That was 2015!

2015 was a busy year, so much so, we didn't update our blog much! But Jim did find time to speak to 80 school children.

We worked with two Dukes, a Lord and a Knight. We were in Dubai and Barcelona, again and planning in Italy.

We enjoyed working with new clients from automotive, retail and from the events industry.

We were nominated for awards from EVCOM, ABPCO and the Institute of Internal Communications, were a finalist in one, commended in another, won a bronze and two gold awards.

We welcomed Mike to the team and welcomed back Jennifer from maternity leave.

We had great fun filming at the top of the Gerkin, the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-talkie building all in one morning. We enjoyed working with some leader YouTubers and 30,000 gamers with the Multiplay team at Insomina over the Bank Holiday weekend.

We supported NYAS, When You Wish Upon a Star and the National Trust with pro-bono work and made donations to the Bone Cancer Research Trust, Christies and other causes nominated by our client contacts.

We enjoyed opera with Paul Potts, laughed with Bill Bailey and heard insights from Sir Clive Woodward.

We added a new re-usable exhibition system which helped our exhibition team successfully deliver from Exeter to Glasgow and everywhere in between.

We used new App tech, new NFC tech, new Drone tech, new 4K cameras, we tracked dozens of coaches with live GPS trackers and watched 1,100 delegates as they journeyed towards us from all over the UK.

Our events teams worked up and down the country delivering birthday parties, roadshows and conferences. We worked in as varied spaces as ever, including railway arches, nightclubs and livery halls in addition to the usual 5-star hotels, cinemas and convention centres.

We filmed new store openings, pop-up restaurants, health and safety videos and our 3D effect Croquembouche video for Iceland enjoyed over 6 million views.

Now we look forward to our 20th anniversary year in 2016.

Award Nominations

By Joanne Madeley

We are very pleased to announce we have been shortlisted for a number of awards over the coming months for one of our events with the National Trust including the following: 

C&IT Awards - Best Use of a Small Budget #CITawards

ABPCO - Best Conference by an Agency Conference Organiser 

Institute of Internal Communication - Live Event 

EVCOM Clarion Awards - Live Event: Conference 

Thanks to everyone who was and is involved including all the team in the office and the National Trust. We're keeping everything crossed and will post updates as we go! 

When the venue doesn't care...

Two of the winners on their way to London

By Alan Wight

Picture yourself stood on the street outside Mahiki, one of London's most prestigious nightclubs, with the CEO and MD of one of your largest clients, accompanying 10 incentive winners on a trip of a lifetime; and the nightclub refuse you entry -  despite having pre-booked and having a long paper trail of correspondence and confirmations.

Sometimes we deal with businesses who don't care, have no honour and break their promises. Thankfully it is rare.

We had been asked by Iceland Foods, one of our favourite clients (who are always as good as their word), to organise their managers' incentive trip. This one was particularly tricky because in previous years it had been held in Ibiza, New York and Monaco - this was a year of austerity - so we had to put together a 5-star trip to London.

The 5 winners and their partners were flown into London by helicopter, enjoyed private cars, 5-star accommodation at the Corinthia, special treatment at the offices of DWF, another of our clients, at their London offices high in the Walkie-Talkie building. They took in a west end show, enjoyed the sights before their highlight, an evening with Malcolm Walker, Iceland's founder and CEO and Nick Canning, Joint-MD. They had a fantastic dinner at Novikov restaurant and then were heading to Mahiki nightclub to dance with the stars.

Mahiki didn't let them in.

We had been concerned about this possibility from the outset. Taking a group of people into one of the trendiest nightspots felt like a risk.

We booked a booth, 4 months before the trip. We agreed minimum spend, signed a contract, with penalty charges if we were more than 15 minute late for our arrival slot, we agreed specific drinks and refreshments. We had the usual relationship that we would expect from people at a venue. But, being paranoid event people, we went to visit Mahiki 2 days before - met the event contact, walked through the venue, discussed the plans for the evening and the service expected - they had taken another large booking and moved us upstairs (less desirable apparently) and to compensate were going to send over some goodies on the night. Being paranoid, our event managers on the ground were in contact via text to the event manager on the day and evening and actually agreed to an earlier arrival than the booked time.

So you can understand their shock when the girl on the door said there was no record of the booking. When she was shown the correspondence she changed her attitude, not as you would expect, but she said they had sold our booth. No apology, no alternative, nothing. Goodbye.

Malcolm Walker decided he wouldn't want to go into such a rude establishment anyway, rang Annabel's, one of London's oldest and finest clubs and they welcomed the group, looked after them by providing jackets for the men who didn't meet the dress code criteria and the night was rescued.

The subsequent response from Mahiki has been nothing. No replies to any of our emails or calls, no unprompted apology or compensation, absolutely nothing.

The response from Malcolm Walker was to be affronted on our behalf at the lack of service, so he wrote this article for his regular column in the trade publication Retail Week, and instructed his lawyer on breach of contract.

http://www.retail-week.com/comment/malcolm-walker-what-mahiki-can-learn-about-customer-service-from-iceland/5076206.article?referrer=RSS&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we stand by the decision to try and give our guests the best possible experience, took every care in making sure that everything was in place and then were let down by people who don't care.

We're not big believers in contracts and written agreements, we believe in honouring commitments, fulfilling our promises, delivering what we agree to deliver. We often have to create a written contract or agreement to formalise the terms of our service to fulfil the requirements of due process, but we have never had to call upon the terms to overcome a dispute, because of the way we work. We do what we commit to do.

Our choice of suppliers mirrors our way of working. We select suppliers who have the same basic values as us, as far as we can. Our regular suppliers, the ones we favour, all think like we do. We don't often have written agreements, we are as good as our word and so are they. Together we thrive by caring for each other.

Giving Something Back!

by Jim Kirkpatrick 

“Do you do this full time?”

“No, we also look after live events.”

This was the beginning of my journey from setting up equipment and managing live events to standing on a stage for the first time and talking to a group of people about anything!

The person who asked the question is Miss Addison, the Head Teacher at the Cavendish Junior School in Derbyshire and I interviewed her for a video which we were making for Chatsworth House.

5 minutes later I had agreed to do a presentation in front of 90, 7 to 10 years olds during their morning assembly, how hard could that be? After all we work in a highly visual world. Unlike a lot of presenters I didn’t have to worry about KPI’s, sales forecasts and no one reading their emails because the presentation didn’t apply to them, just play our fast paced show reel video, hide behind a bunch of props from old jobs, throw in an easy to follow joke around about the middle and finish up with a picture of a zombie, what could go wrong?

https://uk.pinterest.com/

With 3 weeks to prepare I wrote a presentation which included connections between the events industry and some of the things which children learn in the early years of school.

The children were a perfect audience who watched and listened with the kind of concentration that most presenters can only dream of!

This was an interesting and surprisingly enjoyable experience for me. My advice to anyone who has to do a presentation is prepare early and try it out on someone before you unleash  it on your audience, what makes perfect sense to you may be unclear to everyone else. 

App of the month

by Joanne Madeley 

The reason why I love events is I always get to learn something new, no matter how big or small, extending my knowledge is something I welcome. 

Whilst working on a charity fundraising evening in London last week, we needed a quick and efficient way to take card payments. Very few people tend to carry cash around with them, even if they are intending to donate to charity so we needed a reliable system that would be easy to use. 

World Pay was the chosen app for a numbers of reasons; we loved that it would accept payments anywhere with mobile network coverage, it accepts all major credit or debit cards as well as only taking seconds to process. If you require a receipt this can also be completed in seconds, being sent to a mobile phone number or email address. 

Bluetooth connects the World Pay handset to whatever device your using, computer, tablet or phone. The system works much faster using WiFi but will function off 4G alone in order to transfer the payment. 

It really is as simple as that, quick and easy to use and looks sleek in front  of guests, we would certainly recommend. 

That was 2014!

As we load the van for the first event of 2015, it's worth reflecting on another busy year completed - the year we never got around to celebrating our 18th birthday! These are some of the highlights...

We moved office after 16 years at Carrington to newly fitted out offices in Sale, Manchester. We welcomed Amanda, Katy, Louise and Amie to the team. Jo flew to New York to get married and Jennifer left to have a baby (Harry Matthew Houlihan was born on 3rd January, somewhat behind schedule). 

We started to work with several new clients this year and continued some longstanding relationships with existing ones working on a wide variety of projects. Some of which included:

Store openings and new office openings, a 21st birthday, retirement dinner, leased lighting equipment, Christmas parties, a thermal marquee, exhibitions in Paris, Dubai, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. 

We ran an incentive trip to Ibiza that included private yachts, private jets and private villas. Worked in cinemas in London, Dublin and all over the UK, flew delegates into the UK from 3 continents and worked with children's charities and national charities. We supported two outdoor weddings and got away with the weather at both, organised factory tours and fashion shows, sales briefings, change briefings and business briefings. We produced a number of road shows and outdoor festivals, supplier conferences and burns night dinners and worked on Wembley's pitch and on the grid at Silverstone. 

We pushed our technology boundaries using video drones, we used live video streaming and took over Caerphilly castle for filming. We changed our app and registration technology as well as adding direct train and flight bookings to our services. 

We had Jo recognised in the top 35 event professionals aged under 35 and we also won a C&IT award for best use of a small budget for the National Trusts Convestival event. 

We ended the year successfully supporting two private events on Christmas day. 

Thank you to everyone who we worked with in 2014 and we look forward to more adventures in 2015. 

Why fireworks and trams don't mix

by Joanne Madeley

Fireworks for New Year's Eve, as seen from the Police Helicopter @NPAS_Barton

An anti climax for some, the event of the year for others whichever way you look at it the countdown and what comes after is the highlight of the evening. Manchester's firework display was definitely the talking point of New Year's Eve but unfortunately not for the right reasons. 

New Year's Eve enthusiasts had to wait four minutes past midnight to celebrate the arrival of 2015 as a tram apparently pulled into the the firework zone, halting the midnight display that the public had eagerly waited for. 

Fireworks often come with their own set of problems, needing rigorous risk assessments, temporary event notices and numerous health and safety measures. The likelihood of a tram entering the display zone isn't something that would come to mind, unless you were working within a busy city centre but even so, surely this would have been thought of weeks, even months before.

There needed to be an advance transport plan, much like the blog we wrote on the Ideal Home Exhibition at the Trafford Centre. We can only presume that a plan was put together but somewhere along the lines there was mixed communication. For Event Managers it's about actively managing everything and trying to think of all the possible things that could go wrong and not letting these happen.  

Some may say it added to the suspense of the evening, but timing is often everything in this industry and the control freaks within us have to to take control of every possible variable!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from everyone at Cascade. 

Wishing you all a prosperous New Year and an event filled 2015! 

www.ninerbakes.com

Thinking Differently about Dietary Needs

by Alan Wight 

As event planners one of the routine questions we ask our delegates and guest is about special dietary requirements. We ask this to ensure that no individual is served something that they cannot eat. But it goes a little deeper than that, we ask the question before we decide the menu, so that we understand the variety of dietary needs we are catering for - because in an ideal world every one of our guests would enjoy the same meal or as close to the same meal as everyone else.

We consider these five categories in this priority order:

No dietary requirement

Usually the majority of people - so we plan the core menu around them - what is the cultural mix, the theme of the event, the style of service, what have they eaten before and so on.

Allergy or medical intolerance

People who cannot eat certain foods for medical reasons are a particular challenge - because often they are not eating things they would love to have but can't. They don't choose to be that way, they can't change religion or decide on a different diet - if they eat the wrong thing, they become ill. For that reason, we do everything we can to ensure that the menu is planned and the food prepared to enable everyone to eat the same thing as far as possible or with simple substitutes where appropriate.

 The menu solutions are often straightforward, using lactose free milk and butter, using cornflower in sauces in place of wheat flour, avoiding nuts, providing alternatives to fish or cheese within the same salad or dish. Whatever it takes, we try to avoid these guests from feeling 'special', we want them to feel a normal part of the event.

 Religious beliefs

In many religions the preparation and selection of food is very important. The biggest religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism all have differing rituals, fasts and beliefs with regard to food. This doesn't just include prohibited meats, commonly pork and beef, also the manner of the slaughter and blessing - Halal and Kosher for example, some margarines, gelatine and other cooking substances often contain prohibited foods. Fasts and festivals are important in planning too, so that those fasting during daylight hours have the means to eat after sunset.

Lifestyle choice

Ironically, those who have special dietary needs through choice are often the best catered for. Wherever possible we aim to ensure that the vegetarian dish is the same as the main dish, with a meat substitute - it should present as the same dish. Vegan, gluten free (not for medical reasons) and other lifestyle choices are catered for as far as possible by removing ingredients from the main dish or if necessary prepare a separate dish.

Dislikes

When we ask the dietary question there are inevitably those who tell us what they do or don't like i.e. 'only eat beef' or 'don't like fish' or 'don't eat broccoli'. We will review these answers as part of the menu design with an awareness of the number of individuals expressing the same preference, but usually we would hope to accommodate the needs of everyone through the main menu and the vegetarian alternative.

For us, understanding dietary requirements, the motivations and the importance to the individual is paramount - working closely with the chef and the catering team and trying to treat everyone the same is what works best.

Staff Parties

by Alan Wight and Joanne Madeley

In the UK, employers are limited in the amount of money they are allowed to spend entertaining their staff. HM Revenue & Customs set the limit at £150 including VAT per person for annual parties open to all employees (like a Christmas party or Summer BBQ). If you hold more than one event and the total value exceeds £150 then there are strict rules that the employee is liable to pay the full tax and NI contribution (and the employer also has to pay employers NI too).

Crucially, the £150 cannot be a contribution to a more expensive event and the company pay the difference - the total cost of the event has to be less than £150 per person. 

Read more on the HMRC website: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/payerti/exb/a-z/s/social-functions.htm

However Business Visits and Events Partnership (BVEP) have recently bid to double the tax exemption for staff parties which would set the limit at £300 making a huge difference to a number of businesses. 

Read more here http://www.meetpie.com/Modules/NewsModule/newsdetails.aspx?t=Party-tax-exemption-could-be-Christmas-gift-to-industry&newsid=19764

Some business events could fall foul of this law if there is not a clear business purpose - talk to the Cascade team if you are in doubt, we have good experience in this area.

It's also worth bearing in mind that prizes, awards or incentives are also considered to be Benefits-in-Kind by HMRC and are also liable to tax.

C&IT Winners 2014

by Joanne Madeley

We're excited to say that we are C&IT award winners for the second year running winning the category for Best Use of a Small Budget for National Trust Convestival 2013. 

We worked closely with the National Trust to design and produce an event that was part-conference, part-festival. The two day event delivered crucial messages on how to approach volunteer management through a variety of creative workshops and plenary sessions.

A brilliant team effort from everyone and we're already looking forward to next year!

Congratulations to all the winners.  

#citawards

Joanne Madeley and Hollie Wright excepting the award on behalf of the team, presented by Mariella Frostrup. 

App of the month - AeroWeather

AeroWeather

by Joanne Schofield 

There's nothing we love more than finding new apps and trying them out and AeroWeather is particularly useful. Our weather is so changeable in the UK having a weather app is a necessity and now we're well into summer (kind of) this means more outdoor events, so we always need to be on the look out for rain!

AeroWeather gives access to live weather reports from meteorologists based at airports around the world. It provides weather information at any airport right now and forecasts for the coming hours. The coded meteorologists terminology is automatically translated into plain English by app making it easier to understand if and when that down pour is going to happen!

Extremely useful for on the day decisions that can determine whether your outdoor event is going to be wet or dry! 

When the Police get called...

Manchester Evening News photograph of the traffic outside the Trafford Centre

If visitors to an event I was organising were so frustrated with the travel organisation that they called the police, I would be devastated. Amazingly that happened at two events in Manchester on Saturday!

At the Ideal Home Exhibition, the roads around EventCity (event venue) and the Trafford Centre (shopping mall next door) were in a gridlock. The situation was so frustrating that some drivers called the police after being trapped for up to 90 minutes and it made the local press.

EventCity claimed that traffic was flowing freely and being managed – the Trafford Centre claimed that their car park plan was working well and the problems were due to factors ‘beyond their control’. In reality, there were cars parked on verges, on kerbs and everywhere. Stewards, with radios, looked bewildered and elsewhere there were empty car parks. Roads all around were at a complete standstill (not helped by minor accidents on the motorway and a nearby Parklife music festival).

This is what we observed, and there are lessons for all event managers:

-        There was a large consumer exhibition being held at EventCity – it needed advanced traffic planning with all local agencies including the exhibition centre, the adjacent shopping centre, the local authority and the police.

-        It needed a traffic plan. Starting on the motorway with matrix signs directing travellers to different destinations using different exits.

-        It needed signage – advise travellers which car park to head for, and change that when each car parks get full.

-        Have a plan. Actively manage where people park – all day. Let the stewards, security and authorities know what’s happening and let them provide live updates.

-        Be aware – the consumer show, the Ideal Home Exhibition, had been heavily advertised in the weeks before. The weather was dreadful but that had been forecast for days before – and that meant more people travelling to the shopping mall. The music festival was a known factor. On the morning it was easy to forecast problems with traffic, so have the hands available to manage and direct drivers and make people aware that there is a plan and that everything that can be done is being done – that way you can avoid the roundabouts and traffic lights becoming gridlocked and above all you stop individual drivers creating their own solutions and abandoning their car, without regard for the consequences.

At the Parklife music festival, there were very different problems and much better organisation. There, the organisers had laid on dozens of buses to take visitors back to the city centre at the end of the night. They had erected fencing to create managed queues.

An impatient minority broke the fences to jump the queue and were not stopped because there appeared to be too few stewards and those who were around seemed not to know what to do. The consequence was a complete breakdown in the queue system, the bus operation was suspended until police arrived.

The following night, there was large numbers of security and a police presence and everything worked well.

Manchester Evening News Photograph from Parklife's bus queue

As event planners it’s important that we take control and understand the whole event experience for our attendees – it doesn’t matter how good the Ideal Home Exhibition was inside or the music at Parklife, the experience for many outside was poor and that is what they talk about afterwards. So in the minds of many people there is an association between bad event management and both the venue and the event.

I’m glad I was just a driver caught in the middle of the chaos at the Trafford Centre and not responsible for the mess - and that my son escaped Parklife and, like many others, chose to walk home.

Lessons for us all!

Should we share our supplier base?

Here’s a question we get asked from time to time by clients.

“Please could you tell me the phone number of the people you used last time to do X?”

There’s a conundrum. This obviously means you are holding an event and may or may not be involving us this time. You would like the details of one of our suppliers so that you can book them yourself.

Of course we are immediately offended, fold our arms and assume the worst.

And because of our paranoia we assume:

• Maybe you are booking them instead of us, so we can be ‘cut out’ (therefore you liked what our supplier did but not what we did).
• Maybe you hope to save money by cutting out the middle man (we don’t mark up external costs so you don’t pay more BUT we might get a discounted rate because of the volume we book and on rare occasions, a commission*).
• Maybe you are checking their rates directly to see whether we ‘ripped you off’ (see above).
• Over time, we provide more and more contact details and render ourselves redundant!

Are we right?

Of course, there is an alternative view:

Someone’s boss asked them to get hold of XX, “you know, like we had at the last conference”

Nothing sinister, no judgement, no other consequences.

How can we tell which applies?

We never know but we do have a vast number of suppliers built up over years, qualified and checked - some amazing, some good, some that need careful management - if we give the details we are endorsing the supplier even though they may not be the one we would choose for your specific need…

So for all these reasons, we don’t give out supplier details. If you think we’ve got it wrong, talk to us.

* We hate commission generally because we believe that it creates a fundamentally doubting culture in the supply-chain, wherever possible, we will negotiate a preferred rate instead.*

Netflix: A lesson in Values

by Alan Wight

We came across this Slideshare presentation by Reed Hasting about Netflix. It sets out how they view their own culture and the idea of paying top dollar, hiring the best and not tolerating poor performance. Some of the principles are controversial and very interesting!

Culture from Reed Hastings

App of the month - Dropbox

by Joanne Schofield 

This is an easy one for us, a straightforward app that saves all your files in one place. Years ago we would go to the filing cabinet, file away our documents under varying headers and projects and shut the drawer. However, when it came to sifting back through these, trying to find that one document you needed was painstaking. 

Saving your documents onto a 'cloud' is nothing new but we become immune to how clever this technology is. We're used to having a physical piece of paper in a draw, now it's floating around in a cyber world. Genius. 

Dropbox has many advantages, it's a free service which is brilliant, however if you require more storage this is chargeable but you're getting a lot for your money. Bags of storage that can hold photos, documents and video's anywhere...not just in the office, but anywhere. 

Using Dropbox as part of your company is great, but one obvious thing we would recommend is not syncing huge files to the shared Dropbox, this can slow everyone's server and make working as painful as that filing cabinet. We had to learn the hard way. 

However creating your own personal account is a way of getting around this and this can be downloaded to sit next to your shared Dropbox but still keep privacy from other users. 

We would definitely recommend. 

Should you use venue equipment?

This is often a question I get asked a lot - what equipment does the venue have? Isn't it easier to use that instead of hiring externally? Probably, if you want to save time making a couple of phone calls, but in the long term and for the success of your event it may not be. 

Every venue is different and every venue looks after it's technical equipment in a different way. This can range from never being serviced to having an in house tech team that regularly maintain the onsite equipment. 

One of the most important parts of a conference is the technical equipment. If the power fails there is no event, if the PowerPoint fails there is no content or if the projector fails there are no visuals. I can go on but you get the idea...failure isn't an option. 

In my experience it isn't worth taking the risk and whilst many venues have great technical equipment, we always go with what we know, trusted suppliers who we have worked with for years who we know won't let us down. They triple check everything they bring and always have spares on hand - no matter how big! Our suppliers have technicians who also come onsite with us who work day in, day out with this equipment and know just what to do with it in case the worst happens. 

As a general rule we would always advise to use our technical equipment/ suppliers - the tech can be one of the most stressful things on the day for both the team and the delegates...it needs to right. 

Apple vs PC...

by Alan Wight 

Sorry Apple. We have just switched our computers back to PC. This is why.

When we started out 22 years ago, we had Macs, then we switched some machines to PC (Windows 95 & 98), then we switched them all to PC (Windows XP), then we partly moved back to Mac (OSX), now we have fully migrated back to PC (Windows 7 & 8.1). Why?

The real answer is in the software. Whilst we use a variety of software packages, the bulk of our time is spent in the Microsoft Office suite and in the Adobe Creative Suite. Both of these are available on Mac & PC. Adobe is similar on both but Office is far superior on the PC. Working across a network, sharing network printers, using email collaboratively, serious software like Sage & CAD - all work better on a PC.

Our edit suites running AVID software could be set up on either platform but we choose PC because Mac's cannot be repaired anywhere other than via the Apple store which can take weeks. The PC can be opened up and repaired or parts replaced with on our site.

Physically, the Mac is a beautiful thing, the Macbook Pro is beautifully engineered, the trackpad is far superior to anything else we have come across in the market, the cooling is ingenious so the Mac runs much more quietly than an equivalently powered PC and the retina display is gorgeous.

But the computer world has moved on. When buying a PC today you find new innovations - touch screens, rotating and flipping screens (great for presentations in meetings), fingerprint recognition and you can have one built to your exact spec.

It's always been the case that if you do things the way Apple intended then the Apple functions best - manage your music, films and books in iTunes, manage your photos in iPhoto, stream using AirPlay to Apple TV and so on. In reality, there are better solutions and no need to work around the limitations imposed by Apple any longer.

Our frustration is not limited to computers. The iPad was a game changer. It is a fantastic piece of technology and amazingly useful for so many things. If we could have the same build quality, screen resolution, responsiveness and range of apps while at the same time having access to the file structure and a USB port, we could quickly load and play files - it would be perfect. The insistence that we have to play files from within Apps and sync them is just too slow and irritating for business use. 

One area that Apple have absolutely nailed is automatically backing up using the Time Machine and removing the pain of changing to a new machine by restoring a Time Machine backup.

The final straw for us was a very small thing.

We have moaned and tolerated Apple changing the iPhone and iPad connector, moaned about needing to buy an adaptor to add an ethernet port to a Macbook Pro, needing to buy an adaptor to add a VGA socket to laptop and another for DVI, even the power socket on the latest MacBook Pros is different than earlier ones and requires an adaptor to use old displays or power sources. 

The final straw? Apple removed the small hole from their laptops where you attach a laptop lock. When we are on events, we routinely use a cable lock to attach the laptop to the desk to stop the casual thief. Apple have decided we don't need that feature and it's not something that you can buy an adaptor for. Sorry Apple, that was one change too many.

We're back to PC and welcoming the news that Microsoft are opening their doors to developers to provide wider integration. We are looking forward to the future, who knows when we will be back.

Cascade are Moving Office: All Change

We are pleased to announce that Cascade are moving offices. All of our admin, storage and facilities are relocating to a new location in nearby Sale. The new office is close to both the M60 motorway and the Metrolink (Dane Road station).

 

We are in the process of fitting out the building to our specification and aim to physically move on the 1st May.

We will have a new postal address:

Cascade Productions Intl Ltd
Crossford Court
Dane Road
Sale
Manchester
M33 7BZ

We will have a new phone number which we will communicate once it is confirmed by BT. 

And we have new email addresses for all, effective now - we are retiring the cascadeproductions.co.uk address and replacing it with cascadelive.co.uk.

Images showing the building work so far on the 2 floors, we will post updates in the coming weeks.

App of the month!

by Joanne Schofield

www.podio.com

What is it? 

It's only fitting that we start with the app we use the most and that's Podio. This is an online platform with a new take on how works gets done. I would imagine this is great for any industry but it has great benefits when working in events. 

Podio supplies a web-based platform which is great for team communication, app creation specifically for your company and projects, holding projects all in once place and managing jobs wherever you are in the world. 

What we love about it....

There are too many pros to mention but one of my favourites is being able to design client feedback forms through your company website, that directly link to Podio which collates all the data and stores it in one place, extremely useful.  

Creating apps is an obvious one, but if you're in a rush and want to add data in quickly, you can choose an application through the app store, readily built and easy to use, the thinking is done for you. 

Creating workspaces for specific projects is another useful tool, this allows you to have a dedicated page for projects and build apps around this specific project, really useful for larger scale jobs with multiple elements. 

Podio also allows you to update a project from anywhere in the world and the office will always be across this. Updating timings, client details, event changes - very easy to do and very efficient if someone in the office is waiting to put this information within a proposal. You may just think it's easier to email this, but the point is it stores your most up to date details in one place - you can always refer to it and see your logged history. 

Our conclusion....

If you're looking for an accessible project management system I would certainly give this one a go, or at least learn more about it. Really useful and something we couldn't live without.