Women of Vision - the Aftermath

So one of the major things after any event is the PR cleanup. And boy was there a lot of clean up last week.  Let me start by saying Women of Vision was an enormous success.  We had a record breaking number of attendees, all our speakers did a tremendous job and I had the great pleasure of being Arianna Huffington's handler throughout the event. 

I was very glad that in a previous position I had the opportunity to work with celebrities so I was prepared for all the contingencies.  Arianna was lovely to work with - well prepared, charming and so happy to help us with photographs, etc.  Her speech was a crowd pleaser. 

Our three winners were all amazing.  I was a bit stunned that all three chose to wear red and black but it looks great in all the photos.  Arianna had shared her talk's theme of embracing risk prior to the event and I'd notified the three winners.  Each of them talked from her own perspective about embracing risk, and making a difference in the world. 

Post event the work continued. I actually went home and did a final review of the newsletter we were issuing the next day since it was part of the launch of our Anita Borg Top Company for Technical Women Award.  I also fixed a few glitches along the way.

Then Thursday began the work with the press.  We had 11 press people attend Women of Vision. The next day was spent working on our post event press release then issuing it to the 11 press people along with a picture of Arianna and the winners.  The press release itself went out the following morning. The coverage has been amazing - San Jose Mercury News, Forbes, Silicon Valley Watcher all wrote about the event and more are still pending.  We also posted the winners biographical videos on youtube so they could be linked to as well from the press release.

This week the work continues - I'll be editing the footage from the event and getting it back to our editors so we'll be able to launch the videos on Youtube in our next newsletter.  I'm also waiting for the photos to come in so we can distribute them to the media as well as our sponsors, Arianna, the winners, etc.  And of course we're tracking the coverage as it comes in.

I'd like to thank a few people who make my job possible - Megan McKenna from Total Media Group; Denise Nelson from Ventana Public Relations, Dang Le from Jungle Digital Printing and Alex Atkins from Alexander Atkins Design.  These are the folks who make everything possible in doing the marketing for our events. I couldn't do it without them. 

The 10 Day Event Countdown

When doing a program the final 10 days are probably the absolute craziest. That's when your plan either comes together or falls apart. We're in the 10 day countdown to Women of Vision and as Hannibal used to say on the A-Team - I love it when a plan comes together. I can't talk to the other parts of the plan but the Marketing plan has come together beautifully.

• The ads are done, the print program is finalized, the proof copy has been slightly tweaked (one ad looked a little dark in the print run), and the printer has 10 full days to get the printing done - piece of cake for 680 24 page programs. This is weeks of work by multiple companies and it is finished.
• The videos are in final review. The winner videos look terrific, the soundtrack sounds good and we will make that deadline.
• The PR firm has kicked in and are doing the outreach - inviting local and national print, radio, tv news and online media to the event. We already have two media people coming so the hope is more will come.
• All the signs are with the designer except for our one last minute item - the seating chart. Signage is usually done last since it is quick to produce and so forgiving when you need to make last minute changes. We actually had all the sign content to the printer on Friday.

So does this mean I get to relax this week? Sadly no, still to be done - the post event press release, finishing the event script and doing the run through, prepping the photographer who'll be doing the shots at the event. But I can say we're in better shape than last year.