[MUSIC] Let's meet someone from MOHAI. Christine Kolodge is the events manager at the Museum of History and Industry. Christine is involved in events planning at this popular venue. Listen to what she says about planning an event. You will answer some questions after the interview. >> My name is Christine Kolodge, and I am the events manager at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, also known as MOHAI. I've been here with MOHAI for about 9 years. And we're down at South Lake Union. Ideally, at least a year ahead is a good time to start searching out venues, checking on things, available spaces. The larger your event and the more people you have, I think, the fewer options you have in terms of venue and so you need to start that much earlier. We do events up to about 1,000 people here and we book up to about 18 months out. I think if you've got a smaller, simpler event you don't need necessarily that much time. But, I think if you've got a gala for 300 people, probably give yourself a year. I think one of the most important things in event planning that is sometimes not considered right off the bat, is the goal of the event. You think that that would be number one, but a lot of times people think. Well let's have an event and see what happens. If we make money, if we get to know people, if it's I think that having a real specific target, and purpose, and a good sense of what you hope to accomplish with the event. It doesn't have to be fund-raising, although fund-raising events are certainly popular. It can be a sort of friend raising. It can be to celebrate an accomplishment, I think there are a lot of different goals that are unique. But having a sense of what it is that you want to accomplish I think is the number one thing. It helps to focus your energy and prioritize everything else behind that particular goal. Another thing that, I think number two is budget. Budgeting is something that is a valuable a piece of information for everybody surrounding the event to work with. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a whole lot of money, although that can make things a lot easier. But when you start planning, it's important for your venue, your caterers, your volunteers, your staff, everybody to understand what are we working with. How much, what resources do we have in that particular pot of money to do everything else that we want to do? And, then you can work from there and see what's realistic. And I think probably, number three, that's a tough one. Think about day of how you envision things happening from the moment that your guest walks in the door until the time that they leave. And what do you want their experience to be? And then you can sort of design everything else with that in mind. If you want it to be a very elegant and seamless sort of fancy gala. That's one kind of thing. Maybe you want it to be a casual, family style sort of comfortable, warm, welcoming kind of thing. I think that those basic components will all drive the rest of the event. If you have those things in place, it at least gives you a framework to start with. One thing that's important to think about that clients don't sometimes consider is what the Initial impression is for the people that are coming. And that might include things like parking and transportation. It might include your registration process. It might just include signs so that they can find the front door. I think that your very first impression happens sometimes before your guests even arrive at your event. And so trying to consider, as much as you have control over, what the parking situation is going to be like. How they're going to get there, if they're going to be grouchy when the walk in the door because they just had to pay for parking, and walk in the rain, and all that kind of stuff. I think those things sort of set the tone for how people are going to initially perceive your event and so that's something that I think is nice to consider. The other big thing that is important, that I see people make this mistake frequently, is they think that they can do everything themselves in a very short period of time. There is a really critical part which coincides with the beginning of the event where it's time to hit the ground, and there is 100 things to do. And a lot of people think well, I'll just take care of that and take care of that and take care of that and one thing after the other I'll get it all sorted out, almost never happens. If you're an event planner get yourself some help, delegate your tasks, make sure that you're not the only person who's got the answers to all of those questions. You've gotta divide and conquer especially if you've got a really limited time for set up. Our, as a museum we are fortunate in that we have a very unique space. We've got a clientele that appreciates that we are not necessarily a cookie cutter, we're not a hotel ballroom, we're not a generic cube. There are a lot of different variables here. And we do our best to make any reasonable request that we can address happen. It's really based on what's feasible and keeping in mind what our own parameters are. There are some things that we just can't do. If someone comes in the day of and says I have a motorcycle that needs to be in the museum, it's part of the event. There are really strict guidelines about vehicles in a museum as you can imagine. If there's some way to make it happen, if we can get the fuel out and get approval from exhibits and facilities maybe we would do it. Sometimes you have to say no. I mean My rule of thumb with events is that It's you plan and you plan and you plan and you plan as much as you can. And then when you get down to the day of, the nitty gritty, you get prepared to improvise and you just take things as they happen. And there are always going to be last minute requests. Some things are easy, like I need a power strip. Some things are more difficult, like I need a hot air balloon. And it really, we do what we can to help make it as successful as possible. That's another reason, I think, to plan and prioritize ahead of time. So you don't all of a sudden last minute realize that we've forgotten this enormous critical element and now it's too late to do anything about it. Once upon a time we had a request to fill one of our galleries upstairs full of balloons. Full full full of balloons. Like a room this size, about 500 square feet and how ever many cubic feet that works out to. They wanted to fill it with balloons. And one of the balloons had a prize so as guests arrived, they would pop the balloons and there was inside they got a certificate for like a Surface tablet or something like that. Turns out that that many balloons is prohibitively expensive and also really really difficult to transport, so we are it was, that didn't, we didn't actually end up doing that. I wouldn't say that I've organized an event for a famous person. We have certainly had guests here at events that are, that come with their own security teams, that come with their own sort a their own special set of writers and things like that. So yeah, I think that there are particular things to be concerned about with that. A lot of times, people have specific requirements. If I'm going to show up I want this kind of Coke product and I want this kind of room to be in. And I need all of these things. Last week we were fortunate to host the gala fair. That was a fund-raising gala for the Seattle opera that was here. That was a really exciting event for us to have. It was about a year and a half in the planning process from the very beginning of scouting, all the way through execution. They had some of their artists come, which was really neat, to see opera singers who have a really good time. They're fun, they're fun and crazy and cooky and they have great sense of humor. But they put together a really cool program. They sounded amazing in our space. It's one thing to hear them on stage at McCall Hall, in their element. It's another thing to see them in this big, giant 50-foot tall room filling the space with what they do. So that was really fun. It was an elegant, lovely evening. They raised the money. We had a really good time with them. I don't know. It's sort of in our wheelhouse. They were our fellow nonprofit, it was a unique and different experience that you wouldn't get to have at any other venue. It was a really nice partnership so we were really pleased to have them here. We do it all the time. Every event is special and fun, and today we've got a wedding reception, and then next week we've got fashion shows and meetings and everything else. So it's different every day. >> Answer the following questions about Wendy's conversation. [MUSIC]
