How hard it is to organize an event?
Game Conference Guide Insights - March 2021
Let’s say you are organizing a two-day conference; how long does it take to organize it and what goes into it? Well, if it’s just two days, it can’t be longer than a week or a month top, right?
I have been asked this question multiple times in the past, and I understand there are those who don't want to know what goes into the sausage and they are interested just in the final product. This topic has been on my mind for some time, especially nowadays, when tools are easier to get-to, speakers are easier to reach, the audience is global (without location restrictions) and there are no capacity limits.
Organizing an event is the infamous iceberg, where the mountain of work is hidden in the plain sight.
The show must go on
When we look at the nature of events for H1 2021, just as last year, there is a clear trend in moving physical events to Fall/Winter. And there is a simple reason: vaccination and accessibility of the vaccine. Many organizers are betting a lot on vaccination card, which is not the only unknown they are operating with.
Let’s be clear on one thing. Not everyone is willing to travel and some probably will reduce travelling to a bare minimum. Some are going to wait; some will use their accumulated vacation days and show up at an event. Like this has never happened before, right?
As a conference organizer of a live event you are now operating with two huge unknown parameters at this point: you don’t know how travel and accommodation will look like and you can’t be sure how big of a crowd will show up.
Where to park your horse
A general rule of thumb is to make sure that your guests are on location at least one day before the show starts. This period might be prolonged with new restrictions in place either for testing before entering the venue or additional screening upon entering the country. As I have mentioned before with other predictions about how events will look like in 2021, live events will be limited by capacity and if they return, they will for sure make adjustments to the scale, scope and the programme itself.
If there are no flights available, are you willing to use shuttles from different cities / countries? We did this in 2019 for Reboot Develop Red in Banff, Canada as a free-of-charge option for those travelling by plane. Shuttles kickstarted the whole conference experience for many with meetings with fellow travellers on the way from the airport to the venue.
We faced a capacity issue with flights and rooms in 2019 for Reboot Develop Blue in Dubrovnik. It was impossible to get to destination by plane a day before the conference due to an unannounced one-day EU-China summit happening during the same dates. Life in the city was restricted due to heightened security, hotels fully booked and already prearranged bookings cancelled. We were lucky to able to fly guests to different airports and then by shuttle bring them to the venue and find them private accommodation.
With pandemic, it gets a bit trickier.
I live in Croatia where tourism is accounting to nearly 25% of the country’s GDP. Currently, staying in a hotel is the only option to enjoy a sit-down meal in the restaurant or draft beer in a bar. This is changing during the first week of March with opening outdoor patios & terraces. During weekends, some of them are at capacity + during Valentine’s day it was impossible to find a room. Not every hotel and restaurant are open, we are talking about higher class accommodation. The situation will dramatically change with vaccination and opening up the summer season which usually comes with increasing number of flights and tourists.
Booking a venue is a huge risk not just for the organizer but the venue as well. Aside from the money, you are entering the agreement by pre-booking slots / number of rooms. But you still don’t know how many will arrive, or better yet, will they arrive? And most importantly, how big of a gathering you will be allowed to organize by the pandemic restrictions?
One of the options is to introduce a kill date. Set for example 2 months before the event. It gives attendees enough time to sort-out travelling and vaccination questions. Organizers on the other hand, will see if there is high enough demand for an event to happen and based on that arrange all the things needed to adjust the format, downscale it, or make other changes to the programme, if they are still going for an event with live audience. Plus, the scenario to cancel the whole event is always on the table due to thousands of possible reasons, including new strain, new lockdowns, new restrictions etc.
Coming back to the initial question. How long does it take to organize a two-day event? It depends on the size, availability, target group, format, schedule. In case of European Reboot Develop (2500+ attendees, 3 days) it took more than a year to prepare the 2019 edition. Our inaugural Canadian event was in the works for 3 years. From idea to execution, including groundwork, location scouting, tasting the menu, making sure there is enough water, coffee and wi-fi is stable everywhere.
For a smaller conference, the pre-production is 2-3x longer than the production itself. And with ever evolving situation, you want to make sure that the production is as short as possible, once you are 100% sure you can organize a live event.
Monthly Update
Q1 will end with nearly a 300% increase in the number of events. March and February are neck to neck at the time of writing with 19 events each and coming months are not going to slow down either. Why the huge growth in the number of events? With GDC out of the way, a pretty wide window opened up for smaller events, plus the whooping growth accounted for first lockdowns responsible for massive delays and cancelations. This is expected to happen again, with live events this time in Q3/Q4.
Calendar is showing events and Event Deadlines in one place. A very small change but a big difference when it comes to seeing everything that is happening at a glance. Plus you can add individual events / deadlines to your preferred calendar, or subscribe to everything with one click.
Bear in mind, Event Deadlines have automatic reminders via notifications set to 7 and 2 days before the deadline.
Introducing Twitter Bot
Almost every day, an event is added to the Game Conference Guide database. To track the newly added orange label “NEW” was added so you can identify it quicker or to find it via full text search. With the introduction of the Twitter bot, all newly added events you can find in the timeline at @gameconfguide with basic information like description, website, date and nature of the event. With the hashtag #gameconfguide you can quickly find all of them.
With the introduction of Twitter bot you have multiple options how to track new events without visiting the Game Conference Guide website. Either via calendar, or simple by using Twitter.
Twitter bot won’t retroactively add previously entered events to the database.
Let me know what you think about this new feature!
Massive thanks to Robert Zubek who helped me out with the code and the script.
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[Game Conference Guide is tracking games industry & game developers events, trade shows, festivals, conferences and events around the world.]