What you should always ask when you book your event location
We had the unfortunate situation of having to reschedule a number of events due to Hurricane Florence. When you’re working on rescheduling an event you’re at the mercy of whatever is available at the hotel and you squeeze into whatever space is possible. That’s exactly what we did, and it worked! Overall, we had what the space we needed and the event was successful. The one thing I didn’t ask (that you always should) is what other events are going on in the hotel that I should know about.
Why should you ask this question? While this wasn’t the case for us, I have heard of case studies where there was a democratic celebration party for a recent election alongside a Christian conference. Or an NRA convention alongside a teachers against guns rally. I can’t make this up. Now, I believe that these opposing ideals can co-exist, but if you have the choice, I would vote for booking a different weekend for one of these events just to avoid any potential conflict.
As for our event, we did not have opposing ideals. Rather we had logos for each of our events that was nearly identical. We happened to be setting up our banner on the heels of a Alcoholics Anonymous Conference. We had been getting a lot of confused questions from the participants of the AA Conference about what we were doing and if they needed to check in with us. We just thought the participants had inquiring minds. We were none the wiser that our logos were both circular with a triangle in the middle of it until a participant came over and asked what we were doing and showed us her earrings. The logos were identical. It explained everything!
We were highly amused by the sheer coincidence of our logos. But it was a good reminder about why you should always ask about other conferences in the hotel at the same time as yours. The presence of the AA Conference would not have deterred us from having ours on the same day, but would have given us the heads up and possibility to do a quick Google search.
See below our similar logos and enjoy a good laugh with me.