On the second of January 2023 began the history of the newly founded event department, which was created by the admission of its first and at that time only member, a new colleague Lenka. Lenka has two small children and joined WEDOS after parental leave. At the time, she had little experience in organizing events, so this position was all the more challenging for her.
The need to hire someone as a post event manager arose at a time when the management decided that it was necessary to become more visible, and in this regard the company decided to go the way of content marketing. The primary goal was, among other things, to start presenting the brand and offering services at various events. So Lenka began to negotiate partnerships at various events, from local bar camps, through professional conferences, to large exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. Another duty of the event manager was the organization of regular corporate team building events.
It started innocently enough. One team building and one smaller conference took place in January. Four more events were contracted for February, and then this imaginary train started moving faster than anyone expected, and it was clear that it was no longer possible for one person to handle it all. So the event team began to emerge.
Karel has been working in the company for six years. He started in customer support, then became a programmer. But because he had previously participated in several trips, where it became clear that he could represent the company well and knew a lot about products and services, he was offered the opportunity to become part of the event team.
Vendula, a new colleague, joined in mid-February. She understands English very well, so she was put in charge of foreign events. Thanks to her communication skills, she also started lecturing at conferences. Usually by the boss’s side at foreign events, or by herself.
The staffing of individual events depends on their size (respectively the number of participants and presenting companies) and length. CEO Josef and product manager Roman often go to conferences. A 1-2 day event with an expected attendance of several hundred participants can be handled by two people. However, if it is, for example, a foreign conference lasting several days with several thousand visitors, the event team might even approach colleagues from other departments. And so it happens that sometimes even those who do not have traveling as their primary job go to the event. Our ranks are thus occasionally supplemented by colleagues from marketing, sales or perhaps from development.
We make sure that our branding features prominently wherever we go. We usually drive a company car to events and bring our own exhibition stands (we have three in total) as well as several roll-ups and heaps of promotional items.
We travel in all sorts of ways, mainly depending on the distance. The unwritten rule is that up to a distance of 1,000 km we go by car (however, we have already driven 1,300 km to Romania). If the event is in a more distant destination, we travel by plane. We either take the necessary things with us or send them to the destination with the help of transport companies.
How does the organization and realization of an external event work? We arrange a partnership, prepare a booth and promotional items, set off. On site we present the company to the participants at our stand and, if possible, someone from the company also gives a lecture. In the meantime, accommodation, parking, insurance, transportation and storage of things must be arranged, the route must be planned, and basic information must be processed and passed on to colleagues. After returning, the action must be evaluated. Other duties include informing the public on social networks, managing the event calendar, lecturing at events, participating in the design of promotional items.
The job content of the event team is varied, adventurous, and there is no shortage of unique experiences or extreme situations.
The benefits of working as an event manager include:
- Frequent trips (for someone who likes to travel and discover new places, while nothing prevents them from doing so, this point is undoubtedly an advantage).
- Once-in-a-lifetime experiences – a bunch of cool people experience lots of adventures. In addition to visiting cities and countries that many of us would probably not visit on our own, we enjoy our time in the hotels (fitness, wellness), and visit local monuments. And if the schedule and our capacities allow it, we try to enjoy ourselves as much as possible.
- Communication with people – it is no exception that we talk to hundreds of people during one event.
- Solving unexpected problems – not everything always goes according to plan, therefore it happens that unexpected situations arise and the challenge is to solve them to general satisfaction.
- Varied work – paperwork, e-mails, phone calls, packaging, travel, booth preparation, meeting with conference participants, handing out promo items.
Disadvantages of event manager work:
- Frequent trips – for those who have a family and cannot be on the road all the time, this could be a disadvantage, but we try to take turns and childless colleagues usually travel more.
- Long and frequent traveling causes fatigue, and if someone has been away from home for a long time, or is traveling from one event to another, it is not entirely easy to adapt to these conditions. We often travel from early in the morning, then at the event we talk to participants all day and in the evening we try to catch up on administrative work. Fatigue accumulates. Not to mention traveling across multiple time zones and then dealing with jet lag.
- Work under pressure – the more events, the more demands from the organizers, deadlines, etc. We often make a last minute decision to attend an event and it’s up to us how we deal with it.
During the summer, the members of the event department experienced a period of uncertainty, because it was not clear whether after the holidays the company would continue the same pace as in the spring, or if they would stop attending events altogether. When everyone returned from vacation, the near future and other activities were outlined. The selection of actions was influenced by the approval and publication of the WEDOS Global (CDN Cache & Security) plugin for WordPress. Events for the WordPress community have become a priority. At the same time, Vendula left the team. This loss hit the team really hard, because Vendula complemented the team well and did her job responsibly. But despite all this, work life goes on and thanks to this, Roman gained more space to participate in event activities. He has been working at WEDOS for 10 years and knows more about the company, products and services than anyone else. Ten more events were held by the end of the year.
Teambuilding events
Another responsibility of the event department is the organization of corporate team building events, which we try to organize every month. Since the workers from DC1 and DC2, with a few exceptions, hardly have a chance to meet, they don’t know each other very well. We try to solve this through informal meetings of various kinds. If possible (e.g. in terms of capacity), our family members also participate in TB events. Here is a list of the activities we have undertaken since the beginning of that year:
– ice skating – we rented an ice rink for ice skating;
– escape game – two teams solved riddles and puzzles in the Nautilus submarine;
– wellness – sauna, jacuzzi;
– indoor skiing;
– pig feast + table tennis;
– summer barbecue with a surprise – cake for the boss, bouncy castle for children, food, drink, raffle;
– sports and relaxation area – afternoons with families (beach volleyball, netball, boating, mini golf, trampolines…);
– boat office – a week on a boat in Croatia;
– karts;
– squash;
– wellness and dinner.
Conclusion
During one year we visited or realized:
- 19 domestic events,
- 14 foreign events (Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, USA, Luxembourg, Romania, Greece),
- 9 recruitment events,
- 15 excursions in our data centers,
- 11 corporate teambuilding events.
We pre-negotiated many events and in the end did not participate in them for various reasons – this is also part of our work. It often happens that events collide in time (sometimes we are able to cover overlapping events, sometimes not), or they do not make sense economically. We always try to assess the price vs. future benefit. Let’s face it, these activities are understandably very financially demanding and their impact cannot be directly measured. Even with that, the first year was a test in a way. If an event turned out to have perfect marketing and, thanks to it, created the impression of a great future benefit for the company, and in the end only a few dozen visitors attended it, and in addition they received (initially ridiculously overpriced) tickets from the organizer for free, that too was a valuable experience for us . Both positive and negative experiences push us further and help us do our work better and more professionally.