Event Management 101: Become an Attendee!

 

By Carl Landau

 

Become an attendee for a change and you’ll learn ways to run your own events even better. It’s for your own good. You spend so much time focused on your OWN events.

 

So shake it up: Become an attendee.

 

I love being an attendee at events…about events.

 

I had been in the event business for 15 years before going to an event about events.  And now I just came back from my second such event in two months!

 

Last week I was fortunate enough to go to Sam Lippman’s ECEF (Exhibition & Convention Executives Forum) in Washington DC.

 

It was actually really nice to be an attendee for a change–instead of running the whole thing. The result? It  jump started so many new ideas in my brain and helped me see my own events from the attendee and sponsor perspective.

 

Here’s some tips I picked up at ECEF:

 

- Event Personalization:  It was obvious the care and attention that Sam puts into his event. I got the impression that Sam had probably personally talked or emailed everyone at the event. You couldn’t help but feel special.

 

- Love the polling remote:  Each attendee had their own remote for participating in real time polls. This made the event feel super interactive and in the moment.

 

– Assigned seats for lunch:  Great idea. This encouraged everyone to meet new people and allowed for a balanced ratio of attendees to sponsors at each table.

 

– Roster of attendees:  Most organizers do not share their list, which I think is a mistake.  Not only does Sam give you all the attendee contact info, he includes a photo of each attendee. So helpful for future networking!

 

– Hosted Buyer Event:  One of the sessions was about creating a hosted buyer event. Even if you aren’t going to have this exact kind of “matchmaking” event between sponsors and big buyers, it can’t help but give you ideas for add-on events to your existing events. Here’s more about hosted buyer events.

 

These are just a few of many tips that I learned. Plus now I’m full of inspired ideas for my own events.

 

Next up? I’m looking forward to attending and speaking at the SISO Executive Conference in August. SISO has made a mistake and they’re actually letting me teach a session–Event Networking Mania!