live in the past. Don’t stay stuck there with them! New desserts are taking the world by storm, like miniature pies ranging from apple to pumpkin. There’s a pie for every season.

Also, who doesn’t go nuts for donuts?! You can set a variety of donuts up for a beautiful, yet mouthwatering dessert display.

Throw your guests a curve ball with desserts that bring back childhood memories, like cookies and milk, s'mores, or ice cream sandwiches.

Don’t forget about custom sweets to pick up on-the-go like cake pops or hand-frosted sugar cookies.

Are you Hungry now?

We are too! We didn’t mean to get your mouth watering, but we wanted to make sure we could help you jazz up your event with delicious, hot and trendy food. Learn more event tips at Inspherio.com.

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Four Reasons Not to Worry About Your Competition

Let’s Get Down to Business

Who is your biggest competitor? Is it another event planner or music professional that lives in your area? Or, is it a well-known restaurant that offers low-cost catering? Whatever the profession, there are always other businesses that provide similar services to yours. They are what you consider the competition. Unfortunately though, many companies worry more about staying so far ahead of the other guy that they forget to concentrate on what’s really important—their customers.

At Inspherio, we understand that other business management programs can help you plan an event or keep track of your inventory. However, in all humbleness, we are confident in the services we provide and the features we offer, which is why we don’t worry about the competition. Want to know how we do it? We aren’t afraid of the competition knowing so we’ll share our secrets with you!

Mission Over Profit

When you go shopping, the salespeople are always so eager to help you find that perfect outfit. When they are done making selections, it turns out to be the most expensive pieces of clothing they have in the store. Doesn’t that frustrate you? You feel like they don't want to help you look nice, and are only there to make a profit. Believe it or not, your customers feel the same way when you try to sell them your most expensive service. You started your business with a mission to offer your talents and to make your customer’s day a special one. It wasn’t a mission to beat your competitor. Did something change?

It’s important to remember why you started your event business and get back to it. Whether it’s providing tables and chairs, getting people dancing to music or making sure the event goes off without a hitch—forget your competition. Focus only on services that will make your client’s dreams come to life. Trust me, they’ll appreciate it.

Be the Best of the Best

Raise your hand if you’ve ever snooped on your competitor’s website to see what type of pictures they are capturing or services they’re offering. *Raises hand* We’ve all done it, and we’re not too proud of it. But we did it for a good reason, right? We wanted to stay ahead of the competition. Well, I hate to break it to you, but copying from your competition is not helping you grow your business and gain customers. You’ve already missed the customer train if you wait to see what your competitors do.

I’m speaking to a creative group of people, and I know that you have dreams and original ideas for your own business. So go with them! Your thoughts and ideas are what makes your business unique and different from the other guy’s. There’s no time to play copy-cat when you have customers wanting to use your services.

Celebrate the Good Times

It’s time to stop envying other’s accomplishments and start celebrating your own! Be confident and proud of the services you provide, as well as always celebrating your business’ gains. When you’re happy with your business, you won’t be envious of what you competitors have done.

At Inspherio, we celebrate all our accomplishments. From new members joining to helping someone plan the perfect event, we celebrate everything because we love what we do.

Just Do It

“Actions speak louder than words.” Although we say we will put an end to our faulty habits, we never actually do, do we? Well, it’s time to escape the trap of feeling another business is better than yours, and embrace your accomplishments, triumphs, and good deeds. It’s your dream; live it for yourself!

It’s time to share YOUR gifts and talents with the world. When you give the best, no one can stop you—not even your competition. And with Inspherio—the all-in-one event planning and business management program—helping you accomplish great things in your business, you’ll never have to think about the competition again.

Try a free 30-day trial, today!

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Using Technology in the Event Industry

If there is one thing that professionals in the event industry have finally accepted, it was the impending descent of Event Technology. We couldn't avoid it and why would we want to? Now that it's 2015, it's been recognized that event technology spans from the ability to gain great sponsorship opportunities, the ease of gathering speaker and exhibitor materials, instant connection to attendees, and the seemingly effortless ability to manage your entire event business.

All of your business information— leads, events, services, products, pricing, invoices, payroll, contracts, and more— it's all got to go somewhere. Wouldn't it be great to have a system that gathers all of this data and allows you to utilize it so that you can completely manage and grow your event business in one program?

Well, we’re here to say there is.

Let’s take a step back and look at all of the programs you’re using right now to run your company— Quickbooks? Mailchimp? CRM? Salesforce? Spreadsheets? Pen and paper? Now, ask yourself why you are using so many different programs during such a technological revolution in the event industry. While this type of industry can be fun and thrilling, it definitely isn’t always easy. It’s stressful enough just trying to plan a single event, but running an entire business that plans several events a week, wouldn’t it make sense to use something that makes your workload lighter and simpler? 

The days of using upward of five to seven different programs to power your business is over. As Liz King of Techsy Talk says, “Forcing yourself to test out new technology trends is the most effective way to get the experience you need to make technology a driving force in your life and your events.” So, put down the pen and paper and take a look at what we have to offer.

Inspherio is a great addition to the world of event technology as it can administer the most important aspects of your event business. From generating contracts and sending them for e-signatures to scheduling events and keeping track of leads, Inspherio is specifically designed to make sure everything for your business is in its right place and easily accessed at all times.

“The silos of services will start to break down, streamlining the planning process by creating more comprehensive technology products and solutions. Planners want simpler solutions and want to work with fewer vendors,” says Jessica Levin, president of Seven Degrees Communications. We find it to be very important to have a program in which you can rely, to make the planning process easier and more effective, and that’s why Inspherio was created.

We’ve listed just a few solutions below that may give you some insight on how Inspherio’s technology can help you and your business:

Accounts
Keeping an eye on the finances of your business is rather crucial, especially when you have money coming in and going out. Inspherio knows the importance of keeping your business’s account detailed and organized. With this program you have the ability to:

>Create and send invoices to your clients and in turn they have the ability to pay instantly in their private Client Portal.
>Track your income, all of your expenses, reimbursements, vendor and employee pay. 
>Run Reports that show the details of your company’s Profit and Loss.

Contracts
Time is precious, so filling out paperwork can often times be a bit of a pain, especially when your time may be more valuable elsewhere. With easy-to-fill out templates and the Client Portal, you can create and send a contract to a client easily and quickly, all with the ability to sign electronically.

Professionals
This features allows you to input all of your employees and their information. From there you can assign them to different events, appointments, or tasks, and keep track of their payroll. If you staff a large number of employees, no problem. Simply import the data using a CSV file into our system and voila, everyone’s there and ready to be put to work.

Marketing
This is huge for any business, and we get it. Inspherio features Email Marketing, which allows you to create your own email template or use system generated templates. Simply create what you like— adding your own images, links, and other flare, and schedule and send to the Contact Groups of your choice.

When it’s all said and done, it is important that both you and your clients are provided with the best experience possible. “Getting savvy with tech is more about aligning with and accelerating desired business results. Just think more about benefits,” says Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw. 

So take the next step in the technological revolution and get your company and its workflow in control. By integrating event technology like Inspherio into your next event, your opportunities are endless. Why on earth would you want to pass that up?

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Blogs Every #EventProf Should Be Reading Now….Right Now!

I’m sure you know that the Event Industry is ever changing and keeping up on recent news and discussions is vital to your career. Even though social media is not technically a make or break matter, if you are using social to market yourself and company, the blogosphere is a must for finding useful content to share with friends, fans, and followers. If you’re not perusing for others, you should be checking in just to stay up to date on what is happening in your industry.

While I am one of the last few who still checks out books at the local library -- and proud of it -- the interwebs holds that advantageous edge of being extremely current. Real time Twitter discussions, Facebook shares, or Reddit rabbit holes can lead to blog posts within minutes! Okay, maybe hours. I know you’re busy.

True quality event industry bloggers are field leaders and usually highly experienced event veterans who write about all the things that are on other event professionals minds. From non sugar coated opinions to objective news, these are, in my opinion, are some of the top blogs (in no particular order, I swear) that every event professional should be reading...probably every day.

TechsyTalk

Ah, Liz King. This passionate tech-savvy event planner provides fun and influential commentary on event planning trends and tips, event technology and social media, and solutions for the everyday problems faced by event planners. From event inspo, videos riddled with advice, and quick read but full of great content articles, TechsyTalk is a daily must.

Velvet Chainsaw

Powerhouse Jeff Hurt doesn’t shy away from controversial topics and I can’t get enough. VCC showcases entertaining and thought provoking pieces that truly keep focus on great advice and ideas for event and meeting professionals. If you’re looking for innovative and a fresh take on taking your business up a notch, this one is for you.

Event Manager Blog 

As one of the first event professional blogs to come about, EMB made a name quickly and it stuck around. Discussing event technology trends, social media, event concepts and fun new ideas, Event Manager Blog always keeps you Event Planners in mind.From guest posts and a plethora of infographics, to a large innovative startup community, this team covers all of their bases. Even better, resources are easy to find on this comprehensive and well organized site so you have no trouble checking it out on the day to day.

BizBash 

I’m a BizBasher, hardcore. This hub is a wealth of knowledge, news, creative ideas and tips that even the most experienced of experienced event professionals visit for ideas and practices to implement into their own business. Added bonus: you can sign up for an account and create an “ideabook,” similar to Pinterest, and save articles and images to your profile. Frequenting BizBash is a no-brainer.

Event Tech Brief

Home of the weekly newsletter, the team over at ETB is extremely event and technology driven. Filled with insight into emerging trends and what the future eventtech holds, EventTechBrief was created to assist event professionals with choosing and purchasing technology through careful dissection and review by this savvy group. ETB’s goal is to assist your professionals and move the industry into the future, watch this one like a hawk.

Event Planning Blueprint

She says it herself, Melanie Woodward is all about connecting event professionals with new ideas and tools to help them success. Yes, please. Sharing a diverse collection of things she has learned in her years, this blog is chock full of tips, suggestions, motivation, and so much more that any up and coming, or even established, event professionals would need to grow their business. I enjoy her straight forward but inspiring attitude towards a business she clearly loves. It’s a great jump off point for anyone in the industry.

Bizzabo

To me, Bizzabo is one of those perfect blogs that is easy to navigate and fun to read, while still being extremely informative. Keeping event professionals up-to-date on new event technology, planning tips, trends, books to read, seo guides, event promotion ideas, and so so so much more, Bizzabo is an easy and great daily read for everyone in the event industry.

PlannerWire

Well known event professional and conference expert, Keith Johnson, tells it like it is. They claim, and I believe it, that they cut through the clutter and noise so that event industry individuals can learn about new planning trends, marketing, technology, and thinking without having the wool pulled over their eyes. With great tips for any type of event planner, PlannerWire only serves up the best making them a must read.

EventProfs.co

While not technically a blog, it most definitely deserves a spot on this list. All these great sites we have listed provide you event professionals with so much content, it’s likely you might miss some. With the help of Eventprofs, you have a fighting chance to catch it all. Gathering the most popular event content from Twitter, this site is invaluable and keeps you up-to-date with the latest content and trends. If you don’t have time - which is likely - to check in to every blog, visit Eventprofs to view it all in one glance!

There is so much great content out there for the event industry and so many great sites and blogs that I just couldn’t fit them all. Here are some other (again, in no particular order) great sites that you need to frequent to come full circle on all event trends, technology, tips, and more. Show some love to your fellow industry brethren, check a blog out.

Corbin Ball’s Tech Talk Blog

Meeting Pool

Event Industry News

Brand Driven Digital

Pamorama

Conferences That Work

Smart Meetings

PCMA

eTouches

MeetingsNet

William Gallus’ Gallus Events

International Meetings Review

Ticketbud

Plan Your Meetings

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Over The Top Wedding Cakes

Over The Top Wedding Cakes

3D Printed Cake Topper

This cake may not be the largest, but the topper was made by a 3D Printer. That’s right! 3D printing technology is now being applied to food. Using sugar as the ‘powder’ and water as the ‘binder’, edible printed art is available in the form of intricate cake toppers that WOW any wedding guest. Photo courtesy of engineeringfoodie.worldpress.com



Designer Wedding Dress/Cake

Who said you can’t have your cake and wear it too? This cake is a Lukka Sigurdardottir, one-of-a-kind bridal gown with a full skirt made of flour, sugar, and loads of frosting. Photo courtesy of nydailynews.com



The Incognito Cake

If you saw this amazing art piece at a wedding, would you know it was the wedding cake? This over the top edible sculpture was created by Chef Omar Addihaoui - Cafe Opera. Photo courtesy of tripntale.com.






The Chandelier Cake

This new trend of chandelier and suspended wedding cakes is guaranteed to keep wedding guest talking about your event for years to come. The extravagant cake featured in this photo was presented at Kaley Cuoco’s (Big Bang Theory) surprise New Year’s Eve wedding. The cake was created by Kimberly Bailey of The Butter End Cakery-Santa Monica, CA. Photo courtesy of thebutterend.com

World’s Largest Wedding Cake

Weighing 15,032 pounds and standing 17 ft tall, this seven-tier vanilla masterpiece is the world’s largest wedding cake. Made by Mohegan Sun’s Executive Pastry Chef Lynn Mansel, it contains 10,000 pounds of cake batter and 4,810 pounds of frosting. It took 700 sheet cakes and 57 chefs to construct, plus two forklifts to raise each tier. Photo courtesy of MoheganSun.com

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Dealing with Difficult Family Members

 

Artwork credit: The Huffington Post

They are a part of every holiday event; we’re talking in-laws, relatives, and uncontrollable kids. During the holidays, rough relationships with family members cause stressful communications, hesitant gift giving, and hurt feelings. Family members can also hinder your event responsibilities if they become over-involved to the point where you lose control and they take over your event. Don’t panic over any of these tricky family situations, we have life-saving tips to avoid the dreaded family feud.

• Keep calm. With every event or family gathering the pressure is high to perfect every detail and create a memorable event. The stress can cause you to crack under the pressure. If the event doesn’t go exactly as planned, be professional and keep a positive attitude. Remain composed and offer encouragement, whether it be to the cook who just burned the ham or uninvited guests. It will all end soon, so enjoy every moment whether good or bad. 
• It’s not your problem to fix. Attend to the direct problem (bad pictures or a flawed menu), but remain a concerned bystander when it comes to personal issues. When a relative’s deep-seated issues are brought to attention, be an involved listener, but don’t feel responsible to fix those problems in one night, be it messy relationship issues or the attack of the gossip queens, you should stay out of it to keep a grasp on your sanity.
• Know your limits. If kids are running around, don’t scold them unless they are your own children. Even if you have their parent’s permission to reprimand them, let the child know that they need to be on their best behavior rather than waiting for them to test their limits. 
• Let them know your boundaries. You should respect a family’s issues, but at the same time don’t let anyone treat you in a derogatory way. As a professional, if you feel that an individual has crossed a boundary, let the host know and let them handle the outburst.
• Cut your ties. If the situation is physically or verbally inappropriate, step away and break communication completely. If a drunk party-goer is going on a tangent, there is no need to provoke them into a more aggravated state. 

With these tips, we hope you can avoid any unnecessary, uncomfortable, family tension. Above all take this time to enjoy spending time with your family, whether they are difficult or not. Also with the many holiday events, help others celebrate with their families and enjoy this holiday season.

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Filter by Milestone

To simplify the process of locating one of your Booked Events, you can search by the last Milestone that was completed.

For Example, lets say you are looking for your weddings, but you only want to view those events that have completed the milestone: "Event Booked."

This will generate a list based on your criteria.  So instead of searching through a list of hundreds of events, you can narrow down your results based on your milestones.

If you have questions about this or would like to learn more, you can contact us at 704.234.6000 or send us an email at support@Inspherio.com

www.Inspherio.com

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