Event Producers: Bodies at Rest

A body in motion stays in motion; a body at rest stays at rest.

— Isaac Newton

Most B2B events are tired, creaky and ridiculous. And it's no accident.

Most event producers are lazy.

Decades of easy money have made them that way.

That's not to say they're the only lazy businesspeople you'll encounter.

Laziness surrounds us—and runs rampant in industries where easy money once was made. Banking. Stock trading. Real estate. IT. Retail. Advertising.

Ad exec Mitch Joel—who calls laziness not sloth, but self-approval—laments what he sees in his own industry. "There is no doubt that certain strategies and tactics work, but it's the lazy mentality that has got me down these days," he says.

Folks in advertising, Joel says, are allergic to "long, hard and disruptive work." They're unwilling to wake up in the morning and say, "Today is a great day! We're going to destroy what doesn't work, test more things, tweak others, build newer metrics, and keep at it."

You might say they need some woke.

A lot of businesspeople need some woke. Instead, they're imbibing hype.

Hype is particularly dazzling to event producers, says event planner Warwick Davies, who's down on the hype-of-the-month: event tech.

Event tech promises panaceas, but really offers little more than quick-fix "gimmicks," Davies observes.

Gimmicks won't resurrect a dead event.

"Sure, there are some tools and processes which will make your event more efficient and easier," Davies says, "but none will fix an event which is poorly conceived, researched, and not wanted by your prospective audience."

No silver bullet can substitute for long, hard. disruptive work.

"If your philosophy about how to create a valuable event is wrong, there’s no amount of technology that is going to save you," he says.