diesel fumes get you every time

Putting on events can be exciting, frustrating, profitable, and tedious. Often, they are all those things at the same time.

The Corporate Education Center at Western Dakota Tech put on a Marketing Boot Camp for Women today in honor of Entrepreneur’s Week. We had excellent speakers (post-event surveys confirmed this), lunch was well-received, and we delivered a lot of great information about marketing. However, I can almost hear what the attendees will say about the event: “It was great, but the diesel fumes were terrible.”

We held the event in one of WDT’s lecture halls, which is located adjacent to a large shop area. An area company rented the shop, and when they were finished, they brought a diesel pick-up into the shop to pull out a trailer. The pick-up was running for less than five minutes, but the fumes seeped into the lecture hall and stank up the place. Two attendees left the room and listened from the hallway, and many others noted the noxious interruption on the event survey.

Frustrating. Very, very frustrating.

We made up for the scheduling conflict by offering all attendees half-priced admission to next year’s event. It was the least we could do.

Planning a great event means taking care of every detail and trying to anticipate every problem. Sometimes, things still go awry. In those cases, you better hope the content of the event is good enough so people start with praise when the answer the question, “How was that seminar?”