Event essentials
I thought I’d keep things simple this week. Events never really switch off. It’s either conference season, major sporting season, or shows or concerts. You get the idea. This week, I thought I’d put together a simple and fun blog. This is a list of essentials that every event manager or events professional has with them.
Let’s start the list strong with a power bank. Our lives are on our phones these days (and in some cases tablets). Sometimes, even 100% battery feels like it’s not enough. On-site days are long, and depending on what type of event you’re at, it could start anywhere between 6am – 8am, and end anywhere 6pm onwards. There is no chance that your phone will last that long. A power bank is holy grail. It’s sustenance.
Speaking of sustenance, I feel like coffee and energy drinks needs a special mention. Ever since I started my weight loss journey, I have made it a habit to not drink more than one coffee a day. This is easy to maintain when I’m working from my desk. But when I’m onsite, it’s a completely different story. As bad as it is, I can have either one coffee and two hot chocolates or two coffees and a hot chocolate, and somewhere in between some form of an energy drink. I then regret the choices I have made as I try to go to bed. But in that moment, anything that can give you a burst of energy to get through the next couple of hours is medicine.
As an event manager, the one essential thing that will be with you at all times is a clip board. As reliant I am on my phone for things like a run sheet, or any other details, I do love a good clip board with printed material. When you trying to scan through people on guest lists or looking for your next speaker and finding any last-minute details about/for them or whether it’s looking at the site map, you get the idea. The clip board is a right of passage.
This next one I think, is quite a good one, and often one that gets missed. That is Blu tac and/or gaff tape. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been on site during pack-in where we’ve not needed this. In fact it got to a point where our tech team would carry extra, because any amount just never felt enough.
Maybe I’ll do a part two of this blog and continue with this list. If you were packing an event kit tomorrow, what are the first 5 things you would definitely pack before you looked at your list of other things. I would say other than a first aid kit, because that should always be with you, even if the venue has access to it.
Until next time,
Mili
