Tag: event management

Sunday Reading: When Community Events Go Horribly Wrong

“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.”
– Catherine Aird

As a follow up to my previous post on organizing events, here are some articles about a couple of recent community-run conventions that crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. They’re rather lengthy so find a good chair and maybe a tall glass of juice and some popcorn (or do as I did and read the articles on a tablet while lazing around on the bed).

The first is DashCon, a recently concluded community-organized Tumblr convention. The Daily Dot has a good write-up about the event from an outsider’s perspective.

Here are some other perspectives to give you better idea what happened and how the whole thing turned into a trainwreck:

Our other example is last year’s Las Pegasus Unicon, a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic convention.

Here’s a write-up about this event. It’s basically the same as DashCon; the main difference here was that there were higher profile guests (e.g. Tara Strong) making the trainwreck even worse.

Thanks to this MetaFilter post, I found a list that summarizes how these things happen to community events:

  1. Some people have an ambitious idea for a fan convention
  2. They expect a huge success and book beyond their budget
  3. The con starts and Friday ticket sales won’t cover booking costs
  4. Organizers scramble to keep the show running
  5. People speculate that the whole thing is a scam
  6. Everybody is assured ticket sales will be up for Saturday
  7. Guests are not paid, pay their own way, or don’t show up
  8. Attendance is way down on Sunday because everyone’s heard about the trainwreck
  9. The organizers either skip town or get cornered to pay what they can

The other link in that MetaFilter post also gives a veteran anime convention organizer’s perspective in holding such events.

The take-away here is that if you want to hold your own community event, you have to be realistic with your expectations: start small, be professional at all times, and know that holding events is hard work and not a way to boost your ego/excuse to fly in and rub shoulders with celebrities/earn a lot of money.

Common Mistakes in Organizing Events

I’m an “outgoing introvert”. I may be ok with not being around or talking to people, but my long list of interests and hobbies make me attend a lot of events. And no, these aren’t your usual concerts or sporting events that are linked to extroverted people; they’re such a crazy mix of events that the term “event” is the only word I could use to properly classify them — meetups (sports/discussion/etc), conferences, exhibits, showings, seminars, volunteer drives… the list goes on.

I’ve spent over a decade in participating in these events, and I’ve taken up all of the roles (attendee, volunteer, guest, organizer, sponsor, etc). I can tell the chances of the event succeeding or failing within a few minutes of wandering around the venue.

And this brings us to the point of this post. I’ve noticed that event organizers tend to make the following mistakes that bring down the overall quality of their events. If it’s your first few events, it’s understandable, but I’ve seen some organizers still make the same mistakes on their 5th and later ones. (And that makes me sad.)

Continue reading “Common Mistakes in Organizing Events”

Poignant Footnote

crushed melted cupcakes

My cupcakes served as a poignant footnote for yesterday’s event.

Don’t get me wrong, yesterday’s DevCup was on a different level compared to every local tech event so far. It had a very spacious yet air-conditioned venue with very fast (albeit unstable) internet access. There was an unbelievable amount of sponsors. The participants produced impressive output in such a short time frame, and they’re actually available online. And there’s no fucking irrelevant cosplay.

However, the glaring faults in the logistics left a bad taste in my mouth.

—

In my decade of organizing and criticizing events, I’ve come to learn two things that distinguish well-executed events from the rest:

  • Organizers that actively look for problems that need solving instead of merely solving problems as they are reported.

  • Organizers that focus only on managing the event and nothing else. I can even go as to say that they should not have fun until the event is over.

    If you want to have fun or mingle with random attendees, you should either implement a shifting work scheme or just not be part of the organizing team at all – some people hire event planners and coordinators so that they can just spend the event networking with the guests.

—

And what of the cupcakes?

We scraped the melted goo into a bowl and put it in the ref for dessert later.