Catalyst Ranch’s
Creative Juice Blog
As meeting-success mavens, we have a specific set of fears that keep us up at night: An audience with blank stares. Multitasking attendees. Monotonous presentations. They’re nightmare situations we have in common with our Meeting Planner clients. Happily, meetings don’t have to be a drag. With a few smart strategies, you can turn passive participants [...]
On Administrative Professionals Day, 2025, we're reminiscing on the collection of evenings we were able to welcome OfficeNinjas to Catalyst Ranch and see first hand how a professional association perfectly executes networking and community-building. The OfficeNinjas was a thriving community of administrative professionals created and led by Nancy and Edwin Salgado. In just a few [...]
It’s World Creativity and Innovation Week, April 15-21, and we at Catalyst Ranch are, as you can imagine, pretty chuffed. (We’re being worldly with our lexicon, too. 😉) This is a full week devoted to inspiring creative potential and encouraging innovation in everyday life. It’s a reminder that creativity isn't just for artists [...]
Click here to VOTE for Catalyst Ranch in The Summit Awards through Friday, March 28.Two votes per day per email address are permitted.The Hospitality-Tourism-Events Summit Chicago holds court in April, and the organizers have put together an array of award categories that will be celebrated at this expo event.And while the awards themselves are secondary to [...]
As a woman-founded and woman-owned company, Catalyst Ranch has always sought to lift up women. It’s a value that guides us in our private and public event booking as well as in the various arts and fundraising series we’ve produced ourselves. In March, Women’s History Month gives us the opportunity to learn more about [...]
While February comes to a close, we again look to ways Black History can be celebrated all throughout the year, beyond Black History Month.As we’ve explored in years prior, Black History abounds in Chicago, and many industry-changing institutions that were founded in Chicago endure to this day. Among them are the South Side Community Arts [...]
This post, originally published in August of 2021, references a cost comparison chart that has been updated with current figures. Get Out of That Hotel! Maximizing the True Value in Meeting Offsite It’s the classic question, as posed by The Clash, “Should I stay or should I go?” This is the [...]
Halloween is a tradition that for a lot of people started when we were kids. It’s all about the fun we have getting scared. The main event was of course trick or treating, going out in our costumes with a group of friends and going to as many houses as we could. Especially to [...]
Chicago is host to such a wide range of events at any given time, bringing people together, in environments that allow you to interact with the city around you. There are art showings and installations, music at cozy blues clubs and huge festivals, food tasting events in the parks, and so much more. That's [...]
We here at Catalyst Ranch love to celebrate the many varied peoples that call Chicago home. It’s a city where different communities intersect and overlap, much in the way visitors interact in our meeting space. In our Hispanic communities, art, music and dance play a huge role in our lives. Chicagoans encounter them every [...]
