If You Build It, Will They Come? Getting Ready for Vegas
If you build it, will they come?
Planning any party can be challenging, you pick the date, the venue, the theme, you consider your guests, you think about what time to start, what time to end, what to feed them, what to serve them, how to decorate and what music to play. You pray for good weather, you hope you get the invitations into the hands of the right people and then you wait to see who’ll show up and do everything you can to make sure that they have a rocking good time and take away a great memory.
Now, plan that same party for 800 – 1,000 of your closest AV colleagues….this is where party planning can be daunting.
Yes, its been done before, and they’ve always had a good show, but this year, we wanted to change things up a little. So we changed the date to Wednesday to kick off the start of InfoComm, and we added some VIP options for our sponsors, we built a website to give people the information they need on the Unks, started a PR program and we created a social media identity to get some traction. We’ve got invitations and flyers, t-shirts and ear plugs and as of today, we may even have a surprise guest as an opening act for the Drunk Unks.
So many details, and so many little things to keep track of to make sure that all of our guests, and all of the sponsors that make the night possible are properly thanked and recognized because, well basically, we want to keep doing this year after year, and we want our contributors to see real value for having been part of this event.
In full party planning mode for months, I have been amazed by the dedication, talent and resourcefulness of everyone involved. They say it takes a village, I think it just takes people like “Unkle” Steve and the rest of our beloved Drunk Unkles, as well as amazing people like Chuck, Katie, Bonnie, Deb and Joni and the entire staff at the NSCA Education Foundation. It takes really amazing sponsors that care enough to give back to an industry they love. It also takes some sweat, some tears, some flight delays, a handful of late nights, many, many phone calls, a few shots of tequila, and your fingers crossed that it is the best Drunk Unkles night ever.
Come rain or come shine, the boys take the stage for INSANITY AT VANITY, Wednesday, June 18 at 8:30PM at the Hard Rock Hotel. Vegas, baby.
We’ve built it. You are officially invited to come.
See you in June!