How A&M Agency, GigRent, e=mc2, Quest AV, & IES Productions are Assisting their Communities & the Industry
We’re so excited to say that we are back with the 10th edition of our Give Back Series! This will be our last feature in this series (for now), so thank you so much to everyone who has been following us, telling your stories and sharing our content. For anyone who has not read our previous articles, every Tuesday and Thursday, we have showcased five companies to share some stories of the good will and good ideas that have come out of this tough time.
A&M Agency: Working Hard to Promote Important Causes
A&M Agency is a women-owned event management company based in Nashville, TN. As a member of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and chair of their Hospitality Committee, Amanda Stone as well as the rest of the A&M team have been giving back to their local community since their business was first launched.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, however, they wanted to do more and find other ways to give back to their friends and colleagues in need. The A&M team worked quickly to organize a Nashville Event Alliance comprised of local owners of corporate and non-profit event planners to align expectations for when events will take place. Their mission has been to promote confidence among event hosts and attendees in order to strengthen the event industry’s comeback. The group will also serve as a platform for advancing the industry in a more transparent, supportive, and diverse direction than ever before. A&M along with another Nashville event planner came together to draft, distribute, and commit to a pledge that encourages the Nashville events industry to engage and promote relevant businesses owned by BIPOC.
In addition to helping vulnerable members of the events community, A&M’s founders, Amanda and Micaela, stepped up as thought leaders and co-authored several pieces aimed at now challenged industries including hotels, venues, vendors, non-profits, and other event planners. Check out a few of their pieces published by Nashville Business Journal and The Tennessean. They are also helping out by consulting for these companies who need more one-on-one assistance.
GigRent: Disinfecting Event Sites and Equipment for Safer Events
GigRent is an equipment rental company based in Westminster, Colorado who, since 2010 have been providing audio visual and technical equipment rentals along with the training and expertise to actively compose events of all sizes worldwide. Their team is always willing to lend a hand and as a policy, provide free expert support for on-site issues to anyone who needs it.
When their team was confronted with widespread cancellations and reschedules, they pivoted their business to adapt without skipping a beat. Over the last several months, their leadership team started a new sister company directly focused on event disinfection. Their highly skilled and trained team focuses on ensuring event spaces are safely and quickly disinfected with the proper equipment to ensure the safety of the crew, equipment and attendees. All of their teams are OSHA certified and available to help everyone in the industry get clean and back to business, minimizing risk to crew and attendees.
e=mc2 Events: Providing Drive Thru Graduation Experiences
The team at e=mc2 Events, based in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver provides creative strategy, experience design, event, conference, and production design. Their team believes that the experience matters and the human to human connection through events is fundamentally their sole purpose. With this drive to connect people, the COVID-19 pandemic served as an opportunity to do things differently, and the talented professionals at e=mc2 rose to the occasion to continue to find new ways to bring people together.
The team at e=mc2 has been in the virtual events space for quite some time and has helped support countless live-converted-to-virtual events. When it came to honoring the 2020 graduates who would be without a ceremony this year, however, they wanted to think outside the box and find a way to do it in person.
What they came up with was a Drive Thru Graduation experience to celebrate the new grads of schools across the country. The experience they created was complete with photo booth opportunities, live streaming, and photo galleries for the graduates and their families to view and share. The entire experience that the team offers is fully compliant with all local and national safety measures and has provided a wonderful way to preserve such a special and important occasion for thousands of people.
Quest AV: Helping Their Neighbors and Donating Equipment for Important Initiatives
Quest AV, based in Toronto, Ontario provides production and audiovisual services, well known in both the corporate meeting and social events world. When live events started to cancel and their Summer turned out to be less active than originally anticipated, the team at Quest AV decided to use that extra time to jump in and help out their neighbors and friends. For months now, their team has extended the complimentary services of their drivers and vans to assist the elderly and vulnerable members of their community. Even now, they are still at it, providing miscellaneous pickup and drop off service as well as grocery/food delivery within their local community to anyone who indicates that they need it.
In addition to the above, Quest AV has provided complimentary equipment rentals for a number of recent community activism events surrounding Black Lives Matter and other important causes.
If you know someone that needs help with groceries or medication, reach out to the Quest AV team
IES Productions: Adding Resources to Guide Their Partners to Readiness
IES Productions, an event company, based in Charleston, South Carolina intimately understands the uncertainty and fear both their clients and industry friends have faced. They realized quickly, however, that the new reality is already here and they needed to adjust with the responsible approach as soon as the pandemic started. To find the solution to current event problems they launched a brand called Assurance Through Alliance (ATA). The idea behind ATA was to introduce a company to the marketplace that specialized in compliance for three key areas of current and future need as we adjust to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Event Production, Video Production, as well as Meeting and Event Planning.
The roadmap at ATA is a little different than that of IES and is designed to help other companies and organizations to safely navigate to the other side of their unique crisis position as well. Their team has been laser-focused on delivering responsible events, providing meeting, event, technology, and security consultations, working in lock step with their client, hotel, and vendor partners.
Moreover, to provide a safe environment ATA also offers a unique disinfecting fixture, which uses GUV radiant energy to effectively inactivate any viruses and bacteria. The Professional GUV lighting they use has been recommended by CDC as a supplemental control measure for air disinfection, is available for their clients to reduce the risk of infection and allow them to continue hosting meetings and events.
We’d love to continue this series, so reach out if you have a story to tell. Let’s keep the spirit of community and positivity going! We will continue to provide content for the industry to help circulate ideas while we all work towards a brighter tomorrow with the values we’ve learned together in these trying times.
