In my corporate life, I did my share of event planning and still do it to this day. Here are a couple of things you want to avoid.
Last minute lags. You need to have all of your marketing up and running before your event – months ahead of time and not two weeks before. If you are planning on screwing around with your event website for 6 months, you are in the wrong business. If you do not have your speakers info up on your site or at the very least a schedule of events (I have seen it all), people are not going to pay $500 dollars for your event and the V.I.P. table. Start marketing early, meaning sending out newsletters, handing out flyers and setting up affiliate ticket programs where people can sell your event for you – although in the end it is going to be up to the organizer to get the butts in the seats.
Lack of tech prep. Always test your A/V equipment and your speaker’s presentations prior to the event and not at the 11th hour. I do realize that some speakers do lag on sending their stuff in, however you should be up and running from a tech standpoint. If you have asked someone to email in their presentation try not to accidently lose it. Also, if this is the case and the speaker has backup on a memory stick, laptop, etc. and you still cannot run it. Um. Houston we have a problem. Even worse, is when someone has traveled quite a distance to experience this, have their presentation cut in half and then gets to listen their own voice when they present because the mic isn’t working correctly …no bueno. When I had my own radio show, I never even listened to my own voice and certainly do not want to do it when I have a roomful of people staring at me. Talking to yourself in the shower does not count, however hearing an echo when you are trying to speak is super distracting. My point? Plan ahead.
Ticket tackiness. If people have signed up for your event, it is not cool to start doing discounts at the 11thhour because your numbers are not what they should be. If you want to do discounts, this is where you do the affiliate programs before or a 2-for-1 deal. You are going to piss off the people who have paid full price and I don’t see why organizers are oblivious to this. Also, demanding your speakers sell an X amount of tickets and if they don’t tell them they are required to pay X amount for the keynote speaker is just downright tacky.
