Another year, another great TSE location – our carry-ons are packed and ready, and we’re headed to New Orleans where we’ll be participating in The Special Event 2018. This is consistently one of our favourite industry events each year and we expect no less from fabulous NOLA, where we’ll be up for awards, down for exploring, AND presenting a special speaker session about our team’s internal challenge to build a courageous creative culture.

We challenged ourselves to build a better culture, and we’re sharing the results in a TSE speaker session.
We’re biased, but we’ll go ahead and say it anyway – if you’re at the event this year, this session is a must-attend. Our commander-in-chief Dustin Westling, CSEP, will be breaking down our experience during a 30-day focused effort to examine our creative culture. What makes creativity flourish, what stands in the way, and how can we (and you) build an environment where open and courageous creativity isn’t an afterthought or even an effort, but rather a fully infused part of how we work together? We always come away from TSE sessions with thought-provoking, inspiring takeaways (these notes from last year are still so relevant), and that’s why we’re so excited to be part of the line-up this year, sharing our experience with you. Also Dustin’s mastery of sarcasm and the quick one-liner is second-to-none, so we guarantee he will keep you entertained at the very least.

Don’t miss Dustin’s session:
Wednesday, January 31
4:30pm – 6pm
Room 209
Session Number B18

Let us fill you on our favourite New Orlean’s spots!
Before TSE officially takes off, we’re embarking on a whirlwind tour of New Orleans from Sunday night to Monday afternoon, complete with a carefully scheduled and mapped-out itinerary the likes of which only a group of event profs could fully appreciate. We’ll be hitting publish on a post here detailing our experiences and recommendations as soon as we’ve waved goodbye to our last stop, so check back next week to see where we explored, shopped, ate, and drank – and if you’re in NOLA, you can pick a few to check out yourselves and let us know what you thought! Or invite us back with you…

It’s an honour just to be nominated… no, really.
Last but not least, we’ll be getting dressed up for the Gala Awards on Thursday night, where we’re honoured to be up for three awards. Given the company we’re keeping, we can honestly say the thrill is there whether we make the trip up the stage steps or not, and we’re looking forward to celebrating with our friends. Check back here next Friday for more about how it all went down.

TSE in ONE word
Lastly, we decided to really engage with the other attendees and speakers this year by getting one-word answers to a series of questions we’ve put together, then using those answers to determine what one word summed up #TheSpecialEvent this year. Sound intriguing? Confusing? Cryptic? All will be clear… stayed tuned for the results.

Whether you’ll be joining us in New Orleans or not, come follow along on Instagram Stories, where we’ll be posting behind-the-scenes views all week! As we close out the first month of this exciting new year (big, BIG things are coming!) we’d love to connect with you online or in-person – so be sure to say hello.