IT Revolution

Event

The Brief

IT Revolution publish bestselling books such as The Phoenix Project, Team Topologies, and Accelerate, as well as guidance papers authored by enterprise technology leaders and industry luminaries. This all comes together at their annual DevOps Enterprise Summits in the US and Europe. Goho were asked to provide event and registration support for the entire three-day conference in Amsterdam, and ensure everything was flowing smoothly, across sessions, coffee breaks, etc. 

The Challenge

We were asked to provide support on the build day before the live conference to get the registration and conference area ready for the delegates. The challenge was to manage a busy and fast pace registration desk for each day of the conference and to help scan and monitor attendance at breakout sessions across the three days of the conference while maintaining the smooth running of the conference generally.

Our Approach

Pre-conference we familiarised ourselves with the agenda for the three days.  When we arrived on build day we walked through the Okura hotel event spaces where the production team were in the process of building the main plenary staging and the expo stands in the expo hall. 

We made sure to familiarise ourselves with the whole client delivery team and made them aware of our presence to support them throughout the duration of the build and conference.  Likewise, we familiarised ourselves with the hotel staff and the team with which we would be closely working to ensure the smooth running of the conference.

We ensured all lanyards were prepared and ready for day one registration, we learned to use the registration portals and the administration system behind this for any unregistered attendees and to pull the attendance statistics while in live registration.  We set up the signage for direction to the plenaries and expo spaces ahead of conference day one.

We were up at the crack of dawn on conference day one.  It was all hands on deck to ensure registration and cloaks ran smoothly to get delegates registered and into the conference as efficiently as possible.  We made sure we were present and available to the client for any ad hoc jobs and requests at any given time the entire day.  We made sure we were super vigilant in making sure all catering was fulfilled correctly and that after the refreshments and lunch breaks, the spaces were cleared down to a high standard.  We attended the drinks reception at the end of the day in the expo hall and handed out the books that the client was signing to ensure there were no backlogs or queues.  This went seamlessly.  We remained on hand for the client for any requests or assistance they needed.

Day two and three of the conference took on a similar style to day one, but in addition, there were many many breakout sessions.  We had to ensure all attendees to all breakouts were scanned and logged for recording purposes.  This process required meticulous organisation to ensure that people were directed to the correct breakout room and scanned into those sessions in a timely manner.  There was no time between session changeover, so we had to be logistically swift, direct and tactical to get everybody scanned during these tricky changeovers. 

Results

Our management of the conference was hugely appreciated by our clients.  They praised our efficiency, our quick thinking and problem solving, our conscientiousness and our positive attitude towards getting the job done.  Our involvement helped make the first European DOES conference back after a few years hiatus, a huge success all round and we look forward to managing the next one!