Between September and December, Red Hat – an organisation that's been developing enterprise software using an open source model since 1993 – toured its Red Hat Forum events across 12 ASEAN cities.
The events were localised to each of the markets in which they were held, and MOI was given the task of producing the events in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Singapore.
While our Singapore office was building upon MOI's many years of event experience, each event brought new challenges and new opportunities to learn.
Here are seven lessons the Red Hat Forum taught us.
Over the last few months, many new faces with different strengths have joined our Singapore team. We're all very different people, but one thing that unites us is a motivation to put on a great show.
Planning and managing an event is always an intense and emotional experience, so team motivation is a must – it's what keeps you striving to be the best even after long hours and little sleep.
When you get a free-for-all, where everyone goes off to do their own thing, you inevitably get cases of people doubling up on certain tasks while others get overlooked. To avoid this, you need a streamlined, organised team in which each person takes charge of a specific area yet is still agile enough to quickly switch over to help a colleague out.
Clients are going to come to you with requests throughout, and often times they could be last-minute. But it's your job to get ahead of your clients by predicting what these might be, and proactively think about and research them before they even ask you. In other words, you need to be mind readers.
A seamless but memorable experience requires more than a great presentation from a star speaker. It goes all the way down to the smallest of details. Put yourself in the shoes of the delegate and consider all their needs and expectations.
It could be something as simple as changing a few signs to make it easier to find your way around the event venue or the layout of food and beverages, which could change the experience for many.
Managing budgets and tight schedules will always be a main challenge of event production. You can't do it without the best suppliers and vendors on your side.
Pick poor quality ones and they'll constantly be placing hurdles for you to trip over – not something you want when you're racing against the clock. They need to be willing to go the extra mile and act as an extension of your team, especially if you have a crazy and unusual idea to execute.
With a total of 2800 registrations and more than 1200 attendees, and with Jakarta & Singapore event having the highest ever number of attendees and sponsors compared to previous years, I'm ecstatic with how successful the Red Hat Forum events were. But complacency plays no part in MOI's ethos. You must never stop looking at how to reach greater heights and widen the scope of what a B2B event can be.
And thanks too for being brave enough to use the "Red Hat Open Sauce" idea, where delegates could leave with not only great experiences and new ideas, but an actual bottle of hot sauce too!
If you'd like to talk about how you can put on a red-hot show, please get in touch.