Event Management & Concierge Services

CSJ Events

Meetings & Retreats, Conferences, Unique Events, Celebrations, and Concierge Services

Whether a women’s wellness weekend, corporate meeting, warm-weather charity golf tournament, family reunion or annual association conference, or distinctive dinner party, CSJ Events delivers a customized, full-service, value-added approach to make your event happen — and make it unforgettable. The CSJ Event Management Team uses a unique creative planning process, innovative and experiential activities and fresh, secluded West Coast locations to create a tailored experience that suits clients’ personalities, needs and budgets.

Corporate Off-Sites, Executive Meetings & Team-Building Retreats

Creativity + Conversation = Innovation

Current economic, environmental and social problems are at an all-time time high calling for innovative and creative solutions.  Companies are looking to leaders and leadership teams for fresh ideas, unique initiatives, and transforming campaigns.  Like no other time before, corporate off-sites, executive meetings and team-building retreats must deliver value and solutions.  How?  By delivering a different experience.

Einstein said, “If you want different results, do not do the same things.”  For meeting planners, if clients are asking for a totally different experience, are you going to take them back to the same urban hotel with closed windows and air conditioning?  Or, is it time to break out of the box and create a new experience at a new destination – BC’s best kept secret -  where we have more artists and musicians per capita of any other Canadian community*.  Different solutions are a result of a different approach.  Just like a road trip, if you take a different route, you’ll reach a new destination.  Participants need to physically be in a different place if they want to achieve a different, creative head-space.

A sampling of the type of experiences easily created by the Distinctly West Coast team:

  • First Nations interpretive kayak tour, singing, drumming, dancing and an authentic salmon bbq;
  • Theatrical group work or improv at an Art Farm, five acres dedicated to cultivating change;
  • Time to get your hands (and feet) dirty with a visit to an agricultural learning centre to learn organic farming techniques and enjoy a local 100-mile diet lunch;
  • Morning mountain biking or hiking with a certified guide, afternoon yoga and relaxation breathing techniques, interspersed with professionally facilitated conversation, group work, and plenty of social time;
  • Scenic West Coast flight aboard a totally refurbished 1950′s floatplane followed by a big picture, strategic visioning session – expansive experience, expansive minds;
  • Creative leadership conversation labs where we don painting smocks and utilize professionally facilitated discussion intertwined with painting, finger-painting or sock monkey making to get the creative juices flowing!

There are two key ingredients of our successful, innovative, out-of-the-box group experiences:  Creativity and Conversation.  Conversation (ie. a typical corporate meeting) without an experiential activity that allows you to travel beyond the typical day-to-day head-space of doing (answering emails, telephone calls, reacting, etc.) to a creative space of being (brainstorming, creating, enjoying) will only yield typical results.  For those groups ready to shift past the typical onto the exceptional, we can create, organize and coordinate the experiences necessary for you!

Three things to keep in mind when creating your next solutions-based experiential meeting:

  1. Clarity requires simplicity. Back in the day, companies headed for Palm Desert, Vegas or a busy urban centre to host their annual corporate meeting or strategic planning session.  Now they are realizing that over-stimulation and competing activities may not be the answer to take their teams to the next level.
  2. Turn it off so you can turn it on.  Organizers are realizing that by unplugging from our busy lives that cause diffused energy and distractions, we can plug into creativity, inspiration and imagination… that lead the way to innovation!
  3. Innovation is the doorway to the solutions we seek.  Plain and simple, it is only by reaching past our comfort zone and resisting our urge to do things the same way we’ve done them in the past that we’ll create the solutions we are looking for.  Innovation is defined as “something new or different introduced”.  It’s time.

If you are looking to take your next meeting and retreat to the next level ~ far, far past boardrooms, golf courses and typical results ~ and onto something different, really different, then contact us because dollar for dollar the value-added experience we will create for you will catapult your team forward by shifting their thinking, attitude and energy.

*CSJ stat although the Sunshine Coast and Salt Spring Island may be competing for this title!