Schmooze, schmooze, schmooze!
Hey there! I’m Kane Kendziora from the MyBadges.com sales team and I recently attended the MPI Annual Schmooze event at the Shangri La Hotel, downtown Vancouver. Ashley and I set up a display to showcase a few of the new products we have to offer. As we have just expanded into the promotional products industry – we like to refer to as the Conference Essentials – we had a few new and exciting products to show off to other curious Shmoozers.
The venue was beautiful, and staff were very helpful in getting us to where we needed to be. The most enjoyable part of the night was learning that our booth was right across from the cheese table …I’m sure you can deduct where my excitement was conceived. None the less, after a couple – OK maybe more than a couple – servings of delicious brie (not our office dog Brie, don’t worry), delectable smoked gouda, and some funky (in the best way) Blue Cheese paired with a glass of social lubricant, we managed to have more than a few laughs with some of the other attendees who had many business related questions and also shared industry stories.
One of the most interesting things to me regarding my evening schmooze, was the use of new industry technology, more specifically the app that was being showcased, Attendify. From what I learned throughout the night, this app boasts a few interesting features. A schedule complete with the happenings of the night/day, integrated learning about sponsors/exhibitors through an interactive scavenger hunt, it also allows attendees to post status updates to the event-specific “wall” (for lack of a better word), not to mention the back ended functions empowering planners/exhibitors with data demonstrating the ROI the event may have gained. It’s safe to say I was pretty impressed, technology will definitely play a huge role in how we attend events in the future, it was intriguing to see developers in the pioneering stage of event technology exhibit some of their handy work.
All in all, I would say I had a good experience. Having organized a few events in my past, mostly dance parties and other functions of the like, being newer to the professional events industry it’s always a treat to see what the people behind the curtains have hiding up their sleeves.
Check out what Ashley wrote about September’s schmooze here.
Photos courtesy of Vision Event Photography!
Thanks for having us!
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