There is a question that in recent months I have heard several times. The first one surprised me. The second is a little less. At the third I realized it was worth stopping to reflect. “Does it still make sense to organize an event in New York? »
Today we have tools to reach customers, partners and investors all over the world without moving from the office. We can organize webinar, launch digital campaigns, fix video conferencing with interlocutors that are thousands of kilometers away and, in many cases, get also important results.
It is therefore normal to ask whether it still makes sense to invest time, resources and money to organize an event in the presence, especially in a complex and competitive city like New York. My answer, however, is almost always the same. Depends on what we mean by event.
If the goal is simply to tell a company, present a product or distribute a few business cards, there are probably faster, less expensive and even more effective tools today. A good online content, a digital strategy built with criterion or a targeted campaign can reach thousands of people in a few hours.
If instead an event becomes the place where people who, without that occasion, would hardly have known each other, then reasoning changes completely. It is here that, in my opinion, many companies commit the most frequent error.
When they start designing an event, the first question almost always concerns the location. What’s the right place? What view does the best skyline offer? How many people can accommodate? They are understandable questions, but they are rarely decisive ones.
The very important question is another. Who needs to be in that hall? It seems a detail, but it is probably the choice that determines the success or failure of an initiative.
Over the years I have seen events organized in extraordinary locations that, once finished, have left no sign. Everything was planned to perfection: preparation, interventions, catering, even the times of the evening. Yet, a few weeks later, no one spoke more than that meeting.
Other times it happened exactly the opposite. Much simpler, even less spectacular, events have created collaborations that have progressed over the years. Not because the stage was more beautiful or the most sought after menu, but because the people present really had a reason to meet.
I think this is the feature that distinguishes New York from many other cities. There are opportunities here. What’s missing, if anything, is time. Everyone has a full agenda, all receive invitations, all must carefully choose where to be. For this reason an event cannot simply ask people to participate. He must offer them a concrete reason to do so.
And it is a reason that rarely coincides with the evening program. Much more often it coincides with people who will find seats a few meters away. In the end, the value of an event is not measured by the number of photographs published the next day or by the applause that accompany the last intervention. It is measured a few months later, when one realizes that from that evening a project, a partnership, a collaboration or simply a conversation destined to continue.
That’s why I keep thinking that organizing an event in New York makes absolutely sense. Not because it’s New York. Not because it affects a corporate presentation. But because, if designed in the right way, an event can still create something that no algorithm, no platform and no video calls can do: put the right people in the right place at the right time.
And maybe that’s where the most important opportunities arise. The real question, then, is not whether it still makes sense to organize an event in New York. The question is another.
If tomorrow you had the opportunity to gather in the same room the ten people who could change the future of your project, would you know who to invite? Because, in the end, it is from the answer that every great event begins.
Does the article still make sense to organize an event in New York? It’s from IlNewyorkese.
