Here’s one for all the event organisers worldwide:
How many times have you been gazing at your carefully assembled run of order excel sheet, utterly puzzled, while reviewing a set-up onsite, to find out that in fact none of your patiently repeated points have been taken into account?
Let’s guess. If the reply does not come in exact numbers, it is very likely to be something along “too damn often”.
Why is that, you wonder? Your run of order was definitely a masterpiece of brevity and clarity, abounding with highlighted areas, inserted comments, “don’t forgets” and “BTWs”. How could anyone not pick up on the items you had so clearly spelled out?
The reply to that question may very well be as simple as asking the question itself (from an organiser’s point of view, that is). Event organisers tend to operate in multi-faceted, multi-cultural environments, with crazy deadlines like “get it done by yesterday”, overworked suppliers and client’s requirements changing overnight, especially when getting closer to D-day.
With the time pressure building up towards the final deadline, all parties involved tend to assume rather than confirm best practices. And that’s when things may go sour…Need some examples?
How about this one. You sent out your flight manifest to your transfer company a comfortable week before the actual event date and spent some extra hours highlighting the persons arriving at the same time (explaining the clubbing to be followed up on site). The client’s logo was sent in a high res format, and you stressed very clearly to your transport coordinator the importance of paging the client in a formal, but responsive manner: “hold up that pager, please, so our guests see that someone is waiting for them”. Guess what? When you arrive onsite, the first thing you don’t see is the pager: no client logo, no clients’ names, no carefully prepared corporate lay-out. “Why?”, you want to know. The reply could not be more sobering and intoxicating at the same time: Sir, we do not have a colour printer in the office. Assumptions…
Need another one? You have finally managed to book a mobile cameraman to operate during the panel discussion part of the plenary session. All AV preps go according to schedule and you get ready for the final rehearsal. But where’s the cameraman? Sir, he’s at another event, as you did not say he needs to be here for the repetition. Assumptions…
We often assume that what we believe to be common sense, best practice or just “plain obvious” is so too at the other side of the communication/organisation line. But as we, organisers, often find out on site: there’s a zillion ways to interpret deadlines, quality levels, service expectations and performance standards. Assuming that it will be as you would normally expect it to be, may present you with a big disappointment on site and an extra load of unnecessary stress.
The prime lesson to be learned: keep pushing for the best…and never assume.
