First let me say that I am proud of the Vancouver Canucks who played hard to get to the Stanley Cup Final. Note the word played. We play sports. When we play there should be joy. Win or Lose. In schools and sports for younger children they don't even keep score as they believe it is about teaching children the love of sport, exercise and friendly competition. As children get older we are meant to teach them about good sportsmanship, fair play and winning with joy and losing with grace. The Canucks lost with respect for the other team and grace in losing.
However all these lessons seem to have been lost on a small portion of the more than 100,000 people that had filled the streets of Vancouver to watch this final game of the season. This small portion can blame the Canucks for their anger, an anger that incited riots, burnings and lootings - but they made this choice for violence, possibly even before the game began. Now this is not the first time that a small portion of a group has taken advantage of a situation like this - a festival or sporting event that draws large number of crowds - to bring out the very worst in themselves and a few around them. It is horrifying to watch and must have been even more horrible to be part of. Especially if you were one of the many who went with good intentions to share with your tribe of Vancouver fans an experience that is not often replicated. Hockey fans believe in their team, they believe in the power of team sports - it is disruptive individuals who started these riots - not fans.
As an Event Producer we learn about risk management. We learn terms such as crowd surge, crowd push and others - there is no term of "crowd control" as control is lost when we bring together large groups of people. We rely on the support of the professionals - police, security, medical, fire, transit and more to assist us in planning for the safest management of crowds. During the Olympics we saw first hand that it is possible to bring together hundreds of thousands and to be safe. When individuals are bent on destruction, it becomes nearly impossible to stop them, and we have seen this over the years in hundreds of examples, from world wars to love festivals, 9-11 to last night's riots. We will continue to teach event professionals the importance of risk management, and to work with teams of professionals to keep people safe.
As a human I feel shared shame that this has happened in our city and a belief that I still live in one of the greatest cities in the world, where the vast majority are warm, friendly Canadians who will rapidly restore our city to what it was. As a parent, I will continue to instill values in my children that are about the positive power of teamwork and also a strong sense of individual responsibility to make the right choice. Those that choose to violence - in any form - are not to be respected or joined.
I will continue to hold out hope and to plan carefully so that we can continue to safely enjoy events of all kinds that bring us together in the joy of shared experience.
I know many have thoughts to share, please do.
Showing posts with label Vancouver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vancouver. Show all posts
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Thursday, October 7, 2010
You are Always Planning the Unexpected
This may be one of the greatest compliments I have ever received and it was just this week, but it was related to events both this week and from other events the giver of the compliment had experienced with us over the summer. It really has made me think about what I love about what we do. We are often asked for "out of the box" "creative" ideas that will "wow" our guests, and then find out that the budgets don't match the wishes, or that what creative means to us is vastly different from what it means to the clients.
We love to create surprises and this week has offered us myriad opportunities to do this, and for this we thank a client who had trust, and who wanted to do a little bit of shaking up of the norm. As the chief said "it is time to move this organization forward" and we embraced the challenge to keep things safe and elegant, but to add the unexpected. Adding the unexpected has generated comments from "This IS a party", to "they were in a cage" (they were not, it was a Circus SkyLadder), to simply, "WOW!"
From the fantastic keynote speaker they selected, to the surprise of the performance that culminated with a flash mob coming out of the audience to help move the thousands upstairs, a fabulous reception with the Vancouver Convention Centre pulling out all the stops, to the fortune tellers that were lined up all night, the light dance and the silk aerialists that had waited 50' above the audience for 98 minutes... to the fireworks that lit up the harbour, this welcome was a memorable start.
We have continued the week with dinners, performances, venues and delightful surprises, and we are excited about tomorrow's closing... and then on to the events that follow.
Next week is a 50' violin - new group, just as much "unexpected" we believe to come!
We love to create surprises and this week has offered us myriad opportunities to do this, and for this we thank a client who had trust, and who wanted to do a little bit of shaking up of the norm. As the chief said "it is time to move this organization forward" and we embraced the challenge to keep things safe and elegant, but to add the unexpected. Adding the unexpected has generated comments from "This IS a party", to "they were in a cage" (they were not, it was a Circus SkyLadder), to simply, "WOW!"
From the fantastic keynote speaker they selected, to the surprise of the performance that culminated with a flash mob coming out of the audience to help move the thousands upstairs, a fabulous reception with the Vancouver Convention Centre pulling out all the stops, to the fortune tellers that were lined up all night, the light dance and the silk aerialists that had waited 50' above the audience for 98 minutes... to the fireworks that lit up the harbour, this welcome was a memorable start.
We have continued the week with dinners, performances, venues and delightful surprises, and we are excited about tomorrow's closing... and then on to the events that follow.
Next week is a 50' violin - new group, just as much "unexpected" we believe to come!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Bring your kids to work day?
Excerpts from conversations with the client...
Hey, we have a great idea! For the World's Greatest Backyard, we want to make sure it is easy for people to get their beverage of choice, of course. In addition to the greatest grapevine, we are definitely going to include the hydration station, with lots of flavoured water (a huge hit btw) and then we are going to have the specialty bars, and the beer stations with our great local microbrew from Granville Island Brewing, but what about that lemonade stand? Wouldn't it be great to have some kids?
At this point the event planner / mother in me feels a small start of... was that panic? Maybe as I seem to have stopped breathing. I definitely don't want to have to worry about kids at the largest most pressure filled event for our peers of all time... thinking, thinking... what is the right response... stalled completely by the next question, "What about your kids? They are adorable!". Now, every mother wants to hear exactly those words, your kids are adorable. uh - oh, there is only one thing to say... "let me ask them!" I say brightly!
So I asked them if they might know any kids who would be interested in working at this large, important event, and their hands shot up. OK, I guess we will try this. My daughter was especially keen and asked if she could come and spend the whole day with me setting up. Sure, why not, we can use more volunteers, so she did. The first question, as we loaded into the car at 6am was "So Mom, is there like a main person who is in charge of this event tonight?" Apparently my children, who have traveled to exotic destinations like Quebec City and Beijing with me on programs, have no idea what I do!
Well in the end, it was a fantastic day, and the joy of having a junior volunteer, is when you ask them to do anything, they RUN. Think about this high productivity booster, and how can we harness that? I generally discourage running on-site, but in this case, we had a lot of ground to cover.
At the end of it all, they were adorable, and helpful and it was indeed a pleasure to bring my kids to work... and if you had any lemonade at the MPI WEC10 Welcome Reception, you got to meet them too!
Hey, we have a great idea! For the World's Greatest Backyard, we want to make sure it is easy for people to get their beverage of choice, of course. In addition to the greatest grapevine, we are definitely going to include the hydration station, with lots of flavoured water (a huge hit btw) and then we are going to have the specialty bars, and the beer stations with our great local microbrew from Granville Island Brewing, but what about that lemonade stand? Wouldn't it be great to have some kids?
At this point the event planner / mother in me feels a small start of... was that panic? Maybe as I seem to have stopped breathing. I definitely don't want to have to worry about kids at the largest most pressure filled event for our peers of all time... thinking, thinking... what is the right response... stalled completely by the next question, "What about your kids? They are adorable!". Now, every mother wants to hear exactly those words, your kids are adorable. uh - oh, there is only one thing to say... "let me ask them!" I say brightly!
So I asked them if they might know any kids who would be interested in working at this large, important event, and their hands shot up. OK, I guess we will try this. My daughter was especially keen and asked if she could come and spend the whole day with me setting up. Sure, why not, we can use more volunteers, so she did. The first question, as we loaded into the car at 6am was "So Mom, is there like a main person who is in charge of this event tonight?" Apparently my children, who have traveled to exotic destinations like Quebec City and Beijing with me on programs, have no idea what I do!
Well in the end, it was a fantastic day, and the joy of having a junior volunteer, is when you ask them to do anything, they RUN. Think about this high productivity booster, and how can we harness that? I generally discourage running on-site, but in this case, we had a lot of ground to cover.
At the end of it all, they were adorable, and helpful and it was indeed a pleasure to bring my kids to work... and if you had any lemonade at the MPI WEC10 Welcome Reception, you got to meet them too!
Next time they want to be on the trampoline though!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)