One Man's Plea

For those of you planning events, I beg for mercy. I throw myself prostrate before you. I can take the endless rubber chicken. I can take the award speeches. But four hours!!! After working all day, some of you expect us to suffer through a four-hour event?! I beg you, stop the madness!

I appreciate that organizations want to give attendees the biggest bang for the buck. And anyone planning an event knows that competition for attendees has only increased. If you chose to, you could attend an event every night of the week. (I prefer to stay married, thank you.)

I would rather see an event focus on quality rather than quantity. Build in time for networking, but please don't wait until the meal is over to get things going. About halfway through dinner, I'm usually petering out of small talk anyway. Let's move things along!

Please realize not everyone from your board or that you've ever done business with needs to speak or be thanked at the podium. It's tedious to wade through seven speakers to introduce the main speaker.

If you're the one on stage, please keep your comments short and sweet. If remarks are too long, expect the audience to stop paying attention. Cut the program and save the audience from contemplating gnawing off a body part to escape.

Let's face it; people lose their sense of time in the excitement and nervousness of being in front of an audience. For the speaker, it feels like five minutes went by. For the audience, they have stopped contemplating how much overtime they need to pay the babysitter and instead are left wondering if they will make it back in time for their child's high school graduation.

If you are the host and your speaker goes rogue, have a plan ahead of time to politely cut them off. When they take a breath, start to lead the audience in applause and quickly get on stage to shake their hand and thank them. Your speaker may look a little bewildered, but your audience will be forever grateful.

Rule of thumb: Leave your audience wanting more, not wanting to run away. If your event starts at 5 p.m., plan on wrapping up by 7:30 p.m. Everything you could possibly want to accomplish can be fit in that time frame.

We've all been at the table when someone leaves for a bathroom break never to return. If you force us to do the walk of shame in the middle of the program, we won't be giving you a good report to others, and most likely, we won't be coming back for more next year.

Sincerely,

Matthew J. Mowry

Editor