Seamless Event Pivoting and Scaling Attendance from 66 to 350 Members

Kelly Hendricks (00:00) I definitely recommend OkWhen to anyone who needs to run an event, and wants to ideally scale an event over time. And I mention scaling over time because you'll build a relationship with your account manager or with the individuals who come in to support your event - virtually or in person - and they'll begin to know your organization, what your goals are, what your hopes are for your event that you're planning. Is it growth? Is it fun? Is it connection? What is the goal? and they'll be able to support that moving forward. You'll feel like you have a teammate. when you don't have experience event planning, or this is not something that you do on a regular basis for your paid job, it's just a volunteer time, it's invaluable to have people who will come alongside you and say, "what do you want for your event? And how can we make that Alex Tomei. I serve as the professional development committee coordinator for the COABA, the Colorado Association of Behavior Analysis. and I run conferences, and webinars, and all things learning, and development, and programming for COABA. I've been doing this since probably about 2021 running these types of events for the COABA organization. I think the biggest challenges before using okwhen are just the ability to make it accessible for people who maybe can't come in person or have things come up in their lives or trying to connect with a broader membership. We use their platform for just hosting our content, whether it's throughout the year, the webinars, and the virtual content that we put out, as well as using them for AV and the actual physical in-person streaming of the events during our in-person events, whether it's a workshop or a conference. are part of our date negotiations so we can make sure we get the correct dates with them as well as our venue. use them to do almost everything from advertising to actual running of the event. So last year, our conference faced a massive snowstorm, and not just your typical snow in Colorado, but, like, shut down. It took me 4 hours to drive 1 hour type of snowstorm. And because we were using okwhen, it made it almost seamless to pivot. And yes - stressful! absolutely stressful to have to pivot day of a major event where you're expecting 350 people to attend, and now you're at, you know, 150, 175. but okwhen made it extremely seamless to at least make sure that the content got out there, that we were able to honor those who had paid for the content, that they were able to have access to it. And just to be fully transparent, we had staff from okwhen here helping run our conference, and they were the absolute biggest emotional support for me as the event planner where I'm going through stress, and there's tears, there's laugh-crying cause it can't get any more crazy. they're not just there to run the logistics and kind of do the job that we pay for. They're human beings who care about other human beings too. And I speak so highly of the entire okwhen staff because of how they went above what was necessarily in their contract to support me as the event planner. Feedback we get from members is that the platform is relatively easy to navigate. From a speaker perspective, cause I also speak at events that are run by okwhen, the green room and the ability to kind of test things out ahead of time with someone who's seen all the different glitches that can occur is incredibly They are always friendly. They are always kind. They are always eager and ready to help whether you are at the registration desk or you're chasing them down a hallway because the tech won't work in the room you're in. just the feedback has been wonderful. Probably of the tools, we use the CEU management tool, and possibly the app. One of the things I love about the app is when you're at the conference, it can feel a little chaotic, especially when there's tons of people everywhere and you know, we're all carrying our phones around, just being able to log into the phone and be like, okay, so what room is this in? Where's the map? What's the thing for dinner? And so that's been really useful for me to connect with others at the various events that we go to. I think okwhen probably saves us... a solid week's worth of work. saving me a week's worth volunteer work is priceless. We have seen a steady increase in our attendees. I think the first original conference that we ran almost 10 years ago now, had about 66 people in attendance and now we are easily averaging 325 to 350. I am very thrilled that we use okwhen in general. I'm very thankful for this group of people. I tell everyone about how wonderful your team is. So because they are incredibly supportive when things aren't going well, it just goes so much better when things are going well. I know that they have my back. They help someone who may or may not have experience running events make an event incredibly successful and in line with the vision of your event. okwhen has made a huge difference for COABA in general, us being able to connect with others, and bring fantastic content to our membership.