"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 day-long 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 break-out 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.

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 capacity of the Convention Center is 7,000 given the arrangements for the trade show, theater seating, and break-out session rooms.

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 responsibility to protect the brand and quality of your meeting planning firm, and you have a responsibility to maximize the happiness and revenue for your client. What will you do?

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.