It was all going so well. The venue looked great, the food was amazing, the opening night entertainment had broken the ice and got everyone in a great mood. It was a sunny Saturday morning and the vibe was upbeat and positive. The remaining two days of over 80 workshops, networking, socialising and entertainment were going to be great.
Then it happened. One of the event crew walked over to me and said “So some guy just went apeshit at reception”.
“What?”
“Yeah this dude walked in, all sweaty and out of breath. A minute later he was shouting and swearing at the guys on reception. Something about his workshop. Then he just stormed out and walked off site.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Big dude. Made a bit of a scene. Quite scary actually. Freaked out a few of the other attendees too.”
I made my way to reception to find out what had happened.
What had happened was that, at short notice, a speaker had told me that her availability had changed. She’d asked that I reschedule her session, so I’d swapped it for another one. But I’d forgotten that the other session’s speaker also had limited availability. And being busy and distracted with a million and one other last-minute event preparation tasks, I neglected to check.
I’d unwittingly moved his session to the day before he was due to arrive.
So, when he did arrive (after getting up super early to catch a train from Manchester to London, then get the tube and hurriedly walk the last 2 miles to the venue) and discovered that his session had been moved to the day before, he was understandably upset.
There were a few impacts. Other attendees noticed a planning failure: our reputation for quality events was damaged; I’d opened my reception staff up to being verbally abused; I’d let down a speaker who had been generous enough to volunteer his time to contribute to my event’s programme. And it led to a breakdown in the relationship between the speaker and my CEO, who had hoped to use the event to cultivate a strategic relationship with him.
Of course, I have to take full responsibility for the mistake. I let folks down. My bad. It’s a fair cop.
But after reflecting on it for a while, I concluded that it was a mistake that was all too easy to make. Especially if you’re trying to juggle all the last-minute preparations of running a conference. And especially if you’re using email and spreadsheets to plan the schedule.
Spreadsheets don’t remind you about key information contained in emails that you received from speakers weeks ago when you were putting the programme together. Spreadsheets don’t tell you if you’re about to do something stupid.
Suspecting that other event planners might be at risk of making similar mistakes, I set out to make something that does…
I hooked up with a friend and ex-colleague from my IT days and we’re developing an event scheduling app.
Look away now to avoid the product plug!
It uses a call-for-proposals flow to capture all the usual details that you can use to promote events (speaker biography, session synopsis), plus the various practical scheduling constraints: speaker availability, resource needs (e.g. AV equipment, WiFi), session duration, session ordering etc.
These constraints are then used as rules to ensure that you schedule sessions in the right times and places. And it can tell you if you’re trying to do something silly. It means that you can develop your event schedule quickly. Less time checking if your scheduling choices are valid; less worrying that you’ve missed something; less likelihood of making an embarrassing and damaging mistake like mine.
Here comes the call to action…
If you think you’d find this app useful and want to find out more, or if you’d like to play with a preview version and give us feedback, we’d love to hear from you.
And if it doesn’t sound useful, please tell us why.
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Thanks for reading. Happy scheduling!