After 5 EventsThe room is three rooms
Capacity is always given for standing reception. A product launch is not that. You need seated rows facing a stage, a presentation area with sightlines, and usually a standing zone afterward for the part where people talk to each other. Draw the layout on the venue's floor plan before the site visit. If the room holds two hundred standing, it holds a hundred and twenty seated theatre-style, and ninety if there is a stage large enough to demonstrate anything.
Pillars matter now. They did not matter for the summer party. They matter when everyone is facing the same direction.
Blackout, or the lack of it
A daytime launch in a glass-walled venue is a projector fighting the sun, and the sun wins. If the reveal moment or the product video is the centre of the event, the room needs blackout or the timing needs to move to evening. Curtains exist, but budget for them — and for the rigger who hangs them — before you assume.
Ceiling height determines whether you can light the product and the speaker separately. Below three metres and you are lighting both the same way, which is to say poorly. If the venue has a house lighting system, ask what it was designed for: a standing reception in warm white is not a product demo that needs a key light.
Power and where it lives
The venue will tell you it has power. It does. Not enough, and not where you need it. Ask how many kilowatts on how many circuits, and whether the distribution board is in the room or down two corridors. A product demo on a table needs power at the table. A screen needs power behind it. A livestream rig needs power that does not share a circuit with the coffee machine.
If the answer is extension cables run along the wall and taped down, the answer is yes, but also budget and time for that.
The load-in decides the cost
A venue on the third floor with a service lift that fits one flightcase and two people will cost you more in labour than a ground-floor room with a loading bay. Ask where the truck parks, how far the walk is, whether the lift is available from seven in the morning, and what else is happening in the building that day. A product launch shares the calendar with conferences, and the lift shares its time with the conference caterer.
The load-in route also determines what can fit. A two-point-four-metre truss section does not turn the corner in a two-metre corridor.
What the venue includes and what it charges for
The hire fee is rarely the entire cost. Ask what the venue's own staff will do and what requires an external crew. Some venues include basic AV and an operator who knows which button starts the projector; some hand you an HDMI cable. If the venue has a house sound system, ask whether it covers the whole room or just the area near the bar, and whether a wired microphone comes with it or costs separately.
Tables, chairs, staging and drape are sometimes included, usually not. The line item that surprises is often the technician: the person the venue requires to be present whenever external equipment is rigged, paid by the hour, charged to you.
Curfew, neighbours and the thing nobody mentions until it is too late
A product launch in a business district ends when the venue says it ends, and the venue says it ends when the building's noise curfew says it ends. That is usually ten or eleven in the evening, sometimes earlier. If the launch includes an after-party, confirm that the timing allows it. If the venue is residential above or next door, confirm what 'music until eleven' actually means — background music, or a DJ at the volume a party requires.
Some venues do not allow alcohol. Most allow it but require you to use their supplier. Both are fine; neither is fine to discover the week before.
Internet that actually works
If the demo needs the internet, or the livestream does, the venue's guest Wi-Fi will not hold it. Ask about a wired connection, the upload speed if you are streaming, and whether the network can be tested the day before. The demo fails in front of the customer because the internet dropped is a sentence you do not want to finish.
Parking, access and the last bus
Guests arrive on time if they can park or if public transport runs past the door. If neither is true, plan for taxis and plan for the cost of taxis to annoy people. The venue will tell you parking is nearby; walk it yourself and see whether nearby means two minutes or twelve, and whether twelve minutes is lit.
If the event runs past the last bus, say so on the invitation. It will not make people stay home, but it will stop them being surprised.
Two kinds of company build the room
One kind of event agency plans the brief and then forwards it to the lighting subcontractor they found that morning, the AV company that has a screen available, and the crew agency with staff on the books. Margin is added at every step and nobody has worked alongside each other before.
The other kind quotes, builds, and runs the evening with the people who do this every week. After 5 Events is the second. The crew who answers the technical question is the crew in the room at seven in the morning.
The decision now
Before calling anyone, settle the date and the approximate guest count, and visit the venue with the floor plan and a tape measure. Ask about blackout, power, load-in, curfew and what the hire actually includes. The venue constrains the rest, so the venue comes first.