As is so often the case in business, and life, something came up. So, we´ve had a bit of a reshuffle and today, for our very first Ask the Expert series, we´re speaking to Lisa Fawdry, Founder of Nyon Consultancy, a freelance consultant at The Talent and Leadership Club and previously Client Director at Future Talent Learning. She has experience of being in charge of event management and organisation for over a decade, running events for anywhere up to 1000 guests in some of the most prestigious locations in the world. If that weren´t enough then, as the name suggests, I am lucky enough to be able to call her my sister-in-law, and honestly, choosing to opt-in to my crazy family should be enough to tell you she knows how to organize chaos!
Event Management- making sense of the chaos.
To be fully transparent, we had this call over zoom and the interview has been edited both for clarity and because I wasn´t aware of how regularly I say the word “like”. I´ll work on it.
A-CLASS
Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me today about event management. I guess it would be great to find out how you start the process, how you scale up the process, whether there are any particular tools that you use. It's just to get an idea, I guess, of… from the ground up, if you are told, for example, to set up a conference for 100 people… what are the first steps that you take?
Assuming that you don't have to get involved with the sales of the tickets at all.
Lisa
Okay, gotcha, because in my role, I was doing lots of different elements of that, actually. So I was kind of doing the Ticket sales and getting the right people along and getting the invites out. Because I sort of had the community that I built up over that time, but I was doing the operational stuff too. So I liaise with the AV people, the venue, the catering and then just work with my team internally about the timings. You know, we had somebody who would liaise with the speakers directly, who was an external PR person, and that's often the case anyway for that kind of size of event.
A-CLASS
What sort of size conferences are we talking about?
Lisa
I mean, these conferences that I did were for about, well, the first one was 250 and then we did one for 1000 people at Sadler's Wells. And then I think the last few were about 700. 700. So, yeah, it's a lot of logistics, but it was a lot of, you know, from my side… internally liaising with your team, planning timings, dealing with catering, dealing with logistics.
So if you've got sponsors, for example, they always want to make deliveries before the event and making sure stands are delivered and stored in the venue and where they can do all of that and timings for getting into the venue on the day. Often people like to go the day before to drop things off. So there's quite a lot of organisation and with the speakers, although that was managed by somebody in terms of actually getting them and briefing them on what they were going to talk about, they then have requests and demands.
So for example, one quite famous celebrity comedian wanted a bowl of hot water in the room and a towel and a mirror. You've got to try and source these then.
I mean, the venue can help with that sort of thing, but some of it you end up having to do.
And then there's lots of additional resources that you have to get, like if you want to have banners around the place to direct people, so we would get the designer to work on that. We'd all check through and make sure that we've got enough of them to direct people to the right places in the venue and then you might want an app.
And if you have an app that everyone can use on the day, then it's sort of getting that all set up and populated. Also making sure the social media channels are up and running so that, you know, on the day everyone can be tweeting on the same hashtag. One year we got second in the UK on Twitter. First in the UK was Justin Bieber because it was his birthday.
A-CLASS
You can't beat Justin!
Lisa
No, we couldn't. We didn't beat Justin….But yeah, so there's sort of lots of different elements of the organisation side, which I think a lot of EAs, you're right, they do end up being pulled in that direction quite often because they're very organised people. Actually the skillset lends itself really well to doing something like an event.
A-CLASS
So what about the smaller events?
Lisa
With the smaller events that I did, be like seminars, morning seminars, where you'd have maybe like a hundred and you'd need to get a little stage quite often because the speakers would be sat down in that kind of situation, be like a fireside chat or something. Then it's like you've got to arrange how you want the seating and again, are you going to film it?
If you're going to film it to then use again with your community, it's getting all the quotes in and making sure that the video crew know exactly what you want, giving them a brief so that you've got the right video when you come out of it.
And just again, it'd be like the sort timings, the catering, the logistics, how people get there, providing sort of maps and really clear instructions.
That's one thing I learned over time: you write instructions, but you need to make it so clear.
What entrance someone is going in if there are three different ones? Because on the day they don't read it all properly and they might skim back over the email but that sort of thing is so important.
A-CLASS
So where do you start? Because I assume when you start a project like this that you are given a brief and budget And a date that it all needs to take place on. Is that where you start and then you make a list? Do you have an app or a particular piece of software that comes with a checklist?
Lisa
Yeah, I mean, you'd definitely be starting out with the brief, what is the objective.
What are the goals of the event and what are you trying to get out of it?
And then in terms of budgets, you would have, for the larger ones, you would have a rough kind of budget and then you'd have a target that you're trying to achieve in terms of sponsorship as well.
In terms of apps to use, I use Excel a lot for budget management and looking at the expenses for the event.
We had sort of an in-house designer who would work on all the assets really and then we had actually an external company who did an app for us as well.
We used various different apps actually over the years and I think in the end it's sort of the simpler ones were the better ones. I think it's a case of as you go through the process having a timeline of what you're trying to achieve by each week in the build-up and making sure that everybody's in the loop that needs to be and knows what their jobs are coming up to the event and on the day.
It's really important everyone's really clear on what their roles are as well and I think if you're planning it all that does come down to you.
And then I think when you've got any event, you've got your venue and then you think about refreshments or catering, and then you think about how you want it to look inside with the layout and whether you need a stage or not, or seats. But, you
know, those things you can do quite quickly and quite easily at the beginning.
As you get closer to the event, it's working out all the communication to the delegates and the social media and the themes a little bit more.
A-CLASS
I guess it would depend on where it's being held and what it is that you're looking for, but how much do you outsource in terms of if you're told to find a location that can accommodate 500 people and has got hotels?
Do you then just search for that yourself or are there websites that you use or people that you go “Listen, I need a hotel that can do x,y,z. Please come back to me.”
Lisa
So, with the organisation that I was at, I would look into lots of things, but in terms of delegates' travel, they would sort that themselves, we would just give them the information on where they need to be, what time and timings of the day.
In terms of hotels near the venues, actually, because we were using really large iconic London venues- I mentioned Sadler's Wells and the Royal Opera House, but we also did the Royal Geographical Society for quite a few years-They all have lists of hotels nearby that they often have deals with, which we would use.
A-CLASS
I guess from the point of view of an EA, it's about figuring out where their time is best spent. So, you know, there are those companies that will search venues for you and will sort out your hotel or your travel or whatever.
Lisa
Yeah, I don't know about, I'm sure there are, but the venues definitely can help because they do have a list of preferred suppliers, I guess, and that can often help. There was an EA at the organisation I was at who did used to help me around the conference.
And, you know, I think that the skill set of being sort of very organised and also working so closely with the chief exec meant that they were quite close to the action and able to really help on quite a lot of the practical stuff and the admin and just taking that load away. There are quite a lot of EAs that I know of that have ended up moving more into event roles actually, because they end up doing a lot of events.
It might be they're booking dinners all the time for their boss and quite often they would help out as well when we had dinners maybe for about 15 or so clients.
A-CLASS
I guess to an extent it is an event, a dinner for 25 people, and anything else is just kind of scaling from that. You've still got to think about the same sort of things in terms of organisation, of location, how people get in there, dietary requirements, etc, etc.
So, I guess lastly I´ll ask, is there anything that you would think is the most fundamental part to being able to do the job well or that makes your life a million times easier?
Lisa
I mean, I think, in terms of, websites and apps where, you know, you can pre-populate your emails and things like that, they can be super helpful rather than having to do them all personally.
So that can make life easier if you're managing a larger event. But otherwise, in terms of skill sets, it's definitely great organisation that is completely key. And then being calm under pressure, because actually, with events, quite a lot of the time, things do go wrong.
Deliveries don't come on time or on the day, the sound isn't working.
And you need to have people around you that are good at thinking on their feet and that can actually come up with solutions in the moment. You don´t want a thousand people waiting and fed up because you're wasting their time. We had a situation at one where we had too many people turn up and we'd overbooked it. Normally, the dropout rate would be decent and on this occasion it wasn't. Part of the problem was in the theatre that the staff at the venue weren't actually pushing people down into the rows. There were seats, you just couldn't get to them very easily.
So yeah, there's always things that happen that make it a little challenging.
But I think the key to successful event management is definitely just organisation and being calm and personable and planning in advance for things to go wrong!
(To get in touch with Lisa directly, please contact her via Linkedin)
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