PLENARY Social Media, Social Planner Q Meetology: Cordially Invited
CAREER PATH Liz King Owner, Liz King Events
The assistant director of event management and social media at Columbia University’s Center for Career Educa- tion, Liz King, 29, is the founder of New York City–based Liz King Events, which offers event-planning and social- media services. She also is co-founder of PlannerTech, a meeting-planning technology event series, which launched in New York City earlier this year and will be held in Washington, D.C., next month.
How did you get into the meetings industry?
I kind of got into it by accident. I was in a counseling job — I was a psychol- ogy major in college — running support groups. I didn’t think it was the best fit for me, so I began working in an admin- istrative position at Columbia University, which happened to be on the program- ming and events team. I started to think more about it, and one day I was with a friend and asked, “What if I did event planning?” And he said, “That is the best thing! Why didn’t we think of it before?”
What is the intersection between event planning and social media in your business?
I knew I wanted to start a business. When I joined Twitter, I created the handle @lizking events, because that is who I am and what I wanted to do. In the meantime, I was trying to come up with a great company name and business plan. I started to make relationships online, and someone reached out to me and said, “I’d love to hire @lizkingevents” — but I didn’t have a company. I turned down a couple of requests, and then decided, this is what I
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want to do and I am creating a reputation, so I set up Liz King Events. If social media can be that powerful for one individual, it can be that powerful for meetings and events.
What are the pros and cons of keeping a full-time job while running a business? An obvious advantage is financial security. But working at Columbia University is a little bit different than a tradi- tional corporate job. In higher education, there is a little more vacation time built in. It’s also a well- known Ivy League school, and I get ac- cess to a lot of ideas. I kind of play my nine-to-five job and business off each other. Things that I learn at Liz King Events I take back to Columbia, and things that I learn at Columbia, of course, I can take back to Liz King Events. The disadvantage is that
there are limitations on my time. I have to be very selective in the clients I take on.
Where do you see yourself in the future? Long-term, I’m hoping to really educate the meeting industry — not necessarily the plan- ner side, but the client side — about why it is so important to consider technology and social media as a critical component of their events. I would like to work with corporations and those who host meetings to really revolu- tionize the way that we do meetings, to make them more effective and a better experience for attendees. n
TWO IN ONE: “I play my nine-to-five job and business off each other. Things that I learn at Liz King Events I take back to Columbia, and things that I learn at Columbia I can take back to Liz King Events.”
MEETOLOGY®
How You Ask
Creative agency Behance’s
The 99% website on how to “fix broken meetings with better invites”: http://bit.ly/o3LYt7.