DailyDOOH

Guest Contributor, Dave Haynes, The Preset Group

The Preset Group’s Dave Haynes sent around an email blast to attendees of last week’s terrific Preset Group DSE Mixer which we were very happy to co-sponsor. He and Pat Hellberg of Preset Group are looking for feedback on the event and ideas on improvements. Here is what he wrote…

The Preset Group mixer has come and gone, and we generally think it went quite well. There were about 260 people, we think, with roughly 80% of ticketed people turning up and a large number of people bringing along friends. We think the event was a step up over last year, both in terms of venue choice and organization.

However, we know there is room for improvement. Ticketing needs to be planned a little more to control numbers and registration access. Check-in was a little slower than hoped and planned, but hardly awful. And sponsor recognition was solid on screens but trying to talk over 260 people with a PA system, to thank sponsors, just didn’t work. We failed on getting video and snapshots, and would welcome any photos people shot.

We thought about a survey, but decided to simply ask people with opinions and ideas to fire them back to us. Here’s some of what we’re curious about:

1. Crowd size: We think 250-260 is the limit. What do you think?
2. Venue: We liked the dedicated space, ease of access and the help we got from staff. But some said the irregular shape jammed people in a little? It was definitely much better than Lavo in 2010, but was it right?
3. Food: We didn’t do any. It doubles cost and we’re not sure people really want or need nibblies. Do we need food?
4. Timing: We could start an hour earlier. What do you think
5. Social integration: The purpose behind some of the registration questions was not to build a mailing list, but to have the foundation for digitally sharing contact information and pushing information to screens and devices. But we were time-crunched and, strangely, software developers expressed little enthusiasm for building us a free app. But we know attending an event with 260 people means someone might actually have time to meet 26 people, so we think there’s merit to having an event with connective tissue, so to speak. Thoughts?
6. Anything else? We’re not event planners (I know, this shocks you.) Are there things we should be doing or at least might want to think about? The event has grown into a bit of an institution very quickly, but we are very interested in ideas on what we could do better or add to the proceedings.

Again, thanks so much for coming by. We hope you made some new connections, finally met some people you only knew by email, and caught up with some old industry friends.

We fully intend to do this next year, and already have some intriguing ideas. But we’d love your thoughts, as well.

Feel free to comment here and / or email dave.haynes@presetgroup.com

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2011 at 18:58 @832 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.