Nightmares, or Should I say “EVENTMARES”

There is a common topic around the office and among our crew throughout the year regarding the events. Our crew uses the term “Eventmares.” An Eventmare is very similar to a nightmare; something scary is happening, you try to react and escape the situation, then you wake up in a cold sweat trying to collect yourself and get back to reality. Nightmares happen often to some of us while others don’t seem to have them at all. However, EVERYONE in the event business is bound to have an Eventmare at some point in their career.

I am not a dreamer, or at least I can’t remember my dreams after I have woken up. However, the sort of dream that I do remember is theEventmare. I’ve had quite a few over the years ranging from a wide variety of circumstances. Most of my Eventmares are centered around the fear that I have forgotten to take care of an important race component or they involve some crazy scenario that takes place during an event. The psychologist in me believes they are a result of having too many event-related details on my mind which then causes me to have trouble winding down at night. Once I have woken up and have reassured myself that in fact all of the details have been handled or that the scenario did not actually happen, I still find myself going through a mental checklist of my responsibilities. Much like a dream or nightmare, Eventmares can be very detailed in content, but very broad in their context.

One of my cohorts, Mark Adler and I share our Eventmare stories and get a good laugh. As I mentioned earlier, the stories offer a broad range of circumstances under which things can go wrong. Once, while at the Indy Mini, I had an Eventmare that I had forgotten to order the tents. In my dream, I realized this on Friday morning and the event was taking place on Saturday morning. I contacted the vendor who informed me that me there would no way they could get the nearly 50 tents up in time since it normally took them all week to build the site. One of Mark's favorite Eventmares involved 200 volunteers working at the start line who started fighting with each other in lieu of assisting the participants. Another favorite is when all of the participants at large race decided it would be a much more enjoyable experience if they went over and around the start towers instead of running through them.

Regardless of the scenario, Eventmares cause us to wake up in a cold sweat and hope it wasn’t true. A second look is given to all the details to ensure nothing is missed. Only after we are completely sure that our Eventmare will not come true can we share the story with everyone and get a good laugh at our scary moments.

Thanks again for reading. I hope you everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The "Off-Season"

The late fall and winter serve as our official "off-season." I use that term loosely since the only part of it we have "off" is from the actual production of the events. Many people ask us what we do this time of year. While we usually dedicate much of our time to the evaluation and planning for each event, this year we are looking at organizational changes; decisions that aren't easy to make.

After we had the chance to take a deep breath following our last event in mid-October, we spent quite a bit of time reading through event surveys and participant comments, spending time on what they liked about the events, but more importantly what they didn't like or would like to see in the future. We also listened to what our crew was telling us, since they are such a vital role in what we do. All of this resulted in a plan of action for each of the events and the ensuing months is dedicated to the implementation of these plans. This winter however, it is even more important the planning gets done. Our 2011 season is more daunting than the 2010 season. Once we get rolling, there won't be much time for the planning aspect, so we need to have our bigger plans in place so that as we move closer, our time is spent more on the implementation of these plans.

Now, from a big picture point of view. VEM saw many changes during the year, so following the 2010 event season, there was a lot to discuss and plan for as we move into 2011. During 2010, VEM hired another full-time staff member, added another part-time staffer, and added five new events to our lineup, with three of them being first-time events. It was a fun year....and a long year. As I alluded to earlier, we are looking at many organizational changes in an effort to improve our overall operational plan. First, we are looking at the possibility of an actual office accompanied by the potential for a true warehouse. Making the commitment to actually having "brick and mortar" could be the toughest decision of all. Secondly, we are looking at adding an additional staff member, helping to take the event load off of Andrew and myself…or so we think. Adding this new person though is probably the easiest decision because we need the help. The final aspect is our ever-expanding lineup of events. Again, this is not an easy decision or process. It involves a lot of time exploring the options; some of which will be viable and some that will be dead-ends. None-the-less, it’s a process that must be done.

Not only will this winter help give a clearer direction for our events in 2011, it will provide VEM with a direction for the future. A future that is not only promising, but daunting as well. It’s an exciting process and we are enjoying the ride.

Thanks for taking time to read, please feel free to share your comments.

Welcome to the Social Media Age

Anyone that knows us would tell you that we are not the most tech savvy group out there. While some of us at VEM are light years ahead of others, we as a whole, are still in the dark ages compared to the rest of society. I think this is mostly due to the fact that we are past our prime in terms of the tech world, the youngest of us being in our early thirties. However, we are slowly, with some encouragement, beginning to embrace the new era in which people go about their daily lives. For those of you that know Jeff, it may be hard to believe but he's finally agreed to ditch his flip phone for a Smartphone, so watch out! Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Foursquare, QR codes…. the list goes on and on, but we are trying to figure our way through this maze of ever-changing platforms. Part of our effort to become more in tune with the Social Media Age is the development of a blog. Somehow, I've become nominated to write this thing (although some will tell you I wanted to do it to feed my ego). The goal of the blog is to give people, whether it be friends, family, participants or no one, a look behind the scenes at what goes on at VEM. For example, I will touch on subjects such as how we go about producing our events, what goes into the production, decisions that are made and funny anecdotal stories about things that happen during the production of our events. We hope those of you that choose to follow us find the look behind the scenes interesting or maybe even entertaining.


The Social Media age is making us rethink the way we go about doing our business. We've been on Facebook for a while, but not actively, mostly due to my lack of updates. Honestly, it's one of the last things I'm thinking about when we start to get busy. With not only a VEM Facebook page, but now a Twitter feed (which I had created mostly to keep up to speed on the latest sports news), and Facebook and Twitter feeds for each of our events, we need to do more and we need to be better. Not only must we to do this for promotion of the events and recruiting participants, but it provides a great way for our current participants to connect with us and the events. This will be a learning curve for all of us. None of us grew up with this, so it's not second nature and with its ever-changing and new platforms, it's quite a change from the traditional avenues all of us have become accustomed to.

With all of this being said, we now have a HootSuite account, to make our social media lives easier. Michelle has been reading up on the latest news at Mashable.Com and has sat in on many webinars regarding Twitter, Facebook, and Social Media marketing. We've drug Jeff along trying to figure out how we incorporate this into what we do. Its all a huge learning experience or experiment depending on how you look at it. I guess you can say we are looking forward to developing this side of VEM. I'm sure by the time we have a grasp on it, there will be something completely new for us to learn.

Thanks for reading....come back next time for more from the VEM Chronicles