From Chaos to Coordination: Event Communication Strategies from Taste of Madison

Discover how Taste of Madison improved event communication with text messaging to keep attendees, staff, and volunteers informed. Learn practical strategies to reduce confusion, improve coordination, and create a better event experience. Transcript below.

Brittany Lawson [00:05-00:32]: Hey, everybody! Welcome to our webinar. This is Brittany, and I have Bonnie with us. We're going to give everyone a few minutes to Show up and log in, and then we'll get started. Connie, can you see the PowerPoint slide okay?

Bonnie Oleson [00:35]: Yes. Yep. It looks great.

Brittany Lawson [00:37-02:17]: Awesome. Yeah, as you come in, Go ahead and open up the chat and drop. Where you're at, where in the country are you struggling to breathe because of the heat? So Bonnie and Megan and I were just talking about, so where are you hailing from? What organization are you with? Love to see where everybody's coming from. Yes. All right. Okay, let's go ahead and get started. So we'll just let people drop where they're at as they come in. Bonnie, thanks for joining me today.

Bonnie Oleson [02:23]: Thanks for having me. I appreciate you asking.

Brittany Lawson [02:25-04:20]: Yeah. So we're here talking today about all the chaos of event planning. And Bonnie and I met at a conference that was focused on events. and she had some things. excuse me, some things in particular that were pain points with just events. Coordinating, launching the follow up, like kind of the whole nine yards. And just looking for some specific tools that could help with some of these areas. that needed some attention, mostly revolving around communication. So, I'm so glad that we were able to get in touch with each other, and see how our tools could help. So, Bonnie's gonna talk to y'all a little bit today about her events, what it's like in Madison, where she's hailing from. What her events are like and how our tools have been helping things run a little bit smoother. But, I'll go ahead and, let… I'll introduce myself first, and then I'll turn it over to Bonnie so she can tell more about her story. I'm with Engage by Sell, of course. We are a software company that helps in all things communication. We work with a lot of different industries, but the main thing is just helping folks get engaged. And just bridge the gap. There's, a lot of different ways you can communicate with people, and over the years, tech has changed a lot, and these days, there's some new technology that really helps things run smoother. So… Again, we've been around for 20 plus years. We're all cloud based. We're We're a human company. It's not bots and AI that's running this show. So we're proud of that. And yeah, excited to meet more organizations like Bonnie's. Bonnie, introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about Madison Festivals.

Bonnie Oleson [04:26-05:15]: All right. My name is Bonnie Olson. We are based in Madison, Wisconsin. We do two events as Madison Festivals. We're owned by a nonprofit. Our events are Taste of Madison, which is the picture you see here. That's one of the stages at Taste, and the Madison Marathon, which is the largest half marathon in the state of Wisconsin. So we have about 8,000 runners in that. So we've got a lot of people we have to talk to, a lot of people that work with us during these events. And, our event that we're going to talk about mostly today is Taste of Madison. And this event is located around our Capitol Square. It's about a half a mile diameter of the footprint of the event is about half a mile around. We have 90 restaurants, we have 2 music stages, we have lots of activations going around the square. And we have a lot of beverage stands that have a lot of volunteers, so that's why I needed Brittany's help mainly with, getting communication set up between our volunteers and our food stands.

Brittany Lawson [05:27]: Awesome. When you say a lot of volunteers, do you roughly know about how many volunteers you have?

Bonnie Oleson [05:34]: We have about 250 volunteers.

Brittany Lawson [05:38]: That's good.

Bonnie Oleson [05:38]: go throughout the weekend, and we have 90 restaurants, so I usually get one or two people communicating from each restaurant, and then we communicate with all the volunteers, too, so it's a lot of people that you end up talking to throughout the weekend.

Brittany Lawson [05:52-06:35]: Definitely. Yep, that's a lot of people to coordinate, some plans with, so I get it. Okay, awesome. So one of the things that, Bonnie and I discussed when we met at the conference, was weather changes. That was a big topic, I know. Just being able to get out there to your volunteers and your vendors about you know, weather events that are happening, and then how to let the broader audience know, too, that if for some reason you had to take cover, how are you managing that and getting the information out there to everybody? And then it just kind of spiraled into more, ways to communicate as well. Could you tell us a little bit more about your best planned events.

Bonnie Oleson [06:39-08:34]: Yes, so what we used to do when we had weather issues is we would kind of do a communication tree where I would call one person, they would call five other people, they would call just kind of go down and down, down, trickle down, which kind of becomes inefficient, especially when you're in a Wisconsin summer. And all of a sudden a tornado can pop up or a thunderstorm comes rolling through. We need to communicate very quickly to people, especially because of all the power that we have on site. We need to make sure that lightning isn't going to be an issue with our people. And it's an outdoor event with that, you know, people need to get back to their vehicles. So, when I was talking to Brittany, I was very concerned about weather, is our… was our biggest concern at the time, and making sure that we communicate people if they have to put their tent… if vendors have to put their tents down. If volunteers need to close up the tents and get to safety for their… their safe issue, and for staging, if we need to shut those down and tell our staff what has to happen. So, we had a lot of people with questions about what to do, no matter how many signs you put up and how many things you do, people are always gonna, you know, they'll ignore it and they'll call somebody, they'll have a question. So it, when I was originally talking to you, it was about weather and making sure that we had those communications set up. And the emergency situations can be pretty drastic and pretty quick. So we need to make sure that we have a good way to communicate with everybody that way. So that was how we used to do things, was just kind of with signs and with the trees. And it was, it was really hard because we would end up. Calling one person, you'd talk to five minutes for someone, forget to call someone, somebody would get left out. And it was, it got to be a little tedious and hard. And there were a lot, like, there were a lot of delays in that, where all of a sudden, maybe the weather was over, and then people had more questions. So it was just… it was really frustrating, what we used to do, how we used to handle the process.

Brittany Lawson [08:47-08:54]: I can only imagine. A phone tree seems like it's great in theory, but it's only as good as everybody who's involved in the tree. You're relying on a lot of people to pull it off, not just me.

Bonnie Oleson [08:58]: was really good in the 80s when I was in grade school, but you know, I don't think it's the way to do things now.

Brittany Lawson [09:05]: Yeah, especially when it's something that's really urgent. If it's something that takes like, okay, and you then then find out at some point this week, cool. But like in the moment when this, when a storm's rolling through, yeah, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense.

Bonnie Oleson [09:18]: And then it's like playing, it's like playing the old telephone game. You tell someone something, they tell, they change the story, they change the story. And then it's rabbits falling from the sky by the time you're done with the story.

Brittany Lawson [09:29]: Yeah, and the storm has gone and passed. It was here an hour ago.

Bonnie Oleson [09:31]: And it's over. And it's over.

Brittany Lawson [09:34-09:35]: Oh. Awesome. Well, you tried, and at least you learned. And, you know, I mean, you got to do something. So I'm sure you're not the only person who still has this method that they're using out there. And for a lot of things, it probably works. But the stuff that's really timely probably needs something that's a little bit more reliable.

Bonnie Oleson [09:51]: Oh, for sure, for sure.

Brittany Lawson [09:52]: Okay. What do you feel like your breaking point was? Was there one or has this been just culminating over time?

Bonnie Oleson [10:01-10:30]: It was culminating, but the actual breaking point was we have a safety meeting that we have with our county, state, city. fire and police departments, and they literally looked at us and said, how are you going to get the word out to everybody? And when your answer is, phone tree! They look at you like you're crazy. So, that was kind of the pushing point for us. Was we realized we weren't keeping up with technology and we weren't keeping up with the best way to communicate with people at this huge outdoor event. So.

Brittany Lawson [10:30-10:37]: Okay, gotcha. That makes sense. So yeah, if you could tell me a little bit more about The aftermath of that. So you say phone tree. They don't love that idea.

Bonnie Oleson [10:41]: Did you start with that?

Brittany Lawson [10:42]: exploring other options, what did that look like?

Bonnie Oleson [10:44-11:49]: So, I was… I was looking at different ways to… to trying to do push messages. We used to have an app that you could sign up for push messages, but what ended up happening is there's not great cell service where we have our event, and when you put 150, 200,000 people all of a sudden in this area. this… nobody could download the app, so nobody was getting the messages. Right. So, when I… when I talk to you at the event, I'm like, okay, this has got to be the best way to do this, because everybody talks through text messages now. And what was happening for the past couple years was even though we had our phone tree and we had our street captains and we had everybody talking to people, people were still texting me personally. So I was getting 90 restaurants, I was getting volunteer leads, I was getting stage people saying, what are we doing? What are we doing? And it was impossible for me to keep up. So that's when I realized if there's a better way that we can actually mass text people that would. work with what we had downtown for cell service. That's what I needed to figure out.

Brittany Lawson [11:55-12:04]: Okay, gotcha. So, yeah, when they're texting you to your personal phone, were you replying to most of them? Did it… Was it a lot of questions? Yeah.

Bonnie Oleson [12:06]: Yeah, it's a lot of questions. And it was, where do we go? Do we leave our tents up? What do we do with the garbage? Should we close the tents? Where's more ice? I mean, I was getting everything.

Brittany Lawson [12:19]: Yeah. And.

Bonnie Oleson [12:19-12:28]: And… Sometimes I would have to ask someone, then three other messages would come in and I would have to remember to text all the people back. So yeah, it just, it got to be a lot while I was still doing everything else, you know, helping with the event, so.

Brittany Lawson [12:35]: Yeah, because I'm sure you had lots of time to just sit on.

Bonnie Oleson [12:37]: Yes, totally. That's all we do as event planners, right? Yeah, for sure. Okay.

Brittany Lawson [12:43-12:52]: Okay, gotcha. So people that were often hounding you on your personal phone, that's like your vendors, volunteers, staff. Security, as well.

Bonnie Oleson [12:55]: Yeah, we had security too at the stage security and event security. Yeah.

Brittany Lawson [12:59]: Okay, gotcha. Street teams, what do those people look like?

Bonnie Oleson [13:04-13:18]: So, we had street team people that would kind of… they were kind of like block captains. So, the way our event is, there's four main streets that go around the square, so I'd have a block captain on each of the blocks, and they would go in and you know, try to figure out who needs to be talked to, who can we, you know, they would try to pass the word to. So they were all texting me too. So I would have to make sure they have the information. So if they got a question, they could look at their phone and say, here's the correct answer that I need. Okay.

Brittany Lawson [13:35]: Awesome. Well, that takes some of the pressure off of you. You're delegating some of this stuff to these people that are running different areas.

Bonnie Oleson [13:41]: Right. Okay.

Brittany Lawson [13:42]: Okay, cool. So that helps you not have to be in a million places at once.

Bonnie Oleson [13:47]: Appreciate it.

Brittany Lawson [13:48-13:51]: Great. Yeah. So, what you started sending were a series of text messages, and in the time that it would take to send this message of this information to one person, you're sending it to 100 or more, right?

Bonnie Oleson [14:06-15:07]: Yes, it was so nice. What we ended up doing once I actually got into the software was realize you could schedule all these text messages to people and saying, hey, you know, like the one you have up on the screen right now, we're excited for you to be here tomorrow. Get here by this time, you know, make sure that you're ready to go. Make sure that you're dressed in your staff apparel. And then we could do specific messages to specific people. So this was one for our vendor groups. And then we had some for parking instructions. We had some to remind people about the health department coming through. We had some saying, hey, we're going to be open in an hour. Make sure you're ready to serve at your booth. So it was really nice because that's something I didn't have to worry about day out. I thought about it 2 weeks before, and I could put it in the program and make it wordsmith it a little bit to make it. Quick and easy for people to read and then forget about it. So they just went out and I made sure I put myself on the, all the lists too, so I could see what was coming out. So I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. We sent those. That's cool. So it was nice to have that too.

Brittany Lawson [15:22-15:52]: Yeah, that's great. I like that you said, too, that you kind of wordsmithed it. One of the things that I know that we've implemented at Engage My Cell with our text messaging since I've been with the company, and I've been with the company over three years now. We added a little bit of an AI feature where you can use ChatGPT to help you take a long message when you have a ton of info. And I know from talking to you, especially when it comes to sending alerts for events, there can be a ton that you need to say in one text. So you could kind of put it into the AI chat thing and it will spit back out what you need in, you know, your 136 characters or whatever, but it's hitting all the points that you needed.

Bonnie Oleson [16:04-16:31]: And that's one thing that, you know, I'm so used to going, I'm so happy that you are going to be with us tomorrow. People don't care about that. It's like, hey, glad you're here. You know, and you, I end up a lot of time talking in text messages like I do in. Emails? So, I want to make sure that that's a great feature, and another great feature, too, is the bit.ly link, where you can you can, send a link to somebody, so it's like, here's where the parking ramps are, and you can send them a link to a website, and instead of the website taking up 50 of your characters, it goes down to something real little. So that's a real helpful tool, also.

Brittany Lawson [16:46]: Yeah.

Bonnie Oleson [16:46-16:54]: But yeah, that's something that we had to wordsmith a little bit. So I'm really excited for the AI tool to help us out with that. And make it sound a little smarter on our texts.

Brittany Lawson [16:57-17:04]: And, and just, you know, people treat text messages the same way they do. Emails where it needs to be short and sweet. You got to get that message in there in that one text.

Bonnie Oleson [17:09]: It'.

Brittany Lawson [17:10]: read the second or third text if you're splitting it up like that.

Bonnie Oleson [17:13]: They're not going to scroll through your text message. They want the highlights.

Brittany Lawson [17:17]: Yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. So real-time communication changes everything. Instead of walkie-talkies, phone trees, and physical runners, one message reaches everyone instantly. Were you using walkie-talkies?

Bonnie Oleson [17:32-18:26]: Yes, we had… we have walkie-talkies. I have… I still have some that I implement for person-to-person communication between some of our groups, but I had walkie-talkies with our street captains, and then I have… I'd have them with other members, too, that needed to have the information, like the volunteer… the heads of volunteers, or whatever. But it got really hard, because a lot of times they… wouldn't know exactly how to ask a question or something, and people get nervous talking on a walkie-talkie. When they're talking with their thumbs, they're not afraid to say, where do I put the garbage? You know, they'll… they'll just ask you questions, and it goes from there. So yeah, we have walkie-talkies, phone trees, it's really nice not having those. We don't have the physical runners anymore because our street captains have the info. They know how to get a hold of everybody through a text message too. So they can say vendor 304 and they have it and they go that way. So that's nice.

Brittany Lawson [18:32-18:34]: Deal. Okay, perfect. The garbage story. I'm just gonna say that and let you go from there. That's great.

Bonnie Oleson [18:39-20:29]: All you need to say. I think that every event planner has one. crook in their craw about something that has happened to them. And we had a problem last year at Taste of Madison. So like I said, we have 90 food vendors. And at the end of the night, they would always put their garbage on the other side of the street, and our garbage people would come around and pick up the garbage at night so that trash didn't go into our dumpsters and fill everything up. Our garbage people didn't show up. So I had to pick up… I had to assemble a crew. I was part of it, it was so fun. Picking up garbage from everybody and putting it in the dumpsters. So I had to let everybody know that morning Where to take their garbage, if they were on a certain street. where the closest dumpster was, that they had to take care of it that night, that they had to, you know, all of a sudden the rules change on our vendors. And something that, you know, our long-term vendors were like, hey, but this… and I'm like, trust me, I know, they didn't pick up the garbage. I get it, but this is how I need your help. So, it was really nice to be able to just send them a message saying, here's the deal. Here's the new rule. Please go with it. Because then they could hit us back and say, where's the dumpster? Or where should I go? Or where should, you know, they could hit us back right away. But it was a literal mess that we had to go around and clean up. And it was just so much easier to get in touch with the people. One thing that I didn't stress on either is that we have our vendors sign up. I automatically sign up our vendors, so I have the main point of contact. And our vendors can also sign up other people that work in the tent with them. So they have, like, a Saturday lead and a Sunday lead. They sign up those people also. But my main push notification to people goes to the main people. So I knew that the message was going to the right people when I said take your garbage to the dumpsters because I'm not picking up garbage tomorrow morning.

Brittany Lawson [20:47]: Yes.

Bonnie Oleson [20:47-21:03]: So it was really nice to be able to have that instantly of running to our person in our headquarters and saying, this is the message I need you to send and I need you to send it now. And instantly that got to everybody. So it was. It was… Phenomenal. I hate to have a garbage example to make it a good story, but it's a garbage example on my story, so.

Brittany Lawson [21:11]: Yeah. So what would you have done if you didn't have the ability to send a text out to let everybody know?

Bonnie Oleson [21:16-21:20]: We literally would have had to walk around to everybody and say. You have to take your garbage to the dumpster and it's over there. You take your garbage to the dumpster and it's over there. That's what we would have done or I would have talked to the street captains and I would have called all eight of them and said, you need to make sure you tell all your vendors this and hopefully that phone tree and that chain was going to get to the right information and to the right people.

Brittany Lawson [21:40-21:42]: Okay, yeah. Yeah, that's a lot to ask of your team, too, when there's so many vendors and then so many attendees that you're trying to get around to talk to each vendor. Yeah. OK.

Bonnie Oleson [21:52]: And that's what's nice too, is that, you know, like I said, my contact is the main contact for the booth, for the vendor. So they have the responsibility then to pass it along to their team. And then when I go back to them and say, hey, you left something here, I know that that message got to them. So it's nice to be able to do that.

Brittany Lawson [22:09-22:12]: Gotcha. Okay, awesome. Well, thanks for. Sharing that delight.

Bonnie Oleson [22:14]: Sharing my garbage with you. You're welcome.

Brittany Lawson [22:16-22:25]: Yeah. So hours saved. I think it's pretty clear that this has saved a lot of time, even when I'm just thinking about, like, your runners. Yeah. Just cutting that back. That's saving those people time and sweat. The summer, whew, run into each booth. Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Bonnie Oleson [22:32]: Yeah. Yep.

Brittany Lawson [22:33]: So yeah, tell us a little bit about what it looked like before and how that's significantly changed now since you've implemented this.

Bonnie Oleson [22:41-23:41]: It literally cuts hours, like we said, because we would have to pass a message along. and then it would go down the tree, and then they would physically have to walk to everybody to get a message across to people. I was even post… I was handing out signs to people, too, saying, if you have a problem, here's where our headquarter tent is, come see us, that kind of thing. So it was… it was not just saving us time, it was saving our vendors time. And they're the ones that are the most important at the event because they, if we don't have them, we don't have an event. So we need to make sure that we're making their lives easier too. So what's also nice is that the communication that was coming back to us because that saved our vendors time. They weren't trying to track down one, you know, the wrong person or track down a street captain or track down somebody that they could talk to. So it was just so much nicer to be able to send one notification. It's going out in a minute. Less than that. Instead of taking probably an hour to get to everybody that they needed to get to. So, and, you know, a lot of times, like we said before, if it's a weather situation or something, it changes so fast. You just need to make sure that you've got the information as quickly into the hands of the people that need it.

Brittany Lawson [23:59]: Well, and I think too, even trying to text with your personal phone like you were before, that takes so much time writing out that message. You could even try copy and pasting, but that's not just one question everybody's asking. They're hitting you with a ton of different questions. So it's not just a copy paste thing.

Bonnie Oleson [24:14]: And what would happen is people would, people would send me a text and I'd have no idea who they are or what booth they're in.

Brittany Lawson [24:20]: Because…

Bonnie Oleson [24:21-24:41]: Because, you know, it was their other worker that said, oh, here's Bonnie's phone number. Call her if you have problems. And if I, you know, and how many of us have us have 50 contacts in there with no name to them because they randomly text you and you know who they are in that moment. I'll go back and put their name in. You never go back. So you scroll up trying to figure out who these people are. So it's really hard that way.

Brittany Lawson [24:46-24:55]: Yes. That's fine. Leah Davis says, I feel so seen. Sorry you're going through this, Leah. Okay, so, yeah, your vendors, I imagine, really appreciated this, so I want to hear about some of the feedback that you got from them.

Bonnie Oleson [25:04-27:12]: They… they loved it. What they loved the most is that, our food vendors Power's king. If you don't have power, the health department can come and close you down. So the vendors liked it because if they had an issue, especially with power, they could text immediately and say, this is Armando. I'm in booth 312. I don't have power. And immediately someone in our headquarters tent will dispatch that information to our power people. So and then they would text them back and there's an automatic bounce back, but we would text them back and say, contacted the power. They're on the way. And so that way, we knew that communication was going immediately. Where before, they might call me on the phone, they might not get me, they might send me a text, and I'm 12 texts behind. So it's… It's just, they really appreciated the fact that They can get a hold of us because that's the most important thing for them is if I have a problem that's going to shut down my day, I need to make sure that I can get a hold of somebody. They really appreciated that. They really liked that I was able to, you know, I could tell them, hey, surprise, you can drive on the square to set up today. Make sure your cars are off by 10:30. So there was information that I could quickly change my mind about something. And make their lives a little easier. And they got the text message and they could, they could, you know, get the information right away. They like that there was one contact because they could post that number in the booth. I do print out signs for everybody saying, if you have problems during our event, here is the number to text. Include your booth number and the problem. And they… I have… make sure they post it in their booth. They're supposed to. Who knows what they do? But, that way they know how to get a hold of us, too, because they will get an immediate reply. Because I have someone dedicated to this system, and it's not me, which makes my life easier, too. But that's the best part about all of it is the vendors really appreciated it and I was surprised with how much they liked it.

Brittany Lawson [27:20-27:26]: Okay, awesome. There we go. An unexpected benefit, centralized communication. So before, you were the one getting hounded, but you were able to kind of share this responsibility of communication with some of your team now, right?

Bonnie Oleson [27:38-28:18]: Yes. The good thing was, is, I had… I would set up the communication with our vendors, and I had our Volunteer lead set up the communication with the volunteers. So I gave her access to the program and she could go in and craft all the messages because she knew who she was working with. And having those replies go to her and having the other replies go to our headquarters to the person I put in charge. So it was so much nicer. My phone was quiet. Quiet is a relative term during an event, but my phone was a lot quieter than it usually is. And I felt like I had a lot less fires to put out. Because the people that should have been handling it were handling it. And that's the best benefit of the system.

Brittany Lawson [28:26]: Yeah, totally. Then you can focus on the more important stuff that really requires your specific attention.

Bonnie Oleson [28:31]: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Brittany Lawson [28:34-28:44]: Cool. So did you guys mostly just use the mobile version of text messaging? Because with our system, you can log into the platform from your personal cell phone, but still utilize the cell phone number that we assigned to you and the platform through that. Or you could also go in and send text messages and schedule through a desktop or a laptop. Were you using both, or what did that look like?

Bonnie Oleson [28:56-29:58]: I did most of the setup through my laptop computer, because it was just easier for me to type everything out, and to look at it, and to figure everything out ahead of time. So, I did all the pre-setup on my laptop. In headquarters, I did set up a laptop for the person, for Brock, who was using it. I set it up for him, but on my phone, I had I was using the mobile version on my phone and then my headquarters guy had the mobile version on his phone too. So if he walked somewhere, he did something, he would get the notices right away. So I think it kind of just depends on what role you're in and what you're doing because. I really appreciated the desktop version before just to get everything set up because I felt way more comfortable with it than doing it on the phone. But while you're in the action, having it on the phone is awesome. Because you can just see it and it goes. And you can set, you can do the same things. You can do the same thing on desktop as you can on the phone. But. And that's one nice thing, too. But what I found, I was trying to pass some more stuff off, so I would see something come through, and I would get a hold of my headquarters guy and say, send this message out, and then he would do it. So it worked out really well.

Brittany Lawson [30:13-30:24]: Okay, awesome. So the framework, informing, coordinating, responding, and adapting as things change. That's kind of the way that your events looked. Let's talk a little bit about informing what information should be proactively communicated when it comes to events, in your opinion and experience.

Bonnie Oleson [30:36-31:22]: Proactively parking. Parking is very important because vendors want to know where they can pull in, what time they can pull in, because at least in our event, we have food trucks can come in early and then other people come in a little later. So it's important that we can tell them when they can be there. It's important to tell them when they can't be there. Once the grounds have to be clear, it's. When we had… If, if it looks like weather's coming, it's important to push that information out to people because everybody's phone will all of a sudden go off and go and we want to be the ones telling them first. So that they're not freaking out contacting us. Yeah, that'.

Brittany Lawson [31:23]: Alert is not, like, a very soft, friendly nudge, right? Like, it.

Bonnie Oleson [31:26]: It's not.

Brittany Lawson [31:27]: Terrifying when it happens.

Bonnie Oleson [31:29]: Yes, it is. And you know, a lot, and especially because our event is downtown, so you can kind of see the sky's getting dark, but the buildings are kind of taller.

Brittany Lawson [31:37]: Oh, right.

Bonnie Oleson [31:38-32:18]: So as long as we can stay on top of that, and then it saves equipment, it saves people, and it keeps people happy because the happier the vendors are, the happier my day is going to go. So it's just about being proactive with people. And making sure that they know Where they can drop things off, where they can pick things up. If they have a problem, they need to know that headquarters is where it is or that first aid is where it is. So a lot of times we'll get some random questions, but I try to do a lot of proactive things to make sure that our vendors have the information ahead of time, and especially our volunteers, because volunteer groups are almost worse, because it's people that have nothing invested except their time, and so they're just showing up. So you want to make sure that they have all the information they need, too, because they come up with a lot of questions.

Brittany Lawson [32:35-32:38]: Yeah, for sure. That makes sense. So, I mean, you talked a little bit about this, but who needs to know what?

Bonnie Oleson [32:44-32:51]: Yeah, our, our… this is another example of a text that we… I scheduled beforehand. Because we have fridge and freezer trucks at our event and I lock them up overnight to keep all the food safe. And of course people dilly dally or they want to make sure that their stuff makes it in and they get mad if it doesn't. But I want to make sure I can warn everybody because that's a good reminder for people too of, hey, we're going to be closing here.

Brittany Lawson [33:10]: Yes.

Bonnie Oleson [33:10-33:52]: So you better get your stuff and get ready to go. So it's, it's just nice to have. logistic information for the vendors. And it's also nice to leave them on a positive note. Like, at the end of the night, I think we sent out a text saying, what a great day one, can't wait to have you back for day two. You just want to make people feel good. about the event, and when they hear from the people that are in charge of it. It kind of makes them. feel… I don't want to say special, but it makes them feel involved, and it makes them feel like they're part of something bigger. And that's why I try to really communicate with all of our vendors, and make sure that they know That it's the messages they send, they're going to get to me eventually. You know, we'll have an answer for them, but I want to make sure that there's that open communication between us and it's been so important to have that.

Brittany Lawson [34:03-34:40]: Totally. Well, and then that open communication. can really help you in a lot of ways. I mean, you're able to. feel confident responding to them quicker. They feel confident coming to you with questions. If they see that back and forth, and it's easy to get in touch with you. You're not being blindsided by stuff as often. Things don't get missed or I just, I think back to situations that I have with myself too. And if there's open communication and you You know, you just make that a part of your process early on. They're just an open book, and… Things are less messy.

Bonnie Oleson [34:44]: Well, and I think people are so used to talking with their thumbs.

Brittany Lawson [34:48]: No.

Bonnie Oleson [34:48-36:33]: They'll send a quick text and say, where's the freezer truck? They'll send a text and say, is this gate open? And it's the way people communicate now. And if they know they're going to the right person to get the right answer. They're going to be a lot more trustworthy in the process. One thing that reminded me when I saw this example message that you had, this was one of ours. We set up… Because when things change, especially weather-wise, our event has, like, a hundred pop-up tents. So we need to make sure that we're giving the right information to people too. It's a safety concern. So we set up, we go through our doomsday protocol. And it's literally like, if we have hail, what do we need to tell people? If we have thunderstorms, what do we need to tell people? So it looks like we're planning for the apocalypse in all of our text messages, but they sit in the system so that you don't have to think about that. If there's a severe thunderstorm, we know this is the message we send. If hail is coming, we know this is the message we send. Because you get in that mindset, too, of… holy cow, what do I do next? Yeah. And sometimes. Sending. Sending a message to vendors is third on the list. And that way they still feel like they're first on the list. So you need to make sure that all of these messages are ready to go. Because, you know. That's, it's just so important, especially in those emergency weather situations. So yeah, all of our doomsday text messages are ready. And they don't need to change as long as you have a good plan on the front end. Then you can tell people, you know, lower your tents, take your stuff with you, we'll text you as soon as you can come back on the grounds.

Brittany Lawson [36:40-37:09]: Totally. Okay. I remember one of the conversations we had early on when you were planning too, and when you were like thinking about templated messages, one of the things you talked about was, and when it comes to weather and your attendees letting them know what's going on, you saw. An opportunity to use the vendors to get the information out there too. So did you end up. Letting your vendors know that, hey, if there's a weather emergency, we'll let you know, and then we expect you to kind of let the folks around you know to, like, spread the word, right?

Bonnie Oleson [37:13-38:12]: We did, we, and then this is the way, so with our two music stages too, we would push the messages, say messages to them so they could go on the speakers and tell people, but not everyone's in the same place. Yeah. So this way, if you have 90 food vendors. that are dealing with tens of thousands of people, and they have a question, they can look at their phone and go. We have severe weather, we're gonna be lowering our tents, and you guys should all leave. And they can tell people that, as long as it's a quick message. But yeah, we tell our vendors, it's like… nothing we tell them is secret. You don't want any of this stuff to be, you know, just kept to them. So, we tell them right off the bat, it's public info, share it with all your people, share it with everybody around you, especially when it comes to weather events, because it's… And you and I have talked, Brittany, about possibly having attendees sign up for text messages. And I think that's going to be our next step. But right now I'm just kind of perfecting having it all go with all of our vendors and all the operational side because right now that seems to, it's going so great. I want to make sure we continue to grow that process.

Brittany Lawson [38:27]: For sure. And they're doing a good job of letting the folks know around them.

Bonnie Oleson [38:30]: They are.

Brittany Lawson [38:31]: on, too, so…

Bonnie Oleson [38:32]: They are.

Brittany Lawson [38:33-38:39]: That's great. Adapting. Well, I mean, you have already given us a few examples of how you've adapted and used. these tools to help you in situations. But.

Bonnie Oleson [38:43]: Yeah, and it's something you learn with different, because stuff just pops up.

Brittany Lawson [38:48]: Yes.

Bonnie Oleson [38:48-39:31]: All of a sudden, I was at an event a long time ago and someone brought a horse onto the grounds. And, you know, it's like something happens, and all of a sudden you realize you don't realize you need a text message about how to handle animals at your event. So, it's, you know, things happen that you need to adapt to quickly and get a message out to people, and things that you have these 12 messages already in the bank. that you could say, send out this one, send out that one. So it's just nice because then it's all consistent, and the person that I have in headquarters knows how to word things. He got so confident last year that he wasn't even checking with me before with the garbage situation. I said. tell everybody they need to take their own stuff to the dumpsters. And he crafted it, he figured out how to do it, and make sure the messaging was the same for everybody. So, it's… it's having the right people with you, too.

Brittany Lawson [39:42]: Yeah, that's good.

Bonnie Oleson [39:44]: Mmhm.

Brittany Lawson [39:45-39:58]: Great. So we want to hear a little bit more about, what you should ask. So 5 questions every event team should ask. We went over some of these, but yeah, could you… Elaborate a little bit on these questions.

Bonnie Oleson [40:02-42:12]: Yeah, I make sure that the people that I'm working with. on my side that distribute the information to everybody that they know. This is the system we're using. This is how you log on. This is how you do it. So we all have the same consistent message and we're all using the same platform because I don't want. I don't want my volunteer lead to say, I'm just going to have people text my phone. Nope. We're putting everybody on the same thing. So I want to make sure everybody's on the same platform. The communication, then we have our, we still have our little. people. people tree instead of phone tree, where we have, you know, who's crafting the messages, because I know I pass stuff uphill if it's super important to make sure that it's passing the test for everybody, too. So the communication will either come from me if it's going to the people I directly work with or volunteer leads, that kind of thing. So we need to make sure that what happens during emergencies, too, that's It's something that gets really scary to talk about. And you need to talk about the scary scenarios because. They're not scary if they're brought in the open. And if you… if you bring them… if you talk about them, and you have a good plan, you know, when I first started with Taste of Madison, it was like, oh, we have severe weather, what do we do? And nobody could give us an answer. So now it's like you need to make sure that. Everyone on your team, when they ask, what do we do during emergencies, that you know the answer to give them. Because it's really… That's really important. Yeah, we need to support, the vendor support has been great and they've been very receptive of all the technology and all the things that we're doing that, but we need to make sure that we know how we're supporting them because they're the heartbeat of the event. If we don't have them, we're not there. And the volunteers, we just have one captain that takes care of all the volunteers. Because I just can't imagine handling… All 250 volunteers, that would make me crazy.

Brittany Lawson [42:15-42:54]: Yeah, I can speak from the vendor side of things, too, because at Engage by Sell, we do attend a lot of conferences, and there are so many. that I get there and immediately have questions. This doesn't look right, or I'm confused, the layout doesn't make sense, the map doesn't make sense. You know, there's always some kind of a question, and it can be really difficult to find the right person to ask, or I go to who I think is the person, they say, oh no, you need to get in touch with Betty, and she's over here. I go to that hall, and Betty's not there. So it would be so nice to be able to just text in to, like, a main number. And I've had a few conferences that do that, and it was great. But yeah, some of them are still doing the… Phone tree thing, or sending me to different places to hunt down some people.

Bonnie Oleson [42:59]: Yep. When this booth needs a table, they need to know who to talk to and they need to know it's going to get answered.

Brittany Lawson [43:05-43:54]: So that's great. Awesome. Practical ideas that you can implement tomorrow. There's a lot of things that our tools can do that can be. easily and quickly implemented right away. They don't take a lot of thought. But, you know, creating communication templates like you mentioned, that's one that really sticks out in my mind. Especially for those weather ones. They're really simple, and you just set them up, and you hope that you don't have to use them, but they're there, and they're easy to send… easy to make, and even easier to send out, so… Building contact lists, can you describe what the process was like when it comes to building your list and establish, establishing everything in the system? How would you rate it as far as. Ease of setup. Gulching.

Bonnie Oleson [43:55-44:43]: It was great. So what we do is we, I'm just going to speak on the vendor side. So we have a meeting for all of our vendors and I have They have to give me their cell phone number when they register for the event. I automatically sign them up. But then at our vendor meeting, I have a card that I hand. Everybody says, you've been signed up. make sure everybody you have working with you signs up for text alerts also. And then I give them the number, the keyword, and then also a QR code that they can scan to sign up. So that way they come in and they're opting into the program and I'll know if they reply vendor, I put them in the vendor list. They reply volunteer, they go in over here. If they reply ops, I put them over here. Stage, I put them over there. So it's just nice to have all the different lists. And it's nice that people can opt in and opt out. And I don't have to concern myself with did all three people from this restaurant actually get in because they're handling it on their end. So it's really.

Brittany Lawson [44:53]: Well, and our system can automate that too. You can set up those other additional words. You know, you've got the one word and then you can have a bunch of words for other things. So they can just reply vendor and they're, you know, they're initiating that. They're automatically joining that list for vendors. So.

Bonnie Oleson [45:09]: They automatically join the list and it's so. Yeah, it's great. It's wonderful.

Brittany Lawson [45:16]: Okay.

Bonnie Oleson [45:17]: Yeah, we have our One Hub. I mean, everything has been… it's been so great and easy to build those lists, and I love the little templates, too. They're awesome.

Brittany Lawson [45:24]: Perfect. Key takeaways. Just to wrap up here, if you could just tell us a little bit about your key takeaways from the experience you've had with our system.

Bonnie Oleson [45:35-47:18]: Yeah, it's. I didn't know how much time it was gonna save me. And I think that's the biggest thing that I've learned from it. Also. The vendors appreciate it, because they're getting… they feel like they're contacting the right person at the right time, instead of somebody who is wearing a shirt that says volunteer, or wearing an orange vest. It's somebody that they know is gonna get… they got the information of the right person. Once you have, once your vendors have that faith in you, it goes a long way, especially when you start sending them messages that are important to them. Then they understand like, okay, I'm getting the right information when I need it. And that's what's been really great too. We've had so much less Miscommunication. with… Words being passed down and passed down and passed down. And that has been fabulous also. You can change your mind on a dime. If you want to open gates 10 minutes early, text everybody saying, I'm open gates now. Then they, they all know what's happening. So that's been something too, where you can instantly tell everybody what's going on. I love the fact that I can actually have somebody in my headquarters tent that's answering all the messages for me because it saves my time. And that's one thing people, a lot of times I think event planners. Don't put enough value on. The 10 minutes you're saving by not answering this message, or the 15 minutes you're saving by not running to this booth and talking to someone. And your time's really valuable. And I was just surprised how much time it saved me.

Brittany Lawson [47:23]: That's good. So you can focus on more important stuff.

Bonnie Oleson [47:26]: Yep.

Brittany Lawson [47:26-47:44]: Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing. I'm going to open it up for Q&A just for a minute or so. If you have any questions, please go ahead and drop it in the chat. Bonnie or I will answer. This was really, really insightful. I really appreciate it, Bonnie. It's been excellent. To hear about how your events have gone this year using our services, and it's been really fun learning about your festivals and hearing your stories and getting to know you, too, so…

Bonnie Oleson [47:58]: Well, thanks. I really appreciate you asking me. And it's, it's funny because I looked at the software at that meeting went, well, of course this was built just for me. So I'm sure there's lots of other, you know, other platforms and other industries that use it. But as an event person, it's been amazing.

Brittany Lawson [48:18]: Totally. I mean, yet we've been working with events for a long time, but not even just in this use case. Originally, when I was thinking about events, it was with other things, like more on the communication with the attendees.

Bonnie Oleson [48:32]: Oh!

Brittany Lawson [48:33]: Only until you and I spoke did I think more seriously about, oh wow, like there's a lot of communications with the vendors and volunteers too. Volunteers who are just stepping in, not knowing really anything, but ready to work. There's a lot of information you got to get to those folks.

Bonnie Oleson [48:48]: For sure, for sure. So.

Brittany Lawson [48:51-49:16]: All right, cool. Well, it doesn't look like we have too many questions yet. Of course, you can reach out to us if you think of anything. So here's our contact information. Feel free to reach out to Bonnie. I'm sure she would love to you know, talk with you a little bit more about her experience, and give some tips. And reach out to me if you're interested in looking into text messaging for your events this year, or next year, or whenever. We'd be happy to talk more about your use case and how it can help. So, thanks again, Bonnie. We appreciate you, and we love Madison Festivals, and we'll talk again real soon.

Bonnie Oleson [49:23]: Okay, thank you.

Brittany Lawson [49:24]: Thanks, everybody. Bye.

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