THE NEWS from EventWorks, Inc.

As you can see we had quite the Holiday Celebration! Here Mia Brack Enjem hard at work! We had Much Fun and Merriment thanks to Project Linus. Can't sew? Not artsy-crafty at all? Do not despair - even you could participate in this fun, rewarding activity! During a recent staff meeting we had discussed t that we all wanted to get more involved in a community service. We all have passion for one cause or another and the desire to help - but our work rarely leaves us time to actually make it happen. Then we heard about Project Linus , a non-profit organization with chapters all across the country, that donates home-made fleece blankets to sick or traumatized children in hospitals and shelters. It turns out that the Orange County Chapter Coordinator Patty Krause understands our hectic work place. Anyone can become a "Blanketeer"! A Project Linus Party only takes a good hour. All you have to know is how to cut fleece and tie knots! Done! Kate Brack had pur

"Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome Fremde, etranger, stranger Gluklich zu sehen, je suis enchante, Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay Willkomen, bienvenue, welcome, Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret" We hope to see you at the next SEARCH Foundation Soirée, Chèrs Amis! After all, it is our industry's foundation. We all contribute so that friends and co-workers who need assistance during a health emergency or a catastrophic event can find help. It goes without saying that SEARCH Fundraising Events are wonderful affairs that are really fun to attend! One such occasion is around the corner: Please mark your calendars and get your tickets to the upcoming SEARCH CABARET! --> Wednesday, January 7, 2015 9:00 pm – Midnight Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort 1855 South Harbor Boulevard, Anaheim CA SEARCH is happy to share more details: --> We're thrilled to announce that the highly c

Until we meet at The Special Event 2015 I am honored to be one of the THE SPECIAL EVENT 2015 Ambassadors with David Merrell,  and look forward to our conference in Anaheim in January. It is a great opportunity to exchange ideas, educate ourselves about trends and creative ideas in our industry, and energize ourselves for a new year. But it's not just all business! Gala Night will be a great event, produced by colleagues for their peers. I am really looking forward to the entertainment! Our friends Peter Berliner and Nicole Bernardi from Innovative Entertainment are sponsoring entertainment for the Gala event. We are happy to say that they are bringing an amazing program to the Marquis Ballroom at the Anaheim Marriott  Here a sneak peak into the night: The Red Hot Band After hearing The Red Hot Band, you’ll be talking about their amazing musicianship, clever arrangements, stylized choreography, and sexy-chic look for weeks to come.  As a fi

©Max and Moritz/Wilhelm Busch Yep, we know.... all driers malfunctioned over the weekend and all our clothes shrunk! Thanksgiving was wonderful! By Friday the guilt set in. In a panic, we tracked down DJ Matt Cornwall on his family holiday vacation and begged for help! Get us moving, pleeeeeaaaase! Thankfully Matt could relate and put together a super high energy mix on Spotify that will help you "Bounce, Rock,  Shake It Off!" By the way: this playlist is guaranteed to also keep you warm on the East Coast and chase away the Winter Blues. We hope you had a wonderful Holiday and a great start to the week.

This is our favorite holiday! Thanksgiving is truly a win-win. No stressful gift shopping, no greeting cards, lots of wonderful food and drinks with friends and family. And time to reflect. We have a lot to be grateful for this year and we are so aware of how lucky we are! Lee Dyson feels the same way. He called a few days ago and shared his new Thanksgiving Song List. It's the perfect soundtrack for your Turkey Day. DJ Lee Dyson: "Gratitude is always a good place to go to keep perspective on your life and the world around you. Sometimes we get spun up in daily life and forget to take a pause and think about that. Of course Turkey Day is the perfect day to focus on this so I’ve put together a soundtrack to help. Gobble Gobble!" We hope you catch planes, trains and automobiles to join your favorite group of people for a wonderful holiday! Happy Thanksgiving!

It's all about motivation, motivation, motivation - and Jewel gave 150%! We recently produced a large fundraising event in Orange County. Our client had secured Jewel for a 60-minute set and we had included her in our overall decor in many details. Crystals adorned the floral - and we had Jewel perform in front of beaded stage backdrop to add some sparkle. We were ready for the multiple Grammy winning artist. The contract stipulated a 60-minute set - but Jewel delivered so much more! Ted Bowers: "She is known for her social engagement and her real work for philanthropic causes. Our client could not have made a better choice. Jewel and her production crew were truly appreciative and committed to the purpose of the evening!  Jewel donated a signed guitar for the silent auction and she gave her all on stage. Ted Bowers: "Jewel was fantastic! She was contracted for a 60 minute set and performed for almost 90 minutes. She had the audience mesmerized. Jewel relaye

Rebecca, Manuel, Ella, Kate and furry Beatrice, Melissa, Kory, Marguerite and Gayane. We have been waiting for a chance to let you have a look behind the scenes with our Director of Floral and Event Design Kate Brack. A couple of weeks agothe whole team was hard at work in our studio for a local fundraising event we love. The Event: a large, annual Fundraising Dinner Gala and Concert in Southern California. Location: a Hotel Ballroom. The Challenge: the client changes the theme and the message every year. It is our task to integrate these and create a comprehensive look and feel by tying the invitation's design into every aspect of the night. Kate Brack: "The invitation featured a color palette of deep amethyst accented by tangerine.  Furthermore, the featured entertainer of the night was singer Jewel. We took these colors and added sparkle throughout the design. We integrated this theme in everything: the centerpieces, votives, stage backdrop and bars. The cen

What did it take to create "The Perfect Storm" in Cleveland? We got lucky: Wonderful Client + Great Cause + Beautiful Location + the COMPANY MEN  #throwbackPOP As one band member from the COMPANY MEN put it: "It felt like Summer Camp". Our client is a Cleveland native and after she graciously gave us her personal city tour a while back, we fell in love with it, too. There is so much to do and see in this re-energized city that we expanded our horizons beyond the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame and LeBron. And yes, those two are pretty fabulous, too! So we were looking forward to returning here a few weeks ago to produce a very worthwhile event. Event Producer Kristen Rensch: " Our client is very involved in local philanthropic endeavors, and this particular event was organized to thank the supporters of a unique local playground, that is equipped for special need families, for their participation. We hired the COMPANY MEN to provide the entertain

We love to re-purpose. It makes environmental and economic sense and it allows us to offer great rates to our clients. But our extensive collection of decor elements and furniture and our fabrication studio outgrew our old warehouse space. Repurposing in Action! Production Manager Carolyn Vasi and her great crew needed more room. Fortunately for us, a next door neighbor moved - and we jumped on the space! We added 7500 square feet of warehouse space, now happily spreading out over 30 000 square feet total. Carolyn Vasi: "We got the keys on Labor Day weekend and went right to work to remodel the adjacent building for our purposes. Our amazing crew did it all in just over 6 weeks. They built and installed new ceilings above the office space to create more storage, built new floor-to-ceiling shelving and re-organized it all! We doubled the work shop space! Manuel and his crew can spread out. We have better, more accessible storage. It speeds up the work process."

Janet and Ted returned red-faced from Shanghai on Friday! Yep, our intrepid world travelers got themselves into trouble in this beautiful city - but they were saved by the incredible kindness and outstanding helpfulness of local law enforcement and hotel staff! So what happened? Janet: "We had some free time to explore this fascinating, cosmopolitan city. Ted and I were walking along one of the busy streets of Shanghai when four "20-something" students approached us, wanting to practice their English. They were quite friendly and charming.  So we chatted away. They told us about a tea festival down the street. Always up for a new experience, we went along.  We entered a small tea shop and learned a lot about tea and these 20-year-olds. We had a great time and felt, when the bill came, that we should offer to pay. That evening, over dinner, Ted and I thought about the bill and could not help but wonder whether we had been overcharged as it was somewhat confusin

If found guilty of copyright infringement, under the criminal portion of the law, or liable, under the civil portion, you may face a penalty of five years imprisonment and up to $250,000 in damages. Did we get your attention? What we are talking about is a specific niche in overall copyright law: the soundtrack of your event sizzle reel. You produce a gorgeous affair, Your video team is taping hours of footage. You edit an exciting few minutes,  showing decor, costumes, location, catering and entertainment to promote and demonstrate your work and place the video on your YouTube or Vimeo channel. More often than not we use the native sound, i.e. the band's stage performance audio on the reel. In some cases, we use another song on the soundtrack. So what rights do we have to worry about? Record companies and copyright companies have developed software that allows them to find the most obscure video and its soundtrack. And they will come after you if you violate any copyrigh

What does it take to ensure a flawless conference in two European Capitals within 4 days? Ted Bowers' nerves of steel and expertise! Obviously, we all offered to carry his briefcase and fetch his coffee to go along on this enviable task: the technical production of a conference series in London and Paris. But Ted did not need hometown support. Our client Dennis Maggi, Executive Director of the very prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers, has been relying on us to provide flawless technical and event support for their two annual conferences for several years. We have built a relationship of trust and we really are proud of these assignments. Dennis Maggi: " The College has partnered with Eventworks on our production and events more than twenty years.  It is a collaborative effort and as a small staff organization we consider the team that travels with us to be an extension of our own staff. The College wouldn’t be able to do what it does without the

We had one of those "Ohhhhh" moments recently during an event set up. The audio crew was finalizing the stage set up and running sound checks. The loudspeakers came to life - and we pricked up our ears! Event Producer Kristen Rensch: "At first, everyone just went on with their work but after the first verse was over, there was this shared moment of surprise. We stopped and looked up, really all at once. What was this classic Doo Wop music? Somehow it sounded so familiar. And yet again so different. And finally the "wow, that is a current pop hit! But done so differently and so well that everyone wanted to know "who is that?". The sound crew was playing  Postmodern Jukebox's album "Twist is The New Twerk". Huge success! We all loved it and  several people logged on to buy the album on the spot. I guess we are all ready for something fresh and different - and Postmodern Jukebox really is." Check out what Postmodern Jukebox did with Igg

Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Radio, Google Music - the musical cloud is getting more crowded every day. But how does this affect our industry? Can we just put together our Spotify list and pump it into the loudspeakers? We checked in with DJ Lee Dyson. Lee Dyson: "There is certainly no shortage of options these days for finding new music. Pandora first created the Music Genome Project but like all great inventions some other companies have expanded and even enhanced the idea. Call me a romantic but I do think we are so flooded with options now that something gets a bit lost. As someone who grew up on cassettes and records (and eventually CDs) I remember the feeling of walking out of a store after hours of browsing with a bag full of goodies that I own. I’d spend time reading the liner notes and listening to the album or CD from start to finish in correct song order as the artist intended for me to hear it. As a DJ I’d spend hours and hours in dingy record st

A big part of our job: business travel. Long hours on site but our team makes the very best of it! We love ancillary benefits! Like fabulous locations! We spent the first week of the month in Boston to produce a series of events and we very much enjoyed the surroundings! Here a shot of Brynne Price, Carolyn Vasi and Melissa Cowley on closing night at a site they loved: the Liberty Hotel. Two nights prior, the setting was even more grandiose: The Museum of Fine Arts! We took care not to disturb Chihuly's Lime Green Icicle Tower! To work in such exquisite surroundings is a pleasure! The next ancillary benefit: restaurants! Event Producer Brynne Price is a self-confessed foodie and she loves to explore the new, trendy, most delectable and special places wherever she goes. Her biggest weakness: coffee drinks! We think she should write a travel guide just for coffee houses! Until she does, you can follow her on Instagram: #hipsterfoodie! Not just Brynne's

This was surely the most entertaining business meeting we had in recent months! Danny Bergold, President and Managing Partner of About Entertainment, had scheduled a meeting to introduce us to some of his latest entertainment offerings and surprised us with a live performance by ARIA, his pop opera quartet. We expected Danny with an iPad and his sizzle reel. In came Danny - with the four Australian born singers that form ARIA! Imagine our surprise! Nothing beats the real thing. We got an impromptu show  -  they sang the roof right off the building, unplugged with just a guitar for accompaniment! Janet: "Their voices are just incredible, individually and in harmony! Once Scott Fields, Craig Hendry, Liam McLachlan and Jason Short started to sing, work all around EventWorks stopped. Everyone came out to watch the show. ARIA got a standing ovation from our seasoned event pros. These guys have exemplary talent and they clearly love what they do. The show was so much fun! Thei