On Collaboration

In honor of the focus on rethinking events, this post diverts a little from the specific focus on design to an emerging trend in how events are being designed: by collaborative teams of clients and vendors. Specifically for those clients looking to change up how they have always done things or in need of an infusion of creative thoughts, a collaborative team approach to the design of your event can bring fresh ideas and better results in the end.


The Collaborative Pitch
In the last year or so I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of conversations I have had with industry colleagues who have told me the same story: “We lost a pitch because the client wanted one thing we didn’t offer in house.” “Who won the pitch?” I’d ask. Without fail, the same response, “Another company who brought in a partner(s) to do that one other part.”

In our current economy and climate there is a palpable yearning for new ideas and big thinking for clients tired of holding back and wanting to do something. (That doesn’t mean they are spending more, just that they are ready for something else.) And at the same time there is a tremendous amount of great talent in small businesses or with very target business focuses in our industry. So the best thing a producer or designer can do on their next big pitch: harness that talent.


We have to stop the myth that one person or one company can successfully be all things to all of their clients. Maybe you can be all things for one of your clients, but you will never be all things to all of your clients. And the more you try to be all things, the more it seem you loose in the game because the margins are low or competition is stiff or because there will always be someone with another idea. Clients want to pay for value and clients will pay big if you can offer them a unique competitive advantage. But your unique advantage will always be specific, never general. So the opportunities in our industry are prime to partner and to collaborate to win that next piece of business.



How do you do that? By establishing relationships with the best talent you can at a variety of price points and personalities. Then when you are offered that next bid, create the right team to execute the best solution for the client and pitch that team, not just yourself. Let each expert shine in their capabilities and by default your chances for success will greatly increase.


The Collaborative Team
Do you remember that scene in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” from several years back when the PhD students are standing in a bar trying to compete for the attention of a beautiful woman who has just entered the bar with her friends. Then, being graduate mathematics students, they derive that if they stop competing for the one woman but each turns their attention to one of her friends, all win. That idea would go on to help the real life John Nash win a Nobel Prize in economics, but its core idea has something to say about creating events.



I have been involved in too many projects in which vendors compete to be the best client partner in order to be in control of biggest share of the client’s budget. Vendors want to be the one to own the biggest piece (or the whole pie) and disseminate the money as they see most fit. Or the more logistical application of the scenario is that most vendors do not know the other vendors involved in the project and so all show up on site with their own crews, their own lifts, their own production schedules and game plans and then conflict ensues when the décor company wants to attach a fabric swag over the productions companies speaker. Time is wasted and more importantly money is wasted.

But what if you take another approach and focus on the fact that a successfully designed and executed event is a win for you client and therefore for each of the vendors involved. As no one company can do it all, all of the time, for every client, multiple vendors will most likely always be involved. So why not build a collaborative team of vendors focused on collectively executing the best event for your client? A savvy producer or designer upon being awarded a piece of business should be able to determine the personality of their client and bring to the table the right collection of design, technical and event execution partners to meet that clients specific needs. I am making a call her for more boutique collaborative work to generate new and interesting solutions and ideas rather than general event houses who try to do everything themselves. While there is nothing wrong with one-stop event shops, I will say the most successful events I have been a part of are the ones in which the best players from a diverse range of industries or parts of the event industry come to the table to make a new thing happen.

The other component to a collaborative partnership of vendors that is crucial is for those vendors to widen their perspective beyond themselves. Too often onsite there is a mentality of “this is my job”, or a focus on only doing your piece without recognizing how their part of the event affects the other vendor partners involved. Instead installations would flow more effectively with a team approach in which all vendors understand the bigger picture and how their part relates to all of the other moving pieces. Then lines of communication can be opened. Then the decorators can help distribute the lighting equipment so they can set the dance floor or the technical team can maximize the value of the union labor call by incorporating the designers hang points into the rigging plot.



The Client’s Responsibility
Most of the issues that arise among vendors onsite at events happen because vendors are not permitted or empowered to communicate in advance of the event. Clients: introduce your vendor partners to each other and let them communicate! Doing so will only save you time, money, and aspirin onsite.

The collaborative team approach is a fun opportunity for the client to be more engaged in the process of putting together an event and the creative design elements. When you start with a collaborative team, there is more opportunity for dialogue and discussion and more chances for the client team to have input (and if your clients are like mine, I am seeing more of them wanting to be involved in the process and give a LOT of input!). However, the client must realize that a collaborative process can be a more messy process: more time is spent meeting and discussing and creating on the front end, time for idea generation and evolution is required as more players are involved, education of the goals and objectives of the event to a larger audience is required and potentially a larger audience needs the opportunity for buy in and feedback. The best thing a client can do in this situation is be a leader or empower your event designer or producer to be a leader on your behalf and manage that process, keep the team on track and the ideas driving forward to a successful event, one which will be better in the end than any one individual on the team could have created on their own.

Photo References:
http://www.thelifeworkstrategies.com/images/team.jpg
http://www.free-press-release.com/members/members_pic/200911/img/1259258333.jpg
http://androidguide.ru/img/19/194/A_Beautiful_Mind_John_Nash_Game_Theory_Scene.jpg

Not Your Standard Event Seating Set-up

We all know the standard seating set-ups:
General Session = Theater
Breakout = Theater or Classroom. Mix if you are a risk taker
Meals and Awards Program = Banquet Seating, nearly always in rounds of 10

That is it. Those are the choices, or better stated the way we do things and if you know these three and can use the equations to figure out required square footage for your guest count in each of these seating arrangements, you know all you need to know to seat your guests at your meetings or events.

Wrong.

There are other choices. And this month’s column wants to both explore them and finally give you all permission to try something else.

Sofas: They aren’t just for lounges anymore!
Anyone who has ever sat in a general session room in the middle of a long row of interlocked chairs knows how completely uncomfortable the seating is and uncomfortable seating makes for a disengaged or distracted participant. As our industry continues to migrate away from lecture based learning format towards the more effective, participatory, multi-directional conversational learning models, we have to adapt our designed environments to support this style of learning. And that means we need to adapt the way we seat people at meetings and events. Rows don’t encourage conversation of classroom tables create barriers to engagement with a speaker. So instead we should take note from the lounge trend in the special events industry, which took the lesson from interior designers working in living rooms: create conversational zones/areas.


Sofa seating, particularly armless sofa seating offers not only a more comfortable place to sit down, but naturally encourages conversation. We all know that people do not (really) talk across the span of a 72” table, but if you think about the last time you went to a café or a restaurant, you can converse across a 36” table. And if you simply arc the row of theater seats to create semi circle rows of between seven and ten, you create a natural conversation zone for when the presenter throws out a question to the audience. The intention in incorporating these other choices is vary up the possibilities and recognize that different individuals learn and engage differently. And if we don’t support those various needs in the design of our space, we are missing out on setting them up for success in capturing their attention or participation.



Rake it Backwards
Have you ever wondered why it is called “upstage” or “downstage”? Well, a long time ago, the floor of an auditorium used to be flat and the stage was raked, meaning it was lower in the front of the stage than it was at the back to help the audience be able to see the actors on stage. Thus when you moved upstage, you were literally walking up hill towards the back of the stage. Then it flipped and stages became flat while the floor of the auditorium was raked to set each row of chairs progressively higher than the row in front.

Well this raking concept is applicable in order to make multiple seating options function in a breakout of general session room. The height of each seating option should progressively get taller as you move away from the stage. Thus start in the front row with low, backless seating choices: benches, ottomans, etc. The next subset would include soft seating with backs: sofas and lounge chairs. The third furniture grouping could include theater seating or small groupings of chairs with small end tables utilizing chairs which encourage better posture - meaning the have straight backs which prevent you from lounging. Next comes cocktail tables, half rounds or rounds with standard seating, but inclusive of “workspace”. Behind these come taller tables: highboys or higher tables with stool seating. The back rows should allow for standing room, incorporating highboys as workspace or a place to keep your stuff.



Every event doesn’t not need or require every level of seating listed, of course. If workspace is necessary, you might start with low tables in the front and offer higher tables in the back/standing room options. But as more and more people go mobile, there will be less and less requirements for actual tables – because my iPad works in my lap just as well as it works on a table. Other creative or strategic events may desire to totally break the mold and use not only sofas, but exercise balls, bean bags or even standing treadmill workstations! The point is a room that offers individual attendees the opportunity to gravitate to the type of seating situation that is most productive or comfortable for their learning and functional needs while obeying the time honored need for clean sightlines to the stage or the presenter/presentation.

The Challenges
Even though this column has hopefully excited some reader to give new seating options a try, a couple notes of caution. Mixing up the seating is great, but know upfront that it takes up more space. Traditional seating options (classroom, banquet, theater) are known quantities with specific formulas and particularly in the case of theater seating, is an effectively ways to seat a lot of people in a given space. Mixing up the seating options takes more space. You can’t just have a sofa, you probably want a coffee or side table too. The rows have to be bigger and more spread out. Mixing up the sizes of tables also will require more space and vary the size or shapes of your rows.

That said, it is increasingly important to have a resource that can render space drawings with your unique floor plan of varied seating. While most venues have calculated the standard seating set-ups, unfortunately, too often venues do not have accurate, detailed drawings of their meeting spaces readily available so measurements are key. Work with the venue closely to make sure they understand you are trying something out of the box. Correctly labeling various types of tables or chairs will greatly ease confusion when the venue attempts to set-up the room. And as always ensure that your floor plan is run by the fire marshal to make sure that in the new or random arrangement, there is enough space for safe evacuation should that be necessary.

Finally, know your audience before you make the switch. If your breakout is continuing education for lawyers or doctors, you will probably have to be stuck with executive chairs set classroom and even in the most creative of situations, you can’t through out all of the traditional seating options. Human beings are creatures of expectation: they have been to a meeting before and they believe they have a script in their heads for what a meeting room looks like. So they can be knocked completely uncomfortable from the start if they walk into a space that only offers sofas where they have come to expect chairs. And that uncomfortablness can shut them down entirely as participants or learners in a space. So start out with a couple sofas in the front or a couple high-boys in the back because it is better to innovate with small changes over time than radical complete switches all at once.

Callout
Want to learn more about the importance of seating in your event space? Check out the book “Seating Matters” by Paul Radde. Thank you to @ASegar for the lead on this great resource for event planners.




Photo References:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0962587222/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=