I love telling the story of eventIQ and most times people don’t mind hearing it even if I do get a little excited. They understand that while a bit hyper, I am a passionate advocate.

In a few days I will have a new story to tell to a new group. Along with my wing-man eventIQ president Dave Bodnarchuk, I am headed to the North American Association of Commencement Officials (NAACO) 2012 conference in Austin, Texas.

Two weeks ago, I didn’t know NAACO existed. In fact, other than my favourite football team the Dallas Cowboys, I haven’t given Texas much thought either. Did you know the population of Texas is reaching 25 million (or 16 million without the cattle)? … Click here for some more fun facts about Texas.

Actually NAACO is quite strong with 600 members that meet once a year to broaden their knowledge and skills around graduation ceremonies and events. Since we work closely with 40 high schools, the University of Alberta, North Carolina State and Grant MacEwan University, this kind of trade show/convention is perfect for us. Watch our Twitter account (@InviteRight) for updates from the show where I will share some of my experiences from the conference.

I’m confident that when these folks see a demonstration of how InviteRight works, they will become part of our village of happy customers. And I will have new stories to share!

Parents dread one word more than anything: fundraising. Whenever their child comes home from school excited about the prospect of a school trip, sporting event and especially graduation it usually means they will find themselves going door-to-door hawking containers of cookie dough or calendars or magazine subscriptions…

The list goes on but despite all our grumbling, parents pound the pavement to do their part. Of all the things that you pay for during a school year, graduation in particular is not a cheap event. This is partly because graduates want to leave high school in grand style, and sometimes their eyes are bigger than their wallets (like me at the buffet table; sometimes you’re plate is too full).

So when a fresh idea comes along, it’s usually adopted pretty quickly. For example in Manitoba, a bunch of high schools including College Sturgeon Heights and Miles McDonnell Collegiate stood to collect as much as $6,000 each for their June grad if enough parents and other adults (mosquitoes and polar bears don’t count) took Ford vehicles for a test drive.

A local Ford dealership had new vehicles at the high schools for a few hours one weekend with the national company paying the school $20 for each test drive. This fundraiser took place at other Manitoba schools too: Margaret Barbour Collegiate in The Pas, W.C. Miller Collegiate in Altona, R.D. Parker Collegiate in Thompson and Treherne Collegiate.

Kudos have to be given to the teens who, despite school athletics and their studies, raise money for charity. Schools run head-shaving contests for cancer, conduct bottle drives and raise awareness for certain causes through Facebook groups and blogs. Their plans are ambitious; fueled by youthful ignorance and innocence. Us adults give up way too easily when the going gets rough and a lot of us would rather write a cheque than actually walk or run anywhere.

Flush with success

One unique fundraiser involves a full-size toilet being placed on the front lawn of an unsuspecting homeowner. There’s different variations on the traveling toilet theme floating around, but basically when the appliance makes an appearance in your yard, you make a donation to have it removed. A donation of $10 sends it away; $5 will tell residents who sent the toilet to them; $5 will allow them the opportunity to choose another recipient; and $10 will provide insurance that the toilet will not come back to their yard. A suggested donation of $50 gets you your own decorated toilet (painted gold, purple or yellow and dotted with flowers, etc.).

Fundraising can be boring and a large pain in the buttocks. But EventIQ sympathizes and we tip our hats to those schools which got off the ‘pot’ and did something different this year.

“Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” ~ Theodore N. Vail

A true visionary, Vail oversaw the building of the first U.S. coast-to-coast telephone system. I liked this quote because I’ve learned that no matter how difficult a challenge or problem seems to be, there’s usually a solution. What holds a lot of people back is their ability to see past the challenge or problem and seek a solution.

Organizing a successful event takes a lot of work. But how do you ensure maximum exposure and get the most out of the big day? How do you sustain a community and engage your supporters once an event is done? And how can you do it bigger and better the next time around? Last week, Liz King of Liz King Events hosted a webinar through The National Fundraising Event Series — A virtual series, with monthly webinars and virtual events for nonprofit and association professionals who plan events or use event in fundraising. Liz is a Social Media-Integrated Event Planner based in New York, and social media was certainly her focus for her presentation entitled “5 Ways to Build And sustain Your Event Brand”. I’ll do my best to recap her webinar in this article, throw in a few opinions of my own, and try not to paraphrase her too much!

1. Strategy

Before you create an online brand that you want to sustain, you have to first implement a strategy. Liz suggests the POST Method which is a systematic approach to a social strategy.

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To keep up with growth of media and technology, we seem to always have to update ourselves to the “new”. Something as straightforward as a business card needs a fresh new design once in a while.

With the emerging of QR Codes, we may see these more regularly in our everyday lives such as wherever advertising can be placed and that includes even business cards. Remember when having the phone number or fax number was the most important thing on a business card? Well, with a scan of the mobile phone on a QR code, you can go to any site with more detailed information about the contact such as to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, corporate website, etc. This allows you to connect instantly with the contact and have access to their social networking information. Instead of cramming all your information on a business card, you can now just put down the important information and store the detailed information on the site your QR code links to.

Since media and technology is always changing, will business cards be replaced? Videos replaced radios, DVD’s and Bluray’s replaced VHS’s, CD’s replaced cassettes and will the mobile phones replace business cards? Business cards are convenient to easily and quickly distribute and all the contact information is located right on the card. With technology though, we can just store the contact information on our portable devices.  Also, this would ideally also eliminate another resource of cutting down trees for the abundant amounts of business cards being made at a time. Is having a QR code on a business card a good idea and will business cards get replaced? Let us know what you think.

The line between what we can and can’t say has become very unclear. What restrictions do we have? Can we tweet about anything on Twitter? Post any picture on Facebook?

Places have become more firm on their social media policies. The majority of police forces have been banned from posting anything job related which includes job titles and pictures on social media sites. This is to prevent the police from appearing unprofessional and unconstructive.

Sport associations such as the NFL have also restricted their players and coaches from using any social media devices 90 minutes prior or during a game. If caught, they would receive a hefty fine.

In other countries, bans have been placed on soldiers from using social media sites saying that information could be leaked to the public. This has irritated several people since most use social sites as a communication between family and friends.

Are we not allowed to express our thoughts freely without the fear of being persecuted? Where is the line drawn between personal and professional? Should schools also restrict students from going on to sites like Facebook for personal protection? Let us know what you think about this matter.

Using Twitter is one of the fastest ways to let people know about your event. It lets people know what is going on in their area and it may drive participation to the event. Here is a list of pros for tweeting events:

1. It is one way to promote the event
2. You can follow what attendees are saying and improve the event from their responses
3. You can deal with support questions
4. Having important people follow you will draw an interest from others
5. It’s free to tweet

Remember when GAP released their new logo only to be rejected by the general consensus? With the speed of technology and social networking, GAP quickly got feedback from their customers whether they wanted it or not. Evidently, this demonstrates that customers have an interest in the products they purchase.

With the generation of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and many other social media devices, companies have little control to hear what customers feel about their branding. Companies should evaluate the decisions they make while having the thought of customers in mind; not just make impulsive moves because it seems like a great idea. I’m not saying that we should just do what the customers believe is good, but we should have confidence in the choices we make but also let customer’s feedback re-examine our decisions.

With the new whim of companies rebranding their logo, Starbucks has fallen to the fad. With the mark of Starbuck’s 40th Anniversary, CEO Howard Schultz took a bold move by releasing a redesign of their well known logo.  Will Starbucks have the same outcome as the GAP? Only time will tell from the customers voice if this will become a success.

The website www.designcontest.com came up with a contest to allow designers from anywhere around the world to upload their designs on how they think the Starbuck’s logo should look like. We like to hear from you! Tell us what you think about the new logo.

An oldie but a goodie… This guy puts the YOU in youtube…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60og9gwKh1o

But the interesting question is… how can a small business do something to promote themselves… 38 million people is pretty wide exposure!

EventIQ, InviteRight and ElectionBuddy are are now on the social networking scene with Facebook pages and an EventIQ Twitter account.  We’re new to all this but we’re working on a ton of exciting new projects that we can’t wait to share with you across these channels.

You can subscribe to our main EventIQ Twitter account, and check out each of our Facebook pages here:

• EventIQ
• InviteRight
• ElectionBuddy

We invite you to join our community by looking for us on Facebook and Twitter, and of course to leave us feedback on what you’re seeing and what you’d like to see.

And keep your eyes out for our new monthly newsletter that’s about to debut, featuring some fun things that you may not necessarily see here in the blog or on our social network sites…!