Archive for the ‘planner’ Category:
The 44 Best Event Planner Industry Blogs
I first discovered Keith Johnson’s blog, PlannerWire.net starting with his article 13 Event Industry Blogs and Sites That You Should Check Out. Last July he updated the list to 44 event industry blogs that are important. It it just too hard to resist not publishing the list he compiled. Below (after a few of my comments) please find the best event planner blogs on the Internet, by Keith Johnson.
Why is an aviation company like Social Flights interested in event planners?
Nobody ever suggests that UAL or Alaska Airlines would ever ask anyone who intends to stay on the ground that day what their opinion is regarding airline service. Airlines are too busy to worry about what happens before and after their clients board their planes. The airlines are in the business of filling seats so why would they care about the communities whose collective posteriors occupy the spaces in between the lines on their balance sheets?
Maybe that’s the problem with airlines.
Social Flights has every intention to understand the needs of the travelers for whom we provide air service. We exist because the communities we serve tell us to exist. Communities of travelers tell us where to fly and when to fly. They tell us how many people they need to arrive at any geographic point in North America and how many people to depart from any point. Without event planners, there is no reason to travel. Think about that for a moment.
To our esteemed readership
There is some incredible information in these links. Reach out to these bloggers ask how you can help. Send them your best Routes and ask them what’s going on between any two points. They’ll know better than you – they’ll know who wants to share a jet. If you are a charter jet firm, you can either take out a full page ad in the New York Times or you can send these bloggers your empty leg schedule and let them talk about it.
That being said, here are 44 Event Industry Blogs That You Should be Reading, checking out, or know exist. Compiled by By Keith Johnson
Jeff Hurt – Midcourse Corrections
Michael McCurry – McCurry’s Corner
William Thomson – Gallus Events Blog
Peter Straube – Events for Change
Traci Brown – Trade Show Institute
Adrian Segar – Conferences that Work
Janet Rudolph – Team Building Unlimited
Lara McCulloch-Carter – Ready 2 Spark
Michelle Bruno – A Fork in the Road
Christian W. Frei – Meetings Industry Blog
Heather DeLoach – Constellation Communication
Keith Johnston and Teresa Nelson – FamIt!
Heidi Thorn – Promo With Purpose
Alison Smith Jenks – The TBA Global Blog
Rob Hard – Business Travel Destinations
Rob Hard – About.com Event Planning
Emilie Barta – Professional Tradeshow Presenter
Emilie Barta – Virtual Event Host
Thomas H Hallin – THe HTH Business Solutions Blog
Bonuses (Suggestions from readers)
Hotel Desk (this one is interesting, connects event planners and hotels)
The Best Worst Decisions for Transportation
Yesterday’s blog post argued that we cannot price any air transportation correctly until we price all air transportation correctly.
This means that if a trip were priced in proportion to it’s distance, then competition between airlines would amount to battles for internal efficiency rather than price wars dependent on short haul passengers subsidizing long haul passengers – plus “gotcha” fees, and unbundled services, increased government regulation, etc.
This would also allow smaller aircraft to be priced correctly in a time/value model…
The long-term view of wrong pricing
Livability is defined in terms of employment, safety, crime education and transportation. City planners, communities, and transportation officials allocate money towards projects, services and amenities that balance these objectives. They also must react to the influence of external forces. The airlines have a disproportionate power to impact an entire economy by manipulating prices and services.
Losing the proximity war
Without proportional pricing, planners do not have a built-in proximity bias that can support multi-mode projects such as rail, bus, and ferry services. If the price is the same to fly 500 miles as 3000 miles, a form of tunnel vision in regional economic development may appear.
Only 6 airports have direct rail service
Negative incentives
The hub and spoke system also introduces negative incentives to regionalization. The time that it takes to travel between non-hub locations 500 miles apart often exceeds the time it takes to fly to a distant hub 3000 miles away.
Yet, families and friends want to disperse in much shorter distances. Small companies want to branch out in smaller segments. A regional tourism industry is easier to support than attracting distant tourists. Innovation clusters need space to diversify. The flawed airline pricing model combined with profit driven hub and spoke economics may actually thwart natural growth in favor of unsustainable growth. It makes little economic sense to disaggregate people from the land that they occupy.
Social Flights is much more than a ride-sharing system for jets. Social Flights is a social organization concept that allows air transportation to serve the needs of communities as people reorganize themselves in the Digital Age. Social Flights allows for rapid and effective air service to be deployed to the natural foundations of economic growth instead of trying to force growth to occur wherever the airlines choose to fly.
Smaller aircraft can fly efficiently between smaller markets as long as the price can be compared to the same time/value criteria as larger jets. People have extraordinary access to information from which to make superior decisions. However, when the wrong pricing model distorts the right decisions, only the best-worst decision is available. This is inefficient – it’s time to take off the blinders.