What is Next in Special Events...

While I am spending this year absent in my published blog posts due to my position as the President of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter of ISES, this post was too timely to hold until the end of my term.

For all of you event professionals who want to be on the pulse for what is coming...For the second year in a row, my good friend Lara McCulloch of Ready2Spark has brought together 9 innovative thinkers on the topic. We were proud to again be a part of this book sharing our thoughts on the future of Special Events and our need as an industry to focus in on giving a voice to our audiences.

Have a read of the e-book. It is worth your time.

View it through Slideshare
Download What’s Next in Events ebook

Garage Sale Anyone?

Event Peeps: the time has come. Get rid of the stuff. All that stuff on your shelves. The great pieces which go out every weekend. And those pieces which go out every once and a while. And the deal you got on those 40 whatchamawhosits which you have never used. It is time to get rid of the stuff, because for the events of tomorrow - the stuff doesn't matter.

Ok, so maybe you don't have to trash or sell your stuff to stay in the event business (though in the last two year, I am sure some professionals thought about it and other downsized at least a little). But I am not promoting a more economical version of your business. I am writing this note to promote your people, because for the events of tomorrow, people are what count.

As I have continued to create new projects for clients across the country, I have come into a strong appreciation for the value of trustworthy event partners. As a designer there is nothing better to have than a great lighting designer who supports your vision. As a producer, your technical director is invaluable. But people have known this for years and everyone knows relationships are how this business functions. But as the dust settles on the shake up we are emerging from, the importance of those relationships I think are going to become more and more important. The new normal for events require that we open our eyes and look up from our sketch pads to see who else is working-creating-producing-designing in the field. To do that well, means that we all must become better at building teams and discovering the people who can be true partners for the sake of the project. Clients want us to collaborate to create better projects than any one person or company can do on their own. And the companies that win are the companies learn to market and sell their best assets: their talented staff.

Let me try to explain this with an example - and I think audio visuals provide the perfect example. When I travel with a show, I want to have production crew who I know, who I trust, and who I know have the best interests of my client and our project front of mind. The typical model for hiring and working with an audio visual company is that you hire the talent, you book the stuff on their shelves. And if you are headed out of town, you will truck that stuff along with you. But here is the problem: almost always, that "stuff" is anywhere my client is headed. Why waste energy and dollars shipping equipment across country when that equipment already resides at your destination. But that trusted production crew is not at your destination. The stuff in the production companies truck has no value but the people have tremendous value.

I know this is counter to how most of these companies make money - but we live in a new world and those models are tired. I want the people - I don't need the stuff. And the companies who are able to figure out how to rent out their qualified staff with or without the stuff from the shelves are, in my opinion, the companies who will keep creating innovative events.

And if per chance, you are thinking about selling some stuff: try usedeventstuff.com. A very cool event recycling concept!

My Next Great Crowdsourcing Experiment

I was sharing dinner the other day with a fantastic colleague and leader in the events and tradeshow industry and we spent the evening discussing a new product venture he is excited to be launching. Without getting too specific in this moment, leave it to say that the subject of the launch is an over-time proven product re-polished and ready to roll-out around the country. The problem is - big surprise - the tight economy is making it nearly impossible to get the funding to get the product on its feet and out the door.

There is little doubt that the downside to the economic slide of 08-09 is a massive constriction of the tunnel of funding accessible by small business entrepreneurs who have a passion for their creations and want to build success. But without the ability to gain cash or credit holds these creative seeds in a semi-permanent germination process, prohibited from growing into vibrant successes, unless discovered by accident or supported by some "angle" investor. Banks have not been a good way for my friend to go (and don't even get me started on credit!) Even for well established companies with demonstrated success, it has surprised me at the apparent lack of innovation, creation, and perfecting of products by suppliers for me to take to clients for events. Unless I pay for custom builds, I am stuck re-renting the same goods again and again... And I (if anyone) is someone who needs to be inspired! (i.e. I custom build a lot!).

The conversation got me thinking. Perhaps this individuals issue lives in the fact that his proposition is not falling on the right ears. As an every-day-increasing-fan of my social media networks and a new experimentor in the proposition of crowdsourcing, it struck me to try a little experiment. What is we posed this "new product in search of investor" to the great masses to try and generator a solution or find the perfect match? Could crowdsourcing be the perfect way to get this product off the ground? Well, I will give it a try.

Granted of course to be successful we have to find first a community (I have some) of correct potential listeners (I have to figure out). But if anything I hope this experiment will teach me more about the power of crowdsourcing and help hone my skills at building a social network of solution drivers!

So here goes:

I have posted this blog and will now tweet it to the world. (hopefully they will retweet it too).

If you are an investor who likes promising new ideas, brands, approaches and products with a proven track record and you have some or any interest in the event or tradeshow business, respond to this post (or email info@beeventsdesign.com) and I will contact you with more information.

OR

If you know someone who likes to invest in promising new ideas, approaches and products related to the event and tradeshow business, pass the message on.

Who knows if I can lend a hand and help my colleague out. I am excited to see if this experiment works - to see how wide a net we might be able to cast in my next great attempt at crowdsourcing. Results of the experiment to hopefully be posted soon.

Bubbles on the Surface

My conceptual mind is a tinkering away today. The analogy is not yet right, but the question is firm and good:

Will the "Community" surpass the "Event" as the thing? So that events are simply bubbles on the surface of things?

I was re-reading an article this by @samueljsmith in the e-book Social Media for Events by @ready2spark and two specific points leaped off the page at me:

"Attendees will expect to connect with other delegates before, during, and after the event." & "New Events will emerge from online communities."

I am a strong believer in both of these statements (as well as the other 8 great points Samuel makes in the article) and have for a while been articulating the change in the event atmosphere and the understanding of event design and event education. But today a new thought happened! Forever, I have thought about events as "the event" - it is that which we prepare for, which attendees get excited about. The Event has always been the thing. And communities occurred as a result of the event; that is to say that people would meet at a conference or event and then stay in touch as new contacts in a Rolodex-version-of-community. But with a changing understanding of how adult learning occurs, more and more focus has been placed on conversation before, during and after the event. The explosive growth of Social Media continues to demonstrate that the power of the community to shape dialogue and make change is vast.

So what if the Community is really the thing, and not the event? What happens if we re-envision events as momentarily emergences from the conversations within a community that occur over the course of time. What if we consider first the community and its dialogues as the primary experience and like the warming lava inside lamp, at given periods of time portions of the population become excited and bubble up into gatherings on a certain topic, around a specific discussion, or for a special need of the community. As the accomplish their task, they fall back into the community and the conversation continues.

Perhaps a lava-lamp is not the best visual image here, but it gets at the point. Or maybe it is more like that plasma light I used to love to play with as a kid - lots of particles (=people) flying around inside a defined space (=community) in and amongst low pressure gases which makes them excited and visibly functional (=brand, organization, conversation, interest) and act on the sphere by touching your finger to the outside (=action of putting on an event) you cause some of those electrons to get hyper excited and come together to form potent streams of lights.

Lessons from the Field: Know that you will never get it all done

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field for a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business; Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Strategy; Lessons from the Field: Become an Expert, not a Jack; Lessons from the Field: Find Yourself a Great Team

Lesson 5: Know that you will never get it all done.
I am a guy who has always worked in small companies. There was a thrill for me in the ability to wear multiple hats in an organization and contribute to the work being done. While, when you go into business with yourself – that experience is taken to the extreme. Every hat is your hat and quickly I had to learn that I just would not get everything done. That the client might have to be called back tomorrow. That the website would take another week or month. That there is no way I can keep up with my tweets, let alone blog! (Ghost writers anyone, I am hiring!) The illusion that leaving the comforts of a 9-5 job is that you will have freedom over your schedule is somewhat true – you do have control of your schedule, but your job is now 24/7 and at a client’s whim your plans will regularly change. The challenge is to find a schedule and rules that work for you (and it you have employees, for them as well). Limiting distractions is critical in keeping focused when you answer to yourself. Because when you are the boss, it is much easier to take long lunch, sleep in or grab drinks early than it was when someone was watching you!

Lessons from the Field: Find Yourself a Great Team

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field as a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business; Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Strategy; Lessons from the Field: Become an Expert, not a Jack

Lesson 4: Find yourself a Great Team.
In my last blog I spoke about become an Expert and not trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades. As an Event Expert surround yourself with other Experts who fill in your weaknesses. This could be as employees or independent contractors, or even more simply as fellow vendors with whom you work. Building a great team of colleagues will support and promote your business as your develop and grow. They will be the partners who make you look good and vice versa. So the task is to surround yourself with great people – for me that means creative, curious, at-their-best, innovative service providers who demonstrate that willingness to think and the appetite to try new things.

And you may just find a funny thing will happen. If you know yourself, remain open to possibilities and deliver great service, your team will do the sales work for you. Indeed, I have yet to really need to sell myself. Through diligent networking locally and internationally, by attending and speaking at conferences, by entering and winning awards, by being an actively engaged member in industry organizations - like ISES, the absolute best spend of money I have ever made – I have developed a great community of colleagues who have kept me in business. By delivering what I promise and offering something unique, one of my biggest surprises has been that the variety of individuals and vendors who I have enjoyed working with on projects continue to bring me along with them to the next one, reinforcing our teamwork and building bigger and better events every time.

Lessons from the Field: Become the Expert, not a Jack

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field for a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business; Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Strategy

Lesson 3: Become the Expert, not a Jack.
What’s the saying – “to thine own self be true!” This is inherent in the beginning of any business. Before you can provide great service and be open for business you must know yourself – who and what you want your company to be. I launched BeEvents in 2007 with a furious desire to constantly having ideas and fostering live conversations. What I love about the event business is that we create the platform on which a facilitated dialogue occurs. And it is the strategy and design of that platform which can guide the conversation and engage participants into interaction with one another. Despite and alongside the huge advances of technology, human beings are social creatures and that need for in-person interaction will never go away nor not be of value. Yet looking out on the landscape of the industry, I did not see many who were fostering a strategic conversation about the value of and design for events. And so I set out to do that – to focus on the strategic power of people to come together, be present and share an experience. In saying this out loud, I picked what I was passionate about and defined a brand for myself which I now have the pleasure of maintaining, refining and living up to. And I have also defined what my company is not.

This, to me is the definition of being an expert. Experts know what they have to offer and also who and what they are not. By contrast, Jack-of-all-trade types try to offer everything. To be all to their clients. Particularly in a tough economy when the budgets are slim and the margins slimmer, the desire to be a Jack gets stronger. But it is Jacks who do the biggest disservice to the industry as a whole. Because no one can ever be everything to a client, and deliver everything excellently. There is compromise in diversity. That is not to say that sometimes you have to do things outside your expertise or deliver services because the budget to bring in other experts is not there. But on the whole, focusing on being an Expert, defining your brand for what it is and what it is not, and sticking too that will reap rewards in the long run.

Lessons from the Field: Focus on Great Service

This blog post continues a series of lessons from the field for a new event business. See: Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business

Lesson 2: Focus on Great Service.
Being in the event business means you are in the people business. Whether it is your employees, your clients, or their guests, it is always our job to be hospitable. While there are many definitions of great service, my mantra is that our business is not to only give clients what they ask for nor tell them what they need, but to be their guide to what they want. Yes, clients want and need to be listened too. Yes, often clients need to be told what they should do - we as event professionals are the experts after all. But beyond that, being the expert is not about spewing your vision or verbatim taking theirs, but instead being the guide who can facilitate what they say with what you know to eventually give them what they want, even if they cannot articulate that.

To do that ego cannot be a player in the game. There is no room in service providing for superiority, passivity, or the demeaning of anyone on the team or project. In ego’s place, find confidence in a sense of creative curiosity stemming from a constant willingness to think and an appetite to try. I firmly believe that the ROI of events is located in retention of the created experience by those who participate, and those memories are derived by implementing creativity and innovation. And the you can only be creative and innovate if you constantly foster a willingness to think and an appetite to try in the delivery of great service for your client.

Lessons from the Field: Be Open for Business

Tomorrow is my one-year anniversary. It’s a year ago tomorrow that I took a leap from a steady job as an internal event producer/creative director and started working full time for myself at BeEvents. It is not that I intended to be an entrepreneur, and, believe me, there was never a scarier decision I have had to make than to leap. But I have never felt a greater sense of freedom as I did on that day.

Starting a business is an adventure, with all the emotional baggage that entails and little of the action of Hollywood. As I reflect on the year behind me, along the way, I have learned many things that as a creative I never wanted to know – how to drive, or more importantly back-up a box truck, the limitations of rig points never being where you want them, the value of a great union crew chief, taxes – you get the point. But along the way I think I have discover a few small truths, lessons about being in business, which may serve as guide posts in a tough economy for anyone thinking about heading out on their own or as a reminder for the many before me who have taken the leap. Over time I will continue to share these lessons as I continue on this journey of self-employment.

Lesson #1 Be Open to Business.
As I said, I never intended to start my own company. I was working a great job but had nowhere to grow. Inside the organization I couldn’t find the mental space to determine what I wanted next nor was I able to find the right job opening available for what I needed. With a project in the works that could pay the rent, I made the decision to go on my own, for now.

The great thing about starting a company at the start of a recession is that you never knew business could have been better – any business is great. I left my corporate job assuming I would spend some time freelancing as event planner. To my surprise, people kept calling to hire me as a designer, a different role that I have greatly enjoyed. And the opportunities that have come to me as a designer have greatly surpassed what I would have been offered as a planner. But only because I was open to that possibility. Over the last year, I have come to realize that being open for business is more than just having a business card, a phone, email and website. It is about being open to the possibility of what you can do, not just what you think you will be doing. But within that realm of possibility, success, I have found, comes from focusing in on what is right for you to do, not just every little project that comes your way.

Event ROI -> Whats the Return?

Event ROI is fictitious.

Whoa! Back up. Before anyone shouts back, let me explain. My theory is based on the following premises I have observed:

1. Special Events are essentially facilitated human interaction.
2. The problem with people is that you cannot control all the variables.
3. (Excluding sales-based projects and annual meetings), many events are one-offs. With no prior baseline to measure against, how do you concretely document the return.
4. Great Events prove that often 2+2=5 (that is the result of all the pieces (value of the experience) is greater than the individual pieces (price) themselves).
5. Events are ultimately chasing an intangible: memory retention of the experience.

Now some readers of this will want to argue that every meeting and event is sales driving for any organization and we can argue that. Others will articulate that every good event is rooted in brand strategy, business objectives and/or messaging which I agree with, but we are not talking about a Return on Objective, we are discussing Return on Investment. And its NOT just semantics. If you hit the APEX dictionary, the definition for Event ROI is a tradeshow one: Value (most likely financial) returned for an investment made. Events for the most part, represent costs not returns to organizations.

So can we give up the ROI debate? Absolutely not. The question it seems comes down to how we define that word 'value'. As event professionals, it is critical that we create strategies which design meetings & events for a return; and those energies should be split between creating value for the company and for all event attendees. We must frame up the experience at the event to facilitate the conversations we want to happen and allow room for attendees to create their own dialogues. Before we try to measure our events, we need to define what return we are trying to provide and then create both our strategies and measurements tools to document the value we just defined. Which means that there is no one equation for measuring the ROI of an event, but a multitude of possibilities.

And finally we have to be OK with what we hear back through our measurement models. As much as events are facilitated human interactions, they evolve as the audience becomes more refined and the product experience more defined. We must accept criticism which states that we missed the mark, and address it the same way we accept the positive feedback. As a good friend and colleague, Cheryl Kranz of CEK Events, recently shared with me, our focus should not be on moving the "good" evaluation folks up to "great" but creating value opportunities so all respondents respond to a great experience - even if that experience is wholly unique to every individual attendee. And that event will have a perfect ROI.