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A Little Bit About Event Managers

As you tour around this site and read all the fantastic articles on event management, you might be (or might not be, to be fair,) struck with the raging question about the essentiality of an event manager.

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Or, to put it in far less pretentious terms, what being an event manager is all about. Now I’ve never felt that I’ve needed to demean my dear readers and I’m sure a lot of the technical nitty-gritty details of event management can be easily sourced elsewhere, so instead, in this article, let’s give you a little bit of that followed by a few interesting things that might be useful to know about event managers.

Who

Before we get to the more geeky and fun stuff later on, it should be important to understand what exactly it is event managers do. In my definition, this term “event manager” can refer to just one or indeed a team of managers. Nonetheless, this person or these persons are those who conceptualize, create and then execute an event and this takes into account all the creative and technical requirements that events have.

As many of the articles on this fine, fine blog have shown, though, event management is an increasingly complicated business as technological and artistic capabilities improve. This has the double-edged effect of giving event managers tools with which to craft a show, but it does also heighten the expectations of clients. Therefore, the modern event manager has to manage this, the client, pre-event marketing campaigns, budgeting, publicity, post-show operations and many other things. If that doesn’t sound daunting, this profession is the one for you!

How Much

But it is a burgeoning industry so there’ll be chances for you if you are one of those who can indeed juggle all the abovementioned responsibilities deftly. With event management covering a whole myriad of events from large music festivals to a small tea party, there are work and career opportunities everywhere. In fact, it is estimated that around US$263 Billion is spent on event projects annually in the United States. Wherever you work around the world, event management is a growing and flourishing industry.

Still with the same source, there were 94,200 event managers in the US in 2012 and this is projected to increase by 33% in 2022. Further evidence of a party that you don’t want to miss. Obviously it also does mean more competition but, hey, no one said this was going to be an easy job. If anything, I’ve tried to tell you that it isn’t.

More Challenges

A survey conducted among event professionals has revealed that staffing your team with high-quality individuals is increasingly difficult, especially for entry-level positions. 54% of respondents said that 2014 was as lean a year in this respect as 2013 while 33% said it was even worse. As written about in earlier articles, one of the most important thing in my book is being a good leader – one who knows who to delegate to a competent team that you have taken the effort to assemble to the best of everybody’s ability. Obviously, and this survey backs this up, that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that it is getting more difficult to find a “qualified person who is eager to learn about the industry and take on more responsibility”.

What

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it though. In how many other industries can there be a chance for you to combine so many different disciplines and/or art forms in crafting a project in your vision? Not many, that’s how many. So as daunting as the job may seen, it is incredibly satisfying both intellectually and emotionally to see your work come to fruition.

That’s (A Little Bit Of) It

These points, erm, point to the idea that event managers are working in a burgeoning and ever-expanding industry so the opportunities are there for any one who is ambitious either in a more materialistic sense, but also in a more theoretical sense. There is money to be made, but there is also much satisfaction to be had in event planning. We shouldn’t forget that it is still a very tough job and requires a lot of bottle, but hey, what’s life without a few challenges?

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