The night the sprinter was the wrong vehicle

There is a kind of night in Orlando every event planner knows. The sprinter is the wrong vehicle. Twelve people, luggage for a week, and a sprinter that looked right on paper and wrong in the parking lot.

When the plan changes underneath you

There is no time to panic, so you skip it. The whole transfer gets reworked on the spot. Different vehicle, different loading order, same departure time. A quick call to the transportation company, a larger vehicle rolling, luggage loaded first so people board without standing around in a parking lot wondering what is happening. The group boards, laughing about something, completely unaware that the plan has changed underneath them.

Nobody ever finds out, and that is exactly the philosophy.

The plan underneath the plan

People ask me what a planner actually does during an event. The honest answer is: mostly, I stand in parking lots solving problems you will never hear about.

Every event has a visible plan, the agenda, the schedule, the pretty version. And then there is the plan underneath the plan, which is me, usually on the phone, usually somewhere unglamorous, making sure the visible plan survives contact with reality.

The sprinter looked fine on the reservation. It was not fine in person. That gap, between the paper and the parking lot, is where I live during event week.

Logistics is the event

The event you remember is the one where nothing went wrong. My job is making sure that is the only version you ever see.

Logistics is the event. Everything else, the sessions, the dinners, the moments people talk about for years, is what happens when logistics works. I will keep standing in parking lots so nobody has to think about that.