Who’s Next Door?

Working in meeting and events is never boring. Or, very rarely boring. When I planned a multi-day event for a nonprofit organization, one of the things on my site visit check list was to ask what other groups or events would be utilizing the space either before, after, or at the same time as my group. This was especially important for my faith-based and religious clients. It would be really awkward to have a bikini contest happening in a portion of the building the same time I had pastors meeting in the other.

Not only from a conflict of interest stand point, but also for customer service. As I worked an event recently, there was our event in the A/B sections of this long, narrow convention center, and another group in the I/J sections. There was a little construction in between, and for the first few days, nothing else. Our event was on the end closest to the headquarters hotel, so pretty much anyone staying in town would walk from the hotel, through our event and onto the rest of the convention center. No big deal, the foyers were very wide, and everyone had plenty of room.

What was funny was that our group consisted of mild-mannered, well-behaved educators. 4000 of my closest friends who got together once a year for education, fellowship, and to see what new resources were available in the exhibit hall. The event on the other end, however, served a much different clientele. Think Pokemon, meets Nintendo, meets, Anime, meets any other superhero or cartoon character you can imagine.

The juxtaposition between the two audiences was jarring as we watched people with full-face masks, tails, swords, unicorn horns, platform boots, claws, body suits, painted cardboard boxes, and truly just about anything they could come up with, stroll through the hallway of the straight-laced, suburban K-12 educators. As I sat at the service desk, it was obvious to me who was here for our event, and who was here for the other one. The looks on the faces of both groups as the characters stopped to see if they were in the right place to check-in, and those in the right place stopped to see if these were people on their staff.

What we learned early on was that we needed to train the volunteers working check-in not to assume everyone who came up to the self-check-in station knew they were in the right place. Our wide-eyed, innocent volunteers tried to help everyone with a barcode get a name badge to no avail. After a failed attempt or three, they sent them to the service desk only for us to ask the guest if this was the conference they were really looking for.

To add to the confusion, two days in, a financial planners event (or something of the like) started in between the two groups. Now we added folks in business attire who actually DID blend into our natural habitat to the check-in lines. These imposters were harder to spot.

The lesson here is that as the host organization, you need to fully understand the schedule and access privileges of other groups who will be occupying the same convention center or hotel spaces as your event. It helps mitigate conflict of interest issues, allows you to provide better customer service, and wards off a potential security risk. Luckily what we experienced were things like a conversation between Deadpool, Princess Peach, and Mrs. Crabtree, the 3rd Grade teacher from Middleton, and others taking photos with Darth Vader, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Son Goku.

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