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With an unrelenting news cycle comes an unrelenting need for crisis communication preparedness. On Thursday, Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) released a step-by-step guide for business events strategists on how to effectively handle crises.

Crisis management planning is like life insurance; nobody wants it, but everyone needs it. Business owners must budget for risk management even when there is no sign of trouble ahead. Planning for hypothetical events understandably seems like a waste of resources. But, like a life insurance policy, not having one is far more costly.

Whether it’s managing worse-for-wear guests or forgetting to focus on delegates, every event organiser has learned a lesson or two along the way. Here, we speak to seven about their biggest mistakes made (and what they now do differently as a result).

The EU General Data Protection Regulation focuses on the rights of individuals over their personal information and how companies use it. It will have a huge impact on the industry, affecting event professionals, agencies, technology providers, and associations across the globe and not just in Europe. It applies to the collection and processing of data of European citizens, which means compliance is required by any organization hosting events attended by EU citizens anywhere in the world.

After the epically awful 2017 hurricane season wreaked destruction from Texas to Florida to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, meeting professionals with future events booked in affected areas are grappling with a tough question: Should we stay or should we go? Will their organization and attendees be better served by cancelling and relocating the program, or stay the course at the original destination and hope the lights will be on and the AV running by the meeting’s scheduled dates?

There are a variety of crises that can occur at a meeting — something as serious as an active shooter situation or as silly as a skunk wandering into a convention center floor. Bob Mellinger, founder and CEO of Attainium, encountered the latter during his time working with clients on crisis preparedness. But regardless of the scale or gravity of the crisis, “a lot of people don’t think about it when they should,” Mellinger says in the latest video for The Intersection, presented by PCMA and PSAV.

Imagine you’re planning an annual event. Everything has been ordered and confirmed. The event is only a few days away. Then, Hurricane Matthew hits and your supplier can’t deliver as various components of your order were in a building that now has six feet of water in it. Or you are a supplier and I-95 is shut down in key areas forcing traffic into long detours thereby causing your perishables that were ordered to arrive too late. Or perhaps a two-week-long riot (Baltimore 2015) prevents your supplier from meeting a key deadline. Or something as simple as a power outage that lasts for more than eight hours forces the venue to close just a few hours before the event.

Last October, I was working at an event where the main entertainment went up in flames minutes before it was scheduled to venture out into the crowd. I’m talking full-on, “turn the sprinkler system off quick before the exhibitor booths, activity stations and high-end sponsors get soaked” flames.

The entertainment was a 9-foot robot and the event was an international conference.

After we extinguished the flames and lugged the large piece of metal outside through the dock doors (and pulled out all the industrial-sized fans we could find), I apologized to our client and assured her she would not be charged, thanked the venue profusely for not kicking me out, canceled our payment to the vendor and prepared for the onslaught of incoming conference attendees who would be none the wiser, all with an external smile.

The General Data Protection Regulation will be enforced in May 2018. From an event planner standpoint, the time to comply is tomorrow as you may already be prepping for events occurring June 2018 and beyond. Throughout our own research, we came to a few conclusions:

On May 25, 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect. According to the EU’s GDPR website, the new law is “designed to harmonize data-privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data privacy, and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy.” The impact on any organization that collects information from EU citizens — including associations that hold meetings in Europe or host attendees from Europe — will be sweeping. In an article written for EU-based Boardroom magazine, which has a content-sharing agreement with Convene, attorney Benjamin Docquir — head of the information-technology and intellectual-property law department at Osborne Clarke in Brussels — explains what you need to know.

Crowd management is critical for maximising your event’s impact, as this is shaped through the fostering of an inviting, pleasant and safe environment that encourages networking and entertains. But, what is the right number of event attendees that pushes the ‘need’ for crowd management? Of course, looking at crowd management only through the prism of event attendance will only give you a limited overview of your event’s needs. It is the combination of attendees, venue and location that will indicate the right actions to eliminate the risk of having overcrowded areas where people might feel uncomfortable, and even worse, less secure.

All right, so a meteor probably won’t destroy your meeting’s host city. However, recently I was scheduled to speak at a conference that just so happened to begin the same day that hundreds of people decided to take to the streets in protest. After several agonizing hours, the conference organizers decided to cancel their event.

A little more than two weeks ago, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas as a Category 4 storm. Over the course of four days, Harvey dropped 30 to 50 inches of rain on Houston, creating widespread flooding, displacing tens of thousands of people from their homes, temporarily disrupting energy and agricultural production, and causing up to $50 billion in property damage. Nearly 10,000 people ended up sheltering in place at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center.

The people of Texas and Florida are on my mind in the wake of Harvey and Irma. These storms and their aftermath are causing me to feel somewhat helpless. We can (and should) donate to the extent we are able, but what else can we as meetings professionals offer? I’ve lived through a handful of disasters myself, and while these storms’ wrath may be unprecedented, the lessons for our business and personal lives, as well as our role as event professionals, remain consistent

Most garden-variety force majeure clauses specify that both parties to a contract can cancel without invoking damages if unanticipated occurrences outside the control of either party make it illegal or impossible to go forward with the event. But that’s not enough in today’s environment, says attorney Joshua Grimes, president of Grimes Law Offices LLC. With today’s 24/7 news cycle and a growing national obsession with the Weather Channel, more attendees are getting spooked by potential events—anything from a hurricane bearing down on Houston to a service workers strike that threatens to shut down an airport—and deciding to skip the meeting several days ahead of time.

Global data benchmarking and analytics firm STR (formerly Smith Travel Research) has taken what it learned from Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy to forecast potential effects Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath may have on the U.S. hospitality industry. 

Managing events has more than its fair share of frustrations and stressors. From last-minute changes to procrastinating clients, the profession isn’t for the faint of heart. Luckily, executing a successful event makes everything else (like the crazy long hours) worth it.If you’ve been feeling a little fed up lately with a certain aspect of the job, don’t worry — you’re not alone! Here are the biggest frustrations experienced by nine of your fellow event organizers.

Putting it in simple terms, designing and delivering a successful event basically consists of numerous involved parties and a large amount of details to finalise before launch. Due to the large number of factors affecting the program flow and overall attendee experience throughout the event phases, it should be expected that things could possibly go awry from time to time. As there are multiple teams to manage and several stakeholders’ needs and expectations to consider, event professionals are often on edge and need to be resourceful for overcoming any potential obstacles they come across.

Event security is serious business these days. Here are ten events that make it a top priority.

Getting a call from a keynote speaker cancelling a session is the nightmare of every event professional. It is even worse when the announcement comes in the middle of the night! This is exactly the situation that the MPI event team behind World Education Congress (WEC) had to face when Magic Johnson backed out of his All Attendee Lunch keynote late in the evening of the second day.

Risk management, security procedures and emergency planning are all top-of-mind with today’s meetings industry professionals. Just like events – pre-conference meetings (aka pre-cons) come in all shapes and sizes. I’ve been at pre-cons with three people and with 20 people. I’ve been at pre-cons with a formal agenda and with no agenda. I’ve been at pre-cons with my client present and on my own.

The event dates are set, the venue has been selected, and the contracts are in place. Let the planning process begin! As an event organizer, you have an enormous amount of logistics to coordinate and massage into place as the event rapidly approaches. Everything from the event schedule, to registration, speakers and sponsors, food and beverage, you are responsible for it all! The list goes on and on as you work to strategically organize each category down to the finest details.

When I heard early reports of what happened in Manchester at the Ariana Grande concert, I experienced the same feeling of receiving the news someone dear to me had died.

Out of respect we have waited to publish this article and to reflect on where we go from here. It is very easy to jump on some news and make a patronizing article. It’s very easy to say, we told you! It’s very easy to say, you should have thought about it!