As the days grow warmer, our minds turn to one of those harbingers of summer: family reunions. As much fun as old-auntie kisses are, planning a family get-together is no walk in the park, even if the event is held in one.
Whether you’re in charge of a picnic for a few cousins or a week-long vacation with the entire clan, we have some tips to make the planning less daunting and the connections more fun. Write It Down Save yourself a headache, stress and maybe even some money: jot down what you know. It’s okay if all details aren’t planned. After all, we don’t need to know right away whether there will be a sack race for the kiddos at 2:30 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. Start with the basics. Break each day into meals and broad time slots: breakfast, morning (travel), lunch (on own), afternoon (family activities), dinner (potluck), evening (family photos). As you get closer to the event, you’ll likely have a couple of different written plans: one that you can share with the family when you send out the invitations; one that is more of a planning/resourcing document; a third that serves as a communications outline. Here’s an example of information you may want to track:
Create a Budget A budget determines what type of space you can rent for the event. (Even park shelters often have fees.) Food is always a cost. Create a “per person” budget so that Cousin Sam’s family of seven doesn’t pay the same as Grandma. Determine early on, too, how you will gather the money and who is responsible for tracking down those who haven’t paid yet. Gather the Addresses Ask for both email and snail mail addresses. While most people communicate via email, remember great-aunt Maggie may not. Use something like Google sheets so you can easily share updates with the group (and EVERYONE can update their Christmas lists). Ask family members to update their own contact information and to pass along to anybody who might not be on your contact list. List families by household and double-check that cousin Sally isn’t listed twice – at her childhood home and her new SoHo flat. Venue and Accommodations Your venues and accommodations largely will be determined by your budget, but you should also think about your audience. Special accommodations may be needed if there are babies, toddlers, or family members who are visually impaired or use a wheelchair. Check out the site prior to the event. Will it accommodate the whole group if it rains? Is there a severe weather shelter nearby? Does the site have everything you need: electricity, tables, chairs, projector or screen, full kitchen, stocked bathrooms? Nothing’s worse than expecting 125 people and realizing you were supposed to bring your own TP. If you opt for a hotel, ask for a discount rate for room nights. Even if your plan is as simple as setting up tents on Uncle Bruce’s lawn, ask questions. Is there a septic system that people should avoid driving over? Invitations In your first announcement, be sure to provide the basics: dates, location (include the address!), accommodations, and any upfront fees or shared costs. As the event gets closer, update attendees with details about activities and what everyone needs to bring. Swimsuits? A dish for sharing? Additional cash for the latest edition of the family genealogy book or a regional tour? Your last communication prior to the event should contain the schedule of events. It will include a simple layout of the hours and day/s and where activities will be held. This schedule is a kindness for all involved. Keep messages simple and avoid long-winded updates about Aunt Lena’s gout flair-up or the not-so-recent discovery of great-grandpa’s third wife Anna’s missing china in Aunt Mildred’s collection. Tips: Suggest a family hashtag so you can aggregate images on social media during and after the event. Also keep each email heading similar so people can find it easily, e.g. Jaaten Larson Reunion: Accommodations and Jaaten Larson Family Reunion: Graveyard Tour. Activities Activities are a great way to encourage interaction among family members who don’t know each other well. Assign teams (mix by ages and families) to play yard Olympics: bag toss, ladder golf, bocce ball, Klub, washer toss. Create clues for a medallion hunt. If it’s a large group, use nametags. You all may be related, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everybody knows each other. (And think about it: the young ones in your group think anyone over 25 looks the same.) Color coordinate nametags for each branch of the family tree. Bonus points if you can get everyone to wear a nametag every single day. Roles and Jobs You don’t have to do this alone even if you are a prized control freak. Outline jobs for others to take on. Give family members a chance to choose how they want to help. If you are specifically asking people, don’t ask one person to do all the like activities, such as kitchen clean-up, recycling, photography. Ask Sandy to take photos in the morning and Mark in the afternoon. Split up families to prep meals so they can get to know each other. Enjoy the Moments Once the event is underway, stick to the schedule shared prior to the reunion. Everyone will thank you. Be sure to take some leisure time for yourself. After all, it’s your family reunion, too.
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At Reach Partners, we value connections.
We strongly believe that everything is possible when you connect the right people with the right ideas and the right resources. We believe that good can happen when we work together. That said, sometimes making a connection or networking with someone you don’t know is hard. After all, it can be hard to introduce yourself to someone new. It can be hard to continue a conversation about a topic you know very little about. And, it can be hard – at least for some of us – to maneuver through the dreaded silence that follows the obligatory swapping of biographical information. Uh, more spinach dip, anyone? This week (Feb. 2) Reach Partners will be one of the exhibitors at Business After Hours, the region’s largest networking event regularly held by the Chamber of Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo. Hundreds of people mingle with their peers, while enjoying drinks and appetizers. It’s a fun and worthy event. It’s also a time when we can celebrate connections – those with people we know and those we have yet to meet. If you find yourself at Business After Hours, stop by our booth and say hi. We’ll have high-top tables where you can comfortably take a break from wandering. We’ll even provide some fun networking questions that you can use to get to know others a little better. Make a new connection; strengthen an existing one. Either way, we hope to see you there! 5 Fun Ice-Breaking Questions It helps to have a couple of out-of-the-box questions prepared for when you meet someone new. Try these:
Artists, community organizers, program directors, designers, urban planners, large community developers, small HUD offices, mayors, directors, university fellows converged in Phoenix at the generosity of ArtPlace America to explore, share and learn from the observations of those involved in creative placemaking across the country. I was one of the grateful 250 to inquire and learn from the exquisite experts, poets, social organizers and disruptors who shared space.
Artplace America is 10-year collaboration of private and public funders with a focus on community planning and development with arts and culture at the core. I attended because of involvement as Communication Manager with The Fargo Project, a 2014 grantee of the National Placemaking Fund. I don’t want to forget. So what follows is the summary of the connections I made from notes, conversations, and speakers at the 2016 ArtPlace America Summit. With openness and vulnerability each was willing to share their pieces of discovery and the passionate well of curiosity from which they draw and apply to the work (or is it play?) within their place. Together we learned some of the characteristics of great creative placemaking, the challenges, sources of discovery, the advocates, and distinguished the markers of success. It’s important to pause after a project to review, recap and learn from the efforts of all those that contributed. It’s important to get feedback from all involved from the staff, vendors, the customers, sponsors, all those that provided materials or service to the good of the whole. Even if the project doesn’t exactly match the next, comments help you learn what worked, discover where you need grow and imagine how to maximize the next effort. The knowledge gained can help you and others to avoid schedule and cost overruns or improve efficacy. Learn from the last project to carry forward best practices in the future:
The efforts of gathering the crew at the close of the project to kvetch, review, learn and celebrate can strengthen the relationships within the team. A great team paired with the clear recommendations and lessons learned can make the next project run a little more smoothly, efficiently and to the greater good. Rachel, Reach Partners Why is Reach Partners such sticklers for thinking through process before execution? We don’t want to waste time or resources and we want the experience for the user to be as seamless as possible to provide good customer service. Often, we only notice an issue or a problem comes to bear when something doesn’t work or was missed in the planning. For example, in more than a few instances, one of us signed-up our team to attend an event to only find the event organizers did not require emails for each registrant. Later, when information was emailed out to attendees many people were missed (including those on our team). Let’s learn from other’s mistakes and consider a few items when thinking through the registration process for your next event. How well do you know your own event?
Think through the desired outcomes to develop a list of items to collect from each attendee. What do you need besides first, last and payment information? Does the event include time to network, share a story? Do attendees need a special name badge with business information, a “contact me” QR code or icon to differentiate groups within the event? Do you need to know how many chicken dinners to order for lunch or if someone has a raging allergy to Milk Duds? Is there a particular track attendees wish to take or mandatory sessions for a particular job title? Is there an age minimum to participate in the sponsor-hosted Goth-themed pool party? Are some attending for continuing education points? Don’t be THAT planner and have to ask for pertinent details later in your process. There’s always something better you could be doing with your time and resources days or weeks before your event. Lesson learned: collect all the necessary information from the person paying but also those who’ll be in attendance. In using an online system like Eventbrite, you have the option to collect all kinds of information and customizable questions too. You have the power for good or evil with additional questions so please group additional questions in logical order. Also, do ask for information pertinent to the event and don’t use your registration process as a survey. Lastly, always collect email addresses so that you can communicate any last minute event details or share a sponsor’s coupon for a bag of string cheese. Rachel Reach Partners Does a concept ever show up in your life multiple times before you really stop and take notice? That’s how the 7 Mindsets – A Life Changing Revolution was for me. First I was curious when I heard about the book from a friend. It showed-up in my MasterMind’s reading list. Then, I met the authors who were booked at an event I was hired to coordinate. The 7 Mindsets showed up everywhere! Once I spent time studying the material and understood the power, my pre-teenager attended a 7 Mindsets weekend camp to become immersed in the ideas and framework.
7 Mindsets For Success
Date: January 29, 2015 Time: 1:00 – 5:00 pm Cost: $90 investment Speaker: Teresa Lewis, certified 7 Mindsets speaker Registration: http://www.teresainspires.com/event/the-7-mindsets-for-success/ Without the right mindset, skill loses its impact. What if everyone embraced mindsets that led them to be fully engaged at work, appreciate the diversity of co-workers and take inspired action every day? Mastering the right mindsets can put businesses on that path. Research has proven that the 7 mindsets are critical to your happiness and success. This session will teach the mindsets, identify the counter mindsets that can derail us and identify strategies to get better results. Discover the power of your mindset and learn how to master and sustain each of the 7 Mindsets. The 7 Mindsets CAN change your life! Reach Partners and the Women’s Health Conference were excited to partner with Onsharp, a digital marketing company that helps build strategy for online marketing with clear and defined focus. We came to them with no idea how to engage a meaningful online conversation with the audience of the Women’s Health Conference, how to measure success (or failure) or focus our time and efforts. Whitney Nelson, Digital Marketing Strategist and Advanced Funnel Certified, changed all that with a clear road map for content and a schedule for execution. Onsharp truly delivers. This clarity and focus is a subject found in the first issue of the #ONcrew Insider, a newsletter that highlights Onsharp’s success. It describes the partnership and our tremendous success at engaging women and drawing the right people to our website.
When you need a strategy, road map and some clarity when thinking through your digital presence consider working with Onsharp, we are so glad we did! Subscribe to #ONcrew Insider Read more about our work with Onsharp Anita & Rachel We manage events all year round, even on cruel winter days. Often, it’s during a callous stretch of cold and snow when we’ve hunkered down in our homes and offices that we really need a break from the normative to gather, conceive ideas, stretch our minds and get out for something different. For the events held during those cold days of winter we are intentional in planning for bad weather.
Gov Events sum it up nicely: http://www.govevents.com/blog/2014/08/21/weather-to-cancel-or-not/ Rachel, Reach Partners
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