“The views expressed on this site are my own and not those of Etihad.”
The following post is meant to highlight the 3 key stages in planning and running an event successfully.
The 3 stages I will talk about are:
- Pre-Event
- Event
- Post Event
In each stage I will share with you what you need to keep in mind as well as what we did in each case.
The proposed event
A one week event was to be organized and run to help foster a greater awareness of safety amongst the employees of the company. The Safety and Quality Department, together with the operational departments, was to organize the Safety Week. The event is to include daily presentations that will provide insights into the safety challenges that operational departments face, and how they deal with them.
The main remit of the event was to bring together operational and non-operational staff together to understand the roles they play in safety.
Pre-event
Audience
Its important to know who your target audience is and what you wish to achieve. This helps in marketing the event to the right people as well as ensuring any presentations are relevant for the audience.
Ideally we would want to be able to target every single employee but this is difficult due to a few reasons:
- Operationally it would be difficult for everyone to attend. We couldn’t possibly ask everyone to stop working for just for this event.
- Capacity restrictions would limit the number of attendees per day.
So we made a few key decisions, we would target a total capacity of 150 attendees per day with a 2 hour session every day. The number of seats were divided equally between operational and non-operational staff (75 each).
An online registration system was setup to allow people to be able to register themselves into one of the 5 sessions over the week.
Presentation
You need to know what you will be presenting as well as make sure to have a common theme that ties all the different presentations together.
We decided on 8 presentations from operational departments focusing on key areas with each area being allocated 15 minutes. The focal theme that brought all the different presentations together was to focus on the Safety Management System and how each operational area benefits from and contributes to it.
Each operational area was given a week to prepare their presentations and all the final presentations were sent to me for the final compilation. All presentations were quality checked for spelling and data, as well as given a common visual theme (colors, fonts, images) by me.
Video statements
Video statements are a fantastic way to make sure key messages from senior management can be shared even if they are unable to attend all the events.
We recorded video statements from all the relevant divisional senior management to highlight key messages to the organization from their leaders. The video statements were also to be re-used for further training and development in the future.
Handouts
People love free stuff, but its not just about giving stuff away. Anything you plan for people take home with them should help them remind them of the event and the key messages.
As part of the event we ordered custom pens for all the participants with the slogan of the Safety Week.
As part of this I also led the development of a safety management brochure that gave all participants a high level view of how the system works.
Awareness
Its very important to advertise your event and increasing the awareness of the event. Call it marketing, promotion, raising awareness – what matters is people know about it.
We did a couple of things to raise the awareness.
- We sent out a corporate communication to all staff from the CEO, describing the overall event
- We followed that up with an e-mail sent to managers to inform them about the specifics of the event
- Once people registered for the event online, they were sent e-mail reminders 24 hours before the event
- We also changed all the wallpapers on company issued laptops and computers to make sure people know about the dates of the event. You can see an example below.
The Event
Practice
Practice – Practice – Practice.You can’t believe the number of presentations I have attended were speakers stumbled or struggled with the A/V equipment. All of which can be solved if they had practiced before hand or familiarized themselves with the equipment before their presentation.
In order to ensure all the presentations went as smooth as possible, all our presenters met twice to do a practice run of their presentations.
This helped improve on a couple of ways:
- We moved the speaker podium so that the speaker was able to see the screen without having to turn around as well as not obstructing the view of any participants.
- There was a one second lag between when a presenter would click on the pointer and the slide would change. The practice session allowed the presenters to be able to get familiar with that delay as well as to expect it.
- Finally the volume for the auditorium was adjusted to an optimum level taking into account all the voice levels.
The event
Always be prepared for anything that might go wrong and have contingencies in place.
A couple of examples we faced and it helped that we had planned and prepared for these potential events.
- One of the microphones stopped working. We had two spare microphones on hand.
- On one of the sessions the number of participants was more than there were chairs available. What we had done was keep a number of spare seats outside the auditorium and these were brought in as and when needed.
- We also had a spare laptop in place, in case anything went wrong with the primary laptop.
- The presentations and all the relevant materials were available on memory disks and on the cloud in case they were needed to be moved to a different computer or location.
Master of Ceremonies
Any event you plan – you need to make sure you have at least one person who has overall control and big picture view of the event ensuring everything is going according to plan. If there are any deviations or hiccups he is the one responsible to ensure everything is put back on track.
Overall responsibility of the running of the event was mine as well as I was the master of ceremonies preparing presenters and introducing them. Having an MC helps engage with the audience while they wait for presenters to change. As an MC I also helped keep track of time and cue the presenters on the time left. Any other technical problems or logistics were taken care of by me with minimum disruption to the event. As an example people who came in late to the event were asked to wait before being seated so as not to interrupt the presenter or audience.
Post Event
Communicate Success
Always make sure to communicate how the event went with your wider audience.
Post event we sent out another corporate message sharing the success of the event (over 600+ participants).
Share the event
Just because the event is over does not mean you cannot share the experience.
As I mentioned earlier it would have been an impossible task to allow everyone to attend (logistically and operationally).
I designed an online portal with recordings of each of the presentations as well as a photo gallery to allow others who were interested in the event to be able to view it at their own convenience.
Overall the event was a great success and a great example of excellent teamwork and co-ordination between numerous departments.
If there is one thing I can share with you is that plan – plan – plan. As the old adage goes “He who fails to plan, plans to fail”.
“The views expressed on this site are my own and not those of Etihad.”