Saturday, August 7, 2010

MacGyver vs the event manager... it's like Jack Bauer vs. Chuck Norris!

Ah, yes, that's the handyman side of MacGyver; he likes to make clever little things out of odd bits.
 - Quayle ("MacGyver", TV series)

I was just over at the CVent blog and caught their post on Event Essentials: Fast Fixes for Little Event Emergencies. I truly did a "laugh out loud" at the last one, and then started thinking about my event emergency toolkit.

In addition to the duct tape, Scotch brand packing tape, and velcro, I also include:
 - Sharpie marker
 - A couple of sheets of cardstock (you never know when you have to make a sign)
 - Whiteboard markers (at least 2 - black and red)
 - Whiteboard eraser
 - Sticky tack, for when I'm not allowed to use tape
 - Post-it notes
 - Pens
 - if checking the bag, then scissors/swiss army knife for sure! if carrying on, a plastic knife comes in handy with taped boxes, too.

Of course, when a real event emergency happens, your true "fight" mechanism takes over and you have to get really ingenius.

Once, we had to fashion a taller lectern out of a sturdy box and a tablecloth because our keynote speaker (a politician) was 6'4" and wanted to see his speech without having to wear his glasses.

Another time, we had to locate an a doctor in the crowd because an attendee was cut by an armadillo during our armadillo-racing event.

And another time we unpacked our new gaming pods and started hooking up all the computers and monitors only to discover that the pods were not designed large enough to run an extension cord through. Our tech guy had to literally whittle off the "bump" on the extension cord to get it to fit through the pod.

A friend of mine told me about getting kicked out of an expo hall because they had a live animal in their booth which was not permitted (it was a themed booth, and I believe they brought a live goat).

I bet the rest of you have way cooler stories! Tell!

No comments: