THE NEWS from EventWorks, Inc.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! As 2017 draws to a close we wish you all a wonderful, peaceful time with your loved ones and we are happy to share thoughts that inspire us to look forward to 2018. Best Wishes from all of us at EventWorks

As we are writing this six wildfires are raging in Southern California. 200 000 people had to evacuate their homes, including our former operations manager Dee Cannella. Life in the Los Angeles area has been turned upside down for the time being. Here is a list of useful links to keep Event Pros up to date. It seems to be the year of natural disasters in large urban areas. We watched from afar as hurricane after hurricane slammed into Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, not to mention the neighboring Caribbean islands and Central America and Mexico and we worried about friends in Northern California when flames engulfed Napa and Sonoma Counties. This time Southern California is making worldwide headlines. According to authorities it could take weeks to get all fires under control but as we learned from Houston and Florida, life goes on. Our friends from the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board sent out a very useful website link that delivers all the information to our indus

Brynne, Alisa, our friend Paul, Janet and Ted. We are happy and honored to be 2018 Gala Award co-nominees for BEST ON-SITE CATERED EVENT BY A HOTEL BANQUET DEPARTMENT:  JW Marriott Los Angeles LA LIVE, and EventWorks, Los Angeles. Jeff Stutts, Director of Event Planning, JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE: “We are honored to be nominated alongside Eventworks for this award, which is a true reflection of the innovation and hard work that goes into executing such a comprehensive event. Eventworks creative staging brought the ‘character’ of each space to life, showcasing the unique capabilities of the hotel’s venues.”   We are very grateful to all our friends at JW Marriott for the wonderful opportunity and the trust they put in our team. Congratulations to all nominees. We will see you in New Orleans. Here is our “California Food and Wine Festival” Event Report: The Event: Taste of California Food  and Wine Tour The Location: JW Marriott Hotel at L.A. Live, Los An

Feeling sluggish this morning? Pants fit a little tighter than last week? We come to the rescue. Get up and dance it off. DJ Lee Dyson delivers this high energy, sure-to-burn-off-the-pounds music list that will have everyone jumping at their desk. Lee Dyson: "GoGo and Be Groovy is all about shaking those hips!" Have fun!

Before you head out to brave traffic jams or airport security check lines to join your family for Thanksgiving, we hope James Corden's "5 Reasons Not To: Thanksgiving" will make you smile as much as it did us. Thank you for watching! Wishing you a wonderful and joyous Holiday!

Yes, #WeLoveOurJob! Kristen Rensch, Lisa Bronitt and Ted Bowers meet and greet Martina McBride. The country artist had been contracted months before the October 7 event. Then the Las Vegas Shooting happened a week prior. Ted Bowers: "Country music therefore became even more relevant in the context of the event, the annual Celebration fundraiser of St. Joseph Hospital of Orange." Emotions ran high at the 2017 Celebration, whose proceeds benefited the Heart and Vascular Center. Ted Bowers: "The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange had invited their friends and supporters to attend the annual event and opened the evening with a prayer for the victims and families of the Las Vegas shooting. The audience response to Martina McBride was outstanding. Martina delivered an uplifting performance and had everyone on the dance floor." The October 7 event raised nearly half a million dollars. We are grateful for the opportunity to support St. Joseph Hospital of Oran

Oh the memories! We had a blast last Friday reminiscing about our favorite Halloween moments. Top row: Kristen with a young friend last year and an adorable Brynne as Pharaoh's Daughter a little earlier in life. Bottom row: Muhammad Ali-sa and a devilish Elizabeth. It feels good to be bad. We also decided to get our very own party on this year as we individually celebrate with our friends and families. Just in time for ghouls and ghosts:  DJ Lee Dyson delivers a fresh 2017 HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST. Click the image and turn up the sound. Happy Halloween!

The Challenge: We had to upgrade an exclusive event at a location that is outstandingly gorgeous and luxurious on its own. Solution: We transformed the grounds. The Event: The Board Dinner Guest Count: 60 Event Date: Saturday, October 7, 2017 Location: The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, California. Alisa Walsh: "The guests of this dinner were very VIP, the founders and hotel owners of our hotel group client. Consequently the Ritz Carlton made many exceptions for us and allowed us to hold this event on the lawn. We were allowed to bring in our own team to transform the space. We decided to bring in Bamboo Lantern tents because they provide such a wow factor and could be seen from all over the property. We had to truck in the tents in from Los Angeles, the only place where they are available." Alisa: "The space allows for 300 guests so we used decor and tent spacing and placing to create a more intimate feel for the 60 VIPs. One tent was a bar, one

La La Land continues to engage international event attendees. We recently brought the show into the ballroom. The Event: WTCF Los Angeles Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit 2017 Dates: 19-20 September 2017 Location: InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown Guest Count: 230 Our Task: highlight and showcase iconic L.A. imagery in all decor and entertainment. We had a blast bringing "La La Land" back on stage, for the first time indoors onto a ballroom stage. The quintuple Oscar® winning film proves to be a wonderful entertainment concept to promote Los Angeles internationally. Ted Bowers: "The colorful backdrops are energizing and very appealing to Asian audiences. The music has become an internationally understood and recognized soundtrack for Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board promotes filming locations to the tourism industry. La La Land's happy, upbeat tone makes it the perfect entertainment vehicle to promote our home town or bring tha

September 26, 2017: Anaheim Convention Center officially opened the addition, ACC North, at the conclusion of a 2-year expansion project. Anaheim now offers 1,8 million square feet of convention space. We love all the event possibilities. Janet and Alisa report from the opening ceremony in Anaheim, California. Congratulations to our friends in Anaheim!  ACC North truly adds value to the meeting and event space. Janet: "ACC North was designed to work with natural light. However, it can be blacked out. The open floor plans,100,000 square feet on the 100 level and an additional 100,000 square feet of carpeted, column-free space on the 200 level, allow us maximum flexibility. We also love the fact that Anaheim maximizes the benefits of our California climate with the 10,000 square foot outdoor balcony. Sunshine and fresh air during a meeting will make everyone happy." What a difference 50 years make. Top, the 1967 opening, bottom the 2017 ACC North

BizBash Event Style Awards 2017 We are grateful and excited to be nominated in the following category: Best Experiential Incentive Program An Automaker's Center of Excellence 2016 Submitted by The Performance Group San Francisco and EventWorks, Inc. Los Angeles. The Event: A 4-Day Luxury Incentive Event Guest Count: 51 VIPs The Location: The Resort at Paws Up, Montana TPG provided a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the guests for whom we created the ultimate glamping experience in this remote location. We are thrilled to be nominated jointly with the executive producing team at TPG. Fingers crossed and best wishes to all of our dear industry friends and colleagues. See you at BizBash in October. Please find more information about this event on our blog: http://thenewsfromeventworks.blogspot.com/2016/08/event-decor-report-boots-to-bling.html http://thenewsfromeventworks.blogspot.com/2016/07/event-report-we-built-it-and-they-came.html

Fall is in the air - we bring the season into the ballroom. The Event: The 3-day Fall Meeting of the American College of Trial Lawyers. Guest count: 800 Our Task: Technical and Event Support. Location: The Fairmont Queen Elizabeth in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Our assignment started with a site visit last April. We had to wear hard hats.  The Fairmont Queen Elizabeth was undergoing a CAN $140 million dollar renovation. Reopened in June, we reaped the benefits of working in a historic location that had received a 5-star make over just before our event.  Ted Bowers: "The staff is truly A+ and very international. Everyone is at least bi-lingual but many staff members speak more than 2 languages. We only encountered two Quebecois drivers who spoke French. Everyone else around was happy to translate." Our Event Manager Ben Majors:  "I guess I'd have to say interacting with the various Canadians in our labor crews, hotel, as well as in the str

The George R. Brown Convention Center served as a shelter. Fresh in our minds: images of devastation. We decided to check the reality of the situation and we can confirm: HOUSTON IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS. Houstonians need your business to continue their overall recovery! As you know we have strong emotional ties to Houston. Our Creative Writer Elizabeth Brazil Dickson calls Houston home. Account Executive Brynne Peña visits her "second home" frequently and spent a week in Houston during Hurricane Harvey. We decided to get an update on the state of Greater Houston. Visit Houston's President Mike Waterman was happy to grant us an interview.  EW: Mr. Waterman, nearly four weeks after Harvey, is Houston ready for business? Mike Waterman: "Absolutely, it actually never closed. I am happy to share a few facts. According to the Harris County Flood Authority approximately 25% of Houston was negatively impacted by the flood. That could have been flooding that cam

The sweaty EWers with PVPLC Stewardship Associate Josh Weinik We got together for our very own team-building day and managed to combine team fun with a good cause.  We broke out the shovels and worked in gorgeous surroundings with the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. We liked it to so much that we will do it again! It had been a while since we had all gotten together just for fun as a team. Our travel and work schedules rarely place us all in town at the same time.  Finally, August 5th turned out to be the right moment. Since our homes are spread out over two counties in Southern California - and those of you who know Los Angeles traffic know what that means - we were looking for a location equally inconvenient for all of us to keep things fair in our search of an opportunity for our good deeds. We found the volunteering opportunity with the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, the perfect fit. About PVPLC: The Conservancy preserves undeveloped land as open

The reunion in full swing on August 24th, before Harvey hit. As Brynne boarded her long-booked flight to Houston to visit her best friends, Bethany Palmer Mayott and Kimi Musser, two California transplants and current Houston residents, the forecast warned of a tropical depression in Texas counties near the Mexican border. But as we know now Harvey changed rapidly into a category 3 hurricane, made landfall repeatedly and stalled over Houston, flooding large parts of the city with record breaking rain fall.  A weekend with Kimi and her family turned into a week in Houston that changed Brynne's outlook on life. "By Friday night the storm moved in very quickly. The rain was pounding so hard that it was impossible to sleep. I had never heard rain that loud. By Saturday morning we started to take precautions. We checked whether we had enough water and bread to last several days. Neighbors informed Kimi and Michael that this neighborhood had never flooded in 30 years. But y