By: April Cortez, WPIC Intern
On Tuesday April 12th, 2011 Tracey Manailescu, Kim Choy and I attended the BizBash Florida Expo & Awards held at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Centre in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This conference was the first conference I went to that was outside of Toronto, so you can only imagine how excited I was to see what South Florida had to offer.
BizBash Expo & Awards ensured each attendee that we would all walk away “fired-up and ready to create incredible events as we emerge from what has been a challenging economy”. This expo consisted of education sessions, keynote presentations, a luncheon, a very busy tradeshow, a tabletop competition, awards and plenty of entertainment all around.
To greet us when we first entered the convention centre was Mix On Wheels to get the crowd excited.
We first went to the morning general session which started off with a welcome by David Adler, C.E.O and founder of BizBash Media. This led to a keynote presentation by America’s Sassiest Lifestyle Guru Steve Kemble who spoke about the Sassiest Secrets from the Red Carpet from Kim Kardashian to Nicole Kidman and how to work with celebs to sell your event.
The opening act was a group called Sing! By T.Skorman Productions, Inc. that sing “Glee-style” songs.
There was a luncheon sponsored by MPI South Florida that featured Dallas Diggs, Executive Consultant of Diggs Group L.L.C. who spoke about the Fast-Changing Face of Multigenerational Marketing Strategies.
The afternoon keynote presentation we attended was with Lee Brian Schrager, Vice-President, Corporate Communications and National Events, Southern Wine & Spirits of America Inc. He spoke about his book “Behind the Scenes at the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival: Thrills and Spills in Crafting Some of the World’s Tastiest Events!” From Mario Batali to Alice Waters and many Food Network favourite receipes, this book should be interesting.
The opening act for Lee Schrager was an amazing acapella group 42Five by Day Entertainment & Events. They blew the crowd away!
ISES held a tabletop competition for local decor companies with the theme of “Holidays”. The holidays portrayed were Halloween, 4th of July, Earth Day, Easter, Valentine’s Day and my favourite that won, Christmas.
A hands-on design lab gave conference goers a taste of what it is to design a tabletop and all of its details from start to finish. The instructor was Donald Braun, President of Donald Braun Events L.L.C
The best part of the whole conference was seeing and meeting the different vendors at the tradeshow.
I thought the best vendor there was Donut Divas & Fun Foods. Mainly because we got to eat deep fried Oreos! Yum!! All photos courtesy of: Kim Choy & April Cortez
The BizBash Expo & Awards South Florida was awesome and I think I’ve caught the Florida bug (we didn’t want to leave)! I’m hoping I can go back and see what’s new in 2012!
Yup, that’ll do it. You have my appreciaiton.