Adventures in Candyland

Sorry to be geographically exclusive, but we do live in LA! If you’re in LA too, then you should check out the dineLA Restaurant Week event happening this week and next.

Here’s a rundown from the site:

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is dineLA Restaurant Week?
dineLA Restaurant Week is a two-week dining event established to introduce diners to the vast array of restaurants in neighborhoods throughout LA County. Local foodies and visitors to LA will have the opportunity to enjoy a selection of specially priced three-course meals from some of LA’s best restaurants during this dining event.
When is dineLA Restaurant Week?
January 27 – February 1, 2008
February 3 – February 8, 2008
What are restaurants offering during dineLA Restaurant Week?
Participating restaurants will opt into one of two dining categories and present a selection of specially priced three-course meals for lunch and dinner. Diners will be able to choose from three choices for each course. Prices are per person and exclude beverages, tax and gratuity.
LunchDinner
Deluxe Dining:$15$25
Premier Dining:$22$34

What restaurants are involved in dineLA Restaurant Week?
A wide variety of restaurants throughout Los Angeles County are participating in dineLA Restaurant Week. A complete list of participating restaurants is available here or you may contact your favorite restaurants to see if they are participating.
How do I experience a restaurant participating in dineLA Restaurant Week?
Contact the restaurant directly. Due to the popularity of this event, advance reservations are strongly encouraged, but walk-ins are appreciated. There is no guarantee that walk-in guests will be accommodated.
If you have more questions regarding the event
Contact participating restaurants here or call 877.dineLA1 (877.346.3521).

A few of our favorite places are on the list. Bon appetit!

Yesterday we toured a very cool house in Brentwood. Wired Home by Living Homes (obviously, Chris Anderson didn’t completely turn me off). The house used state-of-the-art technology and environmentally conscious steel, glass and reclaimed redwood-encased Prefab for Living Homes by celebrated architect, Ray Kappe. The home is completely wrapped in windows - allowing the outside to be brought it - a concept that is throughly appealing to me. It was 4,000 sq. feet of design and technology exquisitness and absolutely the kind of house I see in my future. There was so much coolness in this house (forget the house keys, how about an iris reader instead) and we’re real suckers for it. Here are a few shots(sorry about the crappy camera phone) that really don’t do it justice.

The interior was also pretty spot on - modern yet not cold. The art was interesting, particularly from this artist -Andy Diaz Hope. Here’s something kinda trippy that I took - reminded Danielle of the show, “Flight of the Concords”. This was the mirror in the upstair bathroom.

But, there was only one issue - the price tag. The house is on the market for 4.3 mill. I don’t know if I will be able to afford this in the near future. And that begs the question, how many people really can? I understand that this home was for touring and sets the standard, but when will the masses, or even the upper middle class, be able to afford a sustainable PREFAB home. The definition of Prefab has definitely changed and so has the price. I don’t know the exact price of putting one of these homes up, but I’m assuming it’s quite costly even when they aren’t customized.

For me, the home symbolizes the green movement. Lots of new ways to be environmentally conscious, yet ironically, the majority of products are typically more expensive than their non-green counterparts. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule so you don’t need to list off all the ways or products I’m wrong about, but if we are to move in this direction, I hope that this kind of lifestyle can become more cost-effective and easily accessible for more people in the near future. I, for one, am waiting for the day.

Innovation never stops and never ceases to amaze. Last Sunday, Danielle and I ventured downtown to the LA Convention Center to experience Wired Nextfest, one of the coolest “tradeshows” I’ve ever attended. As we browsed the booths, we were continously awed by the creativity and cool factor of the products and technologies shaping the future of our world. We were reminded that we’re living during an amazing period of time, where interactivity is the sign of the times as well as the proliferation of communities continually being by reshaped by the technology and inspiration featured at this show. The shape of things to come is about customization, collaboration and innovation tied into entertainment and culture tied into creating a more sustainable and empathetic world.

Honestly, I could write chapters on the innovations we saw Sunday, but instead, I’ll just hightlight a few of of my favorites.

Light Harp
This is the first interactive art you experience upon entering the show. The sound coming from this thing was really beautiful.

Brainball
Are you calm enough to win a game of brain ball. I know I’m not, but it might be a good challenge for me. Brainball is a game where you compete by relaxing your brain and move a little ball across a table into a little circle using your brainwaves. The person who is calmer will get the ball in first. Seriously, who needs mediation when you can just play this game. Everyone was circled around these two players sitting their with their eyes closed while their brain waves were being charted on screen behing them. It was fascinating!

Desktop Factory 3D Printer
This is so cool and so inexpensive when you compare it to the past cost of creating some kind of prototype. The machine looks like a microwave oven and basically layers what sort of looks like sand to create a 3D model of the digital data you feed it and only for $4995.

Jukebots
People DJs may soon be extinct with the introduction of Jukebots, industrial robots who scratch, spin and mix records. They kind of dance as the decise which record they’re going to pick. Ridiculously cool!

LifeStraw
It’s difficult to imagine living somewhere without access to a clean water source. It’s painful to realize children still die from contaminated water — soooo these LifeStraws, which are shockingly inexpensive and simple( $3 )will save many, many lives.

Obviously I could chronicle every experience that seemed significant or fabulous, but I don’t want to bore you. So I’m going end this entry by illustrating the use of technology and art.

Today, text messaging is taking the place of calling, emailing and yes, talking. So I think we can all expect to see many iterations of this technology in the future. Here are two we learned about and took advantage of many times that day. So many times in fact, the guy from Nanikawa who was running the Wind and Swimming Messagesystem was either thinking we were really crazy or really annoying. The other is TXTual Healing, SMS Enabled Interactive Street Performance. Both very cool and the wave of the future. Below are a few samples of what I’m talking about, but please don’t judge me for my camera work, which is absolutely painful and pretty much unbearable - I truly apologize, but I want to illustrate what I’m talking about. Today, we actually bought a really cool handheld video camera by PURE DIGITAL, that we learned about at a PSFK conference. We’ll blog on how that benefits my awful filming ability later.

Both of the below technologies allow you to call a number they provide, enter your message which is immediately rendered into these two artistic forms.

TXTual Healing - Text Message Customizable Graffiti Art

Wind and Swimming MessageSystem - The wind blows your text from screen to screen in front of a beautiful background

Which unique technologies and products do you think will make an impact in the future?

My brain wasn’t really melted by the heat. Yes - I know it’s only September 7th, but I got your attention! The funny thing is some people love Halloween so much, they actually start their seasonal buying binge in MAY. They want the newest stuff, they want it first and they don’t care about the cost. Sort of like women and their bags - well, not the woman writing this unfortunately.

Halloween is a holiday people feel passionate about. Can you blame them? It’s really the only holiday that is truly and only about having fun! Who doesn’t like to dress up to be someone else for a day. That’s why our client, HalloweenMart , is so successful. So, if you are sick of being yourself or maybe, someone else is sick of you, I have the solution! Just go to the site and choose someone different to be. You could be another someone different 365 days a year and then some. Believe me, I’ve spent some time in the company warehouse, and I’ve done a millions costume changes - they never get old. Par example, Elton John, you ain’t got nuthin on Lauren Tarne! If you look around the site, you might even find a few more of these gems (sense the sarcasm).

But, for those who need a little more inspiration, there is HalloweenMart’s new blog, Trick-or-Treat, where people can follow the stories of a bunch of fictional (or are they?) characters whose lives are engulfed by Halloween and all the holiday encompasses. You can even follow the characters as they twitter their way to the big day. So check out Candy, Nick, Jinx and others to get yourself revved up for the season.

Remember , Halloween is only 53 days away. That’s nothing. It takes time to develop the perfect costume. And although I have a plethora of ideas on the ensemble I plan on donning this year, I’m am perfectly willing to take suggestions. And that goes for Danielle and Limor as well. Don’t dissapoint us!

Twice in recent months we’ve attended conferences/tradeshows for event planners.  We were interested in these events because they were planned by professional organizations for event planners.  The first was the BizBash LA Event Style Show, and the most recent was the ISES LA Jam.  Really, what could be better than an event for event planners planned by the event planning industry?

And while there were one or two interesting sessions at the Bizbash event, and a few good vendors at each event, we were largely disappointed with the events as a whole.  As we stood in a pack of people waiting for a lady to yell out our name after she printed our badges for the BizBash show, we wondered if there wasn’t a more sophisticated way to handle check-in and badges.  As we sampled mediocre food samples at the LA Jam, we wondered when we could get to dinner. 

And that hasn’t even touched on the “green” aspect of each event - which was heavily promoted, but was really rather half-hearted.  The decor in the green lounge at the ISES event included a canvas sheet hung as a backdrop with words like “Reuse” and “Recycle” stenciled on it…really glamorizes the greening of events!

So we’re left wondering…what does it say about the event planning profession when event planners can’t plan good events for other event planners?  Shouldn’t those events be the highlight of the profession - where the newest and best trends are highlighted, where all the stops are pulled out, where event planners can be proud of their profession? 

In May, I read a profile about the Development Events Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA, Vanessa Gonzalez.  I was impressed by the sheer number of events she produces on an annual basis, and her creativity in planning those events.  So I was glad to see her as a panelist in one of the sessions at an events industry conference we attended last month.  Her passion about the events she plans was pretty inspiring, and I hadn’t been to MOCA in quite some time, so I thought I would check out one of their events.

Last Saturday night Limor and I headed downtown with our husbands to MOCA Nightvision, the seventh in a series of ten Saturday night summer events at the museum.  We got there on the early side and were disappointed by what we thought was a small turnout.  But by the time we left around 10:30 the place was packed with probably 500-600 people.

We started the night with dinner from the cafe (nothing special) while we listened to the live DJ.  Then we walked around the galleries (I loved the MOCA Focus exhibit of Alexandra Grant) and stumbled upon an interesting spoken word performance by Ruben Martinez in one gallery.  Then we went back outside for drinks and to listen to the live musical performance by Busdriver, who we loved.  Finally, we all collaborated on an art project at the workshop area, which we found very therapeutic.

There are three Nightvision events left, and if you are in LA and haven’t been, you should check it out.  In a city where you often have to scratch the surface to find some culture beyond Posh & Becks, it was refreshing to experience it on an average Saturday night, in jeans, for about $8 and with hundreds of other, mostly young folk.  Kudos to Vanessa!

And we still had time for Pinkberry!  (but that’s a whole nuther post…)

Sweet Talk is in the midst of planning an all-day virtual conference for a client.  If you’re not familiar with a virtual conference, its pretty much the same as a live conference, only online.  You actually enter a conference hall to hear webcasts and live Q&A sessions; then you head to the exhibit hall to visit vendor booths for product demonstrations and live chats; there are sponsors; you can exchange contact info with other attendees - all from the convenience of your desk. 

To prepare for this event, we have registered for and attended a few other virtual conferences to get a feel for what we like, what works, etc.  The most notorious virtual conference in the Sweet Talk office is ecomxpo.  This multi-day conference had numerous sponsors, multiple tracks and countless vendors.  But it has become notorious for us because of their communication style after we registered.  I don’t want to say I felt stalked or anything, but we received no less than five direct-mail pieces, and I honestly lost count of the number of emails I received leading up to the event.  In fact, there were so many that I stopped reading them…I even stopped opening them.  Those darn, annoying email updates and junk mail!  

But something happened today that made me revisit the issue of reminders.  My family and I participated in a charity event - a walk to raise awareness about the situation in Darfur.  We signed up to be walkers last month - paid through Paypal and received our confirmation email.  And we had arranged to meet friends there.  Last week, our friend asked me if I had received anything about the walk since signing up - she hadn’t and was wondering if it was still on.  Come to think of it…I hadn’t received anything either.  But as late as Friday evening, I heard through word-of-mouth that the event was still happening, so we went.  And hardly anyone was there.  I mean it was a Sunday morning in the Valley - probably not too much else going on - and saying the turnout was 200 is probably an exaggeration.  

It left us feeling kind of sad, and it got me wondering…why weren’t there more people there?  Is Darfur an issue that’s passe?  I can’t imagine that’s already the case.  Are people already out of town for the summer?  Seems a little early for that.  Is Sunday a terrible day for events?  But many of these 5k walks take place on Sundays.  Lack of publicity?  Maybe, but charity events often rely on word-of-mouth.  I honestly couldn’t get it out of my mind that my friend had asked just a few days ago if we’d received anything about the event - and we hadn’t.  Maybe people didn’t show up because they weren’t reminded. 

An email update, reminder or follow-up is such an important tool these days - so where is the line between stalking your registrants and not wanting to bother people?