You can give your opinion, but they’re going to do what they want to do.
That’s life in corporate America for venue operations and engineering directors. Everyone is fighting for a seat at the table, but bottom line, someone has to lead and decide and someone has to execute that decision.
Thus there is a lot of giving of opinions and then doing what you’re told to do.
Making it happen is just as creative as selling the show. The stories shared during our Venue Operations Summit in Nashville have inspired me to always look up when visiting arenas.
Booking shows is a venue’s bread and butter. Making them happen is the main course. Matt Balk, Tacoma (Wash.) Venues and Events, once had to hang half of one show and all of another to accommodate back-to-back concerts, both of which needed a full load-in day. That’s a balancing act.
Alex Diaz shared that at Madison Square Garden, New York, he had to leave concert equipment hanging so the dog show could commence. When the Pope bumped Billy Joel, whose show was already loaded in, he simply had the Pope use Joel’s sound system.
For 30 years, I’ve asked how long load in and load out take. I know that’s critical in booking shows, meetings and events of any type. I should have been asking how long did you give them to load in and load out, because that’s the way the industry rolls. You simply can’t afford to say no, that’s impossible; someone has to make it happen. The journalist who asks who, what, when, where and why needs to go one step further and ask how?
Every day is different and, as Sporty Jeralds, University of South Carolina, Columbia, will tell you, change is the only constant.
Sporty told a story at VOS that got a chuckle going among operations pros. He recalled a day at Charlotte Coliseum when a pipe was leaking into the dressing room. He saw no choice but to turn off the water before it burst, which would be disastrous for the artists preparing to perform.
But along came the ultimate handyman, his director of operations, who said, wait a minute, I have an idea. And he did. He found a workaround.
Decades later, Sporty is still telling the story. “I couldn’t believe our $65-million building was being held together by a towel and a broomstick.”
I always return from VOS with a heightened awareness of mold and mildew, standing water, dirty upholstery and banged up and zip-tied telescopic seating. I immediately survey my homestead, wishing I had an ops director to ask and a mobile maintenance system to employ.
And when I visit a venue, I’m much more cognizant of what it takes to make a show possible, seamless and satisfying for the fan. There is a lot behind the execution of those dreams marketing sells.
God grant you many years to find your seat at the table.
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FROM THE EDITOR
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