Readers Speak: Dealing With Conference Snags
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 1/10/2005
You say your speaker is a no-show? A catastrophe has struck? How do you anticipate and plan for the unexpected at your conference? Contributing Editor Gary Tufel asked some meeting planners and show managers to share their experiences.
"Ninety-five percent of the snags we faced could have been anticipated and handled well beforehand. We now assign potential problems to individuals who stay in continual communication over the details. One staffer's only responsibility is to keep in communication with speakers up to the minute they arrive in the green room. Another continually goes over room sets and makes sure our plans and the facility's are on the same page.
"For the 5 percent that cannot be anticipated, relax and keep perspective. Invariably you will come up with a good alternative, and the snag is not critical to the overall success of an event. Those attending will not even notice the problem. However, if you lose your cool you've just turned a potentially minor issue into something, many will see and remember."
Dave Keith, Vice president of operations Natl. Religious Broadcasters
"Snag: low attendance. Solution: telemarketing. Call potential attendees and talk to them about the conference program and the topics you think they might be interested in, and then register them.
"Snag: speaker doesn't show up. Solution: have a representative from your staff in each session so you can tell attendees you will refund their money. Turn the session into a roundtable discussion using the topic that the speaker was going to discuss. After the session, make sure your speaker sends apology letters to your conferees and a letter from you with their refund check, no more than five days post-event."
Jamie Swanson, Vice president and partner Infinity Expo Group
"We plan for weather and terrorist events, fires and earthquakes. But when the keynote speaker gets ill, misses a plane or simply doesn't show up, a lot depends on the audience, and whether they're there to hear that particular speaker.
"Come clean about the situation as soon as it's confirmed. Send out e-mails and letters, make calls or deliver a note to the hotel rooms.
"If you've booked the speaker through a legitimate speakers bureau, turn to them for assistance. Any professional speakers bureau would pull rabbits out of hats to bail you out.
"If there are other speakers, move one up to keynote. Search locally for a suitable replacement, but this is best done in advance. Draw upon industry leaders in attendance for a panel discussion of hot industry issues.
"If all else fails, walk on stage and start sobbing uncontrollably, hoping for some level of sympathy before they throw you a surprise going-away party."
Kevin Johnstone, Director of tradeshows NAMM, the Intl. Music Products Assn.
"It's amazing how successful a calm voice of reason can be during trying times. The Iraq war began the day we assumed the facility for the 2003 Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exposition. Select countries and companies immediately placed restrictions on travel, and other international attendees started to cancel their participation.
"As almost 30 percent of our attendance is international, a swift response was necessary. We provided conference-calling capabilities in all session rooms so speakers could participate remotely if necessary, and convinced most of the affected exhibitors to construct their booths and rely on a smaller sales team, and contact our preferred booth-talent provider if necessary."
Dave Coray, Senior manager, exhibit operations Optical Society of America
"We experienced this in Mexico when a speaker was stranded in California. Fortunately, we were prepared and immediately called on another speaker to cover. With very technical or specialty topics, it is sometimes much harder to have another speaker cover a session, so my staff brings a reserve list of speakers they can call at a moment's notice."
Tom Cindric, Show director, World of Concrete, World of Concrete Mexico Hanley Wood Exhibitions
"We have regularly scheduled e-mails, newsletters and phone calls with our speakers from when the invitation is issued to the post-event thank-you letter. Onsite, we ask speakers to check in early, and we start calling all of their numbers as soon as we know they have not collected their registration materials.
"For conferences that aren't local, we request arrival information and their hotel, which gives us even more reaction time if we know a flight was delayed or they didn't check into their hotel.
"In a true emergency, where the speaker is not able to get to the event, we review our speaker and even attendee lists to see who's available to pinch hit. We've had several conferences where another representative from the speaker's company or a speaker we've used in the past has successfully filled on short notice."
Kelly Ricker, Director, conferences, Intl. CES Consumer Electronics Assn.
"It's hard to prepare for snags as you never know what will go wrong. We try to plan in very fine detail and review plans carefully, so if something does go wrong we have time to deal with it."
Vicki Hawarden, Director of meetings and programs American Assn. of Blood Banks
"Always be sure the speaker has backup flights in place. The speaker should not be traveling to an event on the last flight out that would prevent other options should something happen to the original flight.
"Require a speaker to arrive the evening prior to the presentation. This requirement should be made as part of the initial invitation so that when the speaker accepts the offer, they are also agreeing to the arrival time."
Shayna Stillman, Vice president, Washington (D.C.) Speakers Bureau
