Did you consider who paid the publishers, songwriters and composers of the music your attendees listened to as they walked into your general session room? Or the music that added energy and excitement in the room as your top performers were recognized? This is where a Performance-Rights Organization (PRO) comes into the picture. A PRO collects fees on the public performance of music whether live or pre-recorded and distributes those royalties to the rights holders.

ASCAP (American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers), BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), & SESAC (Society of European Stage Authors and Composers) are the major PROs in the North American market. Just as your DMC handles payments to the florist, decorator, and photographer; ASCAP, BMI, & SESAC ensure that the artists are compensated for the music that is played at your event. With penalties for non-payment (copyright infringement) that can exceed $30,000 per song, the current ASCAP Conventions, Trade Shows and Meetings rate of $125 for an event with less than 1,500 attendees is very cost effective. BMI & SESAC rates are competitive with the ASCAP rates even though all three organizations compute their rates differently. Historically, if there has been a perceived copyright infringement, the rights holders have pursued the “deep pockets” – typically the company or organization hosting the event.

As signatories for decades, we’ve provided the service of reporting and paying the PROs for our client’s events, saving them the inconvenience of having to handle it themselves and perhaps saving them money on smaller events by not having to pay the annual minimum fee that some of the PROs charge.

A slightly dated, but reasoned explanation of why you should license is available here: http://proairshow.com/Music%20Licence.htm

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Below I have four more thoughts based on emails I’ve received recently:

No open-ended questions – Have you ever received a long email which ended with “Thoughts?” Wouldn’t it be better if the sender were specific with their request? I would rather read “Do you think we should use approach 1, 2, or 3?” than an open ended question. This leads me to:

Use Numerical Lists & Bullet Points – when your email contains several questions, tasks or takeaways I think it’s best to use a numerical list or bullet points to separate your thoughts.

Don’t “Bury the Lead” – A nod to my journalism friends. If you’re asking your reader(s) to take action steps, list those items first. By listing the action steps first, followed by content; you are providing the reader context to the action items. Thus helping them map a plan of attack before they are even done reading the email.

How Long Is Too Long? Email threads are helpful in organizing communications between two or more people. But it’s important to remember that “organization” can quickly turn into chaos. To prevent from losing emails in the clutter and communication becoming blurred as the subject drifts from the original; you can start a new, on topic thread simply by changing the subject line.

Use the subject line wisely. Video, Pictures, You’re invited, and “blank” (no subject) are all actual subject lines of emails I’ve received recently. The examples below would have provided a better description of the contents of the offending emails. The email with nothing in the subject line was directed to my “Junk” folder.

Video = Links for Video we discussed
Pictures = Pictures for the August newsletter attached
You’re invited = You’re Invited to our Webinar on Adobe CC2014
(“blank”) = Invoice for rental on 07.23.14

I often just scan the subject line -especially on my phone- and I may delete an email if doesn’t seem relevant to me. Be descriptive and/or put a call to action into the subject line.

Fill in the To: line last. Perhaps I’m the only person that has inadvertently sent an email before it was finished; perhaps not. If the To: line is empty, your email client can’t send the email, and the premature departure of your incomplete email is prevented.

Attachments Included? Tell the recipient when you include an attachment(s) to an email. This lets them know that you intended to include additional information and how many items should be included.

Label attachments. ‘IMAG040.jpg’ isn’t descriptive and may be difficult to find and/or search for later. “PaulMcCartneyBackstage080214_01.jpg” is a better option.

The “poor” examples shown above are real. I’ve fictionalized the “better” examples to protect the identity of the senders. Check back; I realize that I’ve filled my space but I haven’t exhausted the list of tips that the offending emails prompted me to create.

Hannah is interning for the Minneapolis office of a multi-national firm this summer. Recently she was asked to visit several local job sites and confirm that punch list items had been completed. Hannah accessed the corporate website and followed the directions therein to the first job site. SURPRISE! The directions took her to a competing firm’s location. Oops!

After hearing Hannah relate the story I thought back to times when I’ve been in a new hotel or conference center and needed to find the room(s) that the event I was attending were being held in. I could remember times where the signage to the event I was attending were incorrect, incomplete or just plain non-existent.

Clearly, someone hadn’t considered that there may be more than one way to access their event. As you are planning signage for your next event, think about the following:

• If your attendees are all staying in the event hotel, are there multiple towers or elevator banks that people will access to get to the meeting rooms?
• Not all of your attendees will want/be able to take the three-wide escalator bank to the next floor; is an alternate route also well-defined?
• If your participants are staying in multiple locations and/or may be commuting to the event, how will they access the host facility?
• Is there more than one entrance off of the street or parking structure?
• If the facility’s signage doesn’t clearly delineate where the ballrooms/meeting rooms are, you may need to provide signage in the elevators and stairwells as well.

Don’t forget to follow the same guidelines for those small offsite meetings you may be tasked with as well. Recently, I attended a meeting as the guest of a professional organization that my wife belongs to. With no signage in the hotel lobby, we asked at the front desk; they were unaware of the meeting location and directed us to a meeting area on one side of the lobby. A large recognition event was being held there, not ours. We then walked to the other side of the lobby and eventually found our (small) group. In this case, one sign in the lobby with the group’s name and an arrow would have eliminated frustration for 28 of the 30 attendees (the woman who organized the event knew which room it was in).

Hannah’s story ended well. Siri® knew where the job site actually was, and Hannah was able to give the webmaster the proper information to make the necessary changes on the corporate website.

Will the stories of attendees at your next event end well too?

Stuff happens. The extra lighting instruments get put in a corner at load in and the load out crew doesn’t know about them; the musician gets distracted at the end of the evening and leaves their instrument(s) back stage or in a dressing room; the large award plaque is left on stage to be retrieved after the awards ceremony and isn’t; and the extra tchotchkies you provided for your attendees are left in bags/boxes in the registration area.

A simple walk around the registration area may save you from having to re-order the company logo’d lanyards for the next event. Re-boxing the award plaque seems like extra work now, but may save you several phone calls and perhaps a trip back to the venue the next day to track down the “missing” award.

I left one category of items off of my list above – presentation materials. Handouts, presentation notes, presenters’ laptops, tablets, and phones are all items that I’ve seen left behind at events. Backstage, on the table next to the water cooler, under a chair in the reserved front row seating, onstage on the podium shelf – almost anywhere there is a horizontal surface large enough for the item to sit on.

It is likely that in a relatively short period of time the owner will realize that they don’t have their device and come looking for it. Presumably, access to the electronics is password protected per corporate policy so that the contents of those devices is relatively inaccessible and, therefore, safe. What about the hard copy of the script, including the onscreen graphics? The presenter has finished their presentation and is either ready to move on to the next item on their personal agenda for the event and/or is just relieved their onstage time is over.

If this is a public event and you’ve just finished telling “the world” about your new product, then a copy of the script/graphics in the public’s hands is probably a good thing. But wait; if this is a closed event, then that script sitting under the chair in the front row may contain details of this year’s new products, sales strategies, marketing implementations, and other details that your company likely does not want available beyond the intended audience. This is the time you’ll be glad you spent the extra two minutes it takes to walk through back stage, check the podium, and look around the presenter’s seating area as you prepare to leave the room.
In a subsequent post, I’ll share what I’ve left behind when I haven’t done an adequate “dummy check” and reveal some of the things that I do to minimize the risk of leaving something behind.

The client has requested a 9′x 16′ rear projection screen centered above the stage. Some quick math shows that the bottom of the image would be approximately nine feet off the floor if the screen were elevated to the maximum height allowed by a 20′ ceiling. For a six foot tall presenter standing on a 24″ stage; there is a foot between the top of the presenter’s head and the bottom of the screen. I’ll create a room diagram showing the layout and send it off to the client. Excellent! I can move on to my next project for the day.

But wait. What the online document doesn’t state is that in the center of each section of the ballroom is a large chandelier that drops from the ceiling more than six feet. The air wall tracks are only 17’ off the floor, and the soffit is only 18” higher.

If the screen surface needs to stay below the chandelier, then the bottom of the image will only be five feet off the floor, not the nine feet I had originally computed.
As of this writing I’ve proposed a two screen solution, flanking the stage on both sides. While this will not raise the images to the height that I had originally calculated based on the “20’ ceiling”, it should provide a reasonable and cost effective solution for the client. Later this year I’ll post an “as built” image to let you know how this turns out.

Your take away from this brief illustration? Pre-event site visits are very valuable. Once you’ve decided how your guests will enter the room, how the service staff will present your meal; take a moment to look up and see if there are obstacles that may obscure your guests view of the screen(s).