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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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).