Putting together an event can be a very time consuming and stressful experience. From concept to delivering everything to your booth, it’s an easy thing to overlook the opportunity that Documenting your event can bring. When we say documenting we mean recording your event using a variety of tools –photography, video, audio recordings, press clippings etc.

We at Catalyst Exhibits have attended hundreds of shows with our clients, erecting massive booths and small booths alike, and while counting footfall, collecting business cards and selling products are the usual tools of measuring success or failure, documenting your event can yield a valuable amount of information.

For the next couple of blogs, we are going to look at the reasons why you should document your events as well at some of the ways you can do it and their benefits.

• Documenting your event is useful to show your own bosses just how an event looked, the atmosphere of the show and how your company was presented to the public.
• Recording an event through video, photos or audio interviews, presents an invaluable way to evaluate the event: its strengths and weaknesses.
• Having a video record, for instance, of a day on your stand gives you a picture of how successful – or unsuccessful – your stand was with visitors.
• It can show you what parts of your stand were the most popular
• It can show the busiest times of the day
• It can show you how your staff coped with the event
• Photographs from an event are an easy way to gather material for marketing purposes, from Web content to marketing brochures.
• Recordings from an event can be used after the event to review what went right and what could be improved.
• Video shot can be used in promo material especially interviews with customers.
• A recording of the event gives those who participated an opportunity to comment on the event once it’s over. It allows for the critical assessment of the event, a chance to talk over the lessons learned, debrief event staff and make changes for a better event next time.

In our next installment, we will look at the most common methods of documenting your event.