The term corporate event is defined in the Wiley International Dictionary of
Event Management as “an event sponsored by a corporation for the purpose
of achieving specific goals and objectives such as entertaining customers, introducing
and promoting new products or services, or providing incentives or
training for employees, as well as other activities.” Therefore, this simple term
indeed has numerous complex meanings.
This important new book successfully transforms a complex topic into a
simple and effective system that experienced or new corporate event managers
may use to improve their practice. The authors have carefully and ingeniously
adapted the proven principles of project management to the art and science of
event management, thereby producing a new, fresh, and highly effective system
for managing corporate events.
Whether you are an internal corporate event manager or a supplier of services
and products for corporate events, you will greatly benefit from the authors’
systematic approach to this growing field.
Each author brings more than two decades of professional experience in
project management and corporate event management to this text, and their
combined expertise has produced a book that will become a staple in the
libraries of corporate events, communications, human resources, and other
departments.
The numerous checklists, tables, flowcharts, and models will help you implement
the project management principles quickly in order to ease and improve
your corporate event management operations. In an age in which every
worker is being asked to “do more with less,” this book is both timely and
valuable.
To fully benefit from this text, I strongly recommend that you use it as a
training tool for your immediate subordinates as well as others in your organization.
By studying and then actually teaching the principles and techniques
of corporate event project management, you will soon become a master
of this complex art and science.
Whether you are responsible for producing a company picnic, a salestraining
program, or a multimillion-dollar new-product launch event, between
the pages of this book you will find the system you have long been waiting for. By merging event and project management, the authors have developed a
system that will be readily understood, embraced, and supported, not just by
you but by those in other divisions, such as finance, operations, and risk management.
This cross-functional approach to corporate event management is indeed
one of the book’s strongest points.
Within every field, there are those individuals who either on purpose or
by accident invent a new theory and practice that in fact revolutionizes the
field. William O’Toole and Phyllis Mikolaitis now join the short but growing
list of other visionaries who have discovered a groundbreaking set of ideas
that will dramatically improve the event management field. O’Toole, an Australian
whose expertise is project management, and Mikolaitis, an American
who is a 20-year veteran corporate event manager of one of the world’s largest
companies, Xerox, have brought a unique global understanding of corporate
event management during the greatest period of international expansion in
world history. Their close collaboration and careful merger of event and project
management will be recorded by historians of event literature as one of
the most significant advancements in event management during the twentyfirst
century.
Whether you are managing a simple dinner for 10 or an exhibition for
10,000, Corporate Event Project Management is the essential tool that will raise
the quality level of your performance, reduce your stress level, and demonstrate
to your superiors that you can successfully analyze and solve complex
problems through modern event management. This book has not only broken
new ground; it has built a solid foundation upon which corporate event management
will rise to new heights in the future. I am certain that this book will
show you that future while enabling you to benefit personally and professionally
as you incorporate its important principles into your daily practice.
Perhaps after you finish reading this valuable book and share these principles
with others, you will be able to craft your own new definition of the
term corporate event project management, for in the pages of this book, a new
field within event management has been con