What would you do differently next time?

Any suggestions, what we could improve next time? This is THE place for any creative ideas, suggestions, inputs.

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Dinner Seating

hayleysheridan 04 Mar 2008 14:29

I think for the next event everyone should be assigned a seat rather than the select few. I think some people felt a little offended that they could sit 'anywhere but tables 1-6'. If all seats are allocated then people will feel more equal.

Dinner Seating

hayleysheridan 04 Mar 2008 14:32

To speed up seating it may work well to have the table numbers & names displayed at the conference as people are leaving so those that want to can find out what table they are seated at before arriving at the dinner venue. This may prevent a sudden rush as dinner begins. Another alternative would be to have the board displayed in the reception area at the dinner venue.

Wot to do differently next time

Angus McCrone 04 Mar 2008 16:15

1. Table hosts should be much more discriminating in what they pass on. A lot of the stuff passed to distillers was to put it politely, platitudes or rubbish. Table hosts should pass on grains of gold, not sand and grit.

2. Summit newsletter should be produced on Publisher, not Word, so it looks more professional.

3. Panellists should be asked proper questions, not given an excuse to tell us their companies' histories. ie follow Chris' example in his session. Panellists should also be asked to comment on the findings from the floor.

4. Drive a much harder bargain with any headhunting firm that sponsors the next summit.

5. Name badges with larger writing.

6. We should have two or three polls of delegates, providing numerical data that can be presented as proper findings. eg 65% of senior executives in clean energy believe that solar energy will be fully competitive with fossil fuel withing five years. Or 80% of delegates believe that jatropha will become a major, cost-effective feedstock for the biodiesel industry by 2010.

sarapesek 05 Mar 2008 11:14

A larger "Pre-Summit" team should be put together for the day before.
There was an incredible amount of work to be done on Wednesday, from hauling all the boxes over to the hotel, accepting deliveries, putting together lightboxes (the first one took me an hour to put together — Jackie was much better at it than I was), hair-drying off the stickers on the boxes, taking stock of what we have, putting together the participant bags, last minute shopping, writing "sold cards", printing last minute agendas/feedback forms/etc, and a whole host of other things took A LOT of time. We never ever would have been able to get it all done without the help of the table hosts after their practice round.

We need to get a clearer participant list much before 5pm the day before the event.
The badges were the last thing we finished Wednesday night and could have been better organized. It's OK to add or remove people at the last minute, but keepign the whole job of getting the badgest together until the night before could have been avoided. It would help to have a separate list for Day 1, Dinner, Day 2, so that we're sure we have the right people on the badges.

We could hire a service of some sort to move all the "stuff" from the office to the venue and back again?
It ended up taking 3 cabs to get to the hotel (and 3 people) and 6 to bring the stuff back (and at least 10 people). At the end of a fast-paced couple of days, the last thing any of us wanted to do was schlep a bunch of heavy boxes back to the office. This was my least favorite part of the Summit. Thank you to everyone who helped out!

Picture rights

pforti 07 Mar 2008 17:29

Guests need to sign a form that allow us to use the pictures & videos taken from the guests.