Wednesday, January 25, 2012

We Do More Than Just Birthdays

Although we are best known for our commitment to making each and every birthday in NYC absolutely amazing, many people do not realize that we are also a full service events company that is capable of putting together any type of corporate, alumni, community, or school event, ranging from fifty people to five thousand.  Now, don't get me wrong, helping people with New York birthday planning is definitely our first love, but there is still something very satisfying about putting together an event for hundreds of people.

This weekend in New York City, we are planning and sponsoring an event for international law students who are pursuing advanced legal degrees at institutions all across the United States.  Beginning on Friday, these students will be in NYC to network, interview, and job search with a wide variety of international employers.  This event is a very intense two-day affair, and this "job fair" is very competitive.  Due to the sheer number of opportunities for accessing employers, it is likely that the number of students coming into the city this weekend will exceed one thousand.

As you can imagine, these students are not all work and no play, and on Sunday evening (yes, just a few days prior to the job fair) we were approached regarding setting up an event on Saturday evening for all of these students.  This was definitely something we were interested in doing, and we really wanted to help out, but based on the numbers and the short timeframe, it was a tall task.

First and foremost, we had to find a venue that could host such a large number, and that was willing to do so on a Saturday.  This might not seem like that difficult of a task, but when you realize that most New York venues make almost all of their money on Friday and Saturday nights, you then understand that reservations, the normal weekend crowd, and any other events are already taking up space at the venue, and they often do not have the room to randomly add between five hundred and one thousand people to their already packed venue.

Lucky for us, we have lots of experience in working with a variety of venues, and are also very familiar with floor plans and options for spaces, so we were able to come up with a nice plan that involved rearranging a space and creating room for an extra five hundred people.  It required some sketching, several meetings, and some long phone conversations, but we got it done.

Next, we had to plan for the addition of such a large number of people to the normal crowd of Saturday night partygoers.  Planning isn't just a matter of space in the venue, but  also includes such considerations as the number of servers, bartenders, security, other staffing, door people, and entry-control.  The whole point is to ensure that people have a good time, and no one enjoys sitting around all night, hoping desperately that their other friends can get in, or worse, standing around outside waiting to get in.  People also tend to enjoy actually being able to get a drink once they are inside, so as you can imagine, these types of staffing issues are both significant and important.

After taking care of all of those things, then we had to ensure that all of the people coming into the city for the job fair actually knew about the event.  This is one area where social media has really helped ease coordination challenges, and by working with people from each school we were able to get the invitations out, ensure that everyone knew about the event, and also to monitor the number of attendees to ensure that our planning for the event was on target.

Currently, we have almost five hundred confirmed attendees, and the number seems to be growing by the hour, leading us to deal with new challenges.  Some people might find that daunting, but we actually love the incredible amount of work that goes into an event like this.  Not only is it extremely satisfying when the actual event comes together and goes off without a hitch, but more importantly, there is nothing better than seeing the joy on people's faces when they attend a well-planned and well-executed event.  Since this happiness is the whole reason we got started in the event planning business, it makes it easy to work hard dealing with new challenges because we know why we do what we do, and we care about seeing those happy faces during a great event.

Saturday is just a few days away, and we will keep on working to make this event incredible.  As the number keep growing, so does our excitement!  It is going to be a great evening.

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