Table of contents for The Apprentice - series 5

1. The Apprentice: A North South Battle!
2. The Apprentice: The Girls Fight Dirty
3. The Apprentice: The Food In-Fighting
4. The Apprentice Is A Form Of Abuse
5. The Apprentice: Empire is a Wash-up, Ignite Cleans Up
6. The Apprentice – Floored By The Carpet
7. The Apprentices Avoid Selling
8. The Apprentice: The Cereal Killers
9. The Apprentice: The Empire Strikes Out!
10. 7 Top Traits Of Under-Achieving Apprentice Fodder
11. The Apprentice Are All At The Seaside

The Apprentice with Sir Alan Sugar starts on the 25th March. I can’t wait for the annual pressure cooker that is the BBC’s Apprentice programme.

From the moment you hear the Apprentice music to the introduction of the first task to the final boardroom show down it’s all fun and you can even pick up a few business lessons along the way.

And as well as splitting the teams into boys versus girls it looks as though it’s the North against the South too. The girls are mainly from the South and the boys mainly from the North.

Lovely!

And so who do we have? Well for a start we have a drop out. Someone didn’t want to be away from their family for a possible 12 weeks so retired before filming began.

The Apprentice Girls Team

The Apprentice 2009 girls team is made up as follows:

We’ve seen how marketing consultants and human resources people work on the Apprentice. Let’s hope these improve the batting average.

The Apprentice Boys Team

The Apprentice 2009 boys team is made up as follows:

Howard could be someone to watch as I laughed out loud when I saw the quote the BBC attributed to him:

I am a credible businessman who wants to go far. I’m incredibly ambitious. If I don’t go far down this route I shall go far down another route.

The favourite must surely be Rocky Andrews. After all with a name like Rocky you’ve got to live up to peoples expectations, just like in the Rocky films he’s going to come good in his final fight!. Plus he currently earns more than is being offered as Sir Alan’s apprentice running his chain of 15 sandwich shops! So presumably he knows something about the nitty gritty of real business.

Table of contents for Trade Shows And Events

1. How You Make Your Trade Show or Event Successful
2. How You Can Make Or Break Your Event
3. Making The Most Of Seminars, Events and Exhibitions

Event Venue and Location, Location, Location

The one thing that can make or break a meeting or exhibition is the venue and its location. It’s vital that the right venue is chosen for the type of event you’re holding.

If you’re selling up market products or services your venue needs to reflect the same type of image. If it doesn’t your customers are unlikely to attend and the event results will be disappointing.

So your choice of venue depends on your objectives, the scale of what you’re doing, your intended audience and of course your budget.

There are many event management companies that have the experience to quickly provide you with a short list of venues that meet your objectives. And that is certainly the easiest approach to getting a venue. And usually they don’t charge you a fee as they are paid by the location.

Make use of the Internet when researching venues

Venues can range from a hotel meeting room, to specialist conference rooms built within sports stadiums, restaurants, hotel complexes or specialist conference facilities.

Manchester And The Northwest

I’m based in Manchester and in the Northwest we’re fortunate in that we have a wide choice of venues to select from. Places like the Bolton Reebok, Manchester United, Manchester City, Lancashire Cricket Ground, Manchester Central (formerly G-Mex and before that Central station) and the Manchester Evening News Arena to name just a few.

Other slightly more unusual venues are museums, including the Imperial War Museum (North) and the Museum of Science and Industry, historic residences like Heaton Hall and town halls like Manchester, Rochdale, Stockport, Bury and Bolton.

Looking further afield there is the NEC in Birmingham, Earls Court and the Wembley Arena in London and many similar locations scattered throughout the UK’s major cities.

In London there are countless high quality hotels offering good conference facilities. Again you can get quirkier venues too, so you’re not tied to the usual suspects.

Go And Look At The Shortlist

The main point about venues is that once you’ve a shortlist of 3 or 4 venues go and see them. Then consider whether each one fits your event objectives.

And remember it’s all very well finding a fantastic venue, but if your audience find it difficult to get to they wont be in the right frame of mind to listen and learn when they arrive.

The Heathrow hotels are particularly useful for events that attract overseas attendees as people can fly in, book into the hotel and walk straight into the event. Lovely!

Internal Events

If you’re holding an internal meeting, holding it in any cheap venue you can find sends out a message that you’re not particularly interested in your staff. So make sure that an objective of an internal event is to let the staff see that they are appreciated.

Continuing Series

This ad-hoc series on events, exhibitions and meetings continues. In the meantime you can get a trade show and event planner by signing up on the form after the tags.

del.icio.us tags: manchester, northwest events, event venue, Heaton Hall, MOSI, Manchester United, Manchester City, Bolton Reebok

Technorati tags: manchester, northwest events, event venue, Heaton Hall, MOSI, Manchester United, Manchester City, Bolton Reebok

IceRocket tags: manchester, northwest events, event venue, Heaton Hall, MOSI, Manchester United, Manchester City, Bolton Reebok