It’s another week and another edition of #EventIcons where we interview and give you a chance to ask your questions to the icons of the event industry. This week, we are welcoming two AV gurus, Mike McAllen and Jon Trask! They talk about their platform, AV for Planners. As the name suggests, they are on a mission to make event planners’ lives easier by educating them about AV and helping them analyze AV quotes.
Will met Mike and Jon at the Event Technology of the Year awards at IMEX in Las Vegas. Today, they reunite for an informative conversation that event planners in particular will find extremely useful!
Mike & Jon, The AV Gurus
The first thing #eventicons guests typically do is introducing themselves. So, who are Mike and Jon and what do they do?
“We both work at the Grass Shack Events & Media, which is my production company,” says Mike. “The AV for Planners platform evolved out of that because we were doing so many proposals. We were finding clients that were just having full-blown proposals done when they just needed their AV vetted. We started helping them out because a lot of people are not technical.”
“We wear a number of hats because we’re jumping between doing production work and then doing the evaluations, the analysis, and helping people,” adds Jon. “Being an AV guy for so long, I would watch people make horrible mistakes. They would make decisions based on bad data because all they’re getting is the data that a salesperson is giving them. And they don’t have a way to analyze that. They don’t have a way to understand it. So they are just getting this list that looks like a truck packing list of gear and people, but there’s no context to it. We can give them some context.”
Helping Demystify AV For Planners
Jon and Mike are on a mission to help event planners get AV quotes faster and more efficiently. “We started out with an RFP builder because the first step in making this process better for people is helping them put together their needs on paper. I don’t need to ask you how many condenser mics you need, what I need to know is how many people are going to be on stage. I’ll be able to tell you how many microphones you’re going to need. We asked the questions in the RFP builder in a very plain language. We try and make it very friendly and not tech-y and intimidating, so that people can go through it,” says Jon.
“They can put down their needs. And then we take that RFP and we give it back to them. That’s a free service with no further obligation. If you want to use our services, we’ll take it to our database of companies, which we’ve been building up over many years, and send it to three of those companies. We’ll agree with planners on who they want to send it to. Then, we take those quotes back and have a team of evaluators analyze them. We give that all back to the client and let them make their own decision on who they want to contract.”
“It’s been pretty interesting to see how much money event planners saved in the long run. AV companies were also happy because it shortens their work. Everybody’s winning really,” adds Mike.
Event Planners, Just Be Transparent!
Next up, Will asks what recommendations do Jon and Mike have for people who are putting it together their own bid process for AV. How can they make the process more streamlined?
“Be transparent about it,” says Jon. “Some people will try and hide a lot of things about that process. If your organization requires you to get three bids and there are organizations that have that requirement in their purchasing department, be upfront about it: ‘I’m going to send this to three companies and you’re one of them’. Don’t send it to 50 companies. For the work that goes into a really good proposal and putting some thought into things, people need to have a reasonable expectation that they have a shot at getting the show.”
AV For Planners: What To Look For In An AV Company
“You’ve worked with so many different AV companies. Was there a commonality across the most successful ones?” asks Will.
“One thing is attention to detail and a lot of questioning,” replies Jon. “On a show that I’m doing, I’ve had conversations that have lasted five or six hours where we would talk through the project manager about what is going to be happening over and over. We were pre-visualizing pieces that make everything stay on schedule. A lot of the good AV salespeople have an ability to sit there and really analyze the meeting.”
Educating Planners About AV
Mike thinks that there is a big need for more education in AV in the entire industry. “There is a problem with people not getting AV. I think they need to get more. We’re doing a whole video course on AV. There are around 80 videos.”
“It’s a learning style thing,” Jon adds. “I think you put things out in a number of different ways. You do live talks, blogs and printed things for people who read, and videos. People approach this stuff differently.”
Let’s Talk Equipment
The conversation steers from educating event planners to pure tech talk. “Is there any cool piece of the technology that you guys are seeing that is changing the industry?” Will asks.
“Lighting has been an area that has gotten a lot more green,” says Jon. “It’s much more power-efficient and easier to do. You can create so much with lighting, mood-wise. Just yesterday, I saw something about retrofit for ETC lights. Instead of it being a high energy light, you can now do a white LED out of it and retrofit it. When LED lights first came out, they were dim and it was hard to get a pure white. That keeps improving.”
“I did a session on why does AV cost so much a few years ago. The thing is the prices have stayed relatively the same, but the capability of the equipment is so much beyond what it was,” he adds.
Next, Mike shares his thoughts. “Everybody is hopping on the drone idea and that brought me around to the safety and the understanding of how you’re using some of these tools within your meeting. They’re really cool and you can have these neat things, but if you’re flying a drone over the audience, there are ramifications to that. If you’re talking about doing a live stream, there are ramifications to that. Planners are not always asking the right questions. They just ask: ‘Can we stream it?’ But they’re not thinking about why they’re streaming it, who their audience is, how they’re going to archive it. Digging deeper into the safety and the purpose of things is something that is really important.
AV For Planners: Last Tips
Before they say their goodbyes, Will asks Mike and Jon to share one last AV tip for event planners. Mike says that they should be doing more pre-production and spending more time on it. “Many people do everything last minute. There’s a lot of time to plan out. Get your vendors lined up earlier and start. You can learn so much from them to make your meeting better.
“Bringing your production company or your AV company to the venue for a site survey is so important,” agrees Jon.
Will elaborates on their suggestion. “Sometimes, the AV company can help you solve other issues. We do so many events and see so much stuff. A lot of times, we’re the basis who is in there first, building the space. We can help you out by doing things like computer assisted designs. We know how much electricity is going to be used. There’s a lot of technical things we can help with.”
And that’s a wrap on the 7th episode of #Event Icons! Next week, Will will be hosting Dusty Kraatz, Nicholas Roselius, and Jon Burke to talk about the first ever 4k live stream at SXSW!
