Peaks and troughs

As mentioned last time, it’s vital to get the timing right when you are organising any sort of work event, whether it’s online, or in-person. In this post, I’d like to focus on an individual aspect of timing:

“Does your preferred date clash with any other events?”

My original post referred to “you” (the event organiser) and “your delegates”, but there is more to it than that:

You might want to attract the attention of journalists, in which case you probably don’t want to go up against a major, high profile event taking place at the same time, or even during the same week.

For example, during the fortnight of official COP26 events in Glasgow, the Climate Crisis - very understandably - completely dominated the news agenda. And there has been a long tail of associated news ever since.

Speakers and Panelists

You will of course want to attract the best possible speakers or panelists. Try putting yourself in their shoes - are there other events competing for their time? Make it as easy as possible for them to say “yes” to your event.

And…breathe

Are you allowing time for participants, delegates, speakers, sponsors, and panelists to ‘breathe’ between events?

There are only so many events in a row that people can cope with.

This also applies to Drawnalists, see right!

The Times, they are A-changin’

At Drawnalism we used to travel to different places to deliver our traditional In the Moment service. Travel takes time and we often needed to stay overnight so that we could be on site to set-up before the event started, which is why In The Moment is charged as a premium service.

It’s a work event, honest!

When the pandemic hit in 2020 the majority of events were either cancelled, postponed or switched to digital.

When we launched our On The Air remote / digital service in 2019 we were anticipating future demand for digital event services. We therefore had the luxury of time to develop and refine our offer. From the beginning of 2020 demand for On The Air grew exponentially. Fortunately, by that time, our service was already well-established and we were able to meet demand.

During 2021, in-person events have - to some extent - returned, but with limitations like reduced numbers, social-distancing, and mask-wearing. There has been a great deal of work and experimentation to improve the experience for remote attendees at hybrid events. Happily, we have experience of many different variations.

Back to the Future

It seems that the pandemic still has a few surprises in store, and since we started writing this piece the new OHMIGOD* variant has hit the headlines, appearing in several different places across the world.

Various countries are introducing restrictions once again such as mask wearing and even lockdowns, so it’s quite possible that events will once again become almost entirely digital.

Whatever happens, rest assured Drawnalism is ready to support you.

Footnote

* We know that isn’t the correct name for the variant, but it was our first reaction on reading the news about Omicron.