Gala Blog #2: The storm before the storm
Production team discussing potential plans during a site visit at the CBC. (Photo: Nicholas de Pencier)
Gala day is nearly three months away, but the late nights have already started. What are we up to?
The venue, the date, and caterer, and our featured speaker are confirmed. But there is so much more to do.
When you step off the elevators on the 10th floor, we want you to know that your personal connection to water matters. So we’re brainstorming ways to capture your water stories and sending (frequent) thank you notes to our sponsors at McKeil Marine for making a Watermark station possible.
You’ll need to check-in, so we’re building a custom Salesforce tool to cut down on time at the registration table.
When you step into the event space, you should be enveloped by sights and sounds of water. You should feel all of the feelings that water inspires, including friendship, excitement, and mystery. So, we’re working with our production team to develop a blend of live and produced content to capture that spirit.
We want to blow you away with the high-quality food and wine that Lake Ontario provides, so we are taste-testing local wines and working on a great menu with our caterers at Chef Events (several members of our organizing committee have volunteered to help with these tasks).
We’re also adding new information to our website every day. We're firming up sponsorships. We're coordinating with our generous donating artists. We're setting up Mailchimp email alerts so you don’t miss the important news. We're spreading the word that tickets are on sale.
For an office of eight people who still have a lake to keep, watermarks to collect, and beaches to track, the gala is a big deal.
Which brings me to something I forgot to do today – thank our volunteer organizing committee members. They give us their time and they let us into their lives and they are the reason we can create an event, produce videos, partner with sponsors, and do everything we do for a swimmable, drinkable, fishable future.
