The Miller Tanner difference is our people. That’s why we want to introduce you to our team of superstars that brings our corporate meetings and events to life for our customers.
Today, we introduce you to Carrie Hui, Global Experience Manager – Events. Carrie, fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin, is a highly-valued member of our Asia-Pacific team based in Hong Kong. She is always willing to take on new challenges to support the Global Experiences Team in delivering a successful outcome for our customers.
We’ve curated a mash-up of some of our best blogs with tips for creating successful meetings in the life sciences industry. Use these strategies from the Miller Tanner Team to improve and maximize your meeting’s capabilities.
Miller Tanner Associates (MTA) Chief Compliance Officer Mary Long shares the challenges and best practices for addressing compliance when planning investigator meetings (IM). Read more.
Find out how Miller Tanner Associates partnered with our client to develop solutions to improve the training process for a more successful clinical trial. Read more.
Training, continuity in training messages, and documentation of training are all critical components of a successful clinical study. Learn how to maximize your training strategy. Read more.
We survey every investigator meeting participant so that we can better meet your attendees’ expectations. Here are a few ways you can deliver an exceptional meeting to your medical professional attendees. Read more
The Miller Tanner difference is our people. That’s why we want to introduce you to our team of superstars that bring our corporate meetings and events to life for our clients. Today we introduce you to Senior Global Experience Manager Julie Hagan. With her extensive background in managing a variety of event types, along with her invaluable sense of humor, Julie makes event planning look like a walk in the park; however, behind the scenes, she is skillfully arranging each event’s staffing needs like a pro.
Meet Julie Hagan
Tell us about your current role with Miller Tanner Associates (MTA)? What are your primary responsibilities?
As a senior global experience manager, I work with an incredible team of global experience designers and specialists. One of my primary responsibilities is assigning our team members to our client meetings – both for face-to-face and virtual programs. Staffing is all about aligning our experienced planners with clients to create seamless experiences.
How long have you been with MTA? I have had the pleasure of working at MTA for the past 15 years.
What did you do before joining MTA?
The majority of work I did before joining MTA was in the non-profit sector. I had the opportunity to plan everything from incentive trips and advisory board meetings to international conventions and leadership trainings.
What’s the best part of your job?
The best part of my job is working alongside the amazing Miller Tanner Associates team members. We truly have the best humans on our team hands down.
What’s been your favorite event destination as an event planning professional?
Top favorites on my list for event destinations are Barcelona, Budapest, Berlin, Cape Town, Melbourne, and San Francisco!
Julie in Athens
What’s been your most memorable destination to date and why?
Athens, Greece was always on my bucket list and I’m so lucky that I was able to plan a meeting there. Being able to say I’ve touched the Parthenon is pretty cool. I never dreamed my job would create that opportunity, but it did!
Do you have a few great travel tips that you could share?
Dress comfortably, pack light and always carry an extra toothbrush.
What do you do for fun?
I love sports! I enjoy watching my Ole Miss Rebels, Tennessee Titans, and Nashville Predators. As of recent, I’ve even been seen clapping a time or two for my husband’s Georgia Bulldogs (shhh!).
What do you enjoy most about living in Tennessee?
I’m originally from a small town north of Nashville. I grew up in the same house where my great grandparents first lived. My parents still live in the same house and although the Barbie dolls and Def Leppard posters are gone, my room is always waiting for me when I go back.
I currently reside in Nashville and have to say, it is the best “small town, big city”. It’s known as Music City USA, Nashvegas, The Athens of the South, and Smashville – but I just call it HOME. I love it!
What’s your favorite aspect of MTA?
Our annual face-to-face MTA Workshop is my favorite. Once a year, our company has the chance to gather together to train, learn, and strengthen our professional skills. The outstanding spur-of-the-moment dance parties are pretty fun too. It has been awesome to watch our team grow year after year.
What makes Miller Tanner Associates stand out as a meeting planning company?
We are made up of a collective group of outstanding people that truly care about the experiences we create for our clients. At MTA there is always a time to foster learning, share a smile, and make an impact.
Does the idea of paperless meetings sound daunting or liberating? Here are 10 convincing reasons to shred the paper and embrace the digital devices at your next meeting:
1. Mobile access from any device.
In the digital age, access from anywhere at any time has revolutionized how we work. Having all meeting documentation accessible on mobile devices creates a seamless experience for your attendees.
2. Reduce costs and save administrative time.
When you go paperless, you eliminate the costs associated with printing, ink, and mailing in addition to the administrative time involved.
4. Personalize event schedule with sessions and presentation details.
By digitizing your meeting, you can also personalize the attendees’ event schedule so that there’s no question where they need to be and when they need to be there. This is especially useful for breakout and/or departmental sessions.
5. Distribute real-time notifications.
Keep your meeting’s agenda running smoothly even when change occurs. Last-minute agenda updates and announcements can easily be sent to your attendees through electronic notifications.
6. Consolidate travel and event information in one location for easy access.
Not only can attendees quickly access all meeting details within one source but also all travel details to and from their meeting.
7. Aggregate meeting data automatically and instantly.
A digital dashboard generates more accurate insights into your meeting data giving you the ability to analyze and view metrics visually in real-time with no additional mental effort.
8. Ensure data security.
Sensitive information and digital documents can be easily tracked and managed in a secure portal.
9. Manage more effectively with less effort.
When you consider the amount of time and effort spent managing a meeting and its paper trail – from creating and distributing copies, organizing and filing, and protecting and shredding (for security purposes), it’s much more than you might realize. A digitized meeting frees up time to focus on more important matters like ensuring that your attendees are happy and engaged.
10. Reduce your meeting’s carbon footprint.
U.S. businesses use around 21 million tons of paper each year and discard enough to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York City. You can have an impact on these staggering stats when you choose the environmentally-conscious paperless meeting option to reduce your paper waste.
In effort to help readers to summarize the information found within this post, we’ve recapitulated the article in question and answer form.
How is Mobile Access Beneficial for Paperless Meetings?
The ability to work from anywhere at any time has changed how we operate in the digital age. Having all meeting materials available on mobile devices ensures that your guests have a more-rounded and consistent experience.
Do Paperless Meetings Lower Costs & Save Admin Time?
When you go paperless, you save money on printing, ink, and shipping, as well as the time it takes to manage paperwork.
How Do Paperless Meetings Increase Engagement?
Your participants will be able to prepare in advance and engage more effectively during your meeting if papers and agendas are accessible from any device prior to the meeting date.
How Do Paperless Meetings Provide Enhanced Security?
With a secure gateway, sensitive data and digital documents may be readily monitored and better controlled.
What are Some Other Ways Paperless Meetings are Beneficial?
Instantly aggregating meeting data because a digital dashboard provides more accurate insights into your meeting data, allowing you to visually evaluate and see metrics in real time without exerting any extra mental effort. Furthermore, when you select for the ecologically friendly paperless meeting option to cut down on paper waste your meeting’s carbon footprint is drastically reduced.
Sydney is Australia’s largest, oldest and most diverse city. It has become one of Miller Tanner’s popular destination cities for hosting meetings and events because of its multicultural diversity, its proximity to Asia-Pacific, its dynamic landscapes, and hotel conference sites and amenities.
We asked our own Global Conference Director Natalie Lowndes, who moved to Sydney from England, why she believes Sydney is one of Australia’s most desirable meeting locations and why it’s a good choice for meetings and events. Continue reading “Top 5 Reasons to Host an Event in Sydney”
You’ve heard the saying, “no man is an island”. The same holds true for events.
Events simply cannot survive in and of themselves. Successful events require an abundance of resources – research, focus, knowledge, and logistical savvy – in order to orchestrate their many moving parts.
Many companies try to go it alone and assume that planning an event using internal resources will save money when that’s usually not the case; companies often spend more either financially or in taking up other resources by not hiring a professional planner.
When you hire a professional planner, like Miller Tanner Associates, you are also employing our professional planning expertise and our extensive network of vendor relationships with hotels, rental facilities, AV companies, and more. Planners have access to discounted rates that typically aren’t available to those outside the industry. Our MTA event planning professionals also have the unparalleled skillset and know-how to negotiate the best rates and in turn, pass those savings on to you, our clients. We have the processes in place to efficiently manage your event through our intuitive event management tools and to keep your event on track from start to finish.
Beyond saving your company money, time, and resources, professional planners are passionate about what they do and have the aptitude for doing it. Because they are engaged in planning events every day, our corporate event planners possess a deep reserve of knowledge, creativity, experience, problem-solving, and vision that just can’t be easily replicated. By relying on a planner, you’ll have the confidence that every detail of your event is thoroughly planned, seamlessly executed, meets compliance requirements, and, most importantly, is delivered within budget.
Contact us to learn more about how our team can partner with you to plan a successful, exceptional event experience.
Event planning can be challenging if unprepared. It demands time, focus, research, budgeting, logistical skills and relevant knowledge that many corporate leadership teams simply don’t possess. Full article
Studies suggest that every 15-20 minutes a listener’s mind wanders. In fact, 91 percent of business professionals admit to daydreaming during meetings and 39 percent confess to falling asleep, according to a “Meetings in America” study conducted by MCI.
Given these statistics, how can you be sure then that your audience is understanding your message and retaining the information you’ve worked so hard to deliver?
The meeting planning experts at Miller Tanner have a few proven ways guaranteed to make your presentation more engaging with the help of technology.
Go Bold (or go home) with an LED Screen
Your presentation is only as good as its display capabilities. So deliver it in a way that captures your audience using a dynamic LED screen.
You just can’t compare the clarity and vibrancy of an LED screen to a projector. The quality is unmatched.
What’s most impressive is that an LED screen has much greater versatility and resolution than your basic options. The presentation possibilities are virtually endless – from delivering highly-engaging video content to interactive Powerpoint and Prezi presentations displayed at scalable sizes. Visually-rich presentations boost engagement and knowledge retention. There’s no need for boring presentations ever again.
Gone are the days of simply giving a speech. Your audience wants interaction. Use Audience Response System (ARS) to enhance your meeting’s engagement and launch your interaction. By using these small yet powerful devices, transform your presentation into a more interactive discussion. ARS offers real-time live discussions, instant feedback, and instant polling.
You can ask your audience questions in a wide variety of formats, such as multiple-choice, rating, text response, polling, voting and even fun game challenges, which are great for team building. These options add more exchange of thoughts and ideas within your presentation so you know that your message is getting through to your listener. Your audience will feel more involved and invested in the discussion and less likely to tune out your message.
As event planners, our job is to find creative solutions to deliver a successful event or meeting. With your goals in mind, our team can determine the latest innovative technology solutions to ensure that your presentations don’t fall flat. We work with top-notch vendors to bring creative solutions to the stage so that you can have the best interaction with your audience…and have fun while doing it. Virtual reality (VR), hologram technology, Catchbox, and ARS are just a few of the options that you can use to design a presentation that will captivate and engage your audience.
If you need the expertise to improve your presentations using the latest technology, our team can provide guidance. Contact our team today!
Which details would you consider the top priority when planning a corporate event?
First and foremost, we always like to find out the client’s goal for the meeting. Once we know that, we can hone in on more of what the top priorities are for the client. We find that giving the attendees an “experience” that is unique and memorable seems to resonate the most with all clients.
What is one essential that no corporate event should ever be without?
Good food and time out of a hotel ballroom to truly connect are essential. Training and lectures are needed but, especially for corporate events, your attendees are much more productive when they can sit in small groups around a fire pit or in a local pub and share ideas.
In your opinion, what’s one benefit of hiring an event planner?
When you are hosting an internal event, your focus should be on connecting with your colleagues, engaging with your team and getting the full experience of the event. There are so many details, decisions, and frankly, too many “fires to put out” when you are on site; It would be difficult to master both – juggling the details and enjoying the full experience. Having experienced event planners plan your meeting allows you to disconnect from the logistics and focus on your team. Our planning team can see “fires” before they start; we know how to pivot when it goes off track. We have plans and processes to make the entire event run smoothly.
How far in advance do you recommend planning a corporate event for companies considering an incentive trip for their team?
For incentive trips, we recommend a year plus. Depending upon the time of year, you usually have a lot of leisure travelers at these locations which are typically more upscale destinations. The options for availability at hotel properties sell out much more quickly so it’s important to start planning well in advance.
What are some corporate event destinations that we’ve planned recently and why were those locations chosen?
Charleston, Scottsdale, Philadelphia, Cayman Island, Mexico, Key Largo, Las Vegas, Santa Monica, New York, Orlando, and Turks & Caicos have been the most recent destinations.
Each client has their own reasons for choosing a location but most of the time it comes down to convenience and ease of travel to and from the city. Also, depending upon the goal of the meeting, sometimes the time of year and weather preferences are high on the list of musts.
The location of the actual property is one of the most attractive things about these events. If attendees are immersed in the culture of the city and able to walk and explore on their time off, it makes the experience of the event that much more enjoyable.
What is the most exciting part of planning and executing a corporate event from your perspective as a planner?
Finding new ways to engage the attendees and bringing in new vendors that offer something completely unique is an exciting aspect of planning.
Based on the feedback from event attendees, what element of the corporate event seems to be the most impactful?
Attendees seem to prefer events where they can “choose their own adventure”, have a surprise gift that they can personalize themselves, or choose which gift they want from a variety of high-end options.
What’s one activity that was the most fun to plan and see executed?
Any of our incentive trip events would be high on the list. We get to create fun, themed nights for a small group of people and really get to see the surprise and impact that it makes on the group.
What’s different about MTA events compared to other companies?
We aren’t just checking things off lists—we listen. We make sure that it’s the event and experience that our customers want to bring to life. And we use our expertise in logistics and design to make sure that it is truly a remarkable event that your attendees will talk about when they get back home.
Our Global Experience Team can help you design your next incentive trip, global sales meeting, or other corporate event.For more information, contact our team today.
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