The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!
On todays show Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media interviews Lara McCulloch-Carter Of RegalTents & Twitter EventProfs#
Please listen to the interview or read the transcript below.
Other ways to find out about and contact Lara:
http://www.ready2spark.com/ – blog
Video Tutorial on how to use eventprofs on Twitter
http://www.regaltent.com - regal
website
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52569234108 – facebook group
@ready2spark / @eventprofs – twitter accounts
Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media
Mike McAllen: Welcome back to Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events and Media and today, we are talking with Lara McCulloch Carter. Hi, Lara.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Hi, Mike. How are you?
Mike McAllen: Hi. I’m great. How are you doing?
Lara McCulloch Carter: Very good, thank you.
Mike McAllen: It’s nice to talk to you. Normally, we are Twittering back and forth to each other and it’s fun to actually hear your voice.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Absolutely.
Mike McAllen: So can you tell the audience and me a little bit about yourself and how you got into this crazy events and media world – not events and media, events and meetings world.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes for sure. Actually, it’s – it’s probably a little bit of an unconventional story. I was actually in the branding world for many years, about 13 years and I worked the agency side with a number of Fortune 500 companies and kind of crafted what their brand strategy was and after a number of years of doing that, I got a little bit burned out. It was a lot of it – the 15 to 20-hour days and you know how everybody goes through that period in their life where they say, “Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life?” It kind of got there and about three and a half years ago, I decided to join the family business and which is Regal Tent Productions. So I kind of fell into it really because we weren’t the type of family that mandated all of the children have to come work for the family business but after many, many interviews with my parents to really decide if this is what I wanted to do, I actually really fell in love with the industry and the company.
Mike McAllen: Very cool.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes. So right now …
Mike McAllen: So were they – oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Lara McCulloch Carter: I was just going to say right now in addition to the family business, I am also heavily involved in the industry and donate my time as the president….
Mike McAllen: Oh, great, great.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: So when you grew up, were you surrounded by tents all the time then?
Lara McCulloch Carter: I grew up in a tent. No I didn’t. Not – you know, oddly enough, not really. We were a great family in that when we’re together as a family, we’re together as a family. We don’t really bring work into it so I didn’t necessarily grow up around the work. So which is why it was a really great kind of evolution of how things progressed, you know, sitting down with Susan and Michael who are the owners of Regal, my parents and really understanding their business through those series of meetings that I had before I made the decision and it was kind of interesting how that all organically happened.
Mike McAllen: That’s great so what – tell me a little bit more about the tents. What kind of – tell me more about Regal Tents.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, we’re a relatively unique company. We’re an award-winning structural rental company and we service of all North America and the Caribbean, out of our one office, out of Stoney Creek, Ontario in Canada. So we work on events in California and in Florida and the Caribbean, New York and so on which is why it’s quite unique out of this one office.
Mike McAllen: Wow.
Lara McCulloch Carter: And we kind of had the great ability to work with some of the most amazing brands in the world like with Gucci and Madonna and Arnold Palmer and Lexus and a number of other ones and we’ve kind of been able to do that because we developed a reputation for specializing in challenging locations and projects with brands who really, really care about how their brand is conveyed and really want to deal with the best.
Mike McAllen: That’s very cool.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: So and how do you – are you just trucking all these tents around everywhere? Is that – I guess that – so you have to do it though.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, we do. We do a lot of those trucking and in the Caribbean, we do a lot of boating.
Mike McAllen: That’s great. That’s great.
Lara McCulloch Carter: But yes, we send everything out of our one office.
Mike McAllen: Wow, that’s fantastic. So – and then now, you’re branding for them so they must be very happy so you’re – you have that whole background. So is that what you do for them?
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, I’m Director of Marketing for the company but …
Mike McAllen: Oh, fantastic.
Lara McCulloch Carter: … I also get quite heavily involved in sales as well so I’ll fly down to various locations and meet with prospective clients.
Mike McAllen: Very cool. So, you and I met through Twitter, Twitter.com and I wondered how you got started on Twitter, where you found about it, how you got started on playing around with Twitter.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Well I’m sure it’s very similar to how most people did. I just heard about it. I kept hearing people talk about Twitter and I thought, you know, I got to try this thing out. I mean everybody has been saying how amazing it is and I did. I actually set up a Twitter account and started playing around on it and I think for those who’ve kind of read the five stages of Twitter acceptance, at that point, I was at stage one which was I don’t get what everybody is talking about. I don’t get it and I actually cancelled my account and went on with my life and about a year later, again, kept hearing people talking about Twitter and I thought, you know what, I’ve obviously – I’ve missed something because people are just advocating Twitter and saying how amazing it is. So I tried it out again and really stuck with it for a few weeks and at first, you really do have to kind of get involved and feel it out and try out different things and spend some time listening as well to what’s going on and after going through that process, I started to get it. And I actually became a Twitterholic. And it’s really because at a certain point, you recognize the opportunities with Twitter. There’s immense opportunity to learn from others, some of the best minds in any industry, the ability to share and to collaborate with others and almost most importantly, to connect with people that otherwise you would never connect with.
Mike McAllen: Great. Yes, I’ve had the same kind of experience with – I got into it because I’m kind of a nerd and I was talking with all these other people about, you know, nerdy stuff and then – and along with my business because I have a production company so I – then all of a sudden, now, there’s all these event people getting involved in it and it just totally switched for me because before I was, you know, I mean like podcasting and blogging and that kind of stuff and so for media stuff and then this just really grasp – it’s interesting how now, I’ve made so many contacts in my business and actually gotten work from Twitter but it is such a huge time suck for me though too. I have to turn if off now because I get, like you said, there’s just so much information, so much cool stuff coming through the little stream there.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: And I use my Tweet Deck – do you use Tweet Deck?
Lara McCulloch Carter: I do, yes.
Mike McAllen: So I have all the different areas of people that I follow so it’s just – it’s fantastic.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: It really is and it is interesting to tell people who don’t understand it, you know, what is it still. It’s like, you know, and it’s like you just get into it and you can’t get out kind of a thing. It’s just fantastic and now, I have a little Twitter group meet-up, tweet-up group here on the East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area and it has been interesting to meet all these people. Now, they don’t have anything to do with events or – but is’ just a great way to meet people and we get together and just chat about everything under the sun, just a neat thing.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Well, you know, I’m so glad you mentioned that because I think a lot of people think with Twitter, it’s a virtual world where you go in and you talk with people online but it’s really like – just as you said, it can be a launching pad for meeting people face to face.
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Lara McCulloch Carter: And I’ve had the opportunity too with going to industry events and previous to going to those events, speaking with people via Twitter and all of a sudden, you’ve got something in common when you do meet with them face to face and you have …
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Lara McCulloch Carter: … a conversation starter.
Mike McAllen: Yes. You’re so right. I had that at the – with the meet – the MPI, I went to the MeetDifferent Conference and it was just funny to meet all these people. I mean, it was just – we were – and then we were all together all the time because we do have that commonality then …
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: It’s truly fun. It’s a great …
Lara McCulloch Carter: [Inaudible] [0:08:53]
Mike McAllen: Yes. So you did something that’s very cool. You started event profs, event professionals, event profs – how did it say? I’ve just read it. I’ve never really said it out loud.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, event profs [Inaudible] [0:09:08], yes. That’s going to be good.
Mike McAllen: So how did that start up? Well say what it is first I guess because people – will understand that.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Sure. Well basically what event profs is it’s an organized chat that happens on Twitter, twice a week now. It used to be once a week but now it’s twice a week. For one hour, event professionals from all over the world get together and we talk about topics that are relevant to our industry and we share information and we collaborate and we challenge each other and the intent is to help us all grow our businesses and also, hopefully propel the industry forward because we’re all learning from one another. And I think the really exciting part about that is, you know, even when we go to industry events, where we meet with people face to face, they tend to be the people who are in our own segment of the industry or our own clients or friends of our clients who had to share the same segments of our industry. And what’s exciting about event profs is you got corporate event planners, wedding planners, entertainers, producers, rental companies, AV specialty, teachers, students, all with their own unique perspective that come together and share information with one another.
Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s very cool. It’s a cool idea. And how does it work? I mean, how – well, first of all, when is it? When is it happening? I always miss it. I always – I’m like – I always remember it and I’m like, “Oh, sorry.”
Lara McCulloch Carter: Well, it’s every Monday. It’s the same time and day every week so it’s every Monday 9 PM Eastern Standard time or 6 PM Pacific time, Thursdays, 12 PM Eastern Standard Time or 9 AM Pacific time. So that’s when the schedule of chats are and basically all you need to do, you need to have a Twitter account so you have to make sure you sign up first and then all you need to do is go to TweetChat.com and in fact, like I’m going to give you a video on this which you can share with your readers as well which is video tutorial and how to do all this.
Mike McAllen: Great.
Lara McCulloch Carter: But basically, just go on to TweetChat and that’s essentially a chat room where even people who you’re not following on Twitter, as long as they use the hashtag which is event profs – as long as they’re using that word, you can follow their conversations and the entire discussion [Inaudible] [0:11:42].
Mike McAllen: That’s interesting because I’ve always used – just used the Search.Twitter.com …
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, you can do that too.
Mike McAllen: … for how to do this and I didn’t even know about TweetChat and I’m just really interested to go see it.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes. So basically what TweetChat allows you to do is it – it’s a little bit cleaner and if you posted something, it actually highlights your post and if somebody responds to you, it highlights their post to you so it just helps because …
Mike McAllen: That’s great.
Lara McCulloch Carter: … some of the conversation is really, really fast. It helps you to kind to help see when people are responding to.
Mike McAllen: Oh, it’s fantastic.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes and the way that it started, I mean I love to say, you know, I have this brilliant idea and – but I didn’t. You know, it was very organic as much like most ideas of a social media are. In fact, I think it was discussions with you and another gentleman by the name of Julius Solaris.
Mike McAllen: Oh, yes, Julius. Yes, Julius
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes and we were talking about …
Mike McAllen: Of course I do from Twitter.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes. We were talking about, you know, how can we use Twitter to, you know, build relationships and connections and conversations with other event professionals and actually when I first started Twitter, I became aware of what was called editor chat on Twitter which is a very large organized chat group for editors and publishers and copyrighters and I just sat in on their chat and thought, “Wow this would be just amazing for event specialists,” and that’s basically how it started.
Mike McAllen: Very cool. Yes, it’s a great idea. I mean, it’s fun. I know that I saw it, you know, that I really liked it in the hashtag used in – I went to a couple of conferences, a blogger — BlogWorld I went to in Las Vegas. They – one of the conferences just a couple of years ago and they had up on the space, the Search.Twitter.Com and they used that. They made a hashtag for the actual room, you know the …
Lara McCulloch Carter: Right.
Mike McAllen: … the little [Indiscernible] [0:13:52] we were sitting in and you could comment and talk amongst the audience. It was a panel session and you have those panel sessions go sometimes with these conferences that one person is like just talking about their own company or something.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: But they couldn’t really do that because then everybody would be commenting it on the screen right next to them like, “Oh, you know, would he shut up or something about his company?” So it really kept the – it really kept the whole panel on track, you know, like it could keep – and then people were asking questions there and there’s one person running it. It was much like what you’re doing but …
Lara McCulloch Carter: Well …
Mike McAllen: I mean, there’s so many more people in this.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes and there’s a – I mean that just shows the endless opportunities with Twitter but I mean the other great advantage to what you talked about where you’re using it in a conference or speaking session and there’s people who are afraid to put up their hands and ask a question which many people are, can all of a sudden ask a question or …
Mike McAllen: Right.
Lara McCulloch Carter: … you know, build off that idea that came out of somebody else’s mouth. You know, you can say, “Hey, that just sparked something else and I’m going to share this.”
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Lara McCulloch Carter: It’s really cool how that all works and that’s what you see happening in event profs is people just building off of each other’s ideas.
Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, fantastic. And Julius has a great blog. Isn’t it the event manager blog? Is that what it’s called? I think it’s a …
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, he’s …
Mike McAllen: Yes, he’s got a really good blog.
Lara McCulloch Carter: [Inaudible] [0:15:12] with great ideas.
Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. Yes he has asked me to write stuff for it but I just – I don’t have any time. I have to be on Twitter.
Lara McCulloch Carter: That would be great. Well maybe you can write ideas or [Inaudible] [0:15:25] in 140 characters or less.
Mike McAllen: That’s a good idea, yes. That’s a good idea.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes [Inaudible] [0:15:33].
Mike McAllen: All right, well, so what – how can people get a hold of you? If they wanted to get a hold of you, I guess you have two different things. Well, lots of different things probably but …
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes. I – there’s a number of ways. People can either get a hold of me on Twitter and my Twitter user name is @ready2spark [Phonetic] [0:15:51] and that’s the number two. I also have a blog which is ReadyToSpark.com and my e-mail address if people want to get a hold of me is Lara@RegalTents.com.
Mike McAllen: Great and I’ll put all your contact stuff in the – on the blog so if someone is listening to this, they can go to MeetingsPodcast.com and get all her links and I also want to ask, tell me about the blog, Ready to Spark. Where did that come from?
Lara McCulloch Carter: Well, a lot of stuff happened because my love for branding and the industry and I’m also a creative hound so I love to – I love anything creative and I tend to immerse myself into something like painting or photography for like a month straight. That’s all I do and I get really bored and I move on because a blog was actually a combination of all those things so I got constantly, you know, blog about things, about the industry that were creative and it’s really focused on ideas and inspirations for event professionals and it’s an extension of our Regal Tent Productions brand because we are creative problem solvers for our customers and really to add value, I could have created a blog that was all about tenting and, you know, tell you everything you ever want to know about tents but that’s not who we are. We’re very much a creative partner to our customers so the blog really searches out really creative ideas and really cool snippets of inspiration and now, as well, a big component of the blog is post chat follow-ups from event profs and ideas from Twitter.
Mike McAllen: Very cool.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: And so are you speaking about this now or do you do presentations?
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, I just spoke actually at the Canadian Special Events Meeting Expo on the topic of social media so [Inaudible] [0:18:04] social media and I’ll be speaking [Inaudible] [0:18:08] in August and hopefully a lot more in 2010. This year has been a little bit crazy but hopefully, in 2010 more time for speaking opportunities.
Mike McAllen: That’s great. In August, where is that?
Lara McCulloch Carter: It is in your home town actually, in San Francisco.
Mike McAllen: Oh, really?
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes.
Mike McAllen: Well, I have to go to that.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Yes, I hope to see you there.
Mike McAllen: Yes.
Lara McCulloch Carter: And we can take, you know, Twitter to all this and talking on the phone to meeting face to face, right?
Mike McAllen: The next step. It’s beautiful. All right, Lara, thank you so much for the interview, the call, the show and I hope to maybe redo this again, you know, in months coming up. We could get back together and talk about more stuff.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Oh, that would be awesome because hopefully it will evolve even more to be more useful for our users.
Mike McAllen: All right. Great, thank you so much and I’ll talk to you soon.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Absolutely. Thanks, Mike.
Mike McAllen: Okay, bye-bye.
Lara McCulloch Carter: Have a great day.
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