This past year, Reinventing Events team members took the Technical Meeting and Event Production course offered by Event Leadership Institute and taught by Brandt Krueger. ELI explains that this course is designed for experienced planners to be more educated when it comes to mapping out the technical, staging and AV elements of their programs, and to be more knowledgeable in dealing with audio visual providers and clients.
Those who took this course gained detailed understanding of all audio visual and lighting elements involved in producing most meetings and events, determined all the given sound and visual inputs required for most events and how those needs need to be addressed from a technical standpoint, gained a thorough understanding of how to work with speakers in preparing presentation decks for an event, and identified criteria for selecting the right venue and vendors for an event from a technical production vantage point.
The knowledge and tools we learned from the Technical Meeting and Event Production course will not only immensely benefit Reinventing Events as a whole but also our clients, venues, and vendors. Below are our personal accounts of what we learned and enjoyed about this class:
Karen Hartline, CEO & Co-founder, Las Vegas
I really love the education that ELI puts out and the Technical AV class was one that I thought was important for my team to take. When it comes down to it, AV is the most important element of an event. It can really bring an event down if slides aren’t running correctly or there are issues with mics. Reinventing Events prides itself on making sure all items are show ready and we need to be able to understand what our actual AV needs are and to be able to communicate that clearly to the AV team and the client.
One item that stuck with me was learning that adding even just 1 microphone to an order can cost a huge jump in price due to having to increase a switcher in order to ensure all channels are covered. Clients may think it’s just the cost of the mic, but we now know that it really depends on how many other channels we have in the works already and how big of a switcher we have. Great thing to remember!
Marie Scimeca, Event Producer, Chicago
ELI’s Technical Course was a great experience! Having worked on AV for previous events, and having a general knowledge on it, allowed me to fine tune my understanding of this important aspect of events. My biggest takeaway from the course is to ask ‘good’ questions. I remind myself of this every time I am working on AV for a project, whether asking about the number of lumens a projector has given the size of the space, or understanding who is running the gear onsite, helps me fully understand how the technical side of events work and what we’re paying for. This in turns allows me to plan better events for clients. When you ‘talk the talk’ it lets vendors know you understand, and if you don’t fully understand, you know what to ask to get your answer. It’s empowering to learn the technical aspects of events and notice them outside of work too, such as the type of speakers being used at a concert. It’s definitely something that excites me and has a huge impact on event success, so I am thrilled to have this accreditation in my back pocket!
Maria Chalaire, Event Producer, Virginia Beach
I learned a great amount of information from the Technical Meeting and Event Production course. AV in general is a very in depth peice of an event production that one needs to really understand in order for the event to be seamless. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert when it comes to AV, but just by taking this course I have a much better understanding of AV in general and would feel comfortable managing certain pieces of this for an event production.
Of the many things I was able to take way from this course, I enjoyed learning the basic AV terminology and definitions. For example, I now understand what stage left, stage right, house left, house right, upstage, and downstage mean. These are just basic terms used for stage direction. Another thing I found very informative, we’re all the “right” questions to ask AV companies, venues, clients, and speakers. Throughout the course, Brandt Krueger outlined helpful questions that event producers should be asking regarding particular items to ensure everything leading up to and onsite of the event is as seamless as possible.
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