Want to bring in the cash, attract clients with ease and network like a ninja? It all sounds great, right? These are just a few of the benefits of hosting your own business event. The good news is that hosting a successful event that achieves your goals can be done, even on the bare minimum budget.
The question is, how?
We’ve put together seven essential event planning tips and important things to consider when organizing small business events. These tips will help you save money and time while ensuring your event is a hit with your guests. You’ll be hosting and running a top-notch business event in no time, all without breaking the bank!
6 Event Planning Tips for Businesses on a Budget
1. Set clear and measurable goals
First things first: Sit down and set clear, measurable goals that you can use to guide all future decisions. The biggest money and time wasters are due to a lack of clarity, so defining your goals will help you avoid any unnecessary costs that aren’t serving your main purpose.
Some examples of clear goals you might set:
Sell 200 Tickets
Invite/book 3 Speakers
Start promoting the event and selling tickets in 20 days
Host the event in 60 days
Spend less than $500
Moving forward, you can relate every decision you make back to the goals you set. Per the example above, you won’t procrastinate and drag out the planning process because you’ve set a goal of promoting and selling within 20 days—and, for example, you won’t get distracted and tempted by every speaker opportunity that arises because you’ve set a goal of having only three.
When you’re ready to take action on your goals and bring your event to life, EventBrite’s got a handy timeline and template for taking the next steps.
2. Hone in on your audience
It’s important to have a great understanding of your audience so you can plan an event that will generate a lot of buzz and interest. Your event will be a reflection of you and your business, so you want to make sure it brings value to those who attend.
Some questions you should ask yourself to understand your audience better:
What are my target audience’s interests? (What sponsors would they relate to?)
What time and location would suit their needs? (Do they work late? Are they local? Could inclement weather affect the event?)
What price is suitable for my audience? (Are they students or professionals?)
When you are 100 percent sure on who the audience is, you can effectively use your marketing spend through tools like social media targeting and creating your marketing collateral in the language and style that most attracts them. When it comes to things to consider when organizing an event, defining your audience is perhaps the most vital.
3. Budget at the beginning
One of the most important things to consider when organizing an event is outlining your budget from the beginning. It’s also necessary to define what you want to achieve with the event—is it to network, get new clients, raise your profile?
Work out how much a new client is worth to you, and use that to help guide your budget. For example, if a new client is worth $1,000 to your business, how many clients will you need to acquire to cover the cost of your event?
Setting your budget at the beginning will help you identify what you can and can’t afford. You can answer questions such as: Will you print paper tickets? Or will you save money and send electronic tickets? Furthermore, 10 percent wriggle room gives you the leg space to handle unexpected circumstances and expenses.
4. Use free event management software
Using event management software is one of the most important things to consider when organizing an event on a limited budget. Fortunately, there is a ton of free event management software you can use to help make the planning and organization of your event a breeze. Most software will include features such as ticketing, custom branding, event schedules, data management and registration forms.
At Little Tokyo Two, our favorite options for free event management software are EventLeaf, RSVPify and Odoo. One of the most popular and comprehensive platforms for event management is EventBrite. It’s free to get started on EventBrite, but you will have to start paying once you make a sale. You’ll also find plenty of event management tips for beginners within the platforms.
Social media is a powerful platform you can use to promote your event and create buzz. Did you know a social media presence can increase attendee engagement by 33 percent? Facebook is the most powerful platform for marketing events, and if you can spare some money in your budget for Facebook Ads and the time to target well, they will be well worth the investment.
Facebook’s in-depth targeting features will allow you to deliver your ads to the right people, maximizing your chances of converting viewers to ticket sales. Offering a limited-time discount is a great way to get more people to buy. Consider starting a Facebook Event to raise more awareness and to keep in contact with people who have purchased a ticket.
LinkedIn is another great platform to use to promote your business event. You can update your LinkedIn status, publish a post promoting the event, post in relevant groups, and even advertise on the platform. EventBrite have also written a great article on how to use LinkedIn to promote your business event.
During the event, Twitter and Instagram are great platforms to use for attendee engagement and promotion of your brand and event. Using your event hashtag will not only raise awareness of the event, but it will also result in a great collection of photos and videos from the event that you can use later.
Having a social media strategy in place allows you to keep your guests updated before the event as well as engage with them after the event to get feedback. Some other effective social media strategies you can use to help your event succeed include creating an event hashtag, sharing behind-the-scenes content and streaming live video from the event. The best thing about social media: It’s only the time it takes to manage and enhances your public business profile.
6. Find Sponsors
Finding sponsors for your event is a great way to save money if you’re on a tight budget. First, consider your event topic and the audience and then brainstorm what sort of businesses might be interested in being a sponsor.
You don’t need to think of big, wealthy companies when considering sponsors. Get creative and approach some local businesses that might be interested. For example, approach a local caterer to sponsor the food, or find a local business to sponsor gift bags for the guests. Relevant companies will also be interested in having their name displayed on emails, tickets and signs at the event and will consider the sponsorship as brand awareness and exposure.
You can also enhance your business’ social conscience by partnering with sponsors who donate a percentage of their profits to charity. For example, you could use The Good Beer Co., a social enterprise beer company, to supply beverages for the night. The Good Beer Co. donate 50 percent of profits to their charity partners.
Hosting an event on a shoestring budget will be a challenge, but it’s certainly possible, and the benefits you’ll receive will make it worth the trouble. If you use the event planning tips above you’ll be well on your way to planning a low-cost event with big rewards.
At Little Tokyo Two, we have event spaces in each of our locations, with the perfect space suited to your needs, body count and the environment you’d like.
Emerald Coast
Twitter: @EmeraldCoastFLA Go online to discover a wide range of Emerald Coast meeting venues, more than 13,000 rooms, and the only convention center in Florida’s Panhandle.
Caesars Entertainment offers meeting and event planners one dedicated team that works as a united front, committed to providing the most successful meeting experiences possible. Enjoy elite perks, rewards and privileges with our Total Rewards Meeting Diamond Program.
Click here to fill out the survey for your chance to win!
A lot of times when people meet me in person, they’re surprised to see that I’m not “all in” on one of the major technology platforms. Apparently, as an event technology nerd I’m supposed to help people pick a side. “Oh,” they say, “I would have guessed you were a Mac guy,” as they notice my oversized Android phone.
The fact of the matter is that I believe very strongly in using the right tool for the right job. My home computer runs Windows, my kids’ tablets are Amazon Fires, my work computer is a Mac, my phone runs Android and my tablet is an iPad. I’ve chosen these platforms carefully over the years, and I’m constantly re-evaluating whether or not they make sense. I was extremely close to pulling the trigger on a Chromebook for our next family computer, but we still have a few programs not supported by the platform. Sounds like my kids are going to get Chromebooks from their school though, so we’ll get to add that to the mix soon enough!
A result of having so many devices in so many different camps is that I’ve been accumulating a group of apps and services that work across all platforms, and aren’t confined to the Apple, Windows or Google universes. So without further ado, here’s my top six list of cross-platform apps for meeting and event professionals.
A good to-do list app is the cornerstone of the digital age. Wunderlist is simple, customizable and can parse things like “April 1 take the garbage out,” which automatically creates an item called “take the garbage out” with a due date of April 1 (it’s amazing how many apps can’t actually do that in 2017). You can set priorities, have multiple lists and the data all syncs seamlessly to all of your devices. You can even share lists among co-workers or family, helping everyone stay on task.
Everyone needs a cloud brain to store all those useless bits of information, so that your real brain can go back to cereal ad jingles. I used to be firmly in the Evernote camp, but not needing the Pro version, I became frustrated by how strongly they were pushing me, almost biweekly, to upgrade. Nonetheless, some people swear by it, and it almost has to make this list based on principle. If you’re ready for a change, however, Microsoft has been making strides in establishing their apps across all platforms, and OneNote is solid. I find the syncing a little kludgy at times, but overall it’s a great note-taking application. Combine it with OfficeLens, which is a mobile app for scanning documents, receipts, whiteboards or photos, and you have a powerful digital filing cabinet.
OK, I’m cheating a little on this one. I haven’t found a truly cross-platform calendar that I love, but this one-two punch is pretty close. For iOS and macOS, Fantastical 2 is incredible. If you’d have told me I’d shell out $40 for a calendar app, I’d have said you were nuts, but as the timer clicked down on my free trial, I knew I was going to have to do it. It’s simple on the surface, but incredible under the hood, and seamlessly syncs all my calendars from all over the web. On my Mac it lives up in the menu bar (and also understands natural language like, “Meeting with Tom Smith at 1 p.m. on Tuesday”), and I have a keyboard shortcut so that I can highlight any random bit from an email and it will automatically create an appointment based on whatever it can parse from the info. On iOS, it’s easy to swipe into multi-window mode and access Fantastical from whatever app you’re in.
Business Calendar is an Android app, done by some very cool German developers. It has a similar look and feel to Fantastical, and has a beautiful home screen widget for my daily agenda. They work perfectly together, and I’ve been using both for years now.
4. PowerPoint
Yep. You heard me. Believe it or not, this is another app that Microsoft has been trying to make work better across all platforms. It works quite well on all of my devices, including my phone and tablet, though I still prefer Apple Keynote for my own personal presentations. As time goes on, PowerPoint has fixed most of the issues that used to plague it, and, as a result, I’m finding it harder and harder to justify the $2,500 for a MacBook. To be honest, almost all of the Microsoft Office programs work quite well these days across all platforms, so don’t be afraid to stick with what you know, even if you start dipping your toes into another platform pool.
Now that the workday is done, you need a little relaxation as you hop a plane for home. Once we had kids, I found I didn’t ever have time to just sit around and read a book or magazine any more. Audible—and podcasts—to the rescue! I’ve “read” more books in the last five years than I probably had in the previous 20. Whether I’m on the plane, mowing the lawn or doing a few dishes, I pop in my earbuds and I can get lost in a story. I like to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, just to keep things interesting. My library is synced between all my devices, and I have cloud access to every book I’ve ever purchased from them should I feel the need to re-visit something.
For years now I’ve been screaming into the wind that event professionals need to start taking cyber security seriously. As more and more conferences and meetings use sophisticated ticketing, registration and conference app technology, more and more of our attendees’ data is being taken into the cloud. If your registration back-end password is Monkey123, you’re putting your attendees at risk. LastPass is a password management service that’s been vetted by top security professionals. You can use it to create long, random passwords that aren’t duplicated across websites, so even if one of your websites gets hacked, they don’t have a chance of hacking any more of them. “But what if the service gets hacked?” is the most common question asked. Though it’s theoretically possible, LastPass does not hold the keys to your account, so it cannot surrender the data to either cyber criminals or government agencies. If the service was hacked, all they’d find was a blob of unreadable data. That is, of course, unless your LastPass password is Monkey123.
If you’d asked me late last year to identify the big event technology trends of 2017, you’d probably have gotten an answer similar to what a lot of other folks were writing about on their websites and in their magazines: big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality—and maybe drones thrown in for good measure. So far, however, the No. 1 thing people have approached me about this year is regarding audience interaction.
I’ve been asked to host webinars on the subject, clients have approached me looking for recommendations and even while I was speaking with a candidate for our local city council, the subject of audience-interaction apps came up as soon as he heard about what I do. Recently at an event I was working, the CFO of a major financial institution seemed shocked to see two microphones on stands in the audience for the Q&A portion of his session.
“Don’t we have any of those foam microphones we can throw around?” he bellowed from the stage.
And now, I’m writing an article on the subject.
It seems the industry as a whole has decided that 2017 is the year to focus on audience interaction and attendee engagement—and that couldn’t make me happier. Because while drones are cool and VR is fun, we’re in the people business, and communication is at the heart of most of our meetings and events. Let’s take some time to dig into the latest and greatest when it comes to getting our audiences engaged in the conversation.
Low-tech: Re-evaluate your space
First, let’s start with some of the low-tech trends. Savvy planners continue to experiment with non-traditional seating. While there are a lot of reasons to do this, when it comes to audience engagement, the main reason is that theater and classroom seating can automatically lock us into a sit-back-and-listen mode of thinking. Even the setups themselves can prohibit interaction and engagement, as it can be difficult to navigate the rows and tables, discouraging a would-be question-asker from getting up and going to a mic stand or slowing down a potential mic runner. There are ways around that, but let’s come back to them in a moment. For now, just think about opening up your floor plan as much as your space allows, making it easier for people to move around.
Why would you want them to move around? Well, because one of the best ways to grab, and keep, an audience’s attention is to get them out of their seats and get the blood pumping again. My friend Adrian Segar has literally written the book on low-tech audience engagement—The Power of Participation is a field guide for getting people moving around, brainstorming and, above all, participating in a meeting or event, with little or no technology involved. It includes advice on room setups, voting techniques and even ways to display complex information such as graphs and charts using zero PowerPoint slides—just the bodies in the room. Any company or organization looking to break the bonds of the same old boring meeting should definitely give it a look.
High tech
Sometimes, however, you can’t break out of the old seating tropes. Maybe your room simply isn’t big enough to handle much in the way of creative seating, and you have too many attendees to even accommodate them comfortably at rounds. Or the schedule is packed to the point that full-on discussion sessions aren’t an option, but leadership would like to gauge the feelings or mood of the room. Now is a great time to inject a little technology into the mix to allow attendees to weigh in on a question, simply and accurately. There are a number of great apps and services out there, but I’d like to highlight a few that are on a short list for me and my clients.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the Sli.do folks a few times, and even used the service as an attendee. I always enjoy doing that, because it gives me a much better idea of how the service will be received by an audience, something no GoToWebinar sales demo can ever do. It was easy to use, and allows not only for polling but also open-ended Q&A. Additionally, questions can be up-voted, so the most popular questions rise to the top. Because it’s web-based, it’s incredibly easy to integrate into existing mobile event apps or to a live stream of your event so that remote audiences can get involved as well.
If for some reason you haven’t heard of this yet, I’d like to be the first to welcome you back to Planet Earth. These are exactly the foam microphones the CFO was referring to at the event I described earlier. A Catchbox is a soft foam cube with a wireless microphone inside it. Instead of a participant having to get up and walk to a microphone, you can literally just throw this one to them. It’s fun, it makes people laugh, you can brand it with your logo and it just works. It’s easy to plug into existing AV setups, and the internal gyroscope senses when it’s being thrown and automatically cuts out the audio so you don’t hear the jostling around.
PollEverywhere has been around for some time now, but it still warrants inclusion in this listing of the latest and greatest. I’m a fan of their pricing structure, which is based on the number of responses, and they have no problem with moving your pricing plan up or down from month to month. That’s perfect for planners and companies whose attendee counts vary wildly from client to client or event to event. I also feel they’re one of the only companies that effectively implements SMS text messaging as a form of response to polls and open Q&A sessions. This can be huge for an audience that might not be as technologically savvy, but can handle sending a text message.
Like I said, there are a lot of companies out there providing interaction technology for events. Most of the major app manufacturers are starting to bake basic polling and Q&A technology into their meeting and event apps. Evenium is a mobile app company with amazing polling and interaction pieces, including real-time slide sharing directly from the presenter’s computer and screen overlays of polling results. Smaller companies such as SocialPoint and Podiobox each have features that can be appealing to certain groups. SocialPoint focuses on audience engagement and data capture in trade show booth. (Full disclosure: I’ve done some freelance work assisting SocialPoint with on-site management of their services.) Podiobox is one of the lightest-weight apps I’ve ever seen, making it a great choice for events at which bandwidth might be an issue. So don’t be afraid to look at some of the smaller audience engagement companies out there—they might be just want you’re looking for!
Orange juice is about the best thing ever. Growing up right in the middle of Florida’s 200-mile-long Indian River Citrus District, orange juice was always a bright part of my life. I always envisioned the act of drinking it as like that of consuming a sweet, liquid extract of the sun (we all know what that tastes and feels like, right?). Lately, however, the cost of orange juice has been on the rise—whether due to myriad general economic factors or the spread of the Asian citrus psyllid, which can lead to bacterial infection, “greening” and the decimation of citrus crops. In fact, just this winter, orange juice futures—yes, that’s a thing—hit an all-time high.
Of course, the high price of orange juice isn’t in and of itself a significant problem—nothing like what you’re experiencing in the meeting landscape. You’re seeing costs at nearly every stage of planning and executing your meetings and events creep up and up and up. At the same time, if you’re lucky, your budgets are growing as well. However, the associated trend that is proving a challenge is that your budgets are not increasing at the same pace as costs.
The good news is that solutions for your cost challenges exist within the minds of your ever-creative peers—and they’re not closed off to the idea of sharing these strategies and tactics. That’s especially suitable in that various ways of sharing with other planners to save costs pop up throughout the cover story of the newest issue of Plan Your Meetings—including sharing menus to leverage bulk purchasing of F&B and sharing speakers to minimize travel expenses.
Notably, you can also get an in-depth look at how one peer, Pat Guerrero, CVA, senior manager of volunteer engagement and programs for Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society, saves staffing expenses by leveraging the power of more than 150 volunteers for her group’s national conference.
“This conference is a light in the darkness that we sometimes see in animal welfare,” Guerrero says. “It’s our volunteers’ job to be that light because together we can illuminate the world!”
The hope is that within these cost-saving tips and other articles from the newest issue of Plan Your Meetings, you’ll find some ideas that can act like a sun-filled glass of Florida orange juice—bright, eye opening and refreshing.
Orange juice is about the best thing ever. Growing up right in the middle of Florida’s 200-mile-long Indian River Citrus District, orange juice was always a bright part of my life. I always envisioned the act of drinking it as like that of consuming a sweet, liquid extract of the sun (we all know what that tastes and feels like, right?). Lately, however, the cost of orange juice has been on the rise—whether due to myriad general economic factors or the spread of the Asian citrus psyllid, which can lead to bacterial infection, “greening” and the decimation of citrus crops. In fact, just this winter, orange juice futures—yes, that’s a thing—hit an all-time high.
Of course, the high price of orange juice isn’t in and of itself a significant problem—nothing like what you’re experiencing in the meeting landscape. You’re seeing costs at nearly every stage of planning and executing your meetings and events creep up and up and up. At the same time, if you’re lucky, your budgets are growing as well. However, the associated trend that is proving a challenge is that your budgets are not increasing at the same pace as costs.
The good news is that solutions for your cost challenges exist within the minds of your ever-creative peers—and they’re not closed off to the idea of sharing these strategies and tactics. That’s especially suitable in that various ways of sharing with other planners to save costs pop up throughout the cover story of the newest issue of Plan Your Meetings—including sharing menus to leverage bulk purchasing of F&B and sharing speakers to minimize travel expenses.
Notably, you can also get an in-depth look at how one peer, Pat Guerrero, CVA, senior manager of volunteer engagement and programs for Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society, saves staffing expenses by leveraging the power of more than 150 volunteers for her group’s national conference.
“This conference is a light in the darkness that we sometimes see in animal welfare,” Guerrero says. “It’s our volunteers’ job to be that light because together we can illuminate the world!”
The hope is that within these cost-saving tips and other articles from the newest issue of Plan Your Meetings, you’ll find some ideas that can act like a sun-filled glass of Florida orange juice—bright, eye opening and refreshing.
This Sunday (June 18) is International Sushi Day—and I’m betting you didn’t even realize that was a thing. This special event was launched in 2009—an announcement, unsurprisingly, via Facebook. The sole activity to celebrate International Sushi Day: Eat and appreciate sushi (for bonus points, introduce someone to sushi).
My own introduction to sushi happened 10 years ago at the Loews Lake Las Vegas (now Westin Lake Las Vegas)—so if you’re in Vegas for MPI’s World Education Congress next week, know that sushi options abound even though you’re in the Mojave Desert.
‘Fish in the Desert’
[This tale into my first dip into sushi was originally published in the September 2007 issue of The Meeting Professional.]
How serendipitous that I’d land at the table of one of the nation’s finest sushi chefs while newsstands hold a 12,000-word tome on the cuisine by one of America’s finest authors. I hadn’t considered the circumstances, but in hindsight, I really had no choice—I was visiting the desert and I was going to eat sushi, this much was certain.
“Trust Chef Fuji,” my hosts say.
“But…but…but…I don’t really like fish,” I squeak.
I taste a variety of sake and select one to accompany the meal.
“Is there anything you absolutely do not want?” an amused waiter asks.
“No eel. Wait, no. I’ll take whatever Chef Fuji wants to make,” I say in overly dramatic tone.
Master Sushi Chef Osamu “Fuji” Fujita’s signature Tuna Cocktail visually pervades the table—an orb erupting with dry ice vapors beneath chunks of sumptuous tuna swimming in a spicy sauce that celebrates the fish’s flavor.
I place the first piece of tuna in my mouth, trying not to taste. I finally breathe, and experience a stunning delight. A sip of sake created a fuller experience—the two tastes mingle and temporarily take over. I shake my head. Whoa.
Moments later, the tuna is gone and the dry ice cloud has diminished. And then? A large plate of indeterminate seafood ingredients appears.
“There’s more?” I thought.
The waiter is a swell guide, and my taste buds find a favorite flavor in the exotic unagi. I take more sake and in a near-out-of-body experience realize that I love the taste of freshwater eel. If you knew sushi…
Sushi knowledge nuggets
Image courtesy Benihana
As one of the F&B trends showing no sign of letting up, meeting and event attendees love to be educated about what they’re eating, where it came from (geographically and culturally) and any associated factoids that can make dining a memorable experience—something more than just gobbling down sustenance in between education sessions.
Following are some sushi facts, courtesy of Benihana.
The term sushi means “vinegared rice” not “raw fish.” Vinegared rice is the base ingredient to every piece of sushi.
Sushi is estimated to have started as early as 500 B.C. but it didn’t transform into the bite-sized sushi everyone knows until the 19th century.
Traditionally, sushi chefs use special Japanese carbon steel knives. These knives are only honed on a single side to create the sharpest possible cutting edge for prepping sushi.
Sushi is as much of an art form as it is a delicacy. In Japan, sushi chefs must undergo 10 years of professional training before earning the stamp of “Sushi Master.”
Sushi is meant to be served in a particular way. In order to achieve the rice’s ideal “stickiness,” chefs aim to keep their rice around 110 degrees Fahrenheit before adding the cold fish. Once served, soy sauce is meant to serve as a complementary condiment rather than a dipping sauce.
There’s more to sushi than rolls and maki. Nigiri (pieces of fish on top of rice), sashimi (sliced fish only) and temaki (hand rolls), are all more common in Japan.
Emerald Coast
Twitter: @EmeraldCoastFLA Go online to discover a wide range of Emerald Coast meeting venues, more than 13,000 rooms, and the only convention center in Florida’s Panhandle.
Caesars Entertainment offers meeting and event planners one dedicated team that works as a united front, committed to providing the most successful meeting experiences possible. Enjoy elite perks, rewards and privileges with our Total Rewards Meeting Diamond Program.
Click here to fill out the survey for your chance to win!
Emerald Coast
Twitter: @EmeraldCoastFLA Go online to discover a wide range of Emerald Coast meeting venues, more than 13,000 rooms, and the only convention center in Florida’s Panhandle.
Caesars Entertainment offers meeting and event planners one dedicated team that works as a united front, committed to providing the most successful meeting experiences possible. Enjoy elite perks, rewards and privileges with our Total Rewards Meeting Diamond Program.
Click here to fill out the survey for your chance to win!
It started with the Bastille Day attack in Nice almost a year ago. Eighty-four people were killed when a driver deliberately drove his truck into the crowd of revelers. Ten children were killed that day. This was not the first attack of this nature. In 1981 and 1983, there were similar incidents in Beirut. However, since the Nice Attack, there have been similar incidents at Ohio State University as well as in Berlin, Jerusalem, the United Kingdom (Westminster) and Stockholm. The May 18 Times Square incident has led to speculation that cars will be banned from Times Square. In the most recent attack on London Bridge over the weekend, a van mounted the curb and the driver deliberately mowed down pedestrians and three attackers then stabbed random innocent people nearby, killing seven (more than a dozen victims are currently hospitalized).
The recent bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester (UK), in which a 23-year-old man detonated a shrapnel-laden device, injuring 116 individuals and killing 23 (including children), was another reminder of the vulnerability of soft targets.
What are the implications for event industry professionals? One thing is certain. These incidents are a HUGE wake-up call.
With soft targets becoming increasingly vulnerable to attacks by terrorists, lone-wolf attackers as well as individuals who have severe psychiatric disorders, it is extremely important for event planners to heighten their vigilance. Whether it’s a conference, trade show, sporting event, concert, festival or corporate event, anywhere crowds gather can become a target.
At minimum, the following steps are recommended:
1. Conduct security audits and risk assessments
This is becoming a MUST DO not a nice-to-do—and should be undertaken by a team of security professionals (no time for amateurs).
2. Background checks
Perform thorough background checks on all staff and volunteers, both temporary and permanent.
3. Control access points
This should not be limited to entry and exit points. Take steps to control access to stage doors, staff entrances, delivery bays, emergency exits and parking (both outdoor and underground).
4. Erect barricades
Remember to also provide protection in areas where participants are boarding shuttle busses and accessing event venues from public transportation and pedestrian walkways. Venue owners should consider erecting permanent barricades.
In some incidents, attackers have ploughed through barricades and attacked the crowds. So set up very sturdy barricades far from the crowd.
It is unfortunate, but frisking, which has become a common precaution in many nightclubs, may soon become necessary at run-of-the-mill meetings and events.
8. Ban weapons
When possible, bar the possession of weapons by attendees and participants—as we’ve seen, this should include knives and other bladed objects, as well as firearms. U.S. jurisdictions present special challenges in view of the Second Amendments. Please consult the following blog posts.
Soft target attacks are a game changer for our industry. Unfortunately, they are not going to go away any time soon. If anything, indications are that it is not a matter of if they will come to your jurisdiction but when. As the Latin saying goes “Praemonitus, praemunitus.” The translation? “Forewarned is forearmed.”
The fact of the matter is that I believe very strongly in using the right tool for the right job. My home computer runs Windows, my kids’ tablets are Amazon Fires, my work computer is a Mac, my phone runs Android and my tablet is an iPad. I’ve chosen these platforms carefully over the years, and I’m constantly re-evaluating whether or not they make sense. I was extremely close to pulling the trigger on a Chromebook for our next family computer, but we still have a few programs not supported by the platform. Sounds like my kids are going to get Chromebooks from their school though, so we’ll get to add that to the mix soon enough!
I’ve been asked to host webinars on the subject, clients have approached me looking for recommendations and even while I was speaking with a candidate for our local city council, the subject of audience-interaction apps came up as soon as he heard about what I do. Recently at an event I was working, the CFO of a major financial institution seemed shocked to see two microphones on stands in the audience for the Q&A portion of his session.
Of course, the high price of orange juice isn’t in and of itself a significant problem—nothing like what you’re experiencing in the meeting landscape. You’re seeing costs at nearly every stage of planning and executing your meetings and events creep up and up and up. At the same time, if you’re lucky, your budgets are growing as well. However, the associated trend that is proving a challenge is that your budgets are not increasing at the same pace as costs.
