An Open Comment to Events Coordinators

If you’re planning to hold some sort of event that involves bringing in guest speakers from outside your own organization, please take the following hints:

1. When your guest speaker(s) leave voice mail messages requesting a call back, call them back.
2. When your guest speaker(s) send e-mail messages requesting a call or reply, call them back or reply to the message.
3. If you cancel your event for any reason, contact your guest speaker(s) and inform them that the event has been cancelled.
4. Remove the event from your website completely and prominently display a message that the event has been cancelled.

These points are especially important when your guest speaker(s) must travel any distance to be a part of your event.

This morning, I was supposed to lead a seminar on audio for video production at a community teleproduction facility in a neighboring county. The facility is about an hour away from my home office. I was invited to do this back in late June, and I’ve been mentally preparing for this for the past couple of weeks. As a part of my preparation, I’ve been attempting to contact the organization’s new operations manager, both by phone and by e-mail, but received no reply. Frankly, yesterday, I was prepared to do something I’ve never done before — no-show — because I was not receiving any replies from the contact. Donna, however, checked the website for the organization, and found that the event was still listed, and that I was still listed as one of the instructors.

So, I prepared my invoice for the amount agreed upon back in July, and early this morning, I prepared my “visual aid” (which amounted to removing one of the channel strips from my mixing desk) and drove off to the event location in the pouring down rain.

Upon arrival, I was greeted by a very new and very confused receptionist, who was finally able to locate an equally confused production staff member. Yes, indeed, the event was cancelled, and the operations manager should have contacted me to cancel — apparently some time ago. Also, the staffer was certain that the event had been removed from the web site two weeks ago, until I showed it to him by clicking on the very prominent link on their main page.

Both the receptionist and the staffer were very apologetic. And, I think that the staffer was rather annoyed that the ops manager had never bothered to contact me. His comment was that he “will be calling” today. I should mention again that the ops manager who signed me up for the gig has moved on. If she were still there, I’d've been kept in-the-loop with constant updates on the status of the event. Unfortunately, she left there early in September.

So, here’s the deal. If you book me for an event, in any capacity, do communicate with me. If you cancel your event, you need to let me know. If you don’t let me know, you’re getting billed for a full day at my non-discounted rate, plus any expenses incurred. I know other professionals have similar policies.