TSE 2011

By: Tracey Manailescu

WARNING! A ton of photos 🙂

On January 25-28th, 2011, Danielle and I attended The Special Event (TSE) in Phoenix, Arizona. It is the largest tradeshow and conference in the world for event professionals. This was by far, one of the very best Conference I have ever attended.

The Special Event offered attendees invaluable connections with thousands of key event industry notables and colleagues, and we chose from over 100 Conference Sessions and Training Workshops taught by hand-selected speakers, and checked out thousands of event products and services at the Tradeshow. (It took us over an hour to select the seminars we wanted!)

I took pages and pages of notes in quite a few of the seminars. I plan on attending TSE if not every year, then every other year. Totally worth the investment!

We added to our experience by buying the "Social Package" which gave us access to "The Welcome Event" at Arizona Grand Resort which was co-sponsored by NACE. There were food stations set up all over the private function space of the resort. A live band, Club 90 rocked the night away and various booths were set up to experience the best of Phoenix.

Some of my favourite Seminars were:

"Is Shmoozing Relevant? The Art of Relationship Building"
"Looking at Sales and Business Development as an Event Will Turn Your Business Model Upside Down!"
"The Science and Art of the Making a Gala"
"Showing Your Pretty Parties: Showcase Your Hard Work With Stunning Imagery. Details, Details!!!" (This was with our favourites, Sasha Souza and Damion Hamilton)

We also went to the huge Tradeshow that had more then 300 vendors:

Then there was the Gala: