It has to deliver an experience.
In the same way a restaurant is not about food, an event's not about tables, chairs, booths, badges, busses, signs or even speakers.
An event is about an experience.
Restaurateur Danny Meyer says the restaurant's job isn't to serve food.
It's to create an experience of wellbeing: to instill in each patron the sense that "when we were delivering that product, we were on your side."
Delivering an experience justifies the patron's expenditure—not of money, but of time—Meyer says. "When they leave, are they going to say, 'That was a good use of my time?'"
"The most precious resource we all have is time," Steve Jobs once told a reporter.
Are you delivering an experience, or wasting your attendees' time?
