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, Summer 2006
We are happy to have back as a contributing editor Julia
Rutherford Silvers, CSEP who has authored this issue's Industry
News.
Janet Landey, CSEP, of Party Design Pty Ltd in Johannesburg,
South Africa, contends that event designers and organizers
need to consider themselves as event architects instead to
better reflect their ability to help clients achieve their
strategic goals if brought to the table early.
Futurist Alvin Toffler suggested, indirectly, that we should
think of ourselves as "experiential engineers" because
what we are creating is an experience rather than simply an
environment or an activity, which will ultimately provide
more economic and emotional value to the event consumer.
William J. O'Toole of Event Project Management System Pty
Ltd in Sydney, Australia, champions the adoption of project
management techniques for the effective development and production
of events, resulting in improved efficiency, safety, and sustainability.
It is interesting that two of these three occupations are
used as analogies in sociologist Eliot Freidson's book Professionalism,
the third logic (2001, The University of Chicago Press) as
he discusses the forms of knowledge - descriptive, prescriptive
and artistic - and the authority claims each type confers
on a profession (or, to be more precise, confers status as
a profession). Descriptive forms, which include science and
scholarship, claim technical authority; prescriptive forms,
which include the social norms, claim moral authority; and
the arts claim aesthetic authority.
The very title of Joe Jeff Goldblatt's pioneering book Special
Events, the Art and Science of Celebration (1990, Van Nostrand
Reinhold) captures the duality of the knowledge required of
an event management professional. And as one delves into the
book one realizes that, in actuality, Freidson's knowledge
triad must be present to ensure that the empirical, artistic,
and ethos are incorporated into the deliverables of event
management.
There is no doubt that all three occupational tasks are required
for event management. One must be an architect, interpreting
the client's desires and objectives to design the concept
or vision for the event, but this design process must have
a strong foundation in the practicalities of event production
(engineering and project management). When brought to the
table in the earliest stages of event inception, the event
architect can shape the design to the strategic goals as they
are being developed, and do so within the realities of the
resources available.
One must be an experiential engineer, interpreting that vision
and shaping that design into a structural plan capable of
being implemented. Like the steel, bricks, and mortar used
to build the building the architect has designed, the event
engineer selects and sequences the proper program components
and elements that will deliver the experience desired according
to the resources available. As event project manager, the
goods, services, and personnel are procured and the logistics
of implementing the plan are devised and supervised. These
three aspects of event management - aesthetic, structural
and logistical - may represent a division of labor or may
be facets of the work done by an individual practitioner.
Architecture, engineering, and project management all employ
the technical or scientific types of knowledge. The architect,
however, is the only one that gains status through the aesthetic
arena, and a large part of that "professional" status
comes, according to Freidson, as a result of its singular
area of practice - buildings. Engineering and project management
are disciplines that are practiced in many different industries,
and the tasks they perform vary according to the specialized
industry. This perception of status is based on the public's
ability to recognize the architect's distinct realm of practice
and the artistic skills associated with it.
I think Janet Landey has the right idea. It is in the realm
of aesthetic and strategic authority that event management
will gain its status as a profession rather than an occupation
or, worse, a commoditized job, no matter how skilled the worker
may be or need to be.
Consider, for example, the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006
Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy. The three-hour spectacle
featured tradition, innovation, pageantry, and countless cultural
icons celebrating the history of the Games and Italy's rich
contributions to theater, art, music, fashion, style, and
sports heroes throughout the centuries. The strategic and
aesthetic challenges were to integrate the Torino Games' motto
"Passion Lives Here," highlight and promote "all
things Italian," showcase the city of Turin and the assets
of the Piedmont region, meet the IOC specifications for the
formal ceremonies, and create a spectacle for worldwide television
coverage.
The conceptual centerpiece, the single creative element brought
together the different protocol and spectacle segments of
the production, was the Sparks of Passion, eight inline skaters
that wore helmets that spewed two-meter long flames and raced
through dancers and around the stage at speeds of up to 70
kilometers per hour. This iconic element, meant to symbolize
the energy, passion, and speed of the Olympic athletes and
the Italians, helped transition the program comprised of six
mandatory ceremonial and eight entertainment segments. Rhythm,
passion, and speed were infused throughout the program, from
the extensive use of innovative pyrotechnics to the disco
music that helped maintain the tempo of the athletes' entry
during the Parade of Nations to the Sbandieratori, a complex
flag-waving ceremony that began in medieval Italy as a martial
art and weapons drill for standard bearers.
Every aspect of the program required significant technical,
scientific, and logistical expertise, but it was the artistic
vision that drove the production and the strategic objectives
that directed the ceremonial and entertainment choices made.
This is what sets the event "architect" apart from
the event "planner" and elevates this to the status
of a profession.
Julia Rutherford Silvers, CSEP
julia@juliasilvers.com,
www.juliasilvers.com
505-720-8453
Author of Professional Event Coordination (Wiley, 2004)
Originator of the Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK)
Project
http://www.juliasilvers.com/embok.htm
Four-Time Winner of the ISES Esprit Award for Best Industry
Contribution
See Tips: Tips on Music/Entertainment
Contracts, by Dana Lynn Bernstein, CMP
This issue's featured
artist: ATOM The World's Fastest Painter
 Mark
Sonder, CSEP is the Chief Entertainment Officer of Mark Sonder
Productions, a leading national entertainment agency providing
headline talent and production services for large venues,
corporations and associations. In addition, Sonder sits on
the faculty of The George Washington University, Stratford
University, Northern Virginia Community College, University
of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) and The University of the West
Indies. Event
Entertainment and Production is the book published by
Wiley authored by Sonder.
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