Our GDPR Event: We came, we saw, we conquered.

There’s just over three weeks until the May 25th GDPR deadline but if you haven’t prepared yet we can still help…

It’s been one week since our event so here’s a recap of the key areas from the day. If you’re reading this and you attended, thank you very much, the day was a complete success! If you’re reading this and you didn’t attend, you missed out. Big time.

It’s not too late to begin your GDPR journey and learn how we can help make your journey as smooth as possible from an IT point of view.

So let me take you back to the day of our event…

Although the event registrations didn’t start until 9am. The event team at PCS started their day at around 7:30am (ish) at the Marriott Hotel in Northampton.

We came prepped with everything we needed for the day… From printed material (including our snazzy new brochure), pop up stands, roller banners, technical gear, promo kit… You name It, we had it.

11:45am: After the break it was back to business, kicking off with our very own Scott– the second keynote speaker. Scotts talk went down well with the audience. It gave him a chance to focus on the IT side of GDPR and explain how PCS could help assist.

12:30 (ish): Lunchtime! We had vegetarian options and nothing contained nuts, so food wise, we were covered. In great British style, an orderly queue was formed, and after everyone collected their food, they settled down to eat with colleagues, Account Managers and other likeminded business people.

1:20 – 3:30pm (ish): After lunch the breakout sessions were ready to being. At this point, many attendees decided to change the sessions they initially signed up for. This luckily wasn’t an issue because there was enough room in each of the breakout rooms for extra people.

The day before the event we put together some giveaway bags for attendees, we planned to give these out at the end of the event as a ‘thank you’ for attending.

We asked registries for their top size a couple of weeks before the event because we were getting some swaggy branded gym tops made for the giveaway bags. Luckily not many questioned why we were asking for their size, so the element of surprise was still there!

After we received the branded gym tops, we packed and labelled the giveaway bags with the names of the people who had provided us with their size.

Between the breakout sessions we laid these bags out on tables in alphabetical order (by ‘we’ I mainly mean we passed the bags to Claire and she laid them out and made them look pretty). Although the bags were sorted beforehand, we still needed to cater for the people who registered for the event later or didn’t provide us with their top size.

Luckily this is where forward thinking comes into play again. So, we had a selection of bags and spare gym tops for those who didn’t have a
pre-made giveaway.

Between breakout sessions, people started to collect their freebies and before we knew it, the sessions had finished and most of the bags had been collected. In exchange for the bags we asked attendees to make a swap for their feedback forms (there is no such thing as a freebie after all).

I’d say we received about 80% of the feedback forms back. So, if you’re reading this and you attended our event but didn’t leave us your feedback, please let us know your thoughts. It comes in very handy for future event and we also strive towards perfection so we’d appreciate any feedback, whether it’s good, bad or ugly!

The amount of positive feedback we’ve received from the attendees has been immense (we even received some great feedback from our speakers at the event) we couldn’t be happier with how smoothly everything went. From the planning to the execution, the day ran smoother than we could have imagined so we were all thrilled after it finished.

It may seem like a simple task- organising an event, but you don’t appreciate the detail until you are there, on the day, experiencing it all. It’s only then that you can really understand the complexity of an event and how forward planning is so important.

It’s been brilliant being part of something so successful. So all I can say is… bring on the next one!