Couldn't make the Australian Event Symposium? Catch up here!
The 2017 Australian Event Symposium was all about events, technology and the Art of the Unexpected!
With two days worth of Australia’s events experts (including myself Linda Tillman) presenting, sessions included two-hour in-depth groups on crowds and security, focus groups on just about everything creative and major plenary sessions hearing from the best including Bobby Galinsky to Penny Lion.
Read a summary of my presentation on the special relationship between tourism and events.
Here were the top 5 presentations for me:
Creativity
LYNDON TERRACINI - BE DIFFERENT
Lyndon spoke about the courage to be different. Don't take the easy way out. Your event needs to be on brand and in line with the culture of the place and you can do an 'old' experience a 'new' way.
He told us to ask 'Why do the locals stay? Why did they leave?' Visitors care about our place and we need to tell the stories of our place.
PANEL SESSION WITH PETER RIX, LENA MALOUF, MERI TOOK AND IGNATIUS JONES
Research, research, research is absolutely critical to keep creative! Make sure you reflect and do research, then leave it and the creative solutions will come to you.
Sharing knowledge and supporting each other in this industry is important.
Make sure you are working with people who you trust!
Reinvigorate your event each year so people don't say, ‘It was the same as last year, so I won't go next year’.
BOBBY GALINSKY - 'I'LL SEE IT WHEN I BELIEVE IT' + FAILURE
Bobby spoke about one thing very strongly; stop fearing failure! Events will only be successful if you're fearless of failing.
We all make mistakes that we think are fails that are just steps to our Everest (but don't look down. Just keep to the path!).
He said, 'Events are experiences that anchor you in with others. It's the magic of the event that will make a difference. And because it’s an experience, it's ok if it messes up! See the thing is, you didn’t fail. You’ve just found a million ways that don’t work.'
Bobby gave us ideas about visualising an idea to create it. He suggested to visualize what you want and then you can do it; making it a forward memory.
He said we need to act on a great idea within one minute of thinking it.
Risk management
ALDO RAINERI – CROWD SECURITY AND SAFETY
Aldo spoke in an in-depth session about crowd behaviour, security and safety. He straight away threw a bombshell by saying the standard risk matrix is not suited for crowds and Bbehaviour.
Risk assessments are subjective. When the same person writes and implements a risk management plan, there is generally no issue. However, handover of this plan is an issue. My perceived risk will be different to someone else’s perceived risk.
Aldo suggested we need to look at the audience and site to assess risk, assess ongoing during the event, design risk profiles for each spot and design crowd behaviour profiles.
He went on to explain you need to consider the following elements of a crowd:
Crowd Density - how many
Crowd Dynamics - movement
Crowd Behaviour - how the crowd behaves in emergency situations
There are three phases of a crowd; arrival, departure and during the event in which you need to consider the design and management of the whole travel of a crowd.
Some important (math) elements:
5 people per square metre is cosy
3.5 people is capacity to stay in low risk
7 people – maximum static density (still)
4-5 people – maximum dynamic density (movement)
80-82 people per metre per minute – flow rate
Read more about what your event needs to know about Australia’s 'Protecting Crowded Places From Terrorism' national strategy
JOSH LEMON - CYBER SECURITY
Josh: 'Let’s freak everyone out by hacking the Commonwealth Games website'
Josh took us through the ins and outs of cyber security for events. Cyber attackers can have different motives. This is the key!
Cyber Attackers 1: Hactivists
Activists that made a move into IT. Not motivated by money and are great at social media marketing. These people hack into websites and emails to get their message out. They are not generally organised and have no consistency in their branding.
These groups target government, sponsors and media broadcasters of the event. They do this to raise media attention to their cause. If these groups attack you, they create a denial of service. This means they send a lot of junk traffic to the site which takes it offline so legitimate traffic cannot view the website.
Tip Number 1:
Watch photos in back of house areas.
Don't release sensitive information like Wi-Fi passwords and IP addresses.
Cyber Attackers 2: Cyber Espionage/Cyber-crime
This type make fake identical clone websites to collect money and personal info through online forms such as ticket purchases. These groups use secure https sites by purchasing an SSL certificate (I guess they are not as cheap as we were lead to believe). Google and your antivirus will consider it a safe site and voila; they have your details. These groups are also known to hack into online records (Mailchimp, Instagram etc) and release it on social media as a ‘victim list’. They can also sell these lists to other Cyber Attackers to assist with junk traffic!
An if all of this is not scary enough, radio frequency can also be hacked!
How to protect your event
However, all is not lost. Here are some practical things to do:
1. Use a password manager to make sure ALL of your passwords are different (such as LastPass or 1Password)
2. Check out ‘Have I been pwned?’ to see if your email has been compromised
3. Use two-factor authentication and/or get a YubiKey
4. Use Akamai, CloudFlare, or Cachefly to protect your website
5. Engage a professional company to monitor brand abuse
6. Prepare for the worst and have a tech risk management plan
7. Be familiar with the data breach notification laws. Lawyers should be involved with this.
8. If you have issues (hacked, breached etc), make sure you share this with others
2020 Conference
Make sure you join me in 2020 at the Australian Events Symposium or The Business of Events conference, the only conference in Australia focusing on the strategic planning and commercial side of events, where I will be presenting on integrating events into a destination marketing plan.
ONLINE TRAINING MODULE: Operations & Risk Management – Prevention is better than cure!
Learn risk management skills in our online training program with
Training video
Supporting resources, tools & templates to help you action learnings
Successful case studies and examples to highlight how others do it
Links to further supporting readings, podcasts and blog articles to extend your knowledge
Access to Q&A sessions to allow for further discussion on the topic
Lesson 1: Is it really a risk? Defining risks
Lesson 2: Prevention is better than cure. Developing the plan and communicating it!
Lesson 3: Streamlining operations
