Original post by katielewis via tweakyourbiz
Many always say you learn from your mistakes, but for event managers, mistake makes things even better the next time. So how? We all know event management is a tough job, but that’s what we love to do and what we are the best at. It’s quite common that we face issues every minute, but expertise straightens that out. Today, there are multichannel event apps to run things effortlessly by giving backbone support.
Say you are organizing an event for software professionals. The guests, which count to 800, have arrived and are seated. Refreshments are being served and all is going according to plan. The seminar and sessions are just starting, when all of a sudden there has been a change in the plan. One of the facilitators decides to bring a quick change to the proceedings and decides to run a different session instead of the one on the plan. He turns to you for help and would never expect to see you standing astounded not knowing what to do, or that you haven’t got your alpha ready to go live yet, and you have to find the next person to handle this.
Crisis management
Being an event manager, you would be the first person people look to for each and every obstacle that comes along the way. Ensuring success in every step should be your top priority and to get that done can at times be a mountain climbing task. Any sort of crisis can occur at any time, and as you know this always happens, your expertise is what others look to in order to handle the situation.
An experienced event team can obviously facilitate impact assessment, rapid communication and even rumor control as they handle the crisis smoothly. Every effort you put towards investing in planning the event can help you manage even the largest and long term incidents that can or may occur.
Over management
When it comes to event management, there is nothing like over management. The day of the event is the most important and everything prior to that can only be defined as planning. It would also be better to have plenty of volunteers handy, because there will be many last minute errands to deal with.
Improving the experience
All your previous events should always make way for the next to be done even better. That means you have to improve the overall experience by looking to the previous events. It’s incredibly important if it is your brand and company event – you want to track the interactions and behavior of not only your attendees, but also speakers, exhibitors, partners and sponsors. That means just about anyone associated with the event.
So how can you make this happen? No guess work obviously; what you need is true insight and deeper understanding. So, trust the data – analytics on your previous events – and that’s how you can always make things better the next time.
Go digital
It’s a digital world out there and we have to make use of its full potential. We can choose to run everything manually with difficulty, or cut out the hassle and go digital. There are event apps to let this happen the way you would want it to. You can create your ultimate interactive show guide on the palms of the attendees. Facilitate live access, real time data and information about your event. Not just improving the user experience but making it possible for your attendees, sponsors, exhibitors or associates to plan and schedule their time more effectively, and also connect with each other.
Why digital data is important
The importance of collecting data and user interaction on any event is invaluable. Every event needs a measurement strategy; every event is different, each with a different objective.
But when it comes to data, it’s the only way you can:
- know what your attendees actually need,
- find answers to questions,
- know your way around the bottlenecks,
- optimize,
- and above all, improve and improve on the tasks to hit the goals each time.
“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” – Lord Kelvin.
