Event Planning

AI is revolutionizing the fashion industry, and catwalk shows are no exception. What do you think about this one? 1. Virtual Models and AI-Generated Fashion Shows: Hyperrealistic AI Models: AI is creating incredibly realistic virtual models that can walk the runway, showcasing designs without the need for physical models. This opens up possibilities for diversity and inclusivity in fashion. AI-Generated Designs: AI algorithms can generate unique and innovative fashion designs, pushing the boundaries of creativity. AI generated fashion designs Virtual Reality Fashion Shows: Immersive virtual reality experiences allow audiences to experience fashion shows from anywhere in the world, creating a more engaging and interactive experience. 2. AI-Powered Personalization: Personalized Catwalk Experiences: AI can analyze viewer preferences and tailor the catwalk show to individual tastes, creating a more personalized and enjoyable experience. AI-Driven Trend Forecasting: AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to predict upcoming trends, helping designers stay ahead of the curve. 3. Enhanced Efficiency and Sustainability: AI-Optimized Production: AI can streamline the production process, reducing waste and improving efficiency. Sustainable Fashion Solutions: AI can help identify sustainable materials and practices, promoting a more eco-friendly fashion industry. 4. Interactive and Engaging Experiences: AI-Powered Audience Interaction: AI can enable real-time audience interaction, such as voting on favorite looks or creating custom designs. Augmented Reality Catwalk Shows: AR can overlay digital elements onto the physical runway, creating a more immersive and visually stunning experience. While AI is undoubtedly changing the landscape of catwalk shows, it's important to note that it's not replacing human creativity and artistry. Instead, AI is empowering designers and models to push the boundaries of fashion, creating innovative and engaging experiences for audiences around the world. #Ai #Innovation #Technology

For years, I wore the label "overdressed" School classmates called me "bad fashion girlie," and in my early 20s, friends questioned why I was "so dressed up." Now when I post my fit-checks on Insta, I always get asked how do I look decent most days. Well, here is how I've found the sweet spot between personal style and contextual appropriateness. Fabric: The Foundation of Perception Structured fabrics = formality (wool, gabardine, thick cotton) • Flowing fabrics = creativity (silk, chiffon) Textured fabrics = approachability (tweed, linen, knits) 📍Action step: For each environment, select one structured piece paired with a textured or flowing element to balance perception. Color Theory: The Silent Communicator Power colors: Navy projects competence, burgundy signals confidence without aggression, forest green balances authority with approachability Contrast principle: High contrast (black/white) reads as more formal; low contrast (navy/gray) as more approachable 60-30-10 rule: 60% base color, 30% complementary color, 10% accent Action step: Identify your 3 best-performing colors and create capsule combinations following the 60-30-10 rule. Strategic Accessorizing: The Difference Maker • Rule of two: Never wear more than two noticeable accessories One statement piece: Allow a single element to command attention One timeliness piece: Like a watch Action step: Remove one accessory before leaving, then assess whether your outfit feels more balanced. What's your power-dressing strategy? Also, hope this helps!

Over 300,000 people are expected to attend the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix this weekend, but not a single one of these fans will arrive by car. Here's how Zandvoort used incentives to create the world's most sustainable sporting event (and why other events should copy their strategy) 👇 First, it's essential to understand why Zandvoort is so unique. The race track is surrounded by water, beaches, dunes, and even a natural park. It's essentially a dead end — there is only one way in and one way out. This is why race organizers banned cars altogether. Instead, they increased the frequency of trains so that one would arrive every 5-10 minutes before, during, and after the race. It's just a short walk to the track from there. Then, race organizers set up "Park & Bike" stations, allowing fans to park their cars a few miles away from the venue and then rent a bicycle to complete the final leg of their journey through the scenic dunes. The result is 40,000 bikes parked directly outside the track, with 98% of attendees arriving via train, bus, or bicycle. The only people allowed to drive into the venue (2%) were drivers, media members, team employees, and F1 personnel. But even more impressive than the Dutch Grand Prix's transportation initiative is how they eliminated waste through a gamified system. When fans arrive at the track, they are given a token that can be exchanged for a plastic cup when purchasing a drink. If you bring your plastic cup back when purchasing your second drink, you will receive another plastic cup in exchange. If you lose your cup, you will be charged 2 euros for a replacement cup. Once the race is over (and you return your last cup), you can then enter the code on the back of each token to win prizes online. This system is commonly used at other events in the Netherlands (concerts, etc.), but it helped achieve a 75% recycling rate for cups during the race. It worked so well because it gamified the recycling process with incentives. Some people held onto their cups to avoid paying the fee, while others proactively picked up trash to increase their chances of winning a prize. Think of it like this: Instead of spending money to hire hundreds of crew members to pick up trash, organizers paid fans (via prizes) to do it for them. This saved them money in the long run, but also produced better results, as people are more likely to recycle when everyone else is doing it too. Genius! P.S. Follow me (Joe Pompliano) for more sports business content! #sports #sportsbiz #linkedinsports

Sustainability Voices to Follow in 2025 🌍 Sharing is caring, and in the realm of sustainability, accessing the right voices can profoundly shape our understanding and actions. This list represents a curated selection of professionals whose work I consider exceptionally insightful and beneficial for anyone looking to deepen their knowledge of sustainable practices in various sectors. David Carlin: Climate and Sustainability Leader, Advisor, and Expert; Founder, D.A. Carlin and Company Vojtech Vosecky: LinkedIn Top Green Voice | The Circular Economist | Helping you make less more! Harald Friedl: Circular economist | Keynote Speaker | Masterclass Coach Roberta Boscolo: Climate & Energy Leader at WMO | Climate Risks & Policy Expert | Advisory Board Member | TEDx Speaker | GTEX IMPACT Leader Elena Doms: CEO at #EARTH, nature tech for land regeneration | Keynote Speaker on Bold Ideas & Nature-Based Innovations Katharine Hayhoe: Climate Scientist | Distinguished Professor, Texas Tech | Chief Scientist, The Nature Conservancy | Author, SAVING US | LinkedIn Top Voice Alessandro Blasi: LinkedIn Top Voice | 115,000+ | Energy - Economy - Sustainability - Climate | Works at IEA, the global leading energy authority Kate Brandt: Google's Chief Sustainability Officer and leads sustainability across Google's operations, products, and supply chains worldwide Sophia Kianni: Founder of Phi | Founder of Climate Cardinals | Stanford | Forbes 30 under 30 | Youngest UN Advisor Adam Elman: Sustainability Director at Google | Previously leading sustainability at Amazon, M&S (Plan A), and Klockner Pentaplast Dan Sherrard-Smith: CEO | Dragons' Den best ever deal | Founder -> impact | Creates tools for how to leverage LinkedIn to grow quality leads, income & impact Oliver Bolton: CEO at Earthly | Optimistic Keynote Speaker | Host of Wilding Earth | On a mission to Restore >1% of the Planet by 2030 This list is built on the personal relevance of the content creation from these individuals; however, I recognize that many names are missing here, each equally deserving of mention for their contributions to sustainability. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #climatechange #education

Yes, CDN improves latencies by caching things closer to the users, but here's an interesting optimization they do to optimize on latencies... TCP suffers from slow starts, i.e., when a new TCP connection is established, it doesn't immediately operate at full bandwidth. Instead, it begins conservatively with fewer segments and doubles them each round-trip time until it detects congestion. This ramp-up can take several iterations to achieve optimal throughput, which is problematic for latency-sensitive applications. This is a big problem for CDN, because even a few additional round-trips for a massive scale costs a lot. CDNs solve this by maintaining persistent connection pools to origin servers. Rather than establishing fresh connections for each user request, they keep a pool of long-lived connections alive between edge nodes and origins. The clever part is pre-warming during low-traffic periods. CDNs periodically send small amounts of data (like health checks or cache validation requests) over these idle connections. This keeps the TCP congestion window at max and prevents it from shrinking due to inactivity. Here's a simple calculation to quantify the impact. By keeping the congestion window pre-warmed, it is operating at 64KB instead of 4KB. This eliminates the 3-7 round-trip ramp-up delay that would otherwise occur. For a connection with 50ms round-trip time, this saves 150-350ms of latency, and that's pretty significant for something that operates at web scale, literally. Hope you found this interesting, and like always, keep digging deeper.

Style 101 for Young Men In my early years as a senior banker, I noticed that young men in the bank needed some guidance on dressing up. I often saw them wearing orange or red shirts with black ties, and black shirts with silver ties. I recalled the time when I was clueless, and took it upon myself to write this guide: 1. If you want to play it safe, wear light-colored plain shirts white, pink and blue. Try white collars and cuffs. Other shirt colors (orange, red, etc.) are tricky. 2. Ties should generally have a darker shade than the shirt. Put a dimple on your tie knot. Avoid the black or gray shirt with light tie combo unless you moonlight for a steak restaurant or a band. 3. Striped ties are better with plain shirts. But if you feel bold and want to wear a striped shirt, the tie stripes should be wider than the shirt stripes. And they should share a similar color. 4. If you are wearing a bold shirt, like a checkered one, wear a plain, sober tie. 5. Wear dark socks that match your pants. If you feel adventurous and want to wear colored socks, do not wear a patterned shirt or striped suit. They will clash. 6. The belt should match your shoes. Don't use a brown belt with black shoes. Better yet, don’t wear a belt at all, like Korean actors. I usually don’t. 7. Wear brown, tan, or burgundy shoes only with pale or navy blue suits. For suits in midnight blue and dark grey, pick dark chocolate brown shoes. Never wear brown shoes with black or near black suits. 8. The coat and pants should match unless you are wearing a blazer or sports coat (more business casual). If you wear a blue blazer, wear gray or khaki pants, avoid blue or black. Contrast is key. 9. The tie should reach the upper part of the belt and not go lower than the buckle. 10. Leave the lower coat button unbuttoned. Do not button everything. Only JFK and preschool boys are exempted from this rule. 11. Show some shirt sleeve, about half an inch, when wearing a coat. If more than an inch shows, have the shirt altered. 12. Slim cut is preferred, and flat front without pleats. Pants should not be too long, with only one break (wrinkle) and not much cloth hanging around the shoes. 13. Finally, if your suit is new, cut the threads from the pocket openings and the vents. You can’t imagine how many times I had to cut the vent threads from new suits of younger bankers. Have it dry-cleaned, especially if the tailor’s chalk marks are showing. One lady CEO still reminds me of the time I pointed out the chalk marks in her blazer. She was just new in the bank then. When having your first suit made, pick navy blue. Next, medium gray. They match most shirts. Then black for special events. Do pinstripes later. Find a good tailor and make him your friend for life. My shirtmaker has done work for my father, my brothers, my sons and nephews. But my suit cutter recently retired and migrated to Canada. (Reposted, per request)

I've been asked a lot recently on podcasts how to evaluate and think about large sponsorships. At ClickUp, we had a strategic partnership with the San Diego Padres that was extremely beneficial from an activation perspective. Here are some key points on how it worked/ was structured: 1. Embedded Partnership: It was important for us to be as integrated into their ecosystem as they were in ours. Our agreement included them using ClickUp as their primary work management tool across several departments. This integration was beneficial in many ways, helping them to speak our language when building out assets and discussing different aspects of our sponsorship. 2. High-Quality Content: We brought our team on board and ensured we had almost unlimited access to tell their story alongside ours. Baseball has a rich history and underwent significant transformations during the pandemic and when everything reopened. We were alongside them for that journey and wanted to tell that story through high-quality content. 3. Fluidity: I dislike rigid agreements. Life and business are dynamic, and our agreements should reflect that. We structured our partnership to be as fluid as possible, allowing us to add assets ad-hoc and make real-time changes. This created a true two-way partnership where both parties were continually thinking about how to further utilize each other. In many ways, it was one of the best partnerships/sponsorships I've done in my career (and I've done a lot). When evaluating potential sponsorships, beyond market fit and target demographics, consider the type of relationship you want with your partners. Look for organizations that align with that vision—it will pay dividends.

i've licensed my photos to some of the biggest companies in the world—and i've made hundreds of thousands of dollars because i still own them. there's a big difference between licensing an image and signing it away as work-for-hire. a lot of brands will ask for full rights upfront while offering very little in return. that might be convenient for them, but it usually isn't aligned for the artist. as an agency founder now, i see this happening to creatives all the time—often because the terms just aren't clearly explained, and most people don't know to ask. licensing is one of the ways creatives protect their work and build long-term value from it. it's also how you create recurring revenue instead of one-time paydays. over the years, i've had to politely turn down requests and explain usage, scope, and pricing more times than i can count—not just for myself, or clients, but for the photographers and creatives on my team. not because we're difficult, but because ownership matters. if a client wants to buy full rights to an image, that's absolutely possible. but it needs to be priced accordingly. once you give up ownership, they can use it anywhere, forever, without ever coming back to you. that has real value. knowing the difference, having educated conversations, and being confident enough to stand by it—that's how you build a sustainable creative business. not just today's revenue, but tomorrow's too.

🚨 Most sponsorship proposals fail because they’re sales decks, not stories. Too many rightsholders still lead their proposals with what they have to sell — logo placements, hospitality, social media slots. But brands don’t buy assets. They buy outcomes. 🤝 Sponsorship isn’t sold on assets. It’s sold on ideas. That’s where creative strategy is the missing bridge. A great sponsorship proposal doesn’t just list rights. It shows how those rights can be activated through stories fans care about, and how those stories ladder up to a brand’s marketing and business objectives. 💡 Without creative strategy: Rights feel generic, interchangeable, and hard to justify. 💡 With creative strategy: Rights become a platform for culture, emotion, and growth. The difference between a sponsorship that gets signed and one that gets ignored comes down to how well you connect the dots between: • Rightsholder value (audience, assets, moments) • Brand ambition (category growth, audience penetration, equity building) • Creative strategy (the story that makes it irresistible) 👉 In a cluttered market, creative strategy isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the glue that turns inventory into impact. Yet, week in week out I still see rightsholder proposals that lack that bridge. If you don’t understand how brands grow > work with those who do If you don’t have the time to customise for categories > work with those who do If you don’t know how to think about creative strategy > work with those who do Having spent most of my career advising brands how to grow through sponsorship (and having reviewed thousands of proposals for both Coca-Cola & Sky), get in touch if you want your sponsorship proposals to no longer be ignored. #sponsorship #marketing #brands #creative #strategy #sports #sportsbiz #sportsbusiness #sportsmarketing #sportsindustry

Service vs. Hospitality: What's the Difference? 1. Service is transactional. Hospitality is personal. Service is checking in a guest quickly. Hospitality is remembering their name and welcoming them like an old friend. 2. Service is following steps. Hospitality is anticipating needs. Service is delivering a meal on time. Hospitality is noticing a guest's preference and suggesting their favorite dish before they even ask. 3. Service is reactive. Hospitality is proactive. Service is handling a complaint professionally. Hospitality is preventing the issue before it arises by understanding guest expectations. 4. Service is standardized. Hospitality is emotional. Service ensures a clean room. Hospitality ensures the guest feels at home by adding thoughtful personal touches. 5. Service is an expectation. Hospitality is what makes a brand unforgettable. Every hotel provides service, but hospitality is what guests remember-and why they return. Why It Matters Luxury hospitality isn't just about speed and efficiency-it's about making guests feel truly cared for. When hotels embed hospitality into their service standards, they create experiences that leave lasting emotional impressions.