Venue on hold. Speakers half-confirmed. Invites “in design.” Every sponsor wants one small change, and the run-of-show is a shared doc with four colours of comment. Events are the most visible project you'll ever run, and the least forgiving.
The offer, so you don't have to scroll: one owner, from save-the-date to strike.
Tuesday, 4pm.
The venue hold expires Friday. Speaker two's assistant needs “a revised format by Wednesday,” which is tomorrow. Speaker three has gone quiet in the way that means a no. The invite list is three spreadsheets that disagree.
Your agency is lovely and responsive: to you, individually, by email, at different times. Nobody, including you, has the current version of anything. The sponsorship deck quotes a logo size the stage screen doesn't support.
The production company asks for the final run-of-show. You open the shared doc. It is called “ROS_v9_comments_INBOX”. Nobody has the final version, because there isn't one; there are four, and they disagree about the CEO's slot.
And on the day it will be fine, because you'll carry it: 6am, radio in hand, solving things at a jog. It always is. The question is what it cost you for nine weeks, and what the next one looks like.
A great event is a project that ends at 6am on the day. Most of it is won in the nine weeks before.
Every speaker, sponsor, asset and room has its own mini-critical-path, and they all converge on one date that cannot move. The event starts when the invitations do. The day is just the final mile.
Twenty years of projects, told honestly. The Receipt stories are mine and verifiable. The Pattern stories are composites: details changed, lessons intact.
The headline speaker cancels on Tuesday. Every event person knows this one. The good events don't panic; they open the contingency page written in week one: the backup speaker, the reflowed run-of-show, the email that's already drafted. The bad ones improvise beautifully and sleep badly for a week.
My £1.5m deal at BT, the division's largest, was an event in disguise: legal, finance, tech and a buyer, all moving at different speeds. It closed because one list named every decision, owner and date, and got updated when it was inconvenient. Especially when it was inconvenient.
The pattern worth copying: an event where the run-of-show was final three weeks out. The sponsor's account manager said it was the first time in her career she'd been bored on event week, and renewed on the spot. Bored, in this industry, is a five-star review.
Twenty years running enterprise programmes at BT scale. £1.5m largest single deal; critical paths, steering groups and real dates, held for a full year at 100% of target.
I've run the whole launch myself (platform, emails, ads, checkout): 232 course sales in four months. I know what every week of that calendar feels like from the inside.
I've held the £2m programme budget on the other side of the table: writing the scopes, choosing the suppliers, cancelling the ones who drift. I know what "nearly there" means from both chairs.
Projects end in decisions: sign-off, buy-in, adoption. Twenty years of getting to yes without pressure means the decision actually gets made, in writing, and stays made.
"I run projects the way I wanted them run when I held the budget. That's not a slogan; it's a specification, learned from the most expensive seat in the room."
Everything that's left, in order, with an owner and a date on every line. One page: if it doesn't fit, the plan isn't finished. Everyone can see what "done" means, including you.
Every line has a name against it, mostly mine. Status is offered before it's asked for, so nobody spends their week chasing updates that never arrive.
Red, amber, green, without the politics. Bad news travels in 24 hours; good news waits for the weekly. A plan nobody trusts is worse than no plan at all.
Go-live is the midpoint, not the finish line. Handover pack, walkthrough, and a team that knows exactly what happens on day 31, because delivery that doesn't stick isn't delivery.
The numbers above, the launches behind them, and a public ledger of the whole journey: applications, rejections, results, lessons. The highlight reel is boring; the delivery is the evidence.
You bring the event and the date; I'll build the one plan that holds speakers, sponsors, assets and production, and own it through to strike. If I can't help, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
A pitch. There's nothing to buy on the call except a decision, and you'll know inside ten minutes whether I'm the person to run this.
Start to finish: how the client was found, the need proved, the option proposed, the work delivered.
One plan, one owner, one 6am that isn't yours. Speakers confirmed, sponsors handled, run-of-show final, weeks before anyone asks for it.
Book the 20-minute callYou'll know inside ten minutes. · Every number on this page is verifiable.