Planning an event is an enormous task to take on. There are countless elements that need to be addressed before an event can occur, including: catering, registration, speakers, sponsors, itinerary, virtual platform, bar, AV...and the list goes on and on. With so many different aspects to plan, creating an event from start to finish can be daunting. If you find yourself overwhelmed and unsure where to start or do next in your event planning process, check out BLME’s ideal event planning timeline here.

If you’re like us, right now feels a bit like Deja Vu (and, to be honest, like a bad group project where some people do the work for the entirety of the group). In the Spring, we saw vaccinations as a ticket to ‘normalcy,’ or as close to it as possible.

Although much of the nation is vaccinated, new variants and ever-changing mask mandates have event planner’s heads spinning, and clients thinking twice about large, in-person gatherings in Delta variant hotspots.

While virtual meetups cannot offer everything at in-person networking events can, Zoom breakout rooms can help them get pretty close. Since the onset of the pandemic, we at BLME have relied on the platform’s breakout room feature more times than we can count. Here, we are breaking down our 5 favorite ways to optimize virtual networking using Zoom breakout rooms.

Now that we’ve been around the (virtual) block more times than we can count, we have compiled this list of virtual event management essentials for those embarking on similar endeavors. This is a list we wish we had prior to the pandemic so we wanted to share the tips and insight with our fellow industry colleagues. Read on for our must-haves!

BLME is back with our second installment of our tech platform review series, designed to help other hospitality professionals choose resources for their virtual and hybrid events. This time, we are diving into the event-hosting platform Socio.

Given the recent shift to virtual and hybrid events brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, BLME is creating a series of tech platform reviews. We hope these help others in the hospitality industry ease their transition to online events. First up: the online auction platform called Auction Frogs.