Best Practices for On-Site Success
After powering thousands of events over the past many years, we've learned a thing or two about what an event planner can do to be most prepared for their on-site event in case of anything going wrong. Generally speaking, the process is extremely smooth and event planners have a great and efficient time using PheedLoop On-Site. However, we've compiled some of our top recommendations for things you may want to do to maximize your chance of success, just in case!
Invest in Support
If you're new to any platform, PheedLoop or not, and especially if you believe your team is not particularly tech savvy, it's a worthwhile investment to acquire advanced support. Ideally you have a PheedLoop staff member on-site for the duration of your event to manage all the technical details for you. However, if this isn't financially feasible for you, there are other options that may be worth considering. For example, you can have our on-site staff member available for just one day, to make sure the initial set up is all good. If even that is not possible, you can acquire our remote live support, so that our team is on-call for you.
This is helpful in many scenarios, but nothing beats being on-site itself as our remote team is incredibly helpful and responsive, but cannot troubleshoot on-site specific things such as internet connectivity or printer settings. If there's no level of on-site support that's feasible for your event, consider investing more time in testing so that you have a larger buffer to account for any troubleshooting. A final thing you can consider if your budget is so limited is simplifying your event by using simpler badge printing methods, like our free badge sheets option. Learn more here.
Test, Test, and Test Again!
Especially important if you do not have one of our on-site staff members at your event, it's absolutely crucial to test your systems and have them set up well in advance of your opening day. We strongly suggest getting started with testing a minimum of 48 hours prior to your opening day, to ensure ample time to work out and tweak anything that may come up. There's nothing more important that you can do for your event's success than testing beforehand. The absolute last thing you want to do is attempt to set things up an hour before your event, and get stuck hand writing badges - we've seen it happen before and it's not pretty.
Invest in Backup Options
Murphy's Law seems to apply to events more than just about any other situation - "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." However, there are ways to prove Murphy wrong, and that's by investing in backup options! Our best advice is to invest in a backup option for internet, by ensuring you have both venue internet and mobile hotspots as options (either can reliably serve as your primary, learn more here). Other things you may want to have backups for are printers. Even if you have a small event, we generally recommend a minimum of 2 kiosks (including 2 printers).
The printers we send you are extremely robust and reliable, but you just never know. Someone may accidentally drop a printer, perhaps someone steals one, one may not work (extremely unlikely, but possible), etc. Having two of your critical systems, including things like cables, allows you to have the peace of mind in case Murphy shows up for a badge.
Create Some Buffer
There are a lot of variables that are beyond your control or ability to predict perfectly for on-site events, such as the precise number of people who will show up for your event. So if you have 500 people you expect to show up, don't just get 500 or even 520 badges and lanyards. Get a lot more than than that, because you just never know how many people lose things, require re-prints, or whatever else may happen.
Especially when it comes to consumables like badge labels, things can run short very quickly. Our rule of thumb is to get 20% more of any consumables, just in case. It's typically a small investment relative to the painful realization and stress leading up to it. Even better, you can likely use those extras for your next event, so they won't go to waste.