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From Meetings.net:

Pat and Vince Ahaesy: Partners in Work and in Life

It can be challenging to work with your spouse, but this couple make it look easy

Most married couples would never—could never—work together. Live together, yes, but share jointly in the decisions and responsibilities of a business, too?
Meet Pat and Vince Ahaesy of P&V Enterprises, New York, which they started in May 1994, drawing on Pat’s event planning and management and Vince’s audiovisual production and stage theatrical services.
Vince and Pat met through mutual friends in 1991. Pat was working as a travel agent in Phoenix, while Vince owned a production company and had come to Phoenix to work an event. After dating from a distance, Pat relocated to New York City and found a job as the office manager at a midtown travel agency. “But I soon realized that I missed the planning and logistics of the group travel. So one day, Vince turned to me and said ‘Let’s work together.’ And the rest, as they say, is history.”

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From the June/July issue of Collaborate magazine:

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Leverage Technology By Webcasting Events

Webcasting changes the event and meeting planning industry, P&V Enterprises is forging ahead on the cutting edge of this new technology with its clients.

Webcasting is changing the event and meeting planning industry according to Pat Ahaesy, CMF, CSEP, a partner in the corporate event planning company P&V Enterprises, New York City.  P&V now offers high-quality webcasting through their new division, PNVWebcasts, to add an extra dimension to events and to extend their reach. PNVWebcasts offers every event the potential to become a global celebration.

“I started studying the potential of online webcasts about two years ago, when most were still poorly done, with bad lighting and sound and very poor production values in general,” explains Pat. “Our company began to offer webcasting about a year-and-a-half ago, once we were sure we could produce webcasts with high production standards for our clients.” Partner and Producer Vince Ahaesy said that webcasting is now a possibility for almost any event, from corporate product launches to sales meetings, and allows companies to extend their reach in a cost-effective way.  P&V provides webcasting that is tailored to a client’s needs, from the most basic set up to a full event production package that expands the reach of the event with a broadcast television feel.  Services also include digital recording of events that can be made available later for on-demand viewing.

From Travel Market Report online magazine: “Meeting Planners Share 2010 Successes, 2011 Resolutions”

 Pat Ahaesy’s surprise success for 2010 was generating an “unexpected sale” through social media.

Ahaesy contacted a potential client via a mutual connection on LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network. The response was, “Sure, but I have no business to give you as we have put all meetings and events on hold.”

Ahaesy told the contact that it didn’t matter and set up an appointment to meet. “We met for lunch and hit it off immediately; she was a very nice woman,” Ahaesy said. About a month later “she e-mailed me and said she had an event for me after all. It was a success. Then, a couple of months later, she had another series of incentive projects for me. Those were also very successful.”

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From Connectyourmeetings.com online magazine: “Helping Hands: Volunteers are often crucial to the success of an event. Here’s how to find them, use them and reward them.”

Planning and executing an event is difficult; planning and executing an event while short-staffed is almost impossible. Associations and organizations are constantly watching every dollar that comes in and every dollar that goes out. Few have the funds to employ enough full-time staff members to execute large-scale meetings and events. As a result, they rely on volunteers to pick up where labor drops off, but using volunteers isn’t always easy

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Gold and MeCo moderator Pat Ahaesy questioned whether industry associations have carried their message beyond the meetings industry itself, and whether U.S. Travel’s focus is broad enough to include meetings and events. But other veteran meeting professionals worry that projects like Yes2Meetings could divide the industry’s voice.

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From Meetings.net online magazine: “CIC Adds Voice to Meeting Industry PR Efforts”

The Convention Industry Council has launched a public messaging task force to improve the image of meetings, the latest industry effort to battle the negative public perception of events and business travel. CIC has hired Y Partnership Inc., a well-known advertising, public relations, and marketing company in the hospitality industry, to develop half a dozen key messages for CIC’s 34 member associations to use for internal and external communications this fall.

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Pat Ahaesy, CMP, CSEP, of P&V Enterprises, believes in volunteer retention. “There are people who have volunteered for me before and if there are ones I like, I’ll ask them again,” she says. Still, that’s not enough to fill the roster for many of the events she plans, so she taps into the local college market in New York City, recruiting students who study event planning, marketing and communications, or students from fraternities and sororities who need to boost their volunteer hours. “They’re usually very eager,” she says.

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Most planners agree that the positive experiences with volunteers far outnumber the no-show or bad-behavior episodes of a few events. And event volunteers deserve to be rewarded, even if they don’t expect it.

Pat Ahaesy often hands out gift cards to coffee shops or restaurants, and she always sends thank-you notes. More importantly, though, she makes it a goal to have conversations with the volunteers, explaining to them how their help contributed to the success of the larger event. “I tell them what they did and how important it was so they can use it for their résumés,” she says.

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COVER STORY from the July Issue of Successful Meetings magazine: “Initial Success”

The Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) designation was created in 1985 by the Convention Industry Council (CIC). Since then, the number and variety of professional certifications and designations those in the meetings industry can earn have blossomed, but what are the real benefits of earning one? Is a certified meeting professional better than the average event organizer?

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“Most of our clients have no idea what the letters mean. The point is: I do,” says Pat Ahaesy, CMP, CSEP, and partner in corporate event planning company P&V Enterprises in New York City. “By studying for both the CMP and the CSEP, I learned a lot about other disciplines. This has helped me greatly to understand what they do, and in turn makes my working relationship with them really great.”

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FROM ManageSmarter.com: “ManageSmarter Rewind: Become a Meeting Master”

Tired of begging your team members to attend sales meetings? Follow our six-step plan to leading better meetings—and you’ll neve rhave to grovel again.

Think the meetings you run are scintillating, motivating, and information-packed? Unfortunately, they’re more likely to be excruciatingly boring, demoralizing, and pointless. Don’t feel too bad: A quick look at some statistics reveals that the odds of leading a truly successful meeting are slim. Most professionals attend a total of 62 meetings per month, and research indicates that more than 50 percent of these meetings are considered to be a waste of time, according to a study conducted by telecommunications services company MCI, a unit of WorldCom Inc. Perhaps because executives come to meetings expecting the worst, 91 percent admit to daydreaming during such sessions, according to the study. And 39 percent say they’ve actually snoozed during a meeting.

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Vince Ahaesy, owner of New York-based event planning company P&V Enterprises, says developing a meeting theme and introducing it as early as three months ahead piques salespeople’s interest and encourages attendance. “Whatever the agenda is—say, a line of new products you want them to sell—get it in front of people’s faces long before the meeting” via newsletters, e-mail bulletins, invitations, and the company Web site, he says.

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FROM BIZBASH: “ISES Honors P&V Enterprises

Event production company P&V Enterprises won the International Special Events Society’s Esprit award for best creative concept for its work on the gala dinner of the 2003 Working Mother Media 100 Best conference, which featured a guest speaker who incorporated company names into popular songs rather than reading a list.

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