Tricks of the Event Management Trade

Managing major corporate events is part art and part science. It takes enormous creativity and meticulous organization to pull off a successful, productive, memorable event. An event with great memories, that is. Not the more typical recollections: snore-inducing presentations, painful ice breakers, and rubber chicken meals.

I love concocting corporate events. I’ve had amazing opportunities to create and manage large-scale international leadership programs, conferences, and events for multinational clients, totaling nearly 1,200 events and conferences across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East. Each event was designed to be exciting and memorable—and to deliver the required return on investment for the client.

My job is to deliver a wildly successful event within budget and to minimize heartburn for the client’s event point person. That point person might be a skilled internal event planner or perhaps someone who got volunteered for the project. Either way, my goal is to oversee all planning, production and follow-up activities and make the point person, and the host organization, stars.

Over the years, I’ve learned several factors that are critical to the success of a major corporate event. In upcoming blog posts, I’ll dive into each one.

But if I were to summarize the most important unwritten rules to running successful events, I’d boil it down to three things:

Relationships: Build them with everyone involved in putting on or attending the event. Share organizational details with everybody.
Ground rules: Establish ground rules and ensure everyone sticks to them. Don’t let people (vendors or even guests) derail your event. You own it.
Impeccable timing: Start on time and finish early! Guests appreciate it when you acknowledge that their time is valuable. And you will rock if you get people out early.

Stay tuned for more keys to planning and conducting successful, memorable corporate events.