Gone are the days when employees would meekly accept sitting in conference rooms for hour after hour listening to presentations and lectures. Now they expect their companies to incorporate a healthy work-life balance and wellness efforts into their conferences and events.

Savvy corporations are also recognizing that wellness practices can not only increase productivity, but also reduce turnover, and possibly even lower health insurance costs. And when it comes to conferences, scheduling wellness programs into the calendar can also increase buzz and help boost attendance for future events.

Your conference agenda will certainly be full of events to provide information, inspire people to action, or improve performance. But surveys show the No. 1 reason people attend such events is to meet new people, talk, and share ideas or even complaints. So for a successful conference, incorporate creative ways to encourage networking to give attendees what they want most.

Set them free

What's the best way to allow people to socialize?  It's not by packing your schedule so tightly that attendees don’t have time to strike up informal conversations with each other. That i

The pandemic may be waning, but the coronavirus is still out there. If you’re planning a convention, meeting, or corporate gathering in the next few months, you’ll want to incorporate the newest COVID event safety measures and technologies. 

In addition to concerns of attendees becoming ill, companies have a financial incentive to ensure the health of their employees. Those who contract COVID-19 not only face days of missed work, but possibly weeks or months if they’re one of the estimated 30 percent who suffer from long COVID afterward.

And chronically ill employees lead to lower productivity an increased health care costs.

So wouldn’t you like to make your next event

Organizing an event is no easy task because there are so many moving parts that all have to go just right. One important piece of event logistics is finding the perfect vendors for your event, because often they can spell the difference between a roaring success and disaster.

So here are a few things we've learned from working with countless event vendors over the years.

Search widely

Start by looking for at least five vendors for your event. Compile a list of what you want from them. What you need from a florist will be different from what you need in a cater

The pandemic changed a lot of things over the last two years, one of which was our taste in drinks. If you’re planning an event at Miami’s hottest event space, the Historic Alfred I. duPont Building, you’ll want to know what they are.

So here’s a sample of what your guests will be looking for in cocktail and beverage trends this year.

Traditionals with a twist

This year, whiskey, rum, gin and especially tequila and its smoky cousin mezcal are seeing a resurgence, but in exotic new ways, like a chocolate martini, for instance.

People are becoming more appreciative of tequila because of the time it takes to harvest the agave plant—up to 20 years