Our strategy focuses on methods, budgeting processes, bidding and planning for any event, and meeting management needs. Our certified meeting planners and executive leadership team help develop a strategic meeting management plan for your organization.
Meeting Professionals and business travelers can spend upwards of 60% of their time, on average, on the road. As each of us navigate the Coronavirus threat, it is important to stay informed. The CDC has established the following exposure risk categories to help guide air travelers.
The infographic and information is provided by the CDC for the following potential SARS-CoV-2 exposure. These categories may not cover all potential exposure scenarios and should not replace an individual assessment of risk for the purpose of clinical decision making or individualized public health management. Any public health decisions that place restrictions on a person’s or group’s movements or impose specific monitoring requirements should be based on an assessment of risk for the person or group. These risk levels apply to travel-associated and community settings. CDC has provided separate guidance for healthcare settings. All exposures apply to the 14 days prior to assessment and recommendations apply until 14 days after the exposure event.
To sign up for daily updates from the CDC Click Here.
For more information on this topic from the CDC Click Here.
Travel well and be safe.
Please Note: For information on transitioning a live meeting to virtual on to one of our enterprise platforms, Click here, or email us at virtual@americanmeetings.com to schedule a capabilities presentation
Every meeting and event features a lot of moving pieces, but with a stellar event company to help manage the details, hosts can juggle concerns about the venue, lodgings, catering, staff, the schedule, event attendees, and more. It’s not like you’re reinventing the wheel, but you definitely don’t have the bandwidth to do everything on your own.
Unfortunately, snafus can occur, even if you think you’ve planned for everything. The weather might not cooperate at outdoor events. Keynote speakers might get stuck in traffic. A competitor might send a social media influencer to pan your event. None of these things are within your power to control, but you can put a backup plan in place to account for certain potential problems and you can control how you react to unexpected setbacks.
It’s also best to be aware of the most common problems so you can find ways to get out ahead of them instead of scrambling to play catch-up when your event is in full swing. Here are just a few common risks you and your event management team should consider well in advance.
Create a Realistic Budget
One of the most common issues hosts and event management partners come up against is a budget that balloons out of control. The good news is that this is also one of the easiest potential problems to account for early in the planning process.
It’s not always easy to know what an event will entail going in, but planners likely have a few ideas about the general theme and the number of attendees, two key factors in creating a workable budget. If there’s time, it’s best to round up some estimates for major costs like travel, venue, lodgings, and catering at your preferred event location so you can use that as a basis for creating a budget. If you’re stuck with a set budget from the get-go, you’ll simply have to work with what you’ve got and allow it to dictate certain factors like location.
What you don’t want to do is blow your whole budget on a must-have celebrity speaker or a lavish event destination that’s sure to impress, but that you can in no way afford. Start with a budget based on preliminary estimates and make sure to leave some wiggle room for overages, which are almost certain to occur. Setting aside 20% of your budget at the outset and keeping track of every expense means you could have a little extra at the end to upgrade catering, add wow factor to the décor, or hire additional support staff.
Have Your Event Management Company Perform Security Assessments
Of all the problems that could occur at an event, the one you most want to avoid is a security issue that puts guests in peril. The country music festival in Las Vegas is an extreme example, but it serves as a vital warning to every host and event company. Do not left any stone unturned when it comes to planning for adequate security, including asking professionals to assess risks and create a plan for potential disaster scenarios.
Work with Your Event Company to Troubleshoot Logistics
Generally speaking, your events are not going to come up against catastrophic failure scenarios. You’re much more likely to end up dealing with a host of minor logistical issues like uncooperative weather, long lines at registration, malfunctioning technology, communication breakdowns with on-site event staff, ferrying out-of-town guests, and so on.
Says John Cotter, COO at American Meetings, “Having an experienced and forward-thinking event management partner to help you pinpoint potential problem areas, implement solutions, and create a backup plan in case things go south is absolutely invaluable. Managing the many logistics involved in a complex event is what these professionals are paid to do.”
Control the Narrative
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, but you can recover from nearly any shortcoming if you spin the narrative in your favor. You have little control over what event attendees post on social media, which is why you go out of your way to create an impressive, engaging, and enjoyable event that prompts rave reviews.
Sadly, things don’t always go exactly as you planned, and problems at the event can lead to backlash on social media. You can turn this narrative to your advantage in a couple ways. Everyone knows that problems can occur, and when they do, your response is critical.
You must respond quickly to acknowledge and address the situation, and you have to offer impacted attendees something extra to turn their negative experience into a positive one. With the right response and customer service that goes above and beyond, you and your event company can shift the narrative and come out on top.
Our Prime Supplier Member, AFR Furniture Rental joined The American Meetings Network in 2018 and they are already seeing the benefits by meeting 1:1 with AMI’s Meeting Planners and Sourcing Managers at Global Procurement Day.
We take going above and beyond to new measures at AFR. We carefully craft every detail of every experience around you, working on your terms and going the extra mile so you don’t have to. We cherish your complete satisfaction and offer an expansive catalog of exquisite styles and personalized housewares packages certain to achieve these results. With 40+ years of industry experience, 19 strategic locations across the US, and a growing family of 700+, AFR Furniture Rental provides you the highest degree of service and versatility. Enjoy the flexibility and peace of mind that comes along with selecting an innovative, stress-free furniture company. Finally, a furniture rental company designed for you.
Our Prime Supplier Member, Arlington, Texas joined The American Meetings Network as Prime Supplier in 2018 and they are already seeing the benefits of becoming a Prime Member Supplier in The American Meetings Network by meeting 1:1 with AMI’s Meeting Planner and Sourcing Managers at Global Procurement Day.
We’re centrally-located between Dallas and Fort Worth, just 10 minutes from D/FW International Airport and a place full of massive year-round events and things to do. On your way to Arlington’s world-class AT&T Stadium? Catching a thrill at Six Flags Over Texas or Six Flags Hurricane Harbor? Checking out the Texas Rangers? Striking it up at the International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame? We can help you plan. We’ll show you the best restaurants, hotels and where to find great shopping and public art. Arlington: The Pursuit of Happy!
Click here to learn more about becoming a Prime Member of the American Meetings Network.
Click here to download info-sheet.
We all love to travel, but travelling can be expensive, between attendee flights and accommodations often event owners may have to reduce the number of invitees due to costs constraints.
Incorporating a virtual component as part of your project can add great savings. In this article we will share all the advantages of including a webinar element and how you could easily turn your live event into a hybrid event using AMI Virtual Platform.
Learn how by adding a webinar component to your live event you can save on travel costs while increasing your audience reach:
Increase Audience Reach
Traveling can be inconvenient for both attendees and colleagues. A lot of time is spent at the airport, between flights, checking in and out of hotels, waiting for taxis…..not to mention the time that is required for travel preparation, packing and so on.
By webcasting your live event, you could recapture the audience that might have travel restrictions, or do not have time to travel to an event outside their city. This audience could join from the convenience of their office or home, allowing your event to have a regional, national or event global impact.
With the AMI Virtual Platform, you have 1,000 remote attendees included in the standard package and larger audiences are easily supported, indeed the platform supports up to 100,000 remote viewers.
Audiovisual
Now let’s discuss Audiovisual setup. The good news is most of a standard live event setup can be re-purposed for the live webinar stream. More and more companies are now broadcasting their live speaker events as such audiovisual vendors are becoming proficient in providing this service and the additional equipment required.
This equipment includes a professional video camera, an encoder, slide control and monitoring of the webcast transmission. By requesting these from the event AV company directly, they will often bundle them with the other required equipment at lower cost.
Most event AV company’s equipment will be compatible to stream live to the AMI Virtual Platform. Our platform is encoder agnostic which means it supports both hardware and software encoders. To verify compatibility simply contact BD@americanmeetings.com and have your existing AV vendor on-boarded into the AMI Virtual Platform.
Save on Travel Costs
It is not uncommon for companies to restrict travel costs, in a bid to cut budgets. An average national ticket can cost around, 500 USD per attendee, that is before you factor in the additional costs of ground transport, accommodations and food & beverage, etc.
The cost of the equipment and labor needed to broadcast your live event equates to approx. the same cost of just 10 attendees. Not only could these 10 attendees still join the event remotely, but you could invite as many as 100,000 attendees to watch remotely by increasing your audiovisual overall cost by a small percentage.
Detailed Analytics and User Feedback
Client feedback is invaluable, but getting and audience to fill out and return feedback forms is not always easy. Capturing questions submitted from live audiences can be challenging.
Translations
On the topic of translations…Live simultaneous translations can add huge expense to your live events, requiring additional equipment, tables and head counts to distribute the translations head sets to attendees. When streaming your event these translations can be broadcast for a translated live stream, reaching not just a few international attendees at the venue but an entire market.
Alternatively, if at the live event all attendees listen to the presentations in one language only, incorporating a remote translation solution will not only save you money it means you can still reach multiple markets.
Support Team
AMI has a team of dedicated project managers that can guide you to turn your live event into a hybrid event leveraging all the benefits of the AMI Virtual Platform. Just email BD@AmericanMeetings.com to request a Webcast component for your events schedule a qualifying call with a dedicated project manager.
For these and many more reasons AMI Virtual Platform is a great complement to your events. With a fraction of the investment you could add 1000 attendees or more to your next live event.
