Before Cvent, There Was a Typewriter: Jill Rasco on The Wild Origins of Event Tech

 What do mimeograph machines, floppy disks, and early HTML have to do with modern event registration? Everything. In this episode of Barefoot Business, Liz and Jill Rasco of Attendee Management trace the evolution of event tech from literal cut-and-paste newspapers to today’s complex, integrated registration ecosystems. They unpack why registration strategy should start with the end in mind, how early decisions shape everything from reporting to attendee experience, and why the real value isn’t the platform, it’s the people who know how to use it. Plus, a few unforgettable onsite horror stories that prove why experience still beats software every time. 

Want to be a guest on the Barefoot Business Podcast? Join Club Ichi as an Insider member today! https://www.weareichi.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Welcome to Barefoot Business, the podcast where we kick off our shoes and dive into real, unfiltered conversations about the business of events. I'm your host, Liz Lathan, co-founder of Club Ichi. And together with our insider members, we'll explore strategic event marketing topics that matter most to our community. Hello and welcome back to the Barefoot Business Podcast. I'm Liz, and today I have my dear friend Joe Rasco from Attendee Management Inc. Thank you. That's the official name, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Um we officially lost the Inc.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

You did, okay.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Attendee Management Inc. We still use the I because we call ourselves AMI a lot. But yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:39

Ah, okay, very cool. I'm so excited to, I mean, you and I have talked for years and years of all. And I've heard your origin story, but I really think it's a fun one for us to go through. Um, because we kind of have a similar tech background-ish. And but but then you went like super tech. So this is this is your company.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

I'm a geeky. Um no, it is I am a one of five owners.

SPEAKER_04 1:06

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

All in the last name of Rasco. Yes. Which I like to say it happened by accident. Um, let me go even further back. My career started. Well, my career started when I was trying to earn my allowance by stuffing envelopes. My dad was a magazine publisher. Wow. Editor. My parents were both public relations people. So it's it's like in the blood. That and and newscasting and radio and all, you know, so they had beautiful voices. We don't normally get into our twine. Like I am a native Houstonian, but you know. Anyway, so I I taught myself how to type back in the days where nobody on this podcast will understand, but you used to have this manual typewriter and it had this handle on it, and you'd go typey, typey, typey, typey.

SPEAKER_04 2:08

So I went to my dad's office and play with their typewriter, and then they got a word processor that I got to play with, and then they got this computer that had all these green letters on it that I got to type, and then you could print. I would sit in there and write poetry, and then I'd print it out on the dot matrix printer. And then they got one that had like orange writing instead of green writing, and they were so fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Mimeograph machine. Oh, I love the smell of those. Yes, we had one in our house. You know, yeah, yeah. And so one of my big thrills was when I got to be really good, I could create the template that wraps around the mimeograph machine. Oh wow. But you have to be able to type without errors because in those days you couldn't correct. And so yeah, I got I got I was a speed typist.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Um, so that got me in. Well, Jennifer says I still am. Um but yeah, on a manual typewriter, I typed 90 words a minute.

SPEAKER_04 3:09

It was like you know, I took a typing class when I was in second grade. My mom took me down to Georgia State University where they did the Saturday school thing, and I really wanted to learn how to type fast, and so she took me down there. And the way that they did it was rows at a time. So I started with the A S D F row, and we were like a whole weekend doing like a sad lad had a glad vad. And so, like, and I got really, really good at it. And then the next week when we were moving to the quarty row, I had strep throat and I didn't go. And then the next week when we were gonna move to the zero, I might we went to like Mexico on a vacation. It was near Thanksgiving or something. I don't know. And so I was really good at that middle row, but I never got the rest of them.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I never got past it. Well, I have uh there there are times like at a registration desk where somebody is giving me their name and stuff that I can enter it and I will type it while looking at them. And they're like, What are you doing? Yeah, because they're not used to it. I'm a touch typist. Um, but you mentioned word processor. I ran the first word processor in Houston, Texas, called a Wang word processor. It was bigger than like a dorm room refrigerator, and it had these eight and a half inch floppies. And I worked at an ad agency and I was one of the production people, and the copywriters were afraid to give me their copy because I was gonna put it in the word processor, and they didn't have a clue what was gonna happen to it. It's it took a while, but in those days nobody knew what a word processor was. There was no such software, and uh so I got to run the word processor. I was a typesetter for a while. Um yeah, that's so fun. The Selectric typewriter, and then I had the one that that I forgot exactly what it called. It was a brand of Selectric, but that it also kern the type, so it had different little balls, and you trade out the ball and get a different font. Oh fancy.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

I know, I know. I need to go to the like printing museum. That's really fun. Like, and my times have changed, so now a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Teletype machines, yeah, yeah. So from the ad agency, I at skip a few years here and there, but then I ended up being the marketing person for what was one of the first computer resellers called Computer Craft. At one point we had 120 stores around the country, but people didn't know to buy computers. And uh from there, I did advertising for IBM and Compaq and Apple. And it was, it was um, we would get reimbursed partial reimbursements for the ads. It was called co-op advertising. And our IBM rep would come every Tuesday or Thursday, I don't remember, and always bring a bunch of donuts, which of course made everybody in the cup. Yeah, it was like go go in on those donuts. And I adored our compact rep. And in those days, comp this was like early 80s. Compaq was just taking off and about to, you know, make a big splash. And I asked our compact rep, I said, can you please get me a job? I mean, I will run the Xerox machine.

unknown 7:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Back when they were called Xerox machines. So I I ended up at Compaq and uh I was there a dozen years, but we built um an application that was basically online. We in those days it was Lotus Notes, and we built an application that we could then communicate with the channels that sold compact products. So we developed this Lotus Notes lovely thing, and my job was communicating product announcements. So we would we would create the deliverables like the brochures and the boxes and all the stuff would go in, and we'd ship it out all over the world. And we built this product, we called the product, the the program was sales pack. So back in those days, and IBM had a program and Apple had a program. And right about well, actually the week that we rolled out this application, we went out to the channels and we're ready to go install it for them. You know, here's our floppy discs, we're coming and restall it. Um IBM bought Lotus and Compaq's then CEO at Card Pfeiffer did not want to support Lotus product. Sure. So they they canned the whole thing. Oh wow. I'd spent um, I think I had spent a hundred grand in swag to go to all of the channels. It was so fun, but it was also crazy. Oh my gosh. So when that happened, I also in ninety two our team built compact.com before anybody heard of HTML.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

And we used Notepad to write all the code. What you did was you spent your whole day kind of going through whatever site you might find and reverse engineering their code.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

It was so fun. And working with it like New York ad agencies, and it it was a hoot. So anyway, I'm getting into HTML and cascading style sheets and all of this stuff.

unknown 9:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

Tell me you had a Geo Cities account.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Netscape, Geo Cities. We had, you know, email was orange on a little monitor. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 9:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah. During that time, my brother Jeff was conference director at MD Anderson. And everybody can imagine what it's like to try to read a doctor's handwriting when they fax in their registration for an event.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And Jeff was like, there's got to be a better way. Gotta be a better way. And he ended up like going on the speaking circuit, talking to planners and helping them learn things like what email was. And he ended up, he's he founded attendee management. It was, you know, sort of one of those garage operations. And um was one of the pioneers of online registration.

unknown 10:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

So yeah, hanging out with some of the other pioneers like Reggie Agawal and CERN and etc. So somewhere down the line, I can't remember exactly which year it was, he kept calling. He's like, Do you know how to do this in HDML? Do you know how to do that in CSS? Do you know how and I'm like, yes, yes, yes. By this time I had moved out of compact. The internet was too much of a thing for them, and and leadership didn't really understand what it was doing and how, you know, so I had like seven bosses in two years. Because they were like, okay, you take that, you take that. And so I had actually at that time I was running a solopreneurial coaching business. And even then nobody knew what a coach was. Yeah, right, right. That was one of the beginning things. And so when Jeff called, it was like, Yeah, I know how to do that. Yeah, I know how to do that. Yeah, and the next thing I know, I'm working for the company. Well, it turns out when he was in the garage, his daughter, Christina, was in graduate school at UT and um was around, of course, and because Jeff lives in Wimberley and or Wood Creek. Jeff was like, uh, why are you looking for a job? Can you help me out? And sure enough, Christina becomes an employee and not that much longer. Jeff's son Leighton, my nephew, he was a mechanical engineer by trade and kind of decided he didn't like it. And they teamed up on my brother Jeff and convinced him that Leighton could join the company because he solves problems and creates things and fixes things. So sure enough, that brain came in. I came in later. Then my sister Jennifer is a graphic artist by trade. So and she was doing graphic art when they did it on drafting boards, you know, and they had Xactoblades and laid down type and images and all that fun stuff.

SPEAKER_04 13:19

Oh yeah. Oh man, I remember my first uh high school newspaper, but like when it was actually called clip art because it was a book that you literally cut the pictures out of and then spray pasted onto the board that was gonna get photographed to become the mag the newspaper.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Those ads that we did for while I was at computer craft, that's how they were created.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

All of that was done with spray glue. I know it's hysterical. And um, so yep, then I came in and then Jennifer came in because we had need for graphics.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

We're all into you know building out websites and registration forms and trying to make them work.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

And that was for me so well, so she though then from to actually digital art at some point in there.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And and now is also HTML and CSS and still gets still wants to do the graphics, which is lovely.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So we um as we became employees, we bought into the company, so to speak. Yeah. So there's there are five of us with the name Rasco, and then we have another uh five or six or seven, depending uh what we call adopted Rasco's in that work for us. So a group of 10 or 11, and we use contractors and we're Jennifer sitting near you, so you probably can't be honest right now.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

But how is it working with family?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

We grew up working together, you know. Uh we um we have always been very tight and have always gotten along. Well, it was fun. There's there are four of us in the family, and the two brothers and the two sisters, we would either team up against girls against boys, or sometimes the middles against the ends. So Jennifer's the baby and John's, and so you know, the battles would depend on which partner you teamed up with. Oh my gosh. But I've worked with both of my brothers and my sister. I work with my dad at one point, um, actually at that advertising agency. I got him that job as a PR person. And you know, as you know, Jennifer and I are besties. We're neighbors and best friends and office mates and travel buddies, and we're kind of joined at the hip. I love that. We most mostly got along the whole time. She did try to kill me with a umbrella once, but but you're over it.

SPEAKER_04 16:04

You don't care anybody.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

But I got past it, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:07

Well, so there was when Jeff started it. What did he start a software company or did he start a consulting company that used reg software from other people?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

He used Reg Software. Okay. Um, and there was a company. Oh, I'm gonna get its name wrong. Reg 123. Oh, yeah, I remember Reg 123. Reg 123, which got into certain, and I don't I don't know that order. I remember that. That was like around 99 or so. So that's when he was close with Certain. Okay. Um, I think he was on one of their advisory boards. And yeah, so it got built up around him, but also, you know, C Vit and everything else. Jeff maintained we were platform agnostic. And many of our clients already had contracts with somebody. So we we have learned multiple different registration platforms. I think at one time one of Jeff's good good industry buddies is Corbin Ball, who's been around like forever. And Corbin looked at me, he said, You may be one of the very few people that is an expert in three different platforms. Because at the time it was C Vent Certain and EventSair. Yeah. And I was uh qualified in all of them.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

It's wonderful, but it is confusing because one minute you're going, Oh, yeah, it can do that, and then you go, Oh, wait, no, that's that one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but I love it. I mean, I I was always into technology and software and computers and all of it. It's just we're all geeks.

SPEAKER_04 17:55

So do clients come to you and you like run the RFP or recommend which platform to use, or do they come to you because they already have a platform and they just need someone to kind of take it and run with it? Where are you in the process? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

All of the above. All the above. Um a lot of our clients are enterprise and they have their own license. Okay. Um, many of our clients were referred to us by certain, for instance, um, where we could bring them into our license. So they didn't have to to face that, you know, large licensing fee for one event. One event, yeah. One one annual event. So it it's a really nice kind of not officially a partnership, but yeah, it's it's a nice way to work for those enterprise level that maybe they just have little events or bunches of little events, but it's not worth it to them for their team to become an expert builder. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where we're a little different. We get confused with platforms that we are a software company, but we're not.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Do we do have a software developer, and we do have custom software. It's like a learning management system that was developed specifically for some clients. Okay. But in general, we we're not software developers. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

But then not you're not just the technology side of things. You actually do go on site and actually physically manage attendees.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Absolutely. Love it. Well, and uh Jeff was a planner.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I I had a stint at Compaq where I brought in the major accounts and organized those events to bring them in and set up the speakers and blah. I was a caterer at one time, I was a bartender at one time. So I mean, we're kind of planners at heart. Plus, we we did a a lot of planning for PR clients.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

And so we've got that planner knowledge and experience, which makes a big difference. You know, I I kind of joke and say, you know, the software developers, they write the software, but they don't use it. Yeah. Yeah. So we use it and we know the pain points that the planners and their teams are having to go through to make it all work and streamline things. So we do like to to be brought in early if we can and and help with the strategy. And under those circumstances, we're quick to recommend one product over the other. I'm I'm pretty quick to like, oh, would you like to play comparison? I'll tell you what I think.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Um, and compare the different options. But a lot of our clients are already committed to a C vent or a Certain or an Event or a Swugo or whatever. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

Okay. And so do you you're not just Texas based, right? Even though everybody lives in Texas, you guys do stuff everywhere. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Our developer lives in Portland. Okay. Um Jennifer and I are in Houston, everybody else is in Hill Country. Okay. Um, we have um an ex but still employee in California.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

And I can't remember where that one. Anyway, we also have this kind of large network of people that we'll bring in. If we're going on site and it's a big job and the whole company can't be there, then there we've got a bevy of people that we call upon for different expertise.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

Do you have like a sweet spot perfect size conference that you work on?

SPEAKER_00 22:04

I think our perfect size is 5,000 and below. Okay. We ha we've done 20,000 people events, but that's not really our preference.

SPEAKER_04 22:16

That's fun at all.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

No. Um we don't we don't do festivals, you know, just ticketing. Our our expertise is in the registration process. And you know, some of these shows are you've got a trade show and an educational part and speaker wrangling and hotel rooms and all of those little complicated things that all go together that we've just become experts at building that out. And then I think another place that we're a little different is because we do go on site and we'll manage registration on site, the mobile app. We'll we'll build the mobile out, but also on site help everybody that needs help logging in or getting access or whatever. Doing you know, QA, live QA and polling through the app, all those things that we do. We've we've done speaker wrangling and exhibitor wrangling. So there's a couple of clients where like I go and I'm the exhibitor person.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

You know, maybe not even at registration, but I'm down by the exhibitors helping them. Or Wrangling speakers are going in and helping with live QA, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

So you can build out a whole exhibitor portal and whatever you need, and do integrations too, like if someone wants the call for papers, the session board or whatever. Yeah, and that's why you have a developer, I assume, to help them out.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

It is. Yes, yes. Well, and and our developer was with original company uh was called Cardinal, and they had this product that he has continued to manage and grow over the years, which is really a software app. Um, so we can create custom software, but generally we're known for registration. Okay. Yeah. And websites, you know, because they kind of go together. And um we can do the integration. We've got integrations with um kind of anybody that has an open API that just allows softwares that talk to each other. But then also we help manage those enterprises that have Salesforce and they want their Salesforce and their registration records to talk to each other or Zoom.

unknown 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

They have, you know, they do virtual events and they want to track who's there and who's not, and yeah, all of those lovely kinds of ways to gather data.

SPEAKER_04 24:56

Yeah. So I mean, I think that the important part of the conversation is how early you get brought into building these things out because I I feel like registration is easily the first thing that you think about, but what you don't think about then is all the other stuff that you need. So, oh, are you gonna have booths? Oh, are you gonna have a call for papers or are is it just a hypersight and a form, or is it housing, like you said? And what if they're using like a third-party uh venue sourcing booker person? Like, do you need it to go through that or through them, or all these things? So it's it's an interesting thing because I don't know that everybody thinks about that when they're RFPing, like you RP for the agency, and then you RP for like all these things, and then you're like, Well, what tool will we use without actually planning it?

SPEAKER_00 25:44

You're exactly right, yeah, you know, and it it's kind of hard to get brought in early enough. It's definitely hard to get brought in too early. Right. That just if we were brought in from the very beginning, there are things that we might recommend or shy away from for different reasons. Yeah, and and a lot of people when they go to to look for a registration opportunity, yeah, they want to go look for the platform. That is not where to start. Right. That is not where to start. And when we are onboarding a project or a client, yeah, we we kind of need to start with the why. What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? Why do you want to do that? You know, uh even to the point that registration sites, we often start with the reports in mind. Because I can't get through the event and tell you what their you know jacket size is if we didn't know to ask. Right. So you got to get all that stuff together.

SPEAKER_04 26:58

Yeah. And then the questions around, I mean, this is one of the things that we always missed was um you very rarely do you have the agenda locked in before you launch registration. So then what's the process gonna be for when the agenda gets locked in? Are you gonna get people to come back into the tool to pick their sessions? Probably not. So how are you gonna manage these things? Yeah, yeah. That's one of the things I always appreciated about certain is certain ended up being Lanyan, right? Nope, certain still certain. Certain still certain. Okay, so there was the other one was Lanyan back in the day, which oh, they're the ones that became rainfocus, I think.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:32

So I I did always keeping up is hard. I mean, seriously, I did always appreciate that they came in with the consultative approach, even on the sales front, where they were like, we won't even quote you until we whiteboard this out together to figure out what it is, which of course, you know, at that enterprise level, they had the manpower to do that because they were charging a ton of money. But but but it was an eye-opening process the very first time I went through it because they absolutely, as experts as you are, know the questions to ask that when you have, especially if it's a a first-time user conference that's the client, and they don't have a clue what they don't have a clue about. Right, right. You don't know what you don't know. I mean, I think when we did our very first Dell World, we decided probably after we had launched Dell World that there was gonna be an executive summit. Like long after registration had launched. Like now there's this small 200-person thing going on. Well, how are you going to find them and register them? Is it a new website? Is it a thing that we're going after? Like now we gotta like backpedal and try to figure out where it's gonna fit. So, you know, the I think that that registration expertise that that you guys have, you can ask those programmatic questions if you can get into the room.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yeah, yep, absolutely. Have you and and not be in the position to try to help them apologize later because they couldn't pull it off. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 28:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:54

Do you do you have any horror stories, registration horror stories? Oh my gosh. You there might be a few.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:07

I think my favorite one, it was my um my first job out of college. I was a it was called National Instruments then. It's and I um yeah, and one of our clients, actually. Yeah, uh I was um I was the co-registration captain that I think I was 23 years old, straight out of college. And so the the girl that had been running registration for a while was um, but at the Christmas party, she fell down the stairs and the wine glass went right through her hand, and she was like out for emergency surgery and rehab. And they were like, Well, Liz, I think you know what she was doing. You take it over.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Oh, I'm gonna be done. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

So so it was fine, you know. I learned we figured out how to do all the it was fantastic. I just I remember my registration horror story around it was the day of it was the day, and we had the buses going to pick people up at the hotels, they're at the Austin Convention Center. They drop the first group of people off at the very end of the Austin Convention Center. I see the bus unload and they start walking down the hall. I got my reg team, we're all ready to go, we're checking people in, and the entire power goes out in the convention center. Of course, and they're they're all walking toward us, and we're like, and everybody looks at me, and I'm like this 23-year-old who's just like pin everybody, we're right. That's right now, right? Give them and we luckily it was back in the old days when we pre-printed all the badges, it wasn't like print on demand back then. So we had them, so it was just like when you hand out a badge, write their name down. When you hand out a badge, write their name down. Everybody's doing it, and the little IT guy came over to me afterwards after fixing everything, and he was like, How old are you? I was like, um, 23.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I'm not allowed to tell you that.

SPEAKER_04 30:44

You did a really great job handling.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

And that's when I fell in love with events because that was just the best worst moment ever. Yeah, that is part of why I love it so much, is because there are no two events alike. There are no two registrations alike, there and not every day is different, a different challenge, and we get to solve problems all day. Yeah, one of the ones I love, and it's not so much a horror story for us as it was for that poor client, but it was either during 2020 or just after. We had a UK client that had an event, it's an annual event, and it goes from country to country. So this particular one was gonna be in San Antonio and um she called me a few weeks before the event and said, if we have a problem getting our visas, could you run this event for us on site? No. I'm like, yeah, yeah. And sure enough, I mean, Friday, the event started on Saturday. Friday, she said, we still don't know if we'll have our visas. So will you please get there? I need you to go do this site inspection, go check out on this where we're gonna have the speaker dinner, go look at this and this, and then if we can get there on Saturday or even Friday night, we'll just we'll buy your dinner and you can go home.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Guess who could not get there? They did not receive their visas.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

So we like swooped in, they being in the UK, assumed our time zone hours. So we zoomed a lot. But like managing the speakers and making sure they got in there and where their presentation was, and blah blah blah. And that these guys have been handheld for years. We didn't know who the speakers were, we just kind of had to go figure it out. But it turned out to be a terrific success. Of course, you can imagine the planner is just stressed to the match.

SPEAKER_04 33:04

But luckily, they picked a good partner who's in the middle when it failed it it happened so easily.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

It was, I mean, not it wasn't that easy, but yeah, we had a great team that got went out and ran registration and we did the exhibit hall, and we took care of the speakers and a bill. We do get paid.

SPEAKER_04 33:29

That's the important part.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

But yeah, I think that's where we get some of our best feel goods is that we can help, you know, or we're all like, I I want to help, I want to help, I want to help. Yeah, we just almost to a fault. That exactly.

SPEAKER_04 33:45

That that diving catch is a thing that people get used to us being able to catch. And I think that's where we get into trouble. We actually had this conversation on the Ichi sounding board today of the unreasonable client demands and how do you push back and feel it, especially when you're on the supplier side, feeling like you know, the it's a customer's always right kind of thing, that you don't say no, you say yes and or yes, but or or as one of our members said, she says no, but because it's even though you have to say no, but there has to be a constitution. Yeah, she's like, Well, every time we say yes and they don't quite hear that there's a no in it. So we had to switch it to no but so that they could catch the no. But I mean, I think that you know, we're people pleasers, we're hospitality people. We are. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

And we love it.

SPEAKER_04 34:30

I know.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yes, I know. Uh well, you never know what's going to happen. Yeah, we had one event where um we were outside, we were doing registration in a parking lot, and they had, you know, a uh one of those big hunking generators, you know, for to run electricity, and we're running registration. Did you know that those generators can fry your laptop?

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

The power from a generator is not stable enough, so it it's without a surge detector, it just yeah. So we lost a laptop or two, but didn't know that you shouldn't plug into a generator.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

Wow. Hey, lessons learned.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

This is what we but it were we worked it out, we went over somewhere else and had electrical power, you know, rain, sleep, snow, whatever. We'll be there.

SPEAKER_04 35:29

You're right. That is what makes this fun. I mean, there are some terrible, horrible disasters that we have to live through, but man, the stories we have. Oh that's amazing. So you guys work mostly with corporate or association, or do you have that one over the other, or is it a little a little bit of both?

SPEAKER_00 35:47

We're heavily involved in the MPI Association, meaning professionals international. Um and and we have several association clients. Okay. Um so yeah, it's really hard to say it's all corporate, it's all independent. That's good.

SPEAKER_04 36:06

Glad that you're diversified. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

I have I have vendors that use me just to help. You know, we're actually competitors, but they need an extra hand.

SPEAKER_03 36:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:19

And then do you bring on reg site builder people too to help out with stuff? So that's where your fleet of contractors when needed can be reached out to you. Yep. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Or speaker wranglers or exhibit managers or whatever we need to bring in, we we can and do. Okay. Um, we are not sourcing. So we don't go out and try to find the venues and and that sort of thing. We can recommend because we have so much exposure in the industry to you know 87,000 hotels, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:55

Let the venue experts do the venue expert thing.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah.

unknown 36:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

We will go on site, we will do on-site badges, we'll do pre-printed badges. Um, I hate printers.

SPEAKER_04 37:08

That scene from Office Space is just the best scene that's ever existed ever in the world.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Why? Why can a printer not work?

SPEAKER_04 37:16

Great. I don't I don't understand. If you're out of Cyan, you should still be able to print black.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Still print black. Yes. Yes. And uh invariably, have you ever been to an event where a printer worked perfectly the whole time? No, never. That's so true. Don't tell HP.

SPEAKER_04 37:38

Yeah, well, it's good to know that it's not just the normal home user of a printer that hates printers, it is also the enterprise level user of printers who hates printers. So it is uh, you know what? This is this is a really fun. I feel like there's a marketing campaign coming out there, which is if you hate printers too, let us take care of them for you. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Exactly. Well, and actually we'll outsource that. Thank you very much. I I hate printers.

SPEAKER_04 38:04

That's so funny. Uh well, I have very much appreciated your active involvement, engagement in Club Ichi. You were just in our community.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

I do. I wanted to be at the at the session today, and it actually sat on top of another community, and I I tried to divide my time, but it didn't work. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_04 38:26

That's okay. We're still here for you. We have plenty going on.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

I know, I know. I'm so excited for you. I you and Nicole have just blown everybody away. I mean, we go back to hot before hot. So I mean, to to have seen the both of you just explode with graciousness and wonder and fun, which you know, it's it's nice to see it coming into the industry. And I mean, I'm forever telling people about the Slack channel. You gotta get in there, you gotta get in there. So, yes. And partnering with you. We we intend to keep that partnership going.

SPEAKER_04 39:10

Yes, I'm so excited about that. I absolutely love the picture of you and Jennifer by the sign at the pickleball court from IMAX. That was like my favorite. We had your site must have been what seven feet wide or something. That was amazing. Pickle party, the epic pickle party.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Which yeah, how creative. You are just you uh you're both very, very, very creative.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

Well, let me tell you what we're doing at this one. Okay. So so many people have told us that they really loved that place, that it was outside and that they weren't stuck inside. And we hate to do the same thing twice, but it was it was a really good party place, I will have to say. Um, so uh Wendy Porter actually found out that that place at some point was a nudist camp, and that's why it's so amazing to have two swimming pools, a hot tub, and a pickleball court and three houses. So very short-lived because the neighborhood shut it down, but it was that at one point. So we decided that our Monday night party at IMEX this year will be a party in the nude, but it'll be the color nude. So you have to wear the color nude, whatever nude is for you, and we're gonna do all nude decorations, but in homage to the fact that apparently it was a nude as camp.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yeah, nude is not my color. I'm just telling you.

SPEAKER_04 40:24

I was so what I was thinking is I would get the you know, those shirts that have like the the swimsuit on the t-shirt.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Oh, perfect, perfect, yes. That's not fun. Yes, and and that way I could lose like a hundred pounds. Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

But I mean, that's fun. Ridiculous, irreverent. Like we don't need any more pointy-toed shoes, wear a blazer kind of things going on in our lives. And a rubber chicken.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

We need a rubber chicken.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Jennifer and I were both really disappointed because we took our rubber chickens to IMAX and we had them in our badges. Oh, and they got lost. Oh, and we never did know that they even fell off. But we were we were all in with the rubber chickens.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

My little rubber chicken friend right here, so we can we can send you new rubber chickens. We so you know what I did an entire mailing to send them out to every single insider. When we had we were about the 350 insider mark, half of them got returned. Like they couldn't get through the mail system because apparently uh and so they like sent them back to me. So I'm like, oh, I don't know how to get my chickens to people. So that's yeah, my next challenge. Oh yeah, I think that would be something flat. And I so I'm trying to figure out how do we do something that is actually recognizable and noticeable so each people can find each other in the wild, you know. So if we made this a lapel pen or you know, what's the thing you can do to be like, oh my god, you're an Ichi too, you know? Ribbons. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because I mean I don't want it to be attached to a thing like a badge ribbon or something that like if you're gonna go to a different event, you wouldn't have it, but something like this that you would take so people can find each other because a lot of people only know each other through Slack or they've seen each other on one of our Zooms or whatever. And so to meet in person, it's like, is that the person I think it is? Is that the yeah, yeah. So something to make it recognizable. I don't know, maybe I'll end up just doing an arts and craft project where I turn them into lapel pins.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

We um we used ours as a wine charm. Oh, I love it. Before we lost it. That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_04 42:30

It's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

But just sit right there on the edge of the glass and we posted a picture and somebody's like, What is that on your glass? Oh, you gotta know about Clubichi.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

Oh, I love that so much.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

It's so fun, so fun. So fun.

SPEAKER_03 42:45

Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

We were stodgy and boop and boring before you, so no, not the case, but we just figured we'll shake it up a bit. Well, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. I'm sorry it took so long to get it all worked out, but I'm so thrilled we had this conversation and you're going through.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

I can't wait to hug you in person really, really soon. I know.

SPEAKER_03 43:08

I was hoping to go to Chicago.

SPEAKER_04 43:10

Yeah, but no work. I don't think so. Okay. Well, we'll find a time and place for you. Let's do okay. Love you. Take care, love you too. Bye. Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, join Club Eachy as an insider today at weareichi.com. That's weare ici.com.