An exercise in “Emergency Planning”
You are a recent college graduate and have been working with the most successful planning
firm in Portland, Oregon for the past 12 months. You have assisted with dozens of events and
are now excited to lead your first large event. It is three days until your event, the second annual
Women’s Day Conference. The local medical school, Oregon Health Sciences University, is
hosting the daylong conference in Portland, Oregon at the Portland Oregon Convention Center.
Each attendee is paying $100 to receive a fun day of advice on women’s health, a catered box
lunch, a health expo, and breakout sessions that vary from yoga to nutrition while undergoing
cancer treatments. The event was well received last year and has received a lot of press. The
University is excited by the press and since most of the labor and items are donated this is a
large fund raiser for their operations.
Your Assignment
This morning you were notified by your assistant that the web registration did not automatically
close as expected which led to 8,000 paid registrations being processed and confirmed. The ca
pacity of the Convention Center is 7,000 given the arrangements for the trade show, theater
seating, and breakout session rooms.
Key players in the situation:
Peggy Frank
Your boss at the Event Planning Firm
“This is an important client for us as we plan dozens of events for the University each year and
this event is high profile in the community. Just fix it.”
Jennifer Dunn
Convention & Visitor Planning Event Coordinator
“We can hold up to 10,000 guests if we reconfigure the setup. It’s a lot of work but it can be
done… If the catering company can get more box lunches together. If security can find a few
more people to work… If we can rent more chairs… If we can contract with another parking
lot… If… There are a lot of things to change.”
Bill SmithPrimary Stakeholder
OHSU Women’s Center Vice President
“I’m excited about the high response. I wouldn’t worry about the capacity. We’ll have no
shows, some people come late, some people leave early. Not everyone wants a box lunch any
way. I’m thrilled we can help so many women and I hope they bring their friends with them.”
Direction for answer: Go with Jennifer. Her plan will help to save the situation.
Assignment Requirements:
1) What do you do? You have a legal, ethical, and financial responsibility to make certain the
event and its operations maintain the highest standards of safety possible. You have a responsi
bility to protect the brand and quality of your meeting planning firm, and you have a responsibil
ity to maximize the happiness and revenue for your client. What will you do?
2) Often the number of guests is unknown for events. Weather can keep people away or bring
them out in large numbers. How do you plan for unknown guest counts? What would have been
included in contingency planned for this type of event?
Responses to each question should be approximately 200 300 words in length .
Note to the student: You are being graded on your demonstration of reasoning, critical thinking,
and analytical abilities in applying what you are learning. If you use your text or outside sources
of information, please provide intext citations and references using APA or MLA formatting.
