Wi-Fi Disaster That Broke The Event Strategy

[00:00:00] Our guest this week has spent 20 years inside some of the biggest tech conferences on the planet. And she'll tell you that the gap between an agenda that fills a seat and one that actually moves businesses forward isn't a scheduling problem, it's a strategy problem. She is many things, but she is never just content with your content. It's Event About It with Stephanie Wells.

[00:00:32] Hey everyone, my guest today has spent over 20 years building the content strategy behind some of the biggest tech conferences on the planet. Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, Workday, just to name a few. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council. She just wrapped up two years deep inside the world of hands-on training. And this fall, she's launching her own firm, Gold Heart Events.

[00:00:57] She's the person you call when your event has sessions but no strategy. Welcome to the studio, Stephanie. I'm so glad to have you here. Thank you so much, Megan. It is going to be a thrill to be here, I can tell already. It's going to be great. I'm so excited for the conversation. But before we get into all the fun content stuff, you have one of, I think, the most interesting origin stories on how you got into events. And I kind of want to unpack it.

[00:01:26] So when we were doing our prep for this, I learned that you lived in Paris for seven years, hustled your way into working with the United Nations, which, honestly, God didn't even know was possible. And then started working for some of the biggest rock stars that we would all know and never, never named. So I have a thousand questions anyway. But like, let's just start with moving to Paris and hustling your way into the United Nations.

[00:01:54] Like, walk me through how that happens because that's not a normal sentence. No. Yeah, I am not a very normal person. But, you know, I've had a really interesting career. And it's actually a little bit flipped. So I got into events through the music industry. So when I was just a wee young thing out of college, I had a degree in marketing and I wanted to be really intentional about where what I did with that degree and what avenue I went into.

[00:02:25] I knew that in order to, like, dedicate myself to one thing, it would have to be the thing that I love most. And then as is now, it was music. And so I said, what can I do with this? So I ended up getting an internship at a record label in San Francisco. And then I went, moved to New York to get started into the music industry. And I ended up working for a music publicist. And so then kind of got into events that way and then really got into it.

[00:02:53] Then I took a detour into the fashion world, which isn't even on there. But, yeah, so I ended up working for some sort of big name rock stars. I worked for the most notable is probably Lou Reed, which from the Velvet Underground, if you're not familiar. And then segued into working to fashion, like I said. And that was really, like, when events took off. Okay. Like, production, like big, large scale runway shows, things like that, that I was like, wow.

[00:03:21] Especially for a little, you know, 24 year old me saying, like, this is the most glamorous thing I could ever imagine doing. Like, come on. I can only imagine how glamorous it is, like running fashion shows. It was like wild. Like, I still like, like, how did I even, what was, I had no business being there. But it was, I really liked seeing all, and I still do, seeing all the pieces come together. Like you walk into the show floor or the venue or whatever, and it's empty.

[00:03:48] And then it just kind of pops up together and it's incredible. Um, and then I, uh, I decided that I wanted to get my MBA. So I moved back to Paris cause I'd had my, got my undergrad in Paris and back to Paris to the Sorbonne and got my MBA. And that led me to, um, to knock on some doors. I really wanted to continue in this sort of vein of, um, really impactful work.

[00:04:18] Um, in between fashion and MBA, I had taken a spin in the nonprofit world and worked, um, on programming for the Alliance Francaise in San Francisco, which is a French cultural organization. Um, and really love that and opened my eyes to a lot of, a lot more of the world and wanted to continue in that direction. So I managed to knock on the right doors at the right time. And somebody had like a PR and events internship open at UNESCO in Paris.

[00:04:49] And I like to say that I hustled my way in because I had like not the pedigree and I didn't have the right connections. And I just like literally just was fearless and knocked on every door. It's like, I'm just going to swing big. Like I'm here. I might as well like swing for the stars, you know, when that wrapped up, I moved back to the Bay Area. Yeah. Where I am from originally and started to make a move towards tech because that is, you know, if you're in the Bay Area and you're in events, you're probably in tech.

[00:05:18] Um, yeah, probably, uh, for the past, uh, 10 plus years at this point. So anyway, that's a long story, but it does have a lot of twists and turns and it's a fun one for me to tell. I mean, I think it's incredible because the, the first background I've always thought is a benefit. I have a non-traditional path myself and I think it's been the superpower to my success, honestly. And I mean, one thing you said in there and knocked on the right doors at the right time.

[00:05:43] I think putting yourself out there rewards people who do that because at the end of the day, what's the worst case scenario? They're just going to tell you no, and you keep knocking. Right. So like, what's the worst? Um, I mean, incredible rock stars and fashion and UNESCO and so many things. Uh, before we get into our next time, I kind of want to know, like, what's the craziest thing you've seen on a rider?

[00:06:07] I mean, you've worked with some rock stars. You don't have to name who it is or any of that, but like everyone's heard the green M&M stories and we know like why riders are so important. But given the diverse background and the high profile events you've kind of worked on, I want to know, is there something so crazy that like stopped you in your tracks? You know, it's just to be totally honest, it's less about the what and it's the how it was like.

[00:06:34] It was actually really set me up at a very young age for working on like large scale events because the when they want something, they want it now. They want it immediately and it might seem ridiculous. And whether that thing is like moving a meeting, doing a thing, like just constant vigilance on what they want. If it's there in Montreux for the Montreux Jazz Festival and it is, you know, two o'clock in the morning in New York time, they're going to want X done immediately.

[00:07:03] And, um, that kind of blew me away. I'm like, really? Like, okay. I'm like, I'm not sure how sustainable this is for me, but, um, but yeah, I think that's the most nutso thing that I've seen. It's like, okay, all right, man, I'll get you what you need. The speed of delivery. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm curious. So I've talked about this on previous episodes before, but one of my favorite Netflix documentaries I watched this year, maybe it was the end of last year.

[00:07:31] Anyway, recently was the Victoria Beckham documentary and how she's in Paris. She decides to take her fashion show to like a huge chateau outside of town and it's just raining cats and dogs. They're debating if they postpone it. The event nerd in me was like, tell me more about the event and like the setup and how did they solve it? They're kind of like, do we cancel? Do we not? And then it's like, we're not canceling and they just move forward.

[00:07:57] But I was like, well, how did they deal with all of the mud and all these things? So one, have you seen it? And what's your perspective on that? Given that you used to run fashion shows? I was a very small cog in the fashion show wheel. I'll just say that. But I think that like, that's kind of sounds like I have seen the Victoria Beckham documentary. It's been a minute.

[00:08:22] Um, but, uh, it's, it reminds me a little bit of fire fast. It's like you, I don't think you're actually in the event industry. If you haven't watched fire fast documentary and screamed at the screen while you're doing it. Um, but yeah, it's, it's the same thing. And I think that like the, to me, the big difference between like enterprise tech events and more kind of, let's say entertainment or fashion or music or whatever.

[00:08:52] Is that I think enterprise events, like there's a little, it makes a little bit more sense. Like it's grounded in something where, where like, you know, somebody calling you at 2am to request, like, you know, the different air conditioning unit in their like limo or whatever. Like it doesn't make any sense. Like it's like, okay, that was your top priority right now. Um, but yeah, I mean,

[00:09:21] I think it's, it's so funny. Cause like they always talk about this, the seating thing at runway shows and it's like legendary, legendary. And it's literally like bleachers. It's not that like fabulous of a seating range or like seating, like actual seats. Like they're not comfortable, like cushiony seats. They look like bleachers. Like it's like, you know, when tour is on a bleacher.

[00:09:50] Yes. When you break it down, like that's exactly what it is. You don't think about it that way, but from an event standpoint, that's exactly what she's sitting on. Yeah. It's wild. That's a great segue into our game where, I mean, you've seen Paris, the UN rock stars, some of the best B2B tech out there. Um, but we also know that some of it's theater and some of it's strategy and brain. So we're going to play a game called scope or nope.

[00:10:18] So here's how it works. I'm going to give you an event content practice and you tell me it's in scope, non-negotiable. It's in the plan. You should definitely do it or nope, like cut it, not worth it. Okay. And if you, you're welcome to give an explanation, but you have to keep it short. Got it. Okay. First one, a content repurposing strategy built before the agenda is finalized.

[00:10:51] Yes and no. Okay. Um, generally, sure. Like have a skeleton ready to go. But you're not really going to know what you're talking about until the agenda. Well, the agenda is finalized. That's a whole other thing. But, um, I would say like I'm leaning more towards yes. Like be prepared. Be prepared. I think this is kind of a silly question, but like, is an agenda ever really finalized? Like, I don't think it's finalized until it's actually happening.

[00:11:20] No. Has anybody ever been on the other side of the keynote? Like, you know. Exactly. Okay. Next one. A mandatory speaker prep call with content strategists before every session. So before you get on site, you're doing a prep call with every speaker. I love that. Yes. Hard yes. Hard yes. Hard yes. A dedicated content brief for every session before it's confirmed on the agenda.

[00:11:47] Ideally, yes. Does it ever happen? Not really. But ideally, yes. Ideally, yes. Okay. A post-event report that measures attendance and NPS scores. And that's it. Why bother? Why bother? Agreed. Why bother? That doesn't even tell you anything, really. Okay. Content strategy document that exists before a venue contract is signed.

[00:12:15] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot that you can know before a venue contract is signed. Obviously, the real estate that you have to work with is going to vary greatly based on the specificities of it are going to be based on which venue you're signed on for how many days and what kind of pieces of that venue you're going to get.

[00:12:34] But you're generally going to know how many attendees you're going to have. I mean, it's not going to be from like, oh, some curveball like we were planning for 2000, but actually it's 20,000. Like it's that's probably not going to happen. So, yeah, I think content is also the first out the gate, as you like to say, in the content world. And so we are before everything. A lot of times we might be before venues are signed. We are before sponsors are announced. We are before everything. So we have to be we're the first ones.

[00:13:04] Once an event wraps, then we're the first ones to start again on that on whatever event. Yeah, agreed. Dedicated content lead, a separate person, potentially a separate job from logistics. Oh, 100 percent. That's been my job. I have to say that like me and a lot of my peers, like our specialty is an event content. So programming, we usually have a strategy and operations. Those are individual people. I'm talking about like the enterprise level.

[00:13:33] Sure. But I feel strongly that, yes, you have to you really should have an event content lead depending on your goals and your budget. But like you're going to be better off for it. Yeah, agreed. Session titles written by the content strategist, not the speaker. No, I think that. No, and I think that there is like two schools of thought in it.

[00:14:01] So I've been down both pathways where you get an editor involved, like an in-house editor or something, and they change the meaning of what you're actually the speaker is actually talking about so that it actually doesn't make any sense. It could be something technical that's in the description or the title that only not only the speaker, but the speaker is the subject matter expert. They're the SME. So it's important that you retain the integrity of that title and description for that session.

[00:14:29] And oftentimes if you get folks who are not SMEs digging into it, that it's not going to be meaningful to the attendee. I would agree. Okay, last two. A post-event content audit that determines what never gets programmed again. And maybe not what gets programmed, but also evaluating speakers. Like maybe what speakers never get scheduled again. Yes. And I would also say that this is not a post-event thing.

[00:14:55] Me and a lot of other of my peers have a note open on their phone. They're like, okay, do, do not. Yeah. Like do's and don'ts for next time around during the event. And we're walking around and we're taking notes on it. So absolutely. Yep. I think even operations people, I mean, I was just on show site last week and did the same thing. Sometimes I have a little note pad too, because sometimes I can just scribble a thought down versus like typing in my phone. Like I have both. Yeah. A little bit of a text.

[00:15:26] But if, like for example, if a speaker is really not holding up their end of the bargain, if they're not delivering properly, if they don't show up, that person's not speaking again. Unless there is some dire emergency. But that has happened many times where we've been like, oh, this person didn't show up at all. Whether they are an employee, whether they're an external speaker, you're not coming again. You just wasted 150 people's time. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Last one. Attendee feedback that directly shapes the next event's content strategy.

[00:15:55] Again, ideally, yes. And what kind of feedback would you want to hear from attendees? Like beyond, is it just, do you want to know, did they like it? Did they not like it? Or would you want attendees to give more specific feedback? Specific is good. I think couch that in like a big asterisk of is this substantive? Things like, even some, I would say also, even something like they spoke too fast. But I don't want to hear about the AC.

[00:16:22] I don't want to hear about your coffee, which if you've ever read survey data, that is like the bulk of it. It's coffee, AC, and Wi-Fi. Great. But I think it's, you know, this was a, say, 400 level class. And actually, like it wasn't. It's a very basic class or session. If it hit the right level, it was designed to.

[00:16:46] Also, like if the meat of the session, if the delivery matched the title and description that they were sold, and then that's what the attendee decide to spend their time doing. That's super important. How it moves it forward. Like it depends on the frequency of that feedback that we're getting. So if it's, the level is really not matching what's delivered, we really have to address that. If the speaker is super unprepared, why is that happening? We have to address that. And that's over and over. One-offs, if there's outliers, like we really don't.

[00:17:17] You know, take it with a grain of salt. Let's put it that way. But like if there's patterns, we ideally, hopefully, like address them squarely. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's where context comes in. Some of the stuff is addressable. Some of it's not. Right. Awesome. Well, that's a great place to wrap up scope or nope. I think Stephanie just gave all of our listeners some really great takes on how to evaluate your content and what should be in scope and what should not be in scope.

[00:17:42] Well, now it's time for my favorite session of every episode, the vent of the week. Because sometimes the only thing tighter than a load in schedule is our patience. And this is your safe space to let it out. All the pet peeves, the planning pains, and the things that make this industry a little too eventful. So Stephanie, tell us what irks you about attending or planning events?

[00:18:13] Okay. Well, it is the topic that is two letters absolutely everywhere on the present in events. And frankly, it feels like in life. And that is why I have spent a lot of time not only in like enterprise, like tech events, but also in other kinds of events, which is great.

[00:18:39] I think everybody should do that is step outside the tech bubble if you're in tech, step outside whatever bubble you're in and go to something sort of your counterpoint. And I'll say that we love AI for a lot of reasons. Planners love AI. They're really, to me, really great reasons to use it and really strategic ways to use it.

[00:18:58] What I think that we're getting more into and that I'm disappointed to see is we're taking an event, a conference, a gathering of people, which is what a lot of us really miss from, especially from COVID times, especially a lot of work from home culture. I work from home as well, so I'm not knocking that, but we miss each other, right? Like we miss humanity coming together and we miss meeting new people, seeing old friends.

[00:19:27] That the humanity is the core of a conference or an event. And to me, AI is helping to homogenize that experience. So you really don't know if you're going from company A event, B, C, D, they all look the same. They all sound the same. There's such a lack of personality. And you can just tell the AI stamp is everywhere and particularly in content.

[00:19:55] So if we're getting AI to write our titles and descriptions, you're going to know. Anybody who's ever touched AI at all knows what AI sounds like and feels like. And I will say that some of the most successful programming that I've worked with has had a lot of personality in their titles that I don't think is replicable through AI. When I worked on Tableau, Tableau is a Salesforce company.

[00:20:25] Tableau Conference is known for their like very pithy, very kind of jokey, but accurate session titles and descriptions. And they get a lot. People enjoy it. They look forward to that. They want to laugh along. And AI can just homogenize that. I'm not saying that it did, but I'm saying that something like that that is so meaningful to attendees and it's actually like a butts in seats driver.

[00:20:54] People want to know what they're talking about in this like funny session. I'm worried that AI is going to strip that from conferences. It's going to whitewash everything. It's just going to make it all the same. I think that there's a difference between efficiency, leveling the playing field, and homogenization. Like I think those things are what we kind of have to bear in mind.

[00:21:22] Frankly, like AI is boring. Come on. I think when we think about AI in terms of efficiency, I do love it. But there are things that I use it for that are immensely helpful, but you're absolutely right. It does get boring. And it produces a lot of times the same thing. Yeah.

[00:21:44] Like the variations of it, like without proper prompting and learning how to use AI properly, you end up just with the same content over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not why people want to physically spend the time and money to go to a conference and sit there in front of like sit there with their time.

[00:22:09] You know, they're like spending hours out of their day away from their family, away from their work to pay attention to something that is just spit out by a machine. Like it's, they want to hear people talking about real things and real stories and answering their pain points and providing solutions. Not, you know, a bot, basically. I feel like I sound like an old fogey. I'm just saying there's nuance. No, I think there's so much data coming out.

[00:22:37] And this is not totally AI related, but kind of like the analog way of doing things is becoming back around. And people aren't on social media as much. Like we're going back to using channels. That's why events are becoming so popular. Again, just gathering people that people don't want to be behind a screen anymore. They want to be in person. You know, the next generation is not on social media like they used to be. And they're coming to events more. They want the connection more.

[00:23:04] So a lot of that analog, non-digital outreach and connection is what people are really looking for these days. And so if you, I think we know in the events industry, like AI will never take our jobs because an AI bot will never be able to create an environment that thrives human to human connection. Yeah, absolutely. I think just to put a bow on it.

[00:23:28] I mean, I think that the events that I've seen to be most successful and have importantly the greatest loyalty are events that limit the use of AI. So they retain their own point of view. They retain their own voice. And that leads to greater attendance. No notes. And all right, next segment. We're going to event about it. This is the part of our show where you get to spill the tea on a memorable event moment.

[00:23:57] Whether a huge success, total disaster or just chaos, we want to hear about it. And you have worked some very interesting events. So I want to know a good story. So spill the tea. I'm trying to think of like a real good story. They're all about Wi-Fi. Right. But it's a critical piece of events these days. Truly. Like it's amazing as event people like, oh, you only, Stephanie, you only do event content. Like, oh, no, no. I know a little bit about networking. I know a little bit about production.

[00:24:26] I know a little bit about like keynote. Like you have to know a little bit about so much. It's one of the most cross-functional roles you'll ever take on. That said, I think what's important too is like not only what happened in this sort of, you know, instance, but what was learned. And that is a few years ago. I was working in-house for a large, for an enterprise company.

[00:24:55] And we were doing, for the first time, this is when folks really started to do like bring your own device. So BYOD for events. If you have something like a hands-on lab component, hands-on training, you know, usually some companies still provide their own machines, which is great. They're hardline, whatever. This was the first instance of a large company that I was working for really wanting like, but that's a huge budget line, right?

[00:25:22] To provision machines and hardline internet for all these people. So it's dozen rooms, 150, 200 people, like that's a lot in your budget. So they wanted to try to reduce that budget line, understandably. And so we went with Wi-Fi for hands-on labs. Wi-Fi, everybody had to bring their own device, which is ideally a laptop, but who knows?

[00:25:50] And then everything would be on a dedicated network. As, you know, famously, conference Wi-Fi is a little bumpy. So we had to have our own network for it. This was at a venue in Vegas that I'd previously been to with another company a few years prior. And I had raised during the planning, like, hey, I was at another company.

[00:26:17] I was here a few years ago and the venue Wi-Fi went down. And it was for the same sort of format that we're using. It was for the labs. And that was like a paid addition. And so having Wi-Fi go down for like a pre-conference additional fee, like additional paid training program is like really not good.

[00:26:42] And so we at that time, I think this is like 2018, we had kind of gotten to the bottom of it. Is it, you know, is it the third party? Is it the venue? What is it? And it was the actual like infrastructure of this venue that was not up to date. So at the very beginning, I was like, hey, just by the way, guys, like this is what happened to me a few years ago. And fast forward, we thought we did all our appropriate checks.

[00:27:09] We thought that we were like up to it. But it's always you're trying something first time at scale is always like, you know what's going to happen. It's always a bit of a Hail Mary. And so sure enough, the Wi-Fi went down. And so we for this particular conference, hands on training was a big audience acquisition motion. Like a lot of attendees would show up just for this kind of really deep training.

[00:27:38] And so having Wi-Fi go down was not good. And it stayed down. And there are other things happening to like in events. It's like usually not one thing. It's multiple contributing factors. But it would we're trying to get to the bottom of it. We're talking like then you are doing this. And my my my hands on training company, which I in the future ended up working for,

[00:28:03] determined that there was somebody with a tiny microwave in their pocket walking around the venue and completely sucking up bandwidth. So it was bandwidth interruption. It was venue like infrastructure obsolescence. So the like the drops weren't working. We could add as many drops as we wanted to. But because the actual infrastructure of the building was not the latest and greatest, it just didn't have what we needed to be able to function properly.

[00:28:33] And so at the time, like I said, I was in house and I always recommend falling on your face in front of all your leadership. Like do it. Like don't do it quietly. Like just do it in front of everybody who it sucks if you're the leadership, but you're the tip of the spirit for this. They made the decisions or you've made the decisions that have ended up in this result. You just have to own it.

[00:29:01] You just have to own it and say like, you know, we learned. We should have listened. We should have actually put more budget towards X and Y and Z. So in the subsequent years after that lesson learned, there was more budget allocated to networking, to doing scale testing, to doing all of these technical things that we had, you know, opted out of with budget in mind.

[00:29:28] But that we realized because we had a lot of very angry attendees who weren't who had, like I said, shown up specifically to take these this deep dive training, weren't able to. And they weren't able to for like the duration of the conference. Like it was like, oh, no, it's not like a five minute glitz like this. No, no, no, no. This was like this was like a hour day. Yeah. Like a big torpedo. You know, but yeah.

[00:29:55] So I fast forward like a few years and I was working for a different company and we had a situation where we fell on our face. It happens. It sucks. But all of our leadership was there. And again, I was telling my team, I was managing a team at the time. I said, guys, I know this sucks. Don't take it personally. It's not your fault. There's always contributing factors. And guess what? The benefit is we did it in front of all of our C-suite.

[00:30:21] So now what's going to happen is they're going to realize that we need like more resources. We need to think about this differently. We need to approach it differently. And yeah, it like I think most people who have been in this position are like, yeah, man, this sucks in the moment. Oh, God. Like but the biggest learnings come from that. So well, and I think you reframe it really well. Like it sucks to do that in front of your leadership, but then they see it and can allocate more resources moving forward.

[00:30:50] So I think that's a great reframe. And it's also a good lesson in contingency planning of how mission critical is this to the event? Like if the Wi-Fi goes down, is it really, for lack of better words, the end of the world for this event? Like if the hands-on training is such a mission critical to why people are showing up, then you need to allocate as much contingency planning for that to happen and get back up.

[00:31:18] If something occurs versus like if the mobile app goes down, is that really the end of the world? Because we have digital signs, we have actual signs, people can still navigate and get what they need. So maybe that falls lower on the priority list of contingency planning versus like if the Wi-Fi goes down, we can't do these trainings, then no one's going to come back to our show again. Yeah. And it's I mean, anybody's ever dealt with a Wi-Fi outage?

[00:31:44] I had another one, a different company too, where we didn't have trainings, but we had breakouts entirely on Wi-Fi. Yeah. And we had no, only the people who had been in the content management system and actually uploaded a PDF of their breakout were able to present. So keynote struggled, breakout struggled. Like to your point, you have to have a contingency plan if it's that mission critical. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that is all the time we have for event about it today.

[00:32:14] So Stephanie, thanks for joining. Tell everyone about Gold Heart Events and where they can find you. Excellent. So I am going freelance. I'm really excited about it. My company is called Gold Heart Events. Of course, I specialize in event content, strategy operations, and also do general event management. Like I said, I do have a background in entertainment and culture as well. So looking forward to diversifying what I work on. So you can find me on LinkedIn.

[00:32:42] I'm Stephanie Wells, the one with the glasses. And my website for my new venture launching this fall is goldheartevents.net. Amazing. Well, that's all the time for today's episode of Event About It, where we connect events and marketing and prove that live experiences aren't just logistics. They are a growth channel. If this episode made you think differently about how events drive pipeline, brand, or growth, make sure you're subscribed.

[00:33:09] And that's how you'll catch what's coming next in the Event About It after show where Stephanie and I go deeper into what it actually takes to build a content strategy that ties to real business outcomes. How we might finally be able to solve the 365 day content challenge and what her 20 years inside the industry taught her that she's now bringing to Gold Heart Events. Until next time, keep growing, keep laughing, and keep eventing about it.