Event Managers
Develop, coordinate and organise services for events such as weddings, festivals, conventions, conferences, exhibitions, concerts and trade shows.
Opening day at the riverside festival
You are the event manager of a one-day outdoor festival, with gates opening in an hour and a long list of things that must go right. It is 11am. The stage is built, the stalls are setting up and a dark cloud is sitting on the horizon. Your radio crackles with three separate problems before you finish your coffee.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
The weather service has just updated the forecast. A storm could arrive around six. If it comes, we may need to pause the show and move people. I would like to talk about a plan now, not later.
Wait to see whether the storm arrives, because cancelling too early would upset everyone
The storm arrives earlier than expected and the crowd is caught unprepared. A plan that was needed at noon is being made at six. In event safety, prepare before you must act.
Sit down with Pippa, agree a trigger for pausing the show and brief the crew
Everyone knows what will happen and who calls it. When the storm cell passes close by, the pause is calm and brief. Planning for what might happen is the safety.
Cancel the evening acts now, to be completely safe
Nobody is at risk, but the storm turns out to be small and thousands of people are sent home from a perfectly good evening. Overreacting has its own costs.
We paid for the best location in the VIP area, and the stage view is partly blocked by the sound tower. I expected better. I would like it moved, or we will rethink our involvement next year.
Move the sound tower, even though it is in the safest place for the audio
The sound is worse, the audience notices, and the sponsor still isn't entirely happy. You gave up the thing that mattered most to the show to please one party.
Walk the site with Dani, listen, and offer a better viewing spot and a clear way to reach you during the day
Dani gets a better view from a raised platform and feels heard. A direct contact makes small problems easy. Good sponsor relations are built on being responsive, not on giving in.
Tell Dani the location was agreed in the contract and cannot be changed
You are right on paper, but Dani is cold for the rest of the day. The contract protects you, though it does little for the relationship.
The first band is ready to go on at one, but the gates have only just opened and there is a queue of about two hundred people waiting. If we start now, they will miss the first act. What do you want to do?
Delay the first act by ten minutes, tell the MC and the band, and tell the audience why
The queue clears, the band understands and the first act plays to a good crowd. The rest of the schedule slips by ten minutes, which you must manage all day.
Start on time because the schedule is what the performers agreed to
The first act plays to a thin crowd and the band feels let down. Keeping to the clock mattered less than the experience of the people who came.
Open more entry lanes, start on time with the MC warming up the crowd
The queue clears within a few minutes and the first act plays to a growing crowd. Fixing the real bottleneck keeps both the schedule and the audience happy.
How it went
The final act finishes ten minutes before curfew, and the last car leaves the paddock after midnight. An event manager plans for everything, then adjusts when the real day does not match the plan. Does the thrill of making something happen in front of a crowd appeal to you?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The headline act that was stuck on the highway
A fictional case set in an outdoor music and food festival on a fictional riverside reserve, on the morning of opening day.
The situation
Kwame Asante was the event manager for the Riverbend Music Festival. At four in the afternoon, the headline band's tour manager rang to say their van had broken down and they were still two hours away. The stage was set, the crowd was arriving and sponsors were in the VIP area. A local support act had already played twice. The festival's schedule was tight, and the curfew at the reserve could not be moved.
What they did
Kwame kept calm and told his stage manager and the MC what was happening. He rearranged the lineup so the local acts played longer sets, and asked a food stall to run a short free tasting in front of the stage. He sent a runner and a car to meet the band at the highway and brought them in by a service road. He also spoke to the sponsors himself, before they heard it from someone else.
How it turned out
The band arrived with forty minutes to spare and played a shortened set that the crowd loved. The local acts got a great afternoon crowd. Kwame wrote the whole day into a plan for next year, with a rule that headline acts arrive the day before.
What would you do?
- Why did Kwame speak to the sponsors himself?
- How would you decide which parts of a schedule can change and which cannot?
- What would you find most stressful about a day like this?