LIVE National Crew Appreciation Awards Ceremony

What's in the LIVE Recording 🎬

🎞 National Crew Appreciation Week highlights & recap
🎖 Category winners announced ($250 each)
💸 $2,500 Grand Prize winner announced
🎁 Prize drawings throughout the call

Listen 🎧

Watch the episode 📺

Read the Transcript 📚

[00:00:31] Angela Alea: Welcome everyone to another episode of Corralling the Chaos.

[00:00:34] This episode's gonna be a little bit different cuz we're gonna do a live recording of the National Crew Appreciation Award ceremony. For those of you that don't know, this was the first annual week dedicated to celebrating all of the great talent in the event industry that make these events happen, and we wanted to share it with all of you in case you didn't have time to join it live.

[00:00:56] Congratulations again to all of our winners.

[00:00:59] Clay Sifford: Ready to go? [00:01:00] Let's do it. Let's do. Okay,

[00:01:03] Clay Sifford: well, hello everybody. My name is Clay Sifford. I'm Founder and CEO of Lasso and we wanna welcome you to the 2022 National Crew Appreciation Week Award ceremony. While this might be our first ceremony, we've long wanted to celebrate all the people that make the magic happen.

[00:01:21] Clay Sifford: Behind the scenes in our industry. And, today is gonna be that day. Finally, we wanna thank all of you for joining us and congratulate all the winners, and thank you for everything that you're doing for our industry. And, let's go ahead and get rolling.

[00:01:34] Angela Alea: All right. To kick us off, we thought it would be important for you to see the participation and what the reach was for this. So when we started this, what was interesting is we had over 160,000 people, see what we were doing. So over 160,000 impressions. Lots of views on Instagram, LinkedIn, [00:02:00] Facebook, many of you are posting videos and so we're super excited about this number, especially it being our first year because we really did pull the curtain back and really were able to shine a spotlight on all of you that make these events happen.

[00:02:15] Angela Alea: So congratulations for the reach that the National Crew Appreciation Week.

[00:02:20] Angela Alea: So as we go through, we wanted to also highlight there were some really fun pictures and contributions from many companies out there. Everything from. Staffing to event production. There were videos uploaded. People were bringing in lunch, doing dinners, doing happy hours, doing some really fun videos of behind the scenes of what happens at a lot of these companies and really just spotlighting, again, all of you, the people who make these things happen.

[00:02:48] Angela Alea: So it was really fun to see.

[00:02:49] Angela Alea: And so let's get to some of the award winners. Before we jump into the specific ones. We wanted to give some honorable mentions. There were hundreds and [00:03:00] hundreds of nominees, but these were just a few of the honorable mentions. I do wanna call out Gina Harris.

[00:03:06] Angela Alea: Richard, Negron. Chris Patterson and Ebony Davis. And then you can see there are some of the nice accolades that they received and they were, I wish we could share them all with you. There's so many great ones. We tried to really highlight some of them throughout the week. But these are a couple of the drawings.

[00:03:24] Angela Alea: We're gonna do another drawing at the end as well, and about, , five to 10 minutes. But these are a couple of the people that we wanted to highlight. We'll reach out to you so you can claim your prize as.

[00:03:34] Angela Alea: These are the award categories. We had our mopro, which is our most professional, our top teammate, our technical titan, the count on me and the Fearless leader. Those were the various award categories. And then we've added a six one called our Standing Ovation Award.

[00:03:51] Angela Alea: We are having customized trophies made cuz we do believe in trophies around here. Also a $250, some additional swag as [00:04:00] well as a badge that you can put on your LinkedIn, your email signatures, things that really tout your award because.

[00:04:07] Angela Alea: It was a very fierce competition. Lots of great nominees. So with that, we're gonna jump into each of those categories.

[00:04:14] Angela Alea: Our

[00:04:15] Dallion Duran-Ballen: the first category is the MoPro category. We are looking for a person who always shows up prepared, is dressed appropriately, knows how to communicate, and knows how to work well in any situ. So our most professional award winner was nominated by Peter May. This person is a total professional. Just give them a task and they will work through it within any department.

[00:04:40] Dallion Duran-Ballen: They always lead the crew with confidence and professionalism. Congratulations to Frank Pastana our Mopro Award [00:04:50]  winner. 

[00:04:53] John Barron: So our next award is going to be that top teammate award. And what we're looking for here is [00:05:00] someone who's always the first to build camaraderie, is ready to help and does whatever it takes.

[00:05:05] John Barron: And the one you're secretly is hoping is always on your show. So, , with that, our top teammate award winner was nominated by Nefty Brown. This person has over 15 years of industry experience. They're diligent, hardworking. Punctual professional and possess a mastery in many different skills. They're an approachable person and responds positively when they are asked to assist or switch roles, and they're really just a very flexible individual when they show up.

[00:05:33] John Barron: Congratulations to Darris Taylor, you are our top teammate, award winner.

[00:05:39] Ali Taylor: All right. Our next award is the Count On Me Award. This is somebody who's highly accountable, steady and loyal, and always does what they'll say they'll do. Our winner was nominated by Erin Devlin.

[00:05:51] Ali Taylor: This person has been working with how high output since 2015, and in that time has grown and flourished into a skilled lighting technician and designer.

[00:05:59] Ali Taylor: [00:06:00] We know that when this person is on our show, we can count on them to fulfill and often exceed our client's needs. They always show up on time, is always enthusiastic about their work, and it's a skilled leader. So congratulations to Becky Marsh for our count on me winner. Congrats Becky.

[00:06:15] Ali Taylor: And then our next one is our technical titan. This person was nominated by Omar Lom. This person is extremely proficient. Oh, apologies. Let's back up. Technical titan. Seen it all done in our, and isn't phased by a high stress situation. So this person is an extremely proficient V one and a one. They're understanding and discipline of both fields puts them in a unique position to be an asset to any production.

[00:06:39] Ali Taylor: They're also a great mentor to upcoming technicians, generous and always patient with their time. So congratulations to Ed Willock for our technical Titan winner.

[00:06:48] Drew Brucker: right. Next award would be the Fearless Leader Award, and this is somebody that takes initiative. And orchestrates everything from start to finish stays calm under pressure, [00:07:00] spreads confidence and positivity to the team knows what to do when obstacles arise. And we received an awesome, nomination for this one.

[00:07:08] Drew Brucker: So, the nomination was, from Michelle Windon-Ünver, and she said, this person never shies away from getting in the weeds. With our team, their positive and confident energy is contagious and sorely missed when absent. They have a servant's heart, always taking the time to educate their teammates, never stingy with the wealth of knowledge they possess, and have a remarkable ability to make everyone feel included and seen.

[00:07:32] Drew Brucker: Lastly, they bring new meaning to caring for those in charge. In our lighthouse when show site starts to wear on her crew. Congratulations to ya. Natasha Backas, congratulations. You are the fearless leader for the 2022 National Crew Appreciation Week.

[00:07:54] Angela Alea: All right. It is now time for the Standing Ovation Award. Just as a reminder, the grand [00:08:00] prize for this award is $2,500. Also the trophy, the swag, and a badge. So lemme tell you a little bit about this person. So it's the person that you wish you had a hundred of. They're reliable, dependable, they take initiative, they handle chaos with a sense of calm, and they're just an all around rockstar.

[00:08:21] Angela Alea: So our standing ovation nominee was actually recognized by more than a dozen people. This person also got at least one nomination in every single category we just went through, which is quite impressive. And here are some ways that people described this person. They have an innate ability to gather and engage their community.

[00:08:44] Angela Alea: They've been described as setting the bar in all categories. They're a natural born leader. They're inspiring. They have the highest level of technical knowledge in nearly all departments. This person exudes professionalism while maintaining a [00:09:00] humble attitude. They take note of particular barriers that prevent from that, prevent people from accessing training, and then they address those barrier.

[00:09:09] Angela Alea: This person is the hardest working and biggest rockstar I know in the AV world. So that's just a handful of some of the sentences that that we received for the nominations. So with that, our standing Ovation award goes to Omar column. So congratulations, Omar, for the Standing Ovation Award. No surprise there.

[00:09:33] Angela Alea: It's been really, really fun to read all the nominations that have come in and we're really looking forward to continuing to celebrate each year. And so with that, I believe we have two more drawings. We are going, we are going to do, so I think Dion's gonna be drawing that., but I just wanted to say thank you to all of you that participated, all of you, that you make our industry better.

[00:09:57] Angela Alea: You show up, you're leaders, you're [00:10:00] professional, you're reliable. You're great at your skills because without you, none of this happens. And as we always say around here, every event experience is only as good as the people who make it happen. And that's you. So thank you, thank you, thank you for all you do to make our industry as wonderful as it is.

[00:10:18] Angela Alea: So Dallion, I'm going to turn it over to you to announce who our final two drawings.

[00:10:24] Dallion Duran-Ballen: Yes, so Bill Brady and Mateo Felipe, we will contact you, after this webinar is over and you'll be able to claim your prize. Congratulations. Thank you for attending.

[00:10:39] Drew Brucker: All right, guys, just to wrap up, again, just to echo what, what Angela and Clay said this, this was really an important week for us to, feel like we could include the entire industry and touch on all the good things that everybody's doing and make sure everybody's seen and recognize for all the hard work that they do.

[00:10:56] Drew Brucker:  We appreciate your support along the way. Thank you for showing up today. [00:11:00] There are other ways that. Sort of, facilitating the conversation that's taking place right now in the industry. , if you haven't already, definitely check out the Corralling the Chaos Podcast with Angela. It's fantastic.

[00:11:11] Drew Brucker: There's, there are takeaways for both companies and crew. We really dig into a lot of the, the conversations and topics that. I think we all want to talk about, but we just haven't. And we're addressing those things head on as a community and, and really trying to facilitate the change that needs to take place in order for us to move forward.

[00:11:28] Drew Brucker: We're also posting really good content on LinkedIn. So, for companies follow our, LASSO Brand Page. If your crew, the LASSO Crew Page is gonna be a wealth of knowledge and information for you there. And then lastly, if you're also Crew, we do a monthly newsletter to touch on all the things happening in the crew world, along with some bite-size nuggets that you guys can dive into and get a better understanding of practices for the roles and the events that are coming.

[00:11:58] Drew Brucker: That's it. So just wanna say thank you again to everybody that showed up and, for all the winners, we'll be in touch and we'll follow up shortly.

[00:12:06] Angela Alea: Congrats everyone!

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