Country Club of Virginia's Simple Member Experience Boosts Engagement

What happens when a private club realizes that sometimes the best member experiences are also the simplest? The Country Club of Virginia in Richmond listened to member feedback and created Sunset Sips, a complimentary outdoor social series built around casual conversation, live music and a welcoming atmosphere. As Ashley Payne, communications director at The Country Club of Virginia, explained, "The intent was more about member connection and was a direct response to member feedback for a more casual, low-cost opportunity to connect with fellow members outside of traditional club events." The success of Sunset Sips reminds clubs that listening to members, embracing simplicity and creating opportunities for authentic connection can have a lasting impact on club culture. It's a great example of how thoughtful programming can strengthen member engagement by focusing on what members value most: spending time together. Click here to read the full story: https://lnkd.in/gRPiJbt7 Innovative Ideas is sponsored by Club Data Services, LLC. #BoardRoommagazine #InnovativeIdeas #PrivateClubIndustry

One day in London, one clear reason to be there: iGBLive Conference lands July 22, 2026. For attendees, this is a single day in London to spend deliberately. No sprawling week to plan around, no multi-city logistics to sort through. Just one focused date on the calendar to build a trip toward, which tends to make the sessions and conversations that happen feel more intentional rather than diluted across days. For the producers running something like this, a one-day, single-city format changes the operational math entirely. There is no room for a slow first day or a soft open. Registration has to work from the first hour, sponsor and speaker logistics have to be locked before doors open, and every hour of programming carries more weight than it would across a three-day event. Compressed formats like this leave less margin for friction behind the scenes. We spend our time helping producers handle exactly that kind of pressure, from speaker and sponsor outreach to registration, ticketing, and certificates, so the day itself runs the way it was planned to. We are not affiliated with this event, just glad to see it on the calendar and thinking about what it takes to pull a day like this off well. More on how we help producers run events like this below. Organized by iGamingBusiness #EventProfs #EventManagement #B2BEvents #UKEvents #LondonEvents

Something we see constantly with venue operators trying to improve how they work. They've identified the problem. They've looked at the options. They know a better system would make their operation run smoother. And then nothing happens. Not because they changed their mind. Not because the software was wrong. Because they get stuck in the implementation trap, 69% of hospitality professionals cite integrating new systems as their biggest challenge. The most common culprit: running two systems in parallel indefinitely. The old spreadsheet and the new platform, side by side, both being maintained, neither fully committed to. It doubles the work and gives everyone a legitimate reason to stay with the familiar one. The venues that make these transitions successfully tend to do three things differently. Start with one workflow. Set a go-live date. Put one person in charge of it. We've written a full implementation guide built around how grassroots venues actually operate, practical, phased, and designed to get you from decision to live without disrupting a single show. Check it out. https://lnkd.in/eBEAPQN9

Tomorrow should be a good one. Come talk money and all the ways it ties into the tech, sports, health, other capital providers, and media people who'll be there. The interesting part is never just "go get funding." It's how you actually do it. We've watched founders across those industries get creative with debt in ways most people never see. The right loan, the right terms, the right timing, structured to fit their situation instead of forcing them into someone else's box. That's the stuff we like getting into. Austin Moss and a few of our KC Capital Collaboration team will be around to talk through the details with you, whatever you're working on. Curious who shows up, who we get to meet, and what we end up building together.

What if the key to improving member satisfaction wasn't adding more staff or expanding the kitchen, but simply rethinking the workflow? North Hills Club, a BoardRoom Distinguished Clubs with ELITE status, faced a familiar challenge: one kitchen serving multiple venues while producing more than 1,000 tickets a day. During peak pool season, families often waited 30 to 45 minutes for children's favorites. The club's solution, Hot & Ready, transformed the experience. By identifying its highest-volume menu items and preparing them in advance, North Hills virtually eliminated wait times at the pool, eased pressure on the kitchen and created a smoother operation for both members and staff. It's a practical reminder that some of the most effective innovations don't require a complete operational overhaul, just a thoughtful approach to solving the right problem. Click here to read the full story: https://lnkd.in/gRPiJbt7 Innovative Ideas is sponsored by Club Data Services, LLC. #BoardRoomMagazine #InnovativeIdeas #PrivateClubIndustry

You're three days out from a 200-person corporate gala. Two bartenders just cancelled. Your coordinator is buried in a spreadsheet trying to figure out who's certified, available, and close enough to get there on time. This is still how most event companies operate, and it costs them 15 to 20 hours a week in scheduling alone. We compared 7 event staff scheduling platforms to find out which ones actually solve this and which ones just digitize the same mess. AI shift matching, mobile time clocks, built-in communication, and pricing models that don't penalize you for having a large seasonal roster were all on the checklist. Read the full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/e8xZarYz

What if the key to improving member satisfaction wasn't adding more staff or expanding the kitchen, but simply rethinking the workflow? North Hills Club, a BoardRoom Distinguished Clubs with ELITE status, faced a familiar challenge: one kitchen serving multiple venues while producing more than 1,000 tickets a day. During peak pool season, families often waited 30 to 45 minutes for children's favorites. The club's solution, Hot & Ready, transformed the experience. By identifying its highest-volume menu items and preparing them in advance, North Hills virtually eliminated wait times at the pool, eased pressure on the kitchen and created a smoother operation for both members and staff. It's a practical reminder that some of the most effective innovations don't require a complete operational overhaul, just a thoughtful approach to solving the right problem. Click here to read the full story: https://lnkd.in/gcRSuz85 Innovative Ideas is sponsored by Club Data Services, LLC. #BoardRoomMagazine #InnovativeIdeas #PrivateClubIndustry

Excited to welcome the City of Franklin, TN to the Accela community! Franklin just went live with new digital permitting services — moving special events, film, and beer permits off paper and spreadsheets and into one connected online experience. Powered by OpenCounter, applicants now get a guided, end-to-end process: understand what's required, submit, and track real-time status — all in one place. On the city side, staff across departments finally have a single, shared view of activity instead of working in silos. It's a great example of what modern permitting can look like — more transparency for residents and businesses, less administrative lift for staff. Congrats to the team at Franklin on this milestone! 👏 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e28Mqb9b #GovTech #Permitting #LocalGovernment #Accela #Tennessee

Private clubs run on rules. How many times a member or guest can play per day, week, month, or year based on their membership type. Which days and times they are allowed to book. How far in advance they are able to reserve. And every club's rules are a little different. For years, the only way to track it all has been a spreadsheet buried somewhere, or the institutional memory of a few veteran staff members. That works, until it doesn't. Someone's on vacation, a new hire hasn't memorized the play limits yet, and suddenly a member's guest has booked outside their allowed window or blown past their monthly play count before anyone catches it. With Kaisyr, that's no longer the reality. Our automated restriction and rules tracking is built entirely around your club's policies and fully adaptable to whatever criteria you define: ✅ Play count limits per day, week, month, or year, by membership type ✅ Booking windows, meaning which days of the week and times of day members and guests can play ✅ Advance booking limits, meaning how far out someone is allowed to reserve Once it's set up, Kaisyr tracks and enforces all of it automatically, in real time. ✅ No more spreadsheets to maintain and cross check ✅ No more relying on staff memory to "just know" the rules ✅ Consistent enforcement, every time, for every member and guest ✅ Fully customizable to match your club's exact policies, not a generic template We put together a quick video showing exactly how it works in action. Take a look 👇 #PrivateClubs #ClubManagement #Hospitality #ClubTech #Kaisyr

One of the best ways to judge whether a co-production session has been successful is the noise. 🔊 A colleague of ours, elspeth mcadam, used to say she measured the success of a session by the volume of the room. We think there's a lot of truth in that! We recently spent the day with around 40 people from Berkshire Public Health as part of their CPD programme. Even before we officially started, the energy in the room was fantastic. As the day went on, the conversations, laughter and enthusiasm just kept building. There's something really special about helping a room full of people who don't know each other very well become connected over the course of a few hours. One of our favourite moments was hearing a participant say they’d really got to know everyone around their table as people, not just as colleagues. That's such an important part of what we do - creating opportunities for people to share stories, talk about what they're good at, what they love, and what matters to them outside of work. Those conversations build trust, create connection, and make it much easier to work together. It was lovely to hear so many people say afterwards that the session was exactly what they needed. We hope it gives them the confidence, relationships and momentum to go away and put co-production into practice. Thanks to everyone who joined us in Bracknell Forest, and for Louise Duffy for organising it! Helen Sharp #CoProduction #Connection #Berkshire #PublicHealth