Catalyst Ranch’s
Creative Juice Blog
Earlier this year, we presented a set of insider recommendations for things to DO in Chicago. This shortlist of choice activities was curated by your very own Ranch staff as a token of our trademark Champagne Customer Service. Whether you come from near or far, we want you to feel feeling at home — [...]
Any meeting is more enticing if you know someone’s bringing donuts. Fact. And that’s only the bare minimum application of the fact we all know: Food makes a gathering better. Food (and drink, if we're lucky!) accomplishes a lot: Food adds value for folks to physically arrive; Food gives you energy to keep up [...]
One of the best parts of being in the hospitality industry is personalizing that hospitality. It’s a great feeling to make folks feel welcomed and entertained; it's fulfilling on a whole other level to do it in a way that’s uniquely ours. You can’t get the Catalyst Ranch experience anywhere else. More than [...]
We’re thankful for an industry where we get to meet so many people and create community and connection into different industries and spheres. Human connection is such a huge part of cultivating mental wellness. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, so we’re bringing some attention to resources and communities whose work we have high regard [...]
Top 6 Hybrid Meeting Tips: No more Zoom and Gloom “Hybrid Meetings” are nothing new in the realm of off-site gatherings. A conference call during an in-person meeting technically makes it hybrid. However, we’re now in an era where the frequency, intricacy, and importance of a hybrid setup for a meeting has been elevated. This has [...]
Catalyst Ranch Virtual Zoom Backgrounds Welcome all ye who [virtually] enter here! With a virtual attendance element being commonplace for all meetings and events these days, we've gathered here all our virtual Zoom backgrounds, for clients and guests to use when they cannot be here at Catalyst Ranch in person. Use the instructions below [...]
Make More of Your Space: How Creative Meeting Setups Foster Possibilities Necessity is the mother of invention. This has never held truer than in today’s climate. The ever-changing demands for safety and versatility around in-person meetings has been a challenge for meeting planners as we respond daily to new requirements and considerations. At Catalyst Ranch [...]
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 question meeting planners face whenever they’re looking for meeting space in conjunction with a hotel stay. Do I keep my attendees immersed within [...]
Throw Back to Move Forward: The Link Between Nostalgia and Creativity in Business In their study The mnemonic muse: Nostalgia fosters creativity through openness to experience published in 2015, Wijand A. P. van Tilburg, Constantine Sedikides, and Tim Wildschut hypothesized that nostalgia fosters creativity. Long story short, they were right! They could have saved [...]
Environment Matters: No More Boring Focus Groups If you’re reading this, then odds are you’ve been on one side of the two-way mirror or both. The focus group is one of the longstanding ways to gather feedback on your products and services. That real life interaction with your buyers helps you determine what’s really important, confusing, [...]
