Attendees recently returned from a convention your organization spent two years putting together. You and your team thought it went great, but now you are receiving emails, texts and social postings to the contrary. What did you miss?
Below is an except from a Plan Your Meetings article entitled “20 ways to ruin a perfectly good convention“. I have taken 3 of their points to share with you along with ways to fix the problem before it becomes an issue.
Ruin: No or Limited Wireless Access.
A convention of thousands of individuals can bring a venue’s Internet system down or make it buffer into tomorrow. In addition, there may be limited IP addresses and access points because the convention has not upgraded their system in several years. An example of this is you step out of the meeting room and your connection goes away all together.
Remedy: Rent a Wi-Fi Network Array and Use a Bandwidth Calculator.
Every convention has some level of Wi-Fi but whether or not it is enough, is a hard question to answer without knowing how it will be used by your attendees, exhibitors, speakers and sponsors. Chances are probably good that whatever the venue provides will not be enough especially if it has limited access points or a shared system. Consider renting a Wi-Fi network array to help boost the bandwidth. For more information about Wi-Fi and Bandwidth, check out this blog post: Meeting Planner’s Basic Guide to Wi-Fi and Bandwidth Terminology .
Ruin: No Place to Charge Devices.
Your attendee has brought their smartphone and iPad/tablet to the convention. It is approaching the end of the day and their battery is at 10% for both devices. They look around the meeting space and find no way to charge their devices, and oh by the way, they left their charging cord back at the hotel room. So instead of going to the exhibitor hall, they opt for the shuttle bus back to the hotel.
Remedy: Rent a Charging Station.
Charging station rentals have many benefits including: the ability to facilitate networking within your booth, interacting one-on-one with attendees for 7-12 minutes and generating brand awareness about your products and services through the videos, photos and presentations running on the display above the station. For more benefits of a charging station, read Want to Draw a Crowd to Your Trade Show Booth? Rent a Charging Station!
Ruin: The Presentation Screens are Too Small.
If attendees need to squint in order to view the presentation, something is very wrong. In fact, they will do one of three things: 1) move up, 2) turn to their smartphone and start checking emails or 3) leave the room.
Remedy: Get the Right Sized Presentation Screen Rental.
There are many tools available to determine the right screen size, but your AV provider and venue should be of great help here. The important thing to keep in mind is you need to set a font size for your speakers and test that size on the screen. For hard to see areas, consider renting Plasma Displays or utilizing second screen technology.
Turn to AV Event Solutions and SmartSource Rentals for Wi-Fi network arrays, charging stations, LCD projector and screen rentals, and so much more! Give them a call or request a quote to get the rental process started!
