A first internship or position as a communication officer will most certainly lead you to organize an event for your company. And there is panic… because you realize that you barely understand the exchanges with your contacts in the world of events!
Like any business sector, the event industry has its own language and its own codes. Discover without further delay a lexicon of the essential words to know in order to carry out your event project!
TYPES OF EVENTS
Cocktail: A convivial and festive evening often in the form of a buffet. It can be proposed in a lunch or dinner formula in a seated or standing version. In the case of “platter service”, you must consider the number of “pieces” proposed to appreciate the offer.
Convention: Internal or external event bringing together all or some of the members of the company around a common theme or gathering of a network (brand resellers, distributors …). The manager seeks to convey strategic messages and remind employees of the company’s values. The final objective: to create interactivity and proximity with the company’s employees!
Gala: A festive evening of a prestigious nature to celebrate a special event for the company. It must convey the values of the organization and give a positive image of the organization. The objective is to mark the minds of employees by impressing, surprising or entertaining them. To do this, an original theme must be chosen that matches the profile of the participants.
Incentive: From the English term meaning “motivation”, it is a type of event organized for the employees of a company, or for professional partners, with the aim of rewarding them when they have achieved their quantitative and qualitative objectives.
Plenary: A meeting to which all the participants of an event are invited, as opposed to sub-committees where participants are gathered in small groups on different themes.
Road show: Promotional tour where the same event device travels from city to city. The company presents its products, services, novelties with shows, animations and demonstrations to their core target audience.
Seminar: Working meeting for the internal collaborators of a company. It takes place outside of the professional framework and can extend over a weekend. The objective is to study the same theme, the same problem by working groups. Several activities are proposed to the participants to develop the entrepreneurial spirit.
Team-building: or “team-building” in French is an event that aims to strengthen cohesion and motivation within the teams of employees of a company. To achieve this, fun activities are proposed to participants: sports, artistic, culinary, etc… It is a simple and effective virtuous circle: the more there is a collective good mood, the more the individuals of the same group will surpass themselves to contribute to the accomplishment of a common task.
TYPES OF MEDIA
3D: Three-dimensional or three-dimensional, these terms characterize the space that surrounds us in terms of width, height and depth. For a stand project, 3D plans are designed by the agency’s design office (designer) in order to allow the client to visualize the stand in space. This technique is also proposed for specific scenography or layout projects.
Brief: Document written by the advertiser for the event agency. It gathers the information necessary to successfully organize the event (type of event, context, objectives, date, number of participants, target audience, etc.). The more precise the brief is, the more the agency will be able to propose an event project that will meet the expectations of the advertiser.
Draft: Draft or draft document for an event or booth project.
Listing: Complete list of guests, registrants or participants at an event.
Reco(mmandation): File that presents the event project, produced by the agency in response to a call for tenders from the advertiser. It answers precisely to the issues of the brief and contains several parts: context, bias, concept, unfolding, retroplanning, budget, etc…
Retro-planning: Calendar that allows you to set up an event by listing all the preparatory and necessary tasks to carry out an action. For each action, the person(s) responsible and the deadline are specified. The objective is to set the dates on which the work must be completed and to visualize the project’s stages over time.
Roadbook: A complete sequence of the event that summarizes the missions of all the organizers and contributors with the information important to its successful completion (schedules, plans, contact, etc.).
Rooming: List of the room allocation for the guests (or production team).
Rough: Drawing, pencil sketch to present the project. It is used to transcribe and concretize a moving image of the brain so that it makes sense in a few strokes. The rough specifies the technical locations while giving an atmosphere to the project.
Scenography: Organization of a space thanks to the coordination of technical and artistic means (decoration, lighting, furniture, etc.).
TYPES OF ROLE
Catering: from the English word “catering”, which means the meals served to the organization teams (technical, animation, production.) Catering often takes place in an annex or under a dedicated tent.
Project manager: Agency staff responsible for the client file. The Chef is in charge of “building” the project with reporting the data that will constitute the commercial offer. He will interface with the various service providers, artists and technicians involved in the file.
Driver: Real “Partition” of the event presented in the form of an Excel type table with different particular fields. It groups together the different stages of the event, the timing, the stage numbers, the tasks to be performed and the people in charge of carrying them out (sound, light, video, etc.).
Speaker: Person who makes a speech at an event. There are two types of speakers: the internal company speaker (CEO, VP Marketing, Finance, Communication or Sales) and the external speaker who will be chosen for his skills and experience on a given theme, related to the company’s image.
Pax: Term that designates the participants in an event, originally from the world of air transport (abbreviation of the English “passenger” which designates the people present in the plane).
General manager: Technical manager responsible for the preparation, operation, coordination and material, human and technical-administrative organization of the event. He is in charge of the liaison between the management, the artistic staff and the technical heads of the stage. This person is the conductor of the event who follows the conductor precisely with the various speakers and service providers.
Runner: The “runner”, the “handyman”, the “handyman” who is called upon to solve a problem quickly. A participant who stains his suit? A piece that is missing for the assembly of the infrastructure? Need something special for the Vip’s dressing room? The runner (who often has many contacts wherever he is) will have to find a solution as quickly as possible!
Topper: Person in charge of giving the “top!” during the event to all the technicians and stage managers. These “tops” are used to make light changes, to play a jingle, to project a video, to change slides, etc. It is most often the topper who writes and directs the event’s driver. A precious score that will make the event as fluid as possible…in all efficiency!
