Background

NOLAvate Black has hosted Black Tech NOLA, a technology conference for 3 years leading up to the Essence Music Festival. Each year, the audience attendance grows, sponsors get larger, and expectations get higher. I was contracted out to conceptualize more experiential exhibits for sponsors and manage buildouts and activations.

Problem

When we began to actively build the conference in January, we never knew COVID-19 would shut us down in March. As if that wasn't difficult to handle. Founder, Sabrina Short contracted the virus and was off the radar for 6 weeks. I had no idea what we were going to do, but I was sure the conference was canceled and I was out of one of my biggest projects to date. Well, I was wrong. Sabrina came back in full force saying we had 7 weeks to turn to conference virtual and title sponsors Entergy and JP Morgan & Chase Co. did not want simple.

Solution

This time relationship had nothing to do with figuring out how we were going to pull this off. No one on the team had done a virtual conference before. I went from a project manager and a creative consultant to a producer. All of the keynote speeches and breakout sessions became pieces on my run of show chessboard. The production team had to become the tech team and still, we had to pull experts in. There was nothing to it but to do it. Actually, there was nothing to it but, figure it out.

Don't get me wrong, relationships still played a part. We called on our partners to let us use their space as a hub with enough room for social distancing. We consulted others in the industry who could help us manage expectations because they had held their own tech conferences. And we put out an ask from volunteers from the year before to fill in gaps.

Evaluation 

If I would have been offered the position of virtual conference producer last year I would have easily said no. I had no interest in the virtual space. But now, it is crucial that we pivot during the pandemic. At the root of being an experiential marketer is the ability to project manage efficiently and adapt to change. So, I had to apply those same skills here.

When I didn't know something, I was not afraid to ask for help or voice my concerns the moment they arose. I remember hearing a woman say that men are more likely to apply for jobs they are not 100% qualified for while women will not. And we can't have that happen. I almost lost out on an amazing experience and missed the chance to learn a new skill because I was not open.

Ultimately, we finished the conference with about 5000 attendees, major headlines like the artist, Lupe Fiasco, sports veterans, Thaddeus Young, and had speakers from Netflix, Youtube, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Amazon, Adobe, and more. We even hosted a virtual happy hour with featured chefs, mixologists and a live band set each night!