Perfect events | A myth or do they exist?
There is no such thing as a perfect event. Perhaps a controversial topic for what is my sixth blog on my website. But I’m open to your thoughts. Over the years, I’ve seen this pressure on event professionals that they have to deliver the perfect event. I have seen new talent crack under the pressure. Yes, I know events are one of the topmost stressful jobs.
A skill that I’ve had to teach myself, and learn, and really embed in myself is to know that there’s no such thing as a perfect event and really acknowledge it. What is perfect to me, could be vastly different from what is perfect to someone else. It’s the first thing I tell my mentees, also.
When you’re on-site, it is your opportunity to see everything that you’ve been working on over the past few weeks, months, even a year, come to life. As much as you’d like to think that everything is in control, it’s not. There are too many variable factors. There are too many things happening, and you cannot burn yourself out, or give yourself an anxiety attack trying to deliver on what someone else’s understanding of perfect is.
Let’s take conferences for example. There are so many factors that are not in your control. Don’t get me wrong, you could have done everything to ensure that the conference goes perfectly, but what happens, when your afternoon speaker got caught up in a busy meeting in the morning, that ran over time and will not make it in time for their session. What happens when there’s horrible weather causing traffic delays meaning delegates have not turned up and you need to kick off your conference?
Centralising some of the other issues, what happens when you’re working with a tech heavy PPT, and the tech crashes (yes, it has happened). What happens, when you were supposed to receive 20 plants, to make the expo space and conference room look a little greener but end up with 200 plants instead and a higher expense on the budget.
You get the point. Things happen. My biggest learning, and my true definition of a perfect event is, as long as your stakeholders, whether they are delegates at your conference, or patrons at festivals or major events, have had a good time, whilst you’ve put out fires without them getting a hint of what’s going on, that is a perfect event. It is accepting that there a lot of things that are not in your control and knowing that there is a solution to every problem that exists.
I’ll leave it at that, but I’m open to your thoughts, what is a perfect event according to you?
Until next time,
Mili
