by Simone Poetscher, Event Manager Blog

Event professionals and industry associations have acknowledged it for many years. Project Management (PM) tools and methodologies are an asset to Event Management. Why? Well, managing an event is essentially managing a project. Events have a defined beginning and end, and they are unique in terms of teams involved, and changing environments.

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By Steve Mauk, PMP, MPI One+

Early in my genesis to becoming a project manager, I was exposed to event planning and noticed the distinct similarities and differences between the two. With project management, the process is well defined and flows from one step to the next in an ordered manner. Event management on the other hand is a whirlwind of ever-evolving planning and execution.

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Project managers and project team members, like all business professionals, attend numerous meetings of various types, purposes and durations. Examples range from status update meetings, which generally last 30 minutes to an hour and are focused on reporting on the current status of the project, to performance reviews, on the other hand, which last from one to several days.

Today, we can communicate directly with customers, suppliers, and industry experts using platforms like Twitter®, Facebook®, and LinkedIn®; and we can talk and share information using VoIP and webinars. With options like these at our fingertips, why should we go to the effort and expense of hosting a customer event or conference?

While planning meetings certainly qualifies as a form of project management, the latter is a broader discipline with its own set of specific skills. When mastered, this approach can help boost your ability to plan, execute and budget your meetings and events, as well as elevate planning to a higher level of respect and understanding by upper management.