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WESTEDGE DESIGN FAIR

DST Design, PRODUCTS, See, Style

Celebrating its eighth year and relaunching post-pandemic, WestEdge Design Fair returns to Barker Hangar in Santa Monica November 16-18. 

The Fair will bring over 175 established and up-and-coming  brands from across the globe offering furniture, lighting, art, kitchen, and bath products to design professionals and enthusiasts. A series of educational programs will include over 45 speakers and over 20 culinary and mixology demonstrations.

Fair highlights include: 

* MADE:MODERN, a curated section of the fair showcasing independent designers, makers and artists with one-of-a-kind furniture, lighting and accent offerings.  Exhibitors include Art’s Tree House, Buzzell Studios, CarbonShack, Ever Atelier, Thomas Cooper Studio, whyrHymer and others. 

* The PIRCH Culinary Pavilion will offer demonstrations and tastings Including a Thanksgiving wine pairings seminar, a kimbap rolling demonstration, and a Taste of Italian Cuisine.  

*WestEdge XTERIORS, the outdoor section of the fair will showcase outdoor design, furnishings, kitchens and grills, saunas etc. 

* WestEdge Theater presented by Banana Republic Home will offer panel talks, industry forums and conversations in partnership withConvo by Design in partnership with BR Home and Marbé Designs. 

* The IIDA/WestEdge Design Fair Booth Awards features the International Interior Design Association partnering with WestEdge to launch two new design competitions  for product awards and/or booth awards for exhibitors, with winners at an Awards Presentation. 

* VIP Lounge hospitality hub is designed by Los Angeles-based interior designer Julia Wong. 

*An Opening Night Party presented by PIRCH will kick off the fair November 16 from 6-10 pm where guests can mingle over food, cocktails, and entertainment along with early-access shopping.  Ticket proceeds and a one-of-a-kind auction of designer items will benefit Hollywood Food Coalition.

For more information, please visit www.westedgedesignfair.com.

RECURRING REVENUE CONFERENCE

Mona Day Conferences, Technology

The Recurring Revenue Conference will be held on November 9, 2023 at the Hilton Los Angeles Culver City.    Subscription ecommerce or SaaS business thinkers, entrepreneurs, executives and investors will discuss the subscription economy and its latest innovations and customer engagement strategies  to attract and retain customer loyalty. Over 700+ attendees, exhibitors and speakers are expected to attend.

The cloud services industry has become increasingly important, grown exponentially with SaaS revenue touching $143.7 billion;  cloud security is growing by 30% annually; low-code SaaS platforms have come of age, with  75% of development shops adopting low-code platforms by this year; 75% of all cloud workloads and computing instances come from SaaS applications, and new software entrants and 80% of prior vendors offering subscription-based business models, with almost half of all software revenue generated from subscription. 

Topics will cover how leaders of successful SaaS businesses are managing explosive growth; why investors are bullish and paying record-breaking multiples for recurring revenue businesses; why building and optimizing ongoing customer relationships is the lifeblood of subscription companies; the latest strategies on reducing Customer Acquisition Cost while still growing;  creating additional revenue channels to augment SaaS revenue; key insights to reduce churn, increase adoption and upsell new solutions; and achieving data-driven marketing success.

Panel discussions include: Generative AI: Separating Hype from Reality, a deep dive into the growth and impact of Generative AI in the SaaS and subscription ecosystem. The Changing Role of the CFO will provide insights into the future of financial leaders from just number-crunchers to strategic partners shaping corporate strategies for long-term success. State of SaaS: Valuations and Key Metrics.    Making a Key Pivot: Opportunities and Challenges will provide firsthand accounts from seasoned CEOs who have successfully executed major pivots in their businesses sharing strategies and lessons they have learned.  Who is Writing Checks?  Meet the Money  will show what investors are currently looking for in potential ventures, how to get their attention and secure funding in the SaaS space.

Roundtable discussions will cover a host of topics: Unlocking Product Value to Drive Growth through pricing; Extending Your Runway in an Challenging Environment; 5 Strategies for Monetizing SaaS Integrated Payments; Scale to Sale: Building Your Business to be Exit Ready;  Get to Know Your Customer Agreement: Tips, Tricks & Mistakes to Avoid; Legal Challenges of Auto-Renew Subscriptions;  Every Company is a Fintech Company: How to Win your Corner of the Internet; Selling with Design & UX; and Nailing your Go-to-Market.

Breakout Sessions include:  The Future of Work: Harnessing AI’s Potential While Navigating Emerging Risks;  Managing Cash & Extending Runway in a Capital Constrained World;  5 Checkpoints for Mastering your Recurring Revenue;  Metrics that Matter: KPIs to Attract Capital & Accelerate Growth; and Term Sheets 101.

Keynote speaker CEO Chris Webb will share his journey in building and scaling ChowNow! In an industry dominated by well-funded competitors charging hefty delivery app fees to both restaurants and consumers, ChowNow saw the challenges local restaurants faced with high commission rates and disrupted the game by offering restaurants an affordable solution of  a fixed monthly subscription without  order percentage fees, empowering them to thrive in the digital age.

 For more information and registration, please visit https://www.recurringrevenueconference.com

AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC CELEBRATES 25th ANNIVERSARY

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AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC CELEBRATES 25th ANNIVERSARY

Southern California is home to ocean treasures that rival those anywhere in the world, and the Aquarium Of the Pacific in Long Beach is celebrating  its 25th anniversary this year with a new Southern California Gallery to be completed later this year.

The Southern California Gallery will feature over ten exhibits and more than three dozen species.  It will showcase underwater habitats like  towering kelp forests, colorful hydrocorals, swaying seagrass, and artificial and rocky reefs and abundance of sea life a like the California two-spot octopus, sharks, scorpionfish, eels and pipefish.

In related programming, visitors can take in a new short film projected in the Aquarium’s Great Hall next to a life-sized model of a blue whale throughout  the anniversary year. The film highlights  the Aquarium’s work in saving local species and habitats.

The Aquarium’s second floor will showcase the work of the top ten winners of the Aquarium’s 25th Anniversary photo contest celebrating people’s connections to nature.  The first guest daily to find an octopus figurine hidden in a different exhibit will win a limited-edition commemorative pin. 

During the summer, the Aquarium’s First Wednesdays guest speaker series  will focus on the theme of connecting to nature and include music and a cocktail/social hour.

Finally, the Aquarium will launch its new podcast series and carry  new  commemorative anniversary merchandise in its gift store.

For more information and tickets, please visit https://www.aquariumofpacific.org

IMMERSIVE VAN GOGH

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IMMERSIVE VAN GOGH

Immersive Van Gogh is an experiential celebration of the renowned post impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh at Lighthouse Artspace in the former Amoeba Music Building on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. 

The production uses approximately 65 state-of-the-art projectors to produce 500,000+ cubic feet of projections in 119,000 video to re-create the painter’s masterpieces.  The immersive  art, light, music evokes the painter’s emotional and chaotic inner consciousness, letting the audience literally step inside artist’s colors and  brushstrokes for a totally immersive experience of his iconic works, seeing them through an entirely new, magical perspective. 

Highlights of the hour-long walk-through installation include:

● Neon Starry Night Ceiling unifies the lobby and bar space.  Inspired by one of Van Gogh’s most beloved paintings, The Starry Night, it pays homage to the exterior of the iconic Amoeba

Music Building with intricate designs of neon lights for an electric rock vibe.

● Sunflower Bar, wrapped with thousands of sun flowers, provides an array of refreshments. It evokes one of Van Gogh’s most prominent subjects –  sunflowers – which he loved for their beauty, as well as his ability to get them them easily and inexpensively. 

● Absinthe Nook, exploring Van Gogh’s complicated and seductive relationship with

“the green fairy,” lets visitors step inside a fever dream based on the legend and lore of absinthe.

● The Letters from Vincent activation is an artificial intelligence program created

from the digital scans of over 1,000 letters Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo.

Guests can ask Vincent a question and have him respond with a custom letter answer.

● Oversize Portrait, a reproduction of his famous self-portrait, lets you look deeper into his eyes,  and well as appreciate the nuances for a greater understanding of his exquisite brushstrokes. 

Since its North American premiere in July 2020, the exhibit has sold over 4.5 million tickets, making it one of the most popular attractions on the continent.

For more information and tickets, please visit https://www.vangoghla.com

Pelléas et Mélisande

Mona Day Entertainment, Opera, stage

LA Opera continues its 2022/23 season with Claude Debussy’s enigmatic masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande, conducted by Music Director James Conlon. 

The opera tells the story of a prince lost in the forest, encountering an ethereal beauty with a mysterious past. After he brings her home to his family as his bride, she begins to grow increasingly close to his handsome younger brother. Debussy’s sensual, exquisitely nuanced score casts a hypnotic spell, capturing an enigmatic dream world where forbidden love blossoms.

Last presented by LA Opera in 1995, Christopher Koelsch, LA Opera’s president and CEO calls it “one of the most rapturously beautiful operas in the entire repertory … one of my, and James Conlon’s, favorite operas” that they’ve been planning to offer for several years now.

Although Debussy received international recognition for its genius immediately after the premiere of Pelléas, 

the opera did not take immediate root in opera houses because they were dominated by the Italian or German traditions. By the composer’s choice, there were none of the conventional props that audience had long come to expect and seek from opera:   vocal acrobatics, bombastic overtures, choruses, and even no ballet, a virtual requirement in France.  Rather, the demands on the audience are more similar to those on a concert-going audience. 

Most surprisingly, there are even no arias that could be excerpted and popularized.   As Conlon explains, “Self-revelation is the dynamic of the solo operatic aria, and the characters in Pelléas, especially Melisande, do everything but reveal themselves.”

The typical operatic diva or divo has little interest in a work that does not show off the voice, and specially one in which there is no interruption for applause.  Most notably, even the quiet, sad and intimate final act discourages any noisy or prolonged applause, making the opera hardly attractive for serious, success-seeking singers and conductors. But this is exactly what makes the opera different – requiring instead sustained concentration on detail – for greater clarity, tonal color, and expression. 

Says Conlon, “Pelléas belongs to a group of works that should be constantly performed, studied and revisited.” Like Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, Boris Godunov and Wozzeck, Pelléas is unique and does not belong to any tradition or genre.

James Conlon conducts a production created by director David McVicar for Scottish Opera in 2017 Production new to Los Angeles. The cast is led by baritone Will Liverman and soprano Sydney Mancasola as the titular lovers, both of them making their company debuts. 

With an estimated running time of three hours and five minutes which includes one intermission, the opera will be performed in French with English supertitles.  Six performances March 25 through April 16 will take place at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Although masks are encouraged, they are no longer required indoors at the theater.

For tickets and more information is available at LAOpera.org/Pelleas.