The end of 2004 is near and what a great year it has been! We wish all of our clients, suppliers and industry friends a joyful holiday season and we look forward to keeping you enlightened and informed in 2005!

The Honourable Gerry Phillips
Chair, Management Board of Cabinet

	Start your engines – NASCAR excitement! Dana captures the excitement of the NASCAR Pits with her digital camera at Nextel’s Industry Analyst Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Attendees enjoyed a fun filled day, with not a care in the world because Dana was equipped with aNd’s famous emergency on-site kit which included everything from band-aids to extra Nextel phone batteries to EARPLUGS!
	Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy conferences end in a twist! These annual fall Pharmacy conferences ended differently than their usual final conference in Halifax. To honor the growing number of French stores, the conference moved from Halifax to Montreal. Delegates and conference staff alike were challenged by the 5,000 protestors outside of the Palais des congrès. While the Pharmacy conference continued inside the Palais, the protestors sang, played drums, and displayed a 16 foot wooden Trojan horse to oppose the Liberal party, who was also holding meetings in the same venue. Luckily, they were a non-violent group, and the 500 riot police (see below for evidence!) also present helped to keep them in check!
Riot Police Protecting the Palais

There is usually a sigh of relief once an event or a conference program is officially over. However, there are post conference activities that need to take place, one of the most important ones being an evaluation tool. We assist our clients in creating evaluation forms in order to measure the overall success of the event and to determine whether objectives have been met. Aspects we urge our clients to consider when evaluating an event include the following:

• What type of evaluation tool to use? Is the audience more willing to fill out a paper-based evaluation form during the closing session of the event, or will they be more responsive to an on-line format? Knowing your audience is critical for obtaining good results!
  
  
• What kind of information to gather? Consider which aspects of the event you would like to receive concrete data on such as the venue, location, registration, speakers, exhibitors and special activities. Gathering the right data will assist you in knowing what worked and what can be improved for next year’s event.
  
  
• How to design the evaluation form? We assist clients in remaining clear, concise and to the point in designing registration forms. Asking the right questions, using rating options as opposed to open ended questions will ultimately provide quality results in overall evaluation results.
  
  

As meeting professionals, we know that feedback on any event can be used to the advantage of the client, the event, the attendees and the meeting planner. Using our skills and knowledge in creating, tabulating and providing overall results of evaluations provides our clients with the foresight to plan bigger, better and high quality events.

With the holiday season right around the corner…….

Corporate gifts provide advantages that are not available with other mass media methods and they have the capacity to serve virtually any size business and advertising budget. Specialty gifts can be effective on their own as an advertising campaign or as a reward or incentive.

• High Recall- Allows a name and/or message to be consciously noted frequently and with ease.
  
  
• Perception- Can convert a neutral perception to a positive one through the extra service displayed by giving the promotional gift.
  
  
• Cost-effective- A one-time cost brings about repeated visual advertisement over a long-term lifespan.
  
  

“Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”

- Margaret B. Runbeck