Technology
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 | Assignments for TLEP 4830
Technology has come so far in recent years I begin to wonder what else can be invented. While much of technology can be seen as a bad thing, there are also many good aspects that have come out of the phenomena. Since I would like to be an event planner I am going to look at the positive and negative sides of technology within the event planning field.
The first positive aspect that I can think of is the amount of information that can be sent to potential clients without having to take the time to meet with them in person. By taking pictures of event spaces ready for an event and emailing it to a client, that potential client will be able to better imagine their event taking place. It also makes it more convenient for clients to view venue websites to see if that area could be a potential event site. In the end it saves time for both the event planner and the potential client. Another positive aspect of technology in the event planning field is the amount of awesome effects it can have on your event. Clients are now able to have projection screens, state of the art DJ equipment, and the most incredible lighting you will ever see at their events. It is no longer only the rich and famous who have lavish events because thanks to innovations in technology it is easy and cheap to have an over the top ball, wedding or fundraiser.
Of negative aspects, I think one problem is the loss of communication between the planner and the client/potential clients. One may rely too much on email and that message may get lost or fail to send, without one another knowing. I remember over the summer I worked for an organization and a women requested information about our venues via our websites automatic request forms. She did not leave a phone number, only an email address. When I went to email her, the address would not go through and therefore I could not send her the information. About a week later she sent another request stating she was angry we had not sent her information. As it turns out, I compared her email addresses and she misspelled her email address on the first request. All because of one misspelled word our department was yelled at for not sending information, eventually everything was cleared up after we said what happened, but customers often have trouble finding out they were the problem. The second problem with technology is broad but true for all careers and that is distractions. Whether it is an add, facebook, YouTube, your email, whatever it is people who are at work on a computer have trouble with being distracted. This takes away from being with your clients or working on their events, and according to our lecture it takes up almost 6 hours per work week.
As a future event planner, the software package I found was EventPro. What I liked the best about the software was that it was specifically aimed for event planners. Many other types of programs say that you can organize your schedule and calendar, which is great, however with event planners we need an extremely detailed schedule. The top applications I liked most about the program were:
- Itineraries- not only did the program let you schedule the event but it allows you to add an itinerary describing the times of each activity all that can be e-mailed directly to the attendees and clients.
- Set up requirements- there is a function allowing the planner to see all of the chairs and tables available. By a drop down button you are able to take those chairs and schedule them for your event. This application assures the planner they will have enough chairs and tables for each event without any confusion.
- Name tags- Though it may seem lame, I liked that there was a function strictly allowing you to create name badges. This helps save time in trying to format a document to the right size for the name tag you want.
- Automatic Reminders- There is an application allowing the planner to set a to-do list. From there the items will be sent periodically to your e-mail, reminding you to complete it.
Since I am currently not actually using the product it was hard to find flaws of the program, from what I could read though I could really only come up with one flaw:
- There could be problems with the program and if there are it could mess up all the events that have already been planned.