Behind the Scenes
A day in the life of Family Office Summit 1- Master of Ceremonies…
“Remember if there is no SHOW, there is no BUSINESS….”
As I prepare for another significant Summit in Abu Dhabi “the capital of capital’ – the role of Master of Ceremonies, it falls to me to steer the event to another resounding success. After all we’re in show business and our job is to entertain, inform and provoke new discussions and debate.
My day begins early at 6:30 a.m. with a full technical rehearsal, ensuring every detail is in place for a flawless event.
The summit is a marathon, starting and ending with cocktail evenings and networking so that every guest and ticket holder gets the very best experience and return on their times and investment.
In the weeks leading up to the event I work with the organisers to plan the topics and help structure every detail so that on the day everything goes smoothly knowing it won’t. Technical glitches, speakers drying up or no show, as some speakers go off piste – everything hinges on keeping the energy in the room.
But that’s all part of the excitement and challenge of delivering a memorable summit experience.
Chairing Summits, Conferences and Events is great fun
The journey starts months out as the themes and topics for the event take shape. Then it’s about delivering the opening address, writing the keynote or the voice over for the opening video montage and synchronising with all speakers making sure they are on point and last minute adjustments to the running order.
I particularly enjoy moderating the panels and often handle several back to back – as this helps with continuity and keeps the momentum of the event – but most of all allows topics from all panels to be interlinked and for consistent themes and messages.
This minimising of stage changes, consistent panel moderator and continuity is simply more efficient.
Continuity Matters
Audiences dislike interruptions and sitting there waiting for the speakers and panels to change. You can feel the energy in the room change. The key is to link topics and introduce context and position what comes next. Sometimes a little bit of speaker coaching comes into play to give them some structure – focusing on ‘sound bites’ rather than long winded answers. And of course making sure event SPONSORS are looked after, have their time to shine and can get their messages across.
Technical Rehearsals
I like to get to know the production team during set up, ahead of technical rehearsals. To run through the agendas and the timing, the messages and the audio and visuals. during set up and the morning of the event – keeping everyone on their toes.
Working with the Summit Organisers
I work with Event and Summit organisers several weeks out as they pull together the event, the topics and shape the event around the core participants. Making sure the event owners, organisers and sponsors can achieve their desired outcomes.
Organiser like to have Chairman – master of ceremonies, extra Keynote and panel Moderator in one person, it is more efficient, cheaper and audiences prefer it.
Events organisers and a paying audience want three things:
1
To be entertained – part of an enjoyable, well organised, energised event.
2
To learn something they didn’t know before. To have their thinking challenged.
3
Networking opportunities
To make new contacts and friends, to have new conversations that lead to new opportunities.
Practise does make perfection…
Many events do not focus enough on these three elements. Its important to get the conversation going and connect people, ideas and questions with answers, nothing impresses a ticket holder more than making great contacts – they will return
Preparation: Prep starts a few weeks/months out, working with the organisers, their production team to confirm the major themes and the make up of the topics, the structure and flow of the panels and the timing and order. The running order of the panels, the questions and the tone is vital – as get this wrong, the room will be half empty by lunchtime.
It is important to take the time to prepare the speakers with prep calls, and complete extensive research on each speaker and on every panelist. This also helps build empathy as we go through the their thought process, experience and what they want to say, versus what the theme of the panel is.
Audiences: Most audiences are very demanding, discerning, wealthy and powerful. Some events may have a $1trillion in the room. Powerful Families, UHNW people, government officials, sovereign funds and large multi national Family holdings – all of whom are well informed, intelligent, impatient, have access to great data, but attend because they want to learn something new, find good contacts and discover new opportunities