Exercises: Corporate Events and Conferences
Part A recall · Part B application · Part C field work · Part D critique · Part M mixed review · Part E extension.
Starred (★) problems have worked answers in appendices/answers-to-selected.md.
Part A — Recall and Comprehension
A.1 ★ State the chapter's threshold concept. What is the planner's first job, and why is it not logistical?
A.2 Give the two questions asked at the first meeting. Which is the useful one and what does it convert?
A.3 ★ Name the four kinds of corporate objective and what each changes about the design.
A.4 Why is "we want people to leave energised" not an objective, and what do you do with it rather than reject it?
A.5 Which six things from Part VI transfer entirely to corporate work? Which four transfer much less?
A.6 ★ Explain a room block, pickup, attrition, and the cut-off date in four sentences.
A.7 Give the three negotiating moves that reduce attrition exposure. Which is worth more than the other two combined, and where?
A.8 ★ Name the four hotel-contract clauses that matter, and the number you must ask the hotel for.
A.9 What is an inherited agenda and what does it encode?
A.10 State the person-hours argument. Why can only the sponsor spend it?
A.11 ★ Give the six numbers that govern a conference day.
A.12 Compute the banquet multiplier at 24% service and 9% tax, and state what it applies to.
A.13 Name the three things that reliably reduce an AV bill. What is not on the list?
A.14 ★ Who is the sponsor, who is the programme owner, and what is the commonest error a wedding planner makes here?
A.15 State the PO sequence in full and explain "no PO, no payment."
A.16 What is the cash-flow gap, and what are the three defences?
A.17 ★ Which measure is the strongest available, and what does it require?
A.18 State the attribution problem and the professional response to it.
A.19 Why must the measurement be designed before the event?
A.20 ★ What five things does a rehearsal day contain, and which one is where general sessions actually fail?
Part B — Application
B.1 ★ A client says: "We do a leadership offsite every autumn. Forty directors, two days, about $95,000. Same as last year." Write your first four questions, and say what you are listening for in each answer.
B.2 Convert each into a designable objective: "build energy" · "get everyone aligned on the new strategy" · "break down silos" · "reward the top performers."
B.3 ★ 250 attendees, 2 nights, rate $189. Block 460 room-nights, attrition threshold 80%, pickup 331. Compute the damages. Then recompute with a 75% threshold, damages at rate-less-tax (tax 14%), and 40 rooms resold with credit. Show the saving from each move separately.
B.4 A hotel quotes: breakfast $32, break $16, lunch $52, reception $68, dinner $105. Service 22%, tax 8.25%, tax applies to the service charge. Compute the multiplier and the full F&B for 250 people over two days (2 breakfasts, 4 breaks, 2 lunches, 1 reception, 1 dinner).
B.5 ★ An agenda has 11 hours of general session for 320 people over 2.5 days, against a capability objective. Compute the person-hours and the cost of the general session at $92/hour loaded. Then write the one sentence you say in the meeting.
B.6 Rebuild that agenda. Show hours before and after by segment, and state whose time you are taking without naming anybody.
B.7 ★ 280 attendees arriving over 90 minutes, 40% in the peak 30 minutes. Compute the desks needed for a maximum 5-minute wait, then show what pre-printed self-serve badges do to the answer.
B.8 Write the AV spec — in enough detail to get three comparable quotes — for a one-day, 300-person general session with four breakouts and recorded capture.
B.9 ★ Write the four questions you ask in week one about procurement, and say what each answer changes about your own cash flow.
B.10 Design the measurement for an alignment objective: 180 managers must understand and believe a new operating model. What do you measure, when, and how?
B.11 ★ Write the paragraph a sponsor reads to a CFO, for an event whose pipeline number is good and whose attribution is genuinely weak.
B.12 Write the rehearsal-day schedule for a three-speaker general session with one live demo and a video opener.
B.13 An executive refuses to rehearse. Write the three approaches in order, as actual sentences, and say which one you use first.
B.14 ★ Your event has a live product demo. Apply Chapter 28's category-D thinking: what are the four category-D items at a corporate event, and what must exist in advance for each?
B.15 A hotel's in-house AV quotes $148,000. An outside vendor quotes $96,000 plus a $9,000 rigging fee and $4,200 of house power. Do the comparison properly, and name three things not in either number.
Part C — Field and Practice
C.1 ★ Find a real hotel group-sales contract template online and locate: the attrition clause, the F&B minimum, the cancellation schedule, and the walk clause. Report what each says and what you would change.
C.2 Find a published conference agenda. Classify every hour by objective type, and report the ratio.
C.3 ★ Attend any conference as a delegate and record Chapter 29's eleven friction points. Report the registration wait in minutes.
C.4 Get an AV quote — a real one, from a real vendor, for a real spec you write. Report what they asked you that you had not thought about.
C.5 Ask three corporate event owners what their objective was and how they knew it worked. Record verbatim and classify each answer as a measure, a proxy, or a feeling.
C.6 ★ Find your own organisation's (or any organisation's) PO process and time it end to end. Report the gap between "approved" and "PO issued."
C.7 Look at any three conference room sets and compute the square feet per person. Compare to §31.5's figures.
Part D — Critique and Judgment
D.1 ★ The chapter says a corporate event's objective is measurable and a wedding's is not. Is that a real distinction or a difference in convention? A wedding could be measured. Argue both, then say what you would actually do.
D.2 §31.4's person-hours argument prices attendee time at a loaded rate. Attack the arithmetic. Those people are being paid whether or not they are in the room; is the $816,000 real, and does it matter for the argument?
D.3 ★ The productive struggle says a planner's leverage is entirely in the arithmetic and entirely not in the allocation. Argue the opposite: that a planner paid to design an event should be willing to say who should lose stage time. Then decide.
D.4 The chapter is confident that fourteen hours of general session is wrong for a capability objective. Build the strongest case that the general session is doing something the chapter has not counted.
D.5 ★ §31.9 says retention cannot be attributed to an event and "anybody claiming otherwise is selling something." That is a strong claim. What would it take to attribute it, and is any of it feasible?
D.6 The banquet multiplier section implies hotels are concealing costs. Argue that the practice is defensible, then say what a planner should actually object to.
D.7 ★ This chapter and Chapter 29 disagree about disclosure: §31.10 says corporate attendees disclose less because it is their workplace. Test that claim. What would make it true or false, and what does it change?
D.8 The chapter recommends the client contract the hotel and AV directly, removing the planner's largest exposure. What does the planner lose by doing that, and is the trade right?
Part M — Mixed Review
M.1 ★ (Ch.25) What changes about the cascade at 400 people, and what genuinely new source of delay appears?
M.2 (Ch.26) What is a run sheet called here, and which of its features earns its place most?
M.3 ★ (Ch.14) Which two things scale directly from wedding catering, and which one does not scale at all?
M.4 (Ch.28) Category D at a wedding is officiant, caterer, venue, power. What is it here?
M.5 ★ (Ch.29) Apply the guest walk to a conference. Which of the eleven friction points get worse, and which get better?
M.6 (Ch.30) Why is a corporate debrief easier than a wedding debrief, and what replaces the praise problem?
M.7 ★ (Ch.11) Give the square-feet-per-person figures for theatre, classroom, rounds, and U-shape, and say which set is most often wrong in a hotel proposal.
M.8 (Ch.18) Chapter 18 taught power in watts. What is different here, and whose problem is it?
M.9 ★ (Ch.3) The client is a committee. Which parts of Chapter 3 still apply, and which one thing is genuinely new?
M.10 (Ch.23) Sightlines at 400 people in theatre set. What did Chapter 23 establish that applies, and what does it require here?
Part E — Extension and Synthesis
E.1 ★ Build the complete objective-to-measurement chain for a real or invented corporate event: objective → agenda design → measurement instrument → the April paragraph. Then have somebody attack the attribution.
E.2 Research event ROI methodologies — the Phillips ROI model is the standard reference. Report what it does well, what it assumes, and whether §31.9's more modest position is a retreat or a correction.
E.3 ★ Interview somebody who runs corporate events about the agenda fight. Ask specifically who won and how. Report three mechanisms the chapter does not mention.
E.4 Write 800 words on whether the objective discipline should be imported back into weddings. Take a position, and be specific about what would be lost.
E.5 ★ Design a one-page instrument a planner could hand a client in meeting one that produces a stated, measurable objective. Test it on somebody and report where it broke.
E.6 Research a large conference that failed publicly — the record is rich and mostly in the trade press and attendee threads. Map the failure onto this chapter and Chapter 28, and report what neither covers.
📐 Mini-Project
Take a real corporate event — one you have run, attended, or can research in detail — and rebuild it.
- The objective, in one sentence, with the person who would be asked
- The agenda audit — every hour classified by objective type, with the ratio
- The person-hours arithmetic, and the cost of the general session
- The rebuilt agenda, with hours moved and nobody named
- The F&B, with the multiplier applied and three savings identified
- The measurement design, and what it would have to be built into
- The April paragraph
Then the honest part: show the agenda audit to somebody who was there.
Record what they defend and why. Every defence is either a purpose the audit missed or a person who cannot be moved, and telling those two apart is the actual skill in this chapter.