After 5 EventsDecide the format before the venue
IT teams will not sit through a long programme. They are young, half of them are remote, and the threshold for checkout is low. A standing reception with short remarks works. A plated dinner with speeches between courses does not. The format determines the venue shortlist, and the venue determines cost, so this is the first decision that needs to be in writing. If the executive wants remarks, ask how long and whether Q&A follows. If the answer is vague, budget for remarks to run over and plan the room so that does not become a problem.
Plan the remote join first, not last
Half the company will be on a screen. If they cannot hear the room or the room cannot hear them, they will drop off, and the event will have written off half the organisation. This is not a nice-to-have — it is the format. You need a camera that shows the room, a microphone that picks up questions from the floor, and a screen large enough that remote faces are not thumbnails. Test the join the day before with someone on the team abroad, not the morning of. The video link is the first thing that will be mentioned if it fails and the last thing that will be mentioned if it works.
Lock the runsheet early and build contingency around it
The timeline you send up will come back edited. Remarks get longer, a slide deck gets added, someone suggests a demo. Your job is to absorb that without the evening collapsing. Add a buffer between segments — not labelled as buffer, labelled as reception time or breakout or music — so that if one part runs over it does not cascade. Write the runsheet so the executive can glance at it on a phone: times on the left, action in plain language, no jargon. If something requires the executive to do something — move to the stage, begin remarks, join a toast — highlight it. Build a separate tech cue sheet for the crew and do not combine the two documents.
Sound and screen are judged professionally
Your audience designs software. They will notice a microphone that clips, a screen with the wrong aspect ratio, a presentation that plays back choppy. These are not details — they are the part of the evening that either works invisibly or announces itself as broken in the first minute. If the venue provides AV in-house, ask what equipment that means by model, not by category, and verify it handles the formats your executive actually uses. If the answer is vague, bring your own. The crew who quotes the audio is the crew who will stand at the mixer that night; if those are two different companies, someone is coordinating by email, and that is where failures happen.
Budget approvals and invoice hygiene
The founder reads every line. That does not mean spend less; it means the invoice must look reasonable to someone who is not in the room and who is deciding quickly. Break costs into legible categories — venue, production, catering — and avoid line items that sound vague or inflated. If something is genuinely expensive, name why in a sentence: the venue is the only one with reliable videoconferencing infrastructure, the screen size is determined by the remote audience being able to see slides. Approvals come late because they are routed through finance, legal and back to the executive. Add a week to every timeline you are given and submit the budget the moment the format is agreed.
Programme the evening to end when it should end
IT teams tolerate two hours, maybe three if there is music and the bar is open. Beyond that, attendance thins and the visible half of the room is people who stayed out of politeness. If the executive wants the evening to feel successful, it should end before that point, not after. The worst version is a programme that announces an end time and then continues for another hour because remarks ran long. End on music, not on speeches. The last thing people should see is the room at its loudest and fullest, not the executive thanking a half-empty hall.
Build a plan B that does not require executive approval on the day
The microphone will be tested, but test it again with the person using it. The slide deck will be loaded, but have it on two devices. The remote link will be confirmed, but have a dial-in fallback and the number printed. You cannot ask the executive to make a technical decision while guests are arriving, so every decision must already be made and every contingency must already be in the room. This is not paranoia — this is the shape of the job. If something fails and the evening continues without interruption, that is the production working. If something fails and the executive has to intervene, the production has failed regardless of whether the problem gets solved.
The decision now
You are choosing between an agency that plans and then subcontracts every piece to people it has never worked alongside, earning margin on each line, and one whose own crew quotes, builds and runs the night. After 5 Events is the latter: the team writing this guide is the team in the room. Settle the format, the remote join, and the runsheet end time before you call anyone. Everything else can move; those three cannot.