The Science of Creating Memorable Events: Experience Design with Tony Allen

Jun 22

Featuring Tony Allen, President of revroad

Tony Allen has vast experience producing events for noteworthy organizations and passionate causes including Zoom, TED Talks, Disney, Universal, Nike, NFL, Florida Olympic Initiative, HBO, ESPN, ABC, and many more.

He has produced projects in the U.S., China, Japan, Israel, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Africa, Australia, India, the Philippines, Germany, Canada, and South Africa…just to name a few. With an entrepreneurial spirit, he lives and breathes event marketing; also serving on the University of Central Florida Advisory Board for Events Curriculum, the Board of Directors for the CECF Wish Foundation children’s charity, and as an entrepreneurial coach and speaker for multiple companies and universities for over a decade.

Tony currently serves as the President of RevRoad. This venture services company brings together 24 months of venture services, corporate partners, and investors to help visionary founders and startups grow their companies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Having an attitude of gratitude is important for success in any career, as it helps prevent taking things for granted and gives credit where it's due.
Mentors can play a vital role in shaping and guiding your career, and you should strive to do the same for others.
Innovation is key in the current events industry, and hybrid events that combine live and virtual components can provide a better overall experience.
Experience design is a methodology backed up by human nature and science, and it can be applied to a wide range of industries and touchpoints.
Tangible and intangible elements should be considered when designing an event. Every touchpoint should be created by asking what the audience should think, feel, do, or believe.
Following opportunities can fuel passions later on, and you should be open to different paths that can lead to success.
The events industry provides valuable teamwork, leadership, and collaboration skills that can apply to any industry.
The “Five H” system can be a useful tool for hiring top talent and ensuring they have the right qualities for success.
Volunteering your time for a good cause, such as at a charity event, is an excellent way to make connections in the industry while giving back.
The Celebration Exotic Car Festival is a successful example of a non-profit event that has grown over time with the help of volunteers and has become a case study in textbooks for colleges with meetings and events degrees.

In this episode…

In today's competitive business landscape, creating unforgettable experiences has become crucial for companies across industries. Enter experience design, a methodology that combines creativity, psychology, and strategic thinking to craft memorable events. Whether it's a product launch, a corporate conference, or a music festival, the principles of experience design can be applied to any industry, elevating engagements and leaving a lasting impression on attendees.

In this episode of “The Kennedy Events Podcast,” host Paige Buck is joined by Tony Allen, current President of RevRoad and previous Global Head of Event Services at Zoom. Tony shares his wealth of knowledge on experience design and how its methodology can be applied to any industry to create a memorable event. At its core, experience design methodology focuses on orchestrating all aspects of an event to elicit specific emotions and engage the senses of the participants. Tune in to learn how organizations can differentiate themselves from competitors, build stronger connections with their target audience, and ultimately, create events that leave a lasting impact in the minds and hearts of attendees.

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Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events.

Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs — from in-person to hybrid and virtual events.

To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.kennedyevents.com and schedule a consultation today to find out how we can guide you in making your event successful.

Transcript

Paige Buck [00:00:02]:

Okay. Welcome to the Kennedy Events Podcast. I'm your host, Paige Buck. Recent guests have included Kim Alpert of Udemy, meg Fazey of events Gig and Phase Forward and Julie Liu of Afpoint. And my guest today is Tony Allen. Tony has vast experience producing events for noteworthy organizations and passionate causes including Zoom, Ted Talks, Disney Universal, this is a laundry list, nike, NFL, Florida Olympic Initiative, HBO, ESPN, ABC, and many, many more. He has produced projects around the world and he has an entrepreneurial spirit, lives and breathes event marketing, including serving on the University of Central Florida Advisory Board for Events curriculum, the Board of Directors for the CECF Wish Foundation children's charity, and is an entrepreneurial coach and speaker for companies and universities for more than a decade. Tony currently serves as the president of Rev Road, a venture services company that brings together 24 months of venture services, corporate partners and investors to help visionary founders and startups grow their companies. Wow. Before I dive in with Tony, today's episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events. Kennedy Events creates stressfree conferences and events providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs, from in person to hybrid and virtual. And you can learn more about us@kennedyvents.com. Tony, thanks so much for being here today and for sitting through that long intro.

Tony Allen [00:01:35]:

It is my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Paige.

Paige Buck [00:01:38]:

Yeah. So tell me how you got started in this industry.

Tony Allen [00:01:42]:

Well, I wasn't born in Florida, but I got here as quick as I could. I grew up in Florida and opened my first business when I was 17 in high school as a DJ company that turned into a production company and doing events and paid my way through school with that. Started another business while I was in college to help me pay my way through school. And right after that I started a nightclub and I was so intrigued by that industry and kind of the nature of experience design that I applied experience design to the hospitality industry, nightclubs, bars and restaurants. Had some great mentors in that space, eventually writing an article from Nightclub and Bar magazine and being a DJ in that industry for a long, long time. I always had parallel careers. So eventually opened my own 50,000 square foot entertainment complex just to make sure that what I was telling other people was correct and left that to have a music career in London, moved back to here to Orlando in Florida, went to work for Walt Disney World, left Walt Disney World and into corporate events. And that was the time when the corporate events industry was just turning into more of an a marketing approach or marketing agency approach to our industry and just grew up in that industry producing events. Had the opportunity to produce events all over the world and for some great brands and some great clients and kind of always applying the rule of experience design to events.

Paige Buck [00:03:13]:

Talk to me a little bit about experience design, because I feel like that's a phrase we use all the time now and often, too. It's coming out of the web based world where we're talking about what your experience is on a website. You're really saying it's not just the food you taste or the music you're hearing coming through the speakers at the entertainment venue.

Tony Allen [00:03:34]:

Tell me. No, not at all. It's a methodology that's backed up by human nature and science. And when I say that what I did for that article in Nightclub and Bar magazine a long time ago is break down what experience design is and apply that model to not only nightclubs, bar and restaurants in the hospitality industry, but also in the events industry. And that is creating experiences by breaking down and managing the tangible elements and the intangible elements. With every single experience we have, there are both tangible elements. All the things you can see, taste, touch, and smell and put your hands on and also track in an Excel spreadsheet. And all the intangible elements that you can't necessarily track in an Excel spreadsheet. But if you learn a language of how to manage those, how to track those and understand the existence of those, those are things like lighting levels, music programming, elements of branding, all those different things that go into the methodology. And you apply that through a project management process or a methodology just like Disney would use. Like they use the theme story theme methodology, which has been used to design every single ride, experience or theme park or movie. And there are methodologies like the Think, feel, do model or Think, feel, believe model. It's changed a little bit. Started with McKinsey Consulting, started out as a model just to create presentations. And it's grown into an experience design model where you take every single touch point of an event from the registration site, whether that's virtual or live or hybrid, and you design every single touch point by asking, what do we want this audience to think, feel, and do, or think, feel and believe at this touch point. And you do that from the very beginning to the very end. And that way you define exactly the experience that you want people to have. And you design toward that.

Paige Buck [00:05:31]:

Yeah, you can just imagine often the intangibles are what really stay with folks, right? Like who I met, the conversations that I had the feeling I came away with, and I could imagine that a lot of folks might be like, well, that's not in my control. But you are talking very thoughtfully about.

Tony Allen [00:05:49]:

How you yes, it is absolutely in your control. And it's the emotions of what most often people take away from those experiences that last with them the longest. Those are the things that create the same thing. We see it often invisibly we see it in videos. You can understand how you can watch a video, it's informational, but you can also watch a video. And it has emotional elements to it, things about it that tug on your heartstrings or that resonate with you, or those are the intangible elements. So that's an example of you can do that same thing that you see that is done in content creation or video design that you can apply toward a real life experience.

Paige Buck [00:06:28]:

And you talked a little bit about finding a mentor earlier, early in your career. How did you find them and what did you learn from them that kind of made things take off for you?

Tony Allen [00:06:40]:

I would say that that's the secret behind everyone who's ever been successful at any career. They've always been found a good mentor. They've always had mentors, whether that was the relationship that you defined it as that or not. But I was incredibly blessed to find some great people all throughout my career, even the hospitality industry. There was a man called Bob Snow who started in Pensacola, and he had built a place here at Churchry Station in Orlando who just took me under his wing. And when I could provide zero value, probably, he invited me in and he told me I remember him asking me if I had a suit. And of course, all I had was a corduroy jacket with a leather pockets that used to belong to my father. And I said, yeah, have this. And he goes, no, here, go buy a suit, invest in suit, be here at 08:00 a.m. In the morning. And I sat in a meeting with him and Ted Turner at a very young age and no business whatsoever being there. And I've been very blessed with other mentors throughout my career. So that instilled in me if I have the opportunity to give back. I always do that. And that even to today, I make a point of speaking at universities and speaking at different places around to students who are just coming into our industry.

Paige Buck [00:07:56]:

How do you mentorship has come up a lot in recent podcast recordings, and I love to ask, how do you advise younger people in the profession to ask somebody to be their mentor or to identify somebody who would be a good mentor for them?

Tony Allen [00:08:12]:

Anytime that I've been gotten up the confidence to ask, they've always said yes. So I encourage you, ask. Don't be afraid to ask. You're not going to be any more prepared. You are as prepared as you ever will need to be to ask somebody to be your mentor. You don't need to do anything to be able to ask that. Go ask them. Be respectful of their time because they're usually very busy people. Find somebody that's doing what you want to do and reach out and ask them. Be respectful of their time. Follow up is a big one. So often I had people that would ask and would never follow up. I'd say yes, and then they would never follow up. So be consistent, be respectful of their time, and don't be afraid to ask.

Paige Buck [00:08:59]:

Yeah, I can understand how it's intimidating, but people love to be of service. Yeah, they really do. You're certainly a really good emblematic of that with your career and the service choices that you've made. What has drawn you to universities in particular as a way of giving back or a way of supporting the next generation?

Tony Allen [00:09:22]:

I think it's just having the opportunity to. When somebody is at the point where they're just starting out in their careers or starting out and trying to figure out what they want to do in their life, that's a point where I think you can have a lot of impact and I can mentor one at a time or I can go speak to many of them. And I think that's what it is. I get a lot of intrinsic value from speaking and connecting. And I have sit on the board of a couple of nonprofits, and that one is the Celebration Exotic Car Festival. So it was a small exotic car festival. I decided a long time ago to find one charity that's important to me, that's a children's charity, and dedicate my time to just that one and grow it today. This year we celebrated our 20th year, and it's now one of the largest exotic car festivals in the entire world. It's the only one that's 100% nonprofit, and we don't have a single paid employee or a single penny at administration cost. It's 100% volunteer. So I rely a lot on volunteers from the university here, from UCF and Rosen College and offer that up to students all the time to come volunteer and get some real hands on experience.

Paige Buck [00:10:36]:

Well, and so that's a real hands on volunteer role as well for you on the board level. This isn't an advisory board. This is a hands on, manage the organization, manage the event board.

Tony Allen [00:10:49]:

Yeah, it's been very rewarding, but it's a tough event. It's now a five day event. It's five days long with everything from a Concord event to two days of racing at the Daytona Speedway with a wine pairing dinner and auction and live concert. It's so much in one so many different types of events in one event, and I'm very proud of it. I couldn't do it myself. We have some amazing volunteers, a lot of students that started like seven, eight years ago, and now they're still coming back to volunteer to this day with their spouse and their children and their significant others and still coming back. And the cool thing about that is that it's a great way to start off. You meet so many people, you get so many connections in the industry, and you do it in a way that they know that it's for a good cause. It's a great cause and something I always encourage everybody to do. I think we were talking earlier about one of the questions that we always get whenever I speak at a university is, what can you tell me about what can we do next? What can you tell me that's going to help me get a job? And those kind of things. The one thing that I always answer is, go out, find something you're passionate about, volunteer your time, give your time away, and it will come back to you tremendously. You'll make great connections. You'll get hands on experience. And for me, to this day, I love doing it so much that it's been such a great event. It now is a case study and textbook for colleges who have the meetings and events degrees. It's one of the featured case studies in the textbook that people use to go when they have a meetings and events degree.

Paige Buck [00:12:32]:

Wow. It's really impressive. It also sounds like besides raising funds and providing an experience for people who really love exotic cars, you've built a whole community in the people who are giving their time to this whole multi event, multi day experience.

Tony Allen [00:12:50]:

Yes, I'd love to take credit for it, but everything and this includes every single event that I do is it's not me. It's a team of people. It's motivating a temporary team and bringing together a great team of volunteers and volunteer board members and great people who come together every single year to make it happen. And we couldn't do it without each other. And that's one of the things that's been probably one of the best lessons through all the 20 years of doing that, is that it takes a team every single time.

Paige Buck [00:13:23]:

Yeah. Well, one thing you were touching on in terms of that advice that you give students is how this industry requires or can draw on so many different skills. There's nothing you will learn in this industry that you won't be able to apply to something else wherever your passion or your life events take you.

Tony Allen [00:13:44]:

It's so true. And you mentioned a great analogy, and that's a Ven diagram. Everything that you do, every experience that you have in life that's going to be beneficial. There's no such thing as failure. There's either winning or learning, succeeding or learning. Everything that you learn in the job, it will amaze you how much you can apply that toward what your future experience or your future career is going to be. There's always that Ven diagram of your skills and your experience is going to overlap with what you're doing next.

Paige Buck [00:14:15]:

Wow. Okay, I'm going to give you a funny comparison analogy to that note you just had about failure. We have a sailboat, and we were at the dock yesterday. We were just working on our boat. Our friend's boat is like the next slip down, and they were out. They were out on a day sail. Lucky for them, we're slaving away at the dock. They're out enjoying themselves, and then they came in and we were busy, so we didn't notice. But it took them four attempts to dock because it was so much wind and so much current and you're in a downwind slip. So when they hop off, they were laughing at themselves. They're like, oh, my God. And then we all said, you learn nothing from the time you dock perfectly. You only learn something from the four failed attempts about how you need to approach it differently. What will you do next time? How will you adjust? How will you not panic?

Tony Allen [00:15:08]:

Whatever it is, it's so true. And that's such a great analogy for the events industry because we know that. And that's something that was a lesson to me when I left the events industry, went into the SaaS industry. Or the technology industry with zoom is they were looking for somebody that came from the events industry. And it was very clear the difference in the mentality. And I can tell you, I'm incredibly proud of the specific type of person that gets into the events industry. I don't know if there is no such thing as a nine to five, just the mentality of the people of just get it done, that their expectation is that there is a specific date that event is going to happen. There's no pushing it off, things are going to happen, you only have one chance to get it right. And there's so much that we learn in our industry and it creates just some amazing people, amazing work ethics, just amazing attitudes, that I truly feel like the people who come from their work, from the events industry would master any other industry. I truly feel that work. I truly feel that way.

Paige Buck [00:16:21]:

I remember being early in my career and thinking, I feel like I get done in one day, like two and a half times as much as the average person around me. Am I making? Is it just masochism? I think that's what it is.

Tony Allen [00:16:36]:

I was going to say that I was looking for that word a minute ago, but that's the exact word.

Paige Buck [00:16:41]:

Yeah, a little bit just masochism. But you kind of started going to something I wanted to ask you, which is, what was it like? You've been a master of all trades for those who may be watching this. You have guitars and records mounted on your wall behind you and I'm going to ask you a little bit about your music background, but you've done so much in entertainment, music events, and then you make a choice to go into the corporate world. What were some of the big I'll just all use this, like, record scratch moments for you. Where was there a good fit and then where were you like, this is just a very different world.

Tony Allen [00:17:24]:

My music career. Well, I was a musician, that's how I went to college, on a performing art scholarship, but I was always a DJ. I started that DJ company when I was 17. I love music, I love all music to this day and I've always had parallel careers. I had a couple of songs that made it into the top 20 on the dance chart. Had a chance to move to London and live in London for a little while but it was a blast. One thing that it taught me, I've always had my passions, I've always had my passions but one thing that I learned you can follow your passions but what's more important is you have to follow your opportunities so your opportunities will come and they will go. You never put off an opportunity because it may give you the opportunity to fuel your passions later on. And that when I to go into corporate like as you mentioned, I've pursued my music career, I went into corporate events, went to work for Disney, produced corporate events, but it has always allowed me the opportunity to pursue my passions. And I've learned so much that in the corporate events that I have applied to everything else moving from the events industry it was there for 25 years into the described a little bit my experiences moving from the events industry into the SaaS industry or the technology industry and the difference in the mentalities and it truly is a great training ground the events industry is a great training ground for anything else that you're going to do. But I learned that you always do everything as a team. You develop the ability to lead teams and to be a great collaborator not only with customers, but also with your teams. And that's something that serves any industry you're going to go into. Now going into taking what I've been able to learn from, starting at being involved in startups and acquisitions and different things throughout the years, and starting my own companies. And having my own side businesses is the opportunity to give back now to small businesses and entrepreneurs who are starting out looking for a way to do things kind of combined with that events, industry, work ethic and mentality of let's get it done. And it's gathering of resources. I think that's a great way to have a friend, Michael Goldman who says he's always defined what an event producer is and it's a gatherer analogy.

Paige Buck [00:20:03]:

Yeah, I think our team think of the best people on our team as being the ones who are most resourceful. Either listening for the resources that we have in house and how to apply them to an individual project, but also always on the lookout for the best right. New thing that could fit down the.

Tony Allen [00:20:23]:

Pipe, gathering great relationships and then looking to make new ones.

Paige Buck [00:20:27]:

Yeah fascinating. What you touched on made me think that when you said always be looking for your next opportunity or go with the opportunity is reminding me it's just asking yourself what's it all for? If you're going to have that masochism or that drive and work ethic? Is it just to its own end or is it to fuel your other creative projects or to grow your family or send your kids off to college?

Tony Allen [00:20:58]:

I think it's all of those and I think it's all of those. Of course, my family is the most valuable thing. I was single for a very long time and had a great career and traveled and then didn't meet my wife until I was almost 40 years old. And now I have two kids that are amazing. My son just turned 18.

Paige Buck [00:21:14]:

Wow.

Tony Allen [00:21:14]:

So I wouldn't trade it for the world. It's just been an amazing journey. But the thing that I always think of and I was just having this conversation this past week about setting your goals and setting your careers, what's most valuable to you, what's most important to you. And we always say that you can achieve. You have to make your goals, but in the pursuit of your goals, be grateful. You have to have an attitude of gratitude because that's something else. When I speak somewhere, I always share that I said have an attitude of gratitude because it's going to do a couple of things for you, what you're able to learn and to gather, to be blessed with. If you have an attitude of gratitude, one, you're not going to take things for granted. You're always going to be able to give credit where credit is due to other people, and you will stand out to other people. If you have an attitude of gratitude, if you are a know it all, everybody, nobody wants to work with you. But if you have an attitude of gratitude and you say, I'm grateful for this opportunity, I'm going to have a great job, and having an attitude of gratitude does not mean that you can't be ambitious. You can be both at the same time. So be ambitious for the passions that you have. Be ambitious to make more money, to achieve more things, to have greater success, but at the same time, have that attitude of gratitude to go along with it. Those are not mutually exclusive. You can have both of those at the same time. And when you can get that balance, then you stand out amongst other people. You're chosen for more opportunities. You're given more opportunities because people want to work with you. And I think it creates a cycle that people notice and people want you on their team and people will want to work with you.

Paige Buck [00:23:14]:

I think you're describing ultimately humility. And while I hope I wasn't lacking in humility early in my career, I was absolutely terrified to admit I didn't have all the answers. I was resourceful. I was going to fill this thing and figure out this need. But I wasn't approaching it from an aspect of curiosity and openness. And now I'm, like, the second half of my life will be spent correcting that I have a little bit thing up here above my camera that says I have more to learn than I have to teach. I love having these conversations because I get a ton out of every one of these. I get something beautiful from you that will carry me forward, and it will give our audience something that's meaningful to them. And I'm curious how you took it's so wonderful that you have that approach and how you are applying that now to what you're doing with Rev Road. Like, what inspired Rev Road? And then how are you applying that attitude of gratitude with your new line of business?

Tony Allen [00:24:25]:

The attitude of gratitude and what you said, being humble is something that resonated with me. So I'm a chairman of another foundation called the Responsibility Foundation, doing some great things in many different areas. And that's how I met the founders of Rev Road. Many, many years ago, a gentleman named Darren Hill came on as a president. I hired him as a president. He was of our foundation. He's a serial entrepreneur, great guy. And when I was at Zoom, I speak all the time at different places. And he hired me to come to a railroad event and speak. And some of the things I learned when I was there, they have this amazing way. I was looking to create a new way of hiring people, finding the top, finding top talent. And my responsibility at Zoom was growing these international teams in APAC and EMEA and eventually Latin America and across the Americas and Canada. So what I saw something that resonated with me and the way they have something called the Five H system. And it clicked with me, and I said, that's it. I'm going to build that out. And that's how we're going to hire top talent. And it is. The five things that you look for in somebody that you're interviewing is the Five H's. Head, heart, hands, humility, and sense of humor.

Paige Buck [00:25:38]:

And humor.

Tony Allen [00:25:40]:

And instead of going, here's the top ten questions you ask in an interview, instead of going that traditional route, what we did is we broke it down. Now, with video services, you can have a lot more time with a person getting to know them. So instead of everybody asking the same questions, we broke it down where somebody would ask head questions about your education, about your knowledge, about the knowledge about this position you're applying for your heart. Are you a good fit for the community or for the culture of the company? What do you do in your time off? Do you help people? Do you give back humility, ask humility questions? How are you finding out about your humility? Finding out? Are you self aware? Because the top employees are always ones. If you can figure out if they're self aware, those make it the top ten employee percentage.

Paige Buck [00:26:33]:

The questions that come to mind under humility are things like, what do you do when you've made a mistake.

Tony Allen [00:26:38]:

Yes, exactly. Perfect example. And you can just go on and find top ten humility questions and you can do those same thing with a sense of humor. Nobody wants to work for the know at all. Or somebody who's not fun to work with or who freaks out under pressure or those kind of things. Humility and humor all through. So we did that. We hired some of the most amazing people and grew the company. And it was an amazing thing. Now that I'm coming, I was so impressed with what Rev Ro did and their values are grit, growth and gratitude that really resonated with me and I wanted to find out more about that. So when they were expanding to Florida, they've done incredible things with Rev Road and Rev Road Capital and they're expanding to Florida. And I was actually going to start a company called Fundable that helps small businesses become fundable, do whatever they need to be attractive for funding and through conversations that wound up as the new president of Rev Road here in Florida.

Paige Buck [00:27:35]:

Amazing.

Tony Allen [00:27:36]:

Yeah, really, I'm really excited. The opportunity to do good and to do well at the same time and help give back some of what I've learned and help people. I think it's amazing. Opportunity.

Paige Buck [00:27:49]:

That's so cool. It's also great that you're like, I'm going to start a thing. No, wait, I'm just going to join you. And it's not the same effect as what I wanted to do anyway.

Tony Allen [00:27:58]:

You know what? It was something I was planning my exit from Zoom and everything just fell into place. It was a great it was just great. I couldn't be more happy.

Paige Buck [00:28:08]:

So between Rev Road and Zoom being this entirely virtual online world in which so many of us find ourselves and you must have a ton of perspective on where we are in this moment, whether you want to talk about the economy or trends. Where do you think we are and where do you think we're going?

Tony Allen [00:28:32]:

Well, according to my Clifton Skills test skills finder, my number one is learning our learner. So I've always been kind of an eye on not necessarily a futurist, but an eye on our trends and everything where we're going and to have been. Had a front row seat and going into the pandemic and working with zoom and working with being coming from the events industry and everything that we've gone through, including having to go through when ups and downs in the industry in the past. So some of the trends that I'm seeing is there's so much opportunity in the innovation that has happened over the Pandemic and the whole question about is it live versus virtual versus hybrid. One thing that I take away from that as far as a trend, it's not either or, it's both. And they're both tools. They're both communication tools and how you use them is the most important to create. A strategy that utilizes both because both have their strengths and their weaknesses. So by using them in a very strategic way, you will be able to take market share and to reach more people. As an example. Of course live events have their values. Of course live events guy came from that industry, but not necessarily broadcasting that live event and that's your virtual event or that's your hybrid event. You use it in a different way. You use it to generate content. You use your live events to generate content for your virtual audience and you also use your virtual audience to drive attendance for your next live event. You use them all as a tool in different ways. You could use a broadcast part of your live event and leap part of it out to create FOMO for your next live event. Or just do the education virtually and do it in a hybrid way. Just create with your event strategy. Use them in a way in different ways and maybe different audiences, but use them as a strategic way of growing your access to new people who wouldn't normally show up. And I saw some bloomberg had some great statistics on the events industry about the number of people who went back to live events and how many didn't. And one of the things that I learned from all this information as it came together is people are still attending the exact number of industry events. There may be ten industry events in your specific industry. Before the pandemic, people didn't go to all of them, they went to two or three. They picked their time, what they were going to be invest their money in. They went to those and then they didn't go to the other ones. With hybrid events, if your event is hybrid, you give people the opportunity to attend all of them. Now, they're still going to attend some live, but then there needs to be an opportunity to attend them. Hybrid. You're already creating amazing content. Repurpose that content from your live events to reach a virtual audience. You're already paying for it. So to utilize it is not that much more of an investment, but the return on investment for that is tremendous.

Paige Buck [00:31:53]:

Yeah, it's absolutely true. And what I love about this as guidance is you're challenging folks to think strategically about the problems they need to solve and then using the content they probably already have or would already have been developing in new creative ways. Yeah, the last thing we want to see anybody do pre COVID. I hated the word hybrid because what it meant was a lousy experience for all the parties.

Tony Allen [00:32:21]:

Yes, it truly was.

Paige Buck [00:32:23]:

Live was being compromised for the online audience. And online audience was like, you just sit there and watch this thing. Just watch it. It's fun. You're missing out and you're walking you're way in the back of the room. But trust me, you're going to get something out of it.

Tony Allen [00:32:38]:

And I tell you, the tools have advanced to the point now, and I encourage everybody, if you didn't get a chance to I'm so proud of the work that we did at Zoom, especially Zoom Topia last year, which is their user conference. If you haven't seen Zoomtopia from last year, go watch it. Just watch the general session. And what it did is it showcased some tools that are now available to everybody, and that is the ability to truly create a unified experience between your remote audience and your live audience. When you walked into the general session, there's a QR code on the screen and you join it on your mobile device or your computer and you join the same Q and A, the same chat, the same reactions. If you're sitting there live in the audience, you don't have audio and video, but you're there. You're in the same audience as the remote audience and it creates so much excitement for the virtual attendee. It's like you're part of something instead of just watching it.

Paige Buck [00:33:39]:

Yeah, they're way more drawn in because they feel like they're engaged with the folks who are there live.

Tony Allen [00:33:44]:

Way more engaged. And what you see on the screen is that you'll see there's reactions on the screen. That is a combination of both your live and virtual audience. The chat is on the screen, so you can see in yellow that's the audience, someone who is chatting, sitting in the audience and the green text is somebody who's in the remote audience. We're taking people out of the remote gallery view and we're putting them in a bubble and they're floating around the screen. And you have the tools back behind stage to be able to select who you want on and when and those bubbles and it's just a really cool, slick interface. All those tools are available for people to take advantage of.

Paige Buck [00:34:22]:

And something I wish, I believe every one of my clients wishes they could afford to execute on takes a lot. I can imagine a piece of what those logistics looked like and what the video village backstage looked like to execute something like that.

Tony Allen [00:34:41]:

The thing is, you can and I've said this before, you can find somebody who doesn't know how to do it and they try to take traditional production tools and broadcast tools and replicate it. Yeah, that's behind the times. There are people what we did that with was two people sitting in front of a multiview monitor with a few laptops that did all of that.

Paige Buck [00:35:05]:

That's incredible.

Tony Allen [00:35:08]:

The ability and the expense of leveling up just to that level. And we did it not only in the general session, but we also did it in the remote in the breakout sessions.

Paige Buck [00:35:17]:

Nice.

Tony Allen [00:35:18]:

We had three portrait screens. On the right side, you had your content screen, which your presentation. You had three screens on the right side of the stage. The one that had your virtual audience or a virtual presenter, you could bring up anybody in the virtual audience and the remote audience to ask a question at any time. It had audio and video worked perfectly.

Paige Buck [00:35:40]:

Wow.

Tony Allen [00:35:40]:

You had your chat going on the whole time. And this was done in a breakout session, and it took literally one or two people that was in addition to your onsite staff. So the tools are out there. They do exist to provide this type of interactivity, and there's a lot of people in the industry that are saying, we do it, we do it, but they don't really do it to that level.

Paige Buck [00:36:00]:

Well, you're giving me a great perspective on where Zoom has moved in the industry, like how they've positioned themselves to compete with Cvent, Bisbo, all the others, all the others, many of whom had to pivot, acquire, expand, and struggle to say, oh, sure, we can solve that for you. And then maybe they could, and maybe they couldn't.

Tony Allen [00:36:23]:

Zoom has a great professional services team. They come up amazing things that are not cost prohibitive. Their use of technology is amazing. And I'd encourage everybody, just look out for Zoom event services, some of those things. If you're a production company, you're trying to do it, you can look for Zoom ISO or Zoom OSC, which enables you to take the video and the audio out of Zoom, can control it and to do those kind of things with it. But there's some amazing things going on there.

Paige Buck [00:36:54]:

Yeah, that's amazing. That's really cool. So, final question for you. Who are the folks in your industry, in this industry, or in the revro space, whatever jumps out at you that you most respect and that you turn.

Tony Allen [00:37:10]:

To now that I return to now? Let's see gosh. I would say in my previous life would be Bob Snow, who started me out there's so many that I learned from. Disney had some great mentors there. Bill Anoka was a great one. All throughout my career, I've had so many great I hate to mention them because I know I'm going to leave somebody out.

Paige Buck [00:37:39]:

Yeah, I know. And also the way their names leave your head as soon as you're trying to call them to mind.

Tony Allen [00:37:47]:

But I never burn a bridge, and I always try to maintain my relationships throughout my entire career, and I'm just so grateful for those. And I learned from I made a point, and whenever I speak at a college, I always do this. I show case studies, and I share funny production stories and these crazy stories. And a long time ago, I read it in a book, and I can't remember the book, but I made it a point a long time ago that every single event, no matter how small or how large, after the event, I made a point to write down. I said, what did I learn from this event? What was a specific lesson that I took away from this event, and it forced me to really think about it and say, this was a great lesson. That was a great lesson. And I take those on with me, and I encourage everybody to do that and to be a curator of stories, collect those stories and take those with you, because that's one of the best communication tools you can have, is the ability to tell a story.

Paige Buck [00:38:45]:

Wow.

Tony Allen [00:38:47]:

But, yeah, I'd say those lessons, all those people that helped me learn those lessons, all good and bad, all contributed to what you take on and makes you better as you go along through your career.

Paige Buck [00:39:01]:

Those stories of, like, the four times it took you to get into the dock with the sailboat. Right?

Tony Allen [00:39:05]:

Exactly. You know what? And that's what I learned from working with Ted, is the ability to sitting with some great people that are producing the Ted Talks, especially some of the speaker, coaches, and Ted curators, and sitting in the audience, sitting there as people are rehearsing for their Ted Talks, so many great people and helping people craft stories. That was one thing that I learned, and I also share at colleges, is the one skill, the most important skill you can develop it is communication skills. And the most important communication skill that you can develop is your ability to tell a story. And I encourage everybody to become a curator of story. Your notes in your phone should be just a list of great stories that you hear, and take those as your own. We all have our own in our own lives, but you can also use everybody from their allies. I like your one about taking four attempts to park the sailboat.

Paige Buck [00:40:02]:

Oh, my gosh. And you're inspiring me. I'm like, I need to start tracking these. That's fantastic advice, Tony. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. And just to pin it, I've been talking with Tony Allen, president of Rev Road, Florida. Tony, where can people find you?

Tony Allen [00:40:22]:

So on LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn in tony Allen has the picture. You see Ted in the background picture taken on the Ted stage. Find me on LinkedIn and all the other social medias. Also here in Florida, you can check out Revroad.com. And it's amazing stuff that we're doing there. I'm very excited about it.

Paige Buck [00:40:43]:

Awesome. Thanks so much for your time today.

Tony Allen [00:40:45]:

Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Paige.

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PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the co-owner of Kennedy Events, a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.