MOHAI Event Planning Experience and Practical Guide

Let's meet someone from Mohigh. Christine Callogi is the events manager at the Museum of History and Industry. Christine is involved in events planning at this popular venue. Listen to what she says about planning an event. You will answer some questions after the interview. My name is Christine Callogi and I am the events manager at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, also known as Mohigh. I've been here with Mohigh for about nine years and we're down at South Lake Union. Ideally at least a year ahead is a good time to start searching out venues, checking on things that are available spaces. The larger your event and the more people you have, I think the fewer options you have in terms of venue and so you need to start that much earlier. If you're doing, we do events up to about a thousand people here and we book up to 18 months out. I think if you've got a smaller, simpler event, you don't need necessarily that much time. But I think if you've got a gala for 300 people, probably give yourself a year.

One of the most important things in event planning that is sometimes not considered right off the bat is the goal of the event. You think that that would be number one, but a lot of times people think, well let's have an event and see what happens. If we make money, if we get to know people, I think that having a real specific target and purpose and a good sense of what you hope to accomplish with the event, it doesn't have to be fundraising, although fundraising events are certainly popular. It can be sort of a friend raising. It can be to celebrate an accomplishment. I think there are a lot of different goals that are unique, but having a sense of what it is that you want to accomplish, I think, is the number one thing. It helps to focus your energy and prioritize everything else behind that particular goal. Another thing that I think number two is budget. Budgeting is something that is a valuable piece of information for everybody surrounding the event to work with. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have a whole lot of money, although that can make things a lot easier. But when you start planning, it's important for your venue, your caterers, your volunteers, your staff, everybody to understand what are we working with, how much, what resources do we have in that particular pot of money to do everything else that we want to do. Then you can work from there and see what's realistic.

Probably number three, that's a tough one. Think about how you envision things happening from the moment that your guest walks in the door until the time that they leave. And what do you want their experience to be? And then you can sort of design everything else with that in mind. If you want it to be a very elegant and seamless, sort of fancy gala, that's one kind of thing. To be a casual, family style, sort of, you know, a comfortable, warm, welcoming kind of thing. I think that those basic components will all drive the rest of the event if you have those things in place. It at least gives you a framework to start with. One thing that's important to think about that clients don't sometimes consider is what the initial impression is for the people that are coming. And that might include things like parking and transportation. It might include your registration process. It might just include signs so that they can find the front door. I think that your very first impression happens sometimes before your guest even arrive at your event. And so trying to consider as much as you have control over what the parking situation is going to be like, how they're going to get there, if they're going to be grouchy when they walk in the door because they just had to, you know, pay for parking and walk in the rain and all that kind of stuff. I think those things sort of set the tone for how people are going to initially perceive your event. And so that's something that I think is nice to consider.

The other big thing that is important that I see people make this mistake frequently is they think that they can do everything themselves in a very short period of time. There is a really critical part, which coincides with the beginning of the event, where it's time to hit the ground and there's a hundred things to do. And a lot of people think, well, I'll just take care of that and I'll take care of that and I'll take care of that and one thing after the other, I'll get it all sorted out. Almost never happens. If you're an event planner, get yourself some help, delegate your tasks, make sure that you're not the only person who's got the answer to all of those questions. You've got to divide and conquer, especially if you've got a really limited time for setup. Our, as a museum, we are fortunate in that we have a very unique space. We've got a clientele that appreciates that we are not necessarily a cookie cutter. We're not a hotel ballroom, we're not a generic cube. There are a lot of different variables here. We do our best to make any reasonable requests that we can address happen. It's really based on what's feasible and keeping in mind what our own parameters are. There are some things that we just can't do. If someone comes in the day of and says, oh, I have a motorcycle that needs to be in the museum, it's part of the event. There are really strict guidelines about vehicles in a museum, as you can imagine. If there's some way to make it happen, if we can get the fuel out and get approval from exhibits and facilities, maybe we would do it. Sometimes you have to say no. My rule of thumb with the event is that you plan and you plan and you plan and you plan as much as you can. When you get down to the day of the nitty-gritty, you get prepared to improvise and you just take things as they happen. They're always going to be last minute requests. Some things are easy, like I need a power strip. Some things are more difficult, like I need a hot air balloon. We do what we can to help make it as successful as possible. That's another reason I think to plan and prioritize ahead of time. You don't all of a sudden last minute realize that we've forgotten this enormous, critical element and now it's too late to do anything about it.

Once upon a time we had a request to fill one of our galleries upstairs full of balloons, full full full of balloons, like a room this size, about 500 square feet and however many cubic feet that works out too, they wanted to fill it with balloons and one of the balloons had a prize. As guests arrived, they would pop the balloons and there was inside they got a certificate for a surface tablet or something like that. Turns out that many balloons is prohibitively expensive and also really, really difficult to transport. We didn't actually end up doing that. I wouldn't say that I've organized an event for a famous person. We have certainly had guests here at events that come with their own security teams, that come with their own special set of writers and things like that. I think that there are particular things to be concerned about with that. A lot of times people have specific requirements. If I'm going to show up, I want this kind of co-product and I want this kind of room to be in and I need all of these things. Last week we were fortunate to host the Gala. There was a funders in Gala for the Seattle Opera that was here. That was a really exciting event for us to have. It was about a year and a half in the planning process from the very beginning of scouting all the way through execution. They had some of their artists come, which was really neat to see opera singers who have a really good time. They're fun and crazy and kooky and they have great sense of humor but they put together a really cool program. They sounded amazing in our space. It's one thing to hear them on stage at McCaw Hall in their element. It's another thing to see them in this big, giant 50-foot tall room, filling the space with what they do. That was really fun. It was an elegant, lovely evening. They raised some money. We had a really good time with them. I don't know. That's in our wheelhouse. They were a fellow nonprofit. It was a unique and different experience that you wouldn't get to have at any other venue. It was a really nice partnership. We were really pleased to have them here. We do it all the time. Every event is special and fun. Today we've got wedding reception. Then next week we've got fashion shows and meetings and everything else. It's different every day.