Horror Show: Be Secretly Afraid Of Your Next Event

If you aren’t afraid of your next event you are heading for a fiasco.

Events are complex, they are alive and you only get one shot with your audience to deliver a memorable experience. Horrifying.

It would be nice if events were like software. Then we could launch a half-broken product and follow up with some updates. Unfortunately events have to work the first time. It is more like creating a monster than a product. Hopefully you tame the beast and put on a good show, if not, it runs amok and destroys an island.

A friend of mine found himself wisely afraid of his event monster recently. He had invited a few hundred super-smart people to spend a day together at a prestigious university. All the moving parts (catering, a/v, volunteers, speakers, etc) were making him nervous with just three weeks until his event monster would come to life.

He wanted to create a community around a great event experience and had managed enough big projects to know when to ask for some help. I was happy to spend some time with him to offer advice. Our conversation reminded me of how common it is for people to ignore their fear. Instead they plow forward, wishfully thinking that they can send out an update if something goes wrong.

So if you are creating a monster of an event and you find yourself justifiably afraid, I have put together a few self-diagnostic questions and tips to tame the beast.If you aren’t afraid of your next event you are heading for a fiasco.

Are you leaving your audience room enough to digest?

It is easy to over-pack an event and exhaust your audience’s attention. If you are spending a lot of money on an event if can be tempting to fill it with every possible message. The problem is that if nothing stands out, then nothing is memorable and everyone is exhausted.

If you aren’t afraid of your next event you are heading for a fiasco.

Tips To Prevent Audience Exhaustion:

• Don’t pack a schedule with too much content. That is a recipe for a bad experience and an audience tuning-out halfway through your event.
• Think of it like a meal with friends. People want time to eat and time to talk. At a great meal the food inspires the talk and talk makes you hungry for the food.
• Think about the actual food and drinks you serve. Offer nutritious options that will fuel sustained energy rather than sugary snacks that will lead to energy crashes.
• Provide ample networking and mingling time for your audience to digest the curated experiences and information you are offering. Leave them hungry for your next session.
• Be aware of time management. Leave enough slack in the schedule so you can get 20 min back without hurting your audience's experience if you run late.

Are you overstretching your team?

Events tend to be all-hands on deck moments for an organization. In the weeks before and during your actual event, your staff can easily work long hours and end up exhausted. There may be times when you need to push through to the finish line but it has a cost. You increase the risk of making mistakes and creating a bad audience experience working with an exhausted team.

Tips To Prevent An Exhausted Team:

• Your team cannot be in two places at once. Place dedicated managers at key locations like registration, the a/v table and standing at the elbow of key speakers. Connect them by radio is possible.
• If you don’t have the experience to make informed estimations, assume everything will take twice as long as you are planning. Transitions will take 30min minutes instead of 15min, the first half of the event will run 30min late, and the a/v installation needs to be set up the night before.
• Hire enough people. It is always good to have a few people that can shift around to deal with the unexpected and to cover for people. If budget is an issue, consider inviting in a few volunteers to help.
• Plan for breaks. Events have highs and lows. Take advantage of the quiet moments to refresh the team.
• Rotate people through different roles if you can. People like to own a job and master it, but in a multi-day event, eventually that gets old. Cross-train your team so you have more flexibility to cover roles and to help people stay engaged in the event.

Where do event gremlins gather?

Events have a few delicate parts that tend to break. Try to imagine what could go wrong and talk through how you will enable your team respond. I go into this more in my Halloween webinar: Horror Show: How Good Events Go Bad.

You might call us scardy-cats but any planner worth their salt expects everything will go wrong and is working as hard as they can to prepare for the worst.

Tips For Avoiding Event Gremlins:

• Registration: At certain times your registration area is a very busy spot. Create a check-in process and walk-through the process with your team a couple days before the event to check for hitches. Using this approach, you can get a sense of how long an average check-in will take and how many people will work the table at busy times. Have someone who is knowledgeable about your event manage registration who can help people with questions or who are having problems with checking-in.
• Installation/Setup: Installation of your event...all the decorations, a/v, etc is where a ton of surprises show up. If you plan well and give yourself enough time, then this is a time to fine tune your event, if not, your monster will eat you. Ideally, you get a night of sleep between the installation of your event and when it starts.
• Technology and A/V: Technology loves to break. Be sure to have backups (batteries, cords, etc), contact information of help, and time to solve problems. Keep it simple by creating an event that uses as little technology as possible. For instance, fancy iPad check-in stations are nice but checking people off a printed list doesn’t crash 5 minutes before you open registration. If you don’t have the bandwidth and budget to properly staff and manage your technology then ditch it for a simpler approach. If you use the technology, it is wise to have a simple backup handy.

So what happened to my friend’s event? He was satisfied and also saw areas for improvement. He wasn’t able to implement everything I advised but did run-throughs that saved him headaches. He had problems with the A/V team and had to negotiate with them on site to fix the situation (see typical danger areas). His fear kept things from going a lot worse.

Whether you are putting on a wedding, conference or a haunted house, it is easy to get buried under the enormous complexity of producing an event. You might call us scaredy-cats, but any planner worth their salt expects everything will go wrong and is working as hard as they can to prepare for the worst.

One last tip. Let your fear help you but don't let it spread. A colleague likes to remind me to smile so no one knows how much work it all takes. Be afraid but be secretly afraid so your guests have a good time.

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Erik Fabian is a brand marketer and founder of Upright Brand. He helps founders launch and build new brands at every stage of growth. He has put on events for nearly 20 years.

Tune in for the replay of my webinar with the former VP of Design at Etsy.

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