Faith Smith on what it’s like to host live podcast events for Slate.

How Do You Throw a Party for 1,300 Guests?

How Do You Throw a Party for 1,300 Guests?

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June 1 2016 12:09 PM
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How to Throw a Party for 1,300 Guests 

Slate Live director Faith Smith tells Working how she keeps cool while hosting live podcast shows.

In the May 23 edition of Slate’s Working, Jacob Brogan sits down with his co-worker, Faith Smith, to hear about her work as the director of Slate Live. Smith is responsible for coordinating live events and podcast tapings for Slate, which can end up hosting more than 1,000 people. How does she pick a venue? What tricks does she use to make sure hosts are on the top of their game? What is Smith’s biggest pet peeve when she attends parties she doesn’t throw? Listen to find out!

And in this episode’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Smith tells Working about what she has in store for Slate’s 20th birthday party.

working event planner.

Photo illustration by Slate. Image by Faith Smith

Jacob Brogan: Welcome to Working, Slate’s podcast about what people do all day. I’m Jacob Brogan, and I write about technology and culture for Slate. For this episode, we spoke to Faith Smith, who orchestrates all of Slate’s live events. She puts together live tapings of podcast episodes, conferences, panel discussions, happy hours, and much more. She offered us a literal backstage look at the way that those events come together.

And in a Slate Plus extra, Faith tells us about her early efforts toward an upcoming event, Slate’s 20th birthday celebration.

Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Faith Smith: I am Faith Smith, and I am the director of Slate Live.

Brogan: What does that mean?

Smith: That means I oversee all of our live programming at Slate, and Panoply, and with the Slate custom team. So, I produce our live podcast shows, I put on parties. Any sort of live gathering that’s not on the website is sort of my area.

Brogan: So, you recently did a live podcast event in Atlanta. Is that right?

Smith: Mhm. At Political Gabfest, yeah. A couple weeks ago, we went to Atlanta for our first big show in the South. And you know, we as a collective have been thinking since the beginning of the year, we want to branch out and go to a few new cities. The Political Gabfest is very popular. It’s Slate’s longest running podcast. And they have a lot of really loyal listeners. And they’ve traditionally done shows in New York and D.C. and San Francisco, and a few other ones here and there because we know that Slate has listeners and readers in those cities.

So, we’re kind of expanding our wings and trying new places. And Atlanta was a little bit of a risk, but it totally paid off. We found an amazing audience there. And we found an amazing partner with Georgia Tech University. They were our “on the ground” the host, and it was great having an ally on the ground to help us out with stuff—even just telling us where to go get drinks after the show, for example.

Brogan: So, when you really start to plan an event like that, what’s the first step?

Smith: There’s a lot of research that goes into sort of surveying where we should go. Kind of trying to figure out where our audience is and where we should be expanding to. You know, we know we have a lot of readers and listeners in New York and D.C., but we also know there’s a lot of stuff happening in New York and D.C. on any given night. And we want to go to new cities that might not have other live podcast shows happening on the same night. I look at venues. I calculate costs. I make a lot of phone calls to kind of figure out who would be our on the ground host or our ally. That’s really important, sort of finding where we’re going to go. And that’s the first big step.

Brogan: So, let’s talk about venues. What’s the first step in terms of figuring out where you want to do the event and what the right space is going to be?

Smith: Yeah. I sort of start with I guess around how many people I think might show up, how many people we could try to get in that room. So, I sort of have in my mind a venue size and an idea of the idea we’re going for. You know, we don’t want anything too austere. We don’t want anything too grungy, perhaps. You know, we kind of want something that feels Slatey, that feels like a nice place to be.

So then I make a lot of calls. If I know anybody in the area, I ask around for recommendations. Sometimes I’ll put it on Twitter or on Facebook. Like, “Hey, people in Atlanta! Where should we go do a show?” And we get great suggestions that way. And we actually get a lot of unsolicited suggestions, which I love.

And then I just work with the people on the ground. I ask a lot of questions. Sometimes I ask for pictures. I literally sometimes ask for a picture of the chair that they have for people to sit in, just to try and get as much information in advance as possible.

Brogan: Do you also have to think about details like the sound system or the lighting design?

Smith: Yeah, I do. I mean, I have a set list of sort of our basic audio requirements for a show. And it includes everything we might need the day of, like access to a printer, because the host is going to want to print their notes, for example. And I send that usually with an initial request to make sure it’s going to work technically, because a live podcast show would be terrible if we didn’t get a good podcast out of it.

Brogan: You’ve got so many pieces in motion. I’ve been working with you for almost two years now, and I’ve never seen you harried or flustered.

Smith: Oh, you’re so kind.

Brogan: How do you stay calm?

Smith: Thank you. I hide the frenzy. That’s what I do. I do have—on my desk right now is my most important, is a full year calendar that I consult very often, because I’m often planning things three, four, six months in advance. So, I’m sort of like calculating backwards and figuring out a timeline in my head. A lot of it I don’t write down. A couple times a week, I’ll sort of take a moment and make a list of things I need to do for this show, and for the next show, and for this project that I’m thinking about, for example. Just to make sure I’m not missing anything.

Brogan: Can you just go through a few things that are on your kind of long-term calendar right now?

Smith: Absolutely. So, I’ll mention two projects. One is a really unique project that we’re just really starting to announce. It’s a partnership that we at Slate have cooked up with Second City, the comedy group. And we are going to coproduce a national tour. It’s called “Unelectable You,” and it’s a political comedy tour. And it’s going to be a really fun project.

So, I check in with them pretty regularly, and really always excited to get updates. And another one is our Future Tense project. It’s a channel on Slate, and it’s a very robust series of live events. The mission of Future Tense is to look at emerging technology and its impact on society. We plan probably 15 events a year, maybe 20. The bulk of them are in D.C. We do a lot in New York. And those vary greatly. They’re, you know, occasionally a huge conference on a specific tech issue. We’re always very forward looking.

So, there’s the challenge: to be talking about what’s next, not what’s current. Which can be a little hard. And then, we do really fun happy hours, occasionally with robots. We watch movies sometimes with really smart people in D.C.

Brogan: One thing that—because I’ve worked with you on a bunch of those—one thing I know that’s really important to you is ensuring diversity and inclusivity. Especially when we’re talking about tech and future issues, it’s so easy to just have a panel of like forty-something white men.

Smith: Yeah.

Brogan: How do you work around that?

Smith: Yeah. I think the default for any tech panel you might go to is a lineup of white men, probably straight white men. I think they dominate—they do dominate the tech fields. Like, there’s the data to prove it. So, the easy way out is to just say, well, most of technology is made up of white men, and these are the qualified speakers that we found. I reject that premise. And I, along with the rest of the Future Tense team, we work really hard to find people with different perspectives, people that are doing interesting work that maybe aren’t on the speaking circuit as much as others.

And you know, we work really hard to make sure that we have a strong representation of women, of people of color, of LGBTQ. Like, anybody who’s not the mainstream, the standard voice that people think of when they think of the tech world. You know, it’s not a bunch of straight white guys in gray suits or in hoodies. It’s really—

Brogan: Mostly hoodies.

Smith: Mostly hoodies. Yeah, there’s a lot of hoodies. It’s true. In D.C., everyone puts on a suit when they come to D.C., though. Maybe not … maybe not Zuckerberg.

Brogan: Once you’ve got a panel of people selected, how do you make sure that it’s going to be fun?

Smith: Yeah. We try. There’s no guarantees in live events, right? There’s always something that goes wrong. But I think the key is preparation, but not too much. I’ve heard, over the years, panels get on a conference call, and they hammer out all the details. And then they get in front of an audience and they basically try to recreate their conference call that they had the week before, and it’s very uninteresting. And they’re reminding each other, oh remember when you said this thing. So, we try to avoid that.

We do keep it very conversational. We don’t do the typical academic panel where everybody gives a presentation for 10 minutes and then the moderator asks a few questions. We start with a moderator. I have a preference for journalists as moderators. I think they tend to ask really good questions. And they can ask from the position of somebody who’s not an expert on the topic. Those are some of the rules that keep it interesting, and also keep it short.

There’s no rule that says a panel needs to be an hour and a half, or even an hour.

Brogan: What’s the hallmark of a successful panel conversation, or a successful live event of this nature, generally?

Smith: We measure success in so many ways. I mean, the simplest way is numbers. Like, how many people showed up and thought the topic was timely and interesting? But that’s—you know, every worthy topic isn’t going to be a blockbuster. So, I measure success by the enthusiasm of the audience, by the quality of the questions, that people are actually thinking about what was being said and they are still talking about it after the event.

Brogan: You said earlier that stuff always goes wrong, and I’m sure it does. What do you look out for? What’s the kind of stuff that has gone wrong in events that you’ve put together?

Smith: Yeah. I mean, the worst thing that can happen is— I mean, the worst thing that can happen is the speaker doesn’t show up, right? And that’s happened. Like, oh, my opening keynote for this huge conference is stuck on Capitol Hill voting in the Senate. And what do you do? So, there’s constant troubleshooting. And you know, I had to get a team of people out west for a big conference, and two of the three were stuck in snowstorms. So, we soldiered forward with one. Those are the things that go wrong that you just can’t control, like weather and the Senate. But for the other things that you can control is making sure that everyone knows where they need to be and when, and that you’ve communicated as clearly as possible, and there’s no room for error.

Brogan: With those more kind of social events that you’ve organized, are there different things that go wrong there and things that go right?

Smith: There are different things. You know, the stakes are not as high as like a big conference where you have 60 consecutive speakers lined up, and you have a minute-to-minute schedule and 200 people in the audience to deal with it. I mean, the stakes are just so much lower. I rarely enter one of those happy hours with a high stress level. I just want to make sure that beer is there, and the conversation is good, and everyone is probably going to walk away happy. So, they’re definitely easier to pull off.

Dealing with the catering and ordering the ice, that usually doesn’t need to happen until like the week before the event. And when it comes to ice, I’m going to give one tip for everybody who is ever planning an event or a party. You can never have enough ice. Picture how much ice you think you need and double it, and just pay for it. Because it’s not that expensive, and running out of ice is the worst.

Brogan: So, your number one tip for party planning: ice.

Smith: Yeah. Yes. That’s my number one tip.

Brogan: You can never have enough ice.

Can we talk about advertising and reaching out to a possible audience a little bit? How do you start thinking about promoting an event?

Smith: Yeah. It could be emailing a group that might be interested, or individuals, just to let them know about the event. It could be just tweeting more broadly. You know, we’re very lucky at Slate. We have a pretty great platform to promote something because we have so many great readers and listeners. So, we promote things on the podcast. We put them on the website, slate.com/live. And we tweet. We put them on Facebook. I don’t really pay for advertising. It’s all pretty organic and natural. And we get the people who like us and what we do.

Brogan: What do you do if you’re realizing that it’s sort of under-attended, that you don’t have as many people buying tickets?

Smith: This happens. You panic.

Brogan: I’ve never seen you panic.

Smith: I panic on the inside. That’s when you just sort of up what you’re doing, and you try to do more. And then you think about what you can do differently.

And generally, I think that we plan good events. In fact, my motto is, “Never plan an event that I wouldn’t want to attend.” So, the secret is just to find the audience that wants to go and get to them. I mean, and we don’t sell out every event. We may just have empty seats. I’ve never had anything that’s been like a failure or it just didn’t work. We just may not have gathered as big an audience as we’d have liked.

Brogan: Have you ever had to think about moving a venue because you have so many RSVPs?

Smith: That would be such a good problem to have. I haven’t. We’ve often reached capacity or filled up. But I’ve never been compelled to book a new venue for it.

Brogan: When you’re looking out at the audience and you see that it’s full, is that satisfying? Or does it make you think, “Gosh, I wish I’d gone to an even bigger venue?”

Smith: No, it’s very satisfying. I love it. I wish all my events were standing room only. But then that probably would mean that I need to be in bigger venues. It means that you sparked, that you hit something right, and you’re giving people what they want.

Brogan: You’ve been listening to event planner, Faith Smith. In a minute, she tells us about how she gets ready on the day of an event and makes sure that everything moves smoothly.

Let’s talk a little bit about the day of an event. It’s the morning. Let’s say it’s an event here in D.C., a live podcast recording. What are you thinking about at 8 AM, or 9 AM, or whenever you’re getting ready to head in?

Smith: Yeah, yeah. So, the first thing in the morning, I’m planning my event day outfit, which is actually very important. And this is why you see the event planners all around D.C. and in New York tend to, tend to wear a uniform. You need—you’re going to be on your feet a lot. You need to look really professional and like you’re in charge. It would be nice if you had a pocket to put your phone or notes in. So, things like that. You might be getting on and off a stage a couple times. You might be moving things around. So.

Brogan: What kind of shoes are you wearing?

 

Smith: Yeah, that’s the eternal question. Unfortunately, I’m probably wearing sensible flats, or perhaps a nice wedge.

Brogan: That sounds reasonable. It doesn’t sound unfortunate.

Smith: Yeah. Exactly. I wish I could run an event in stilettos, but I cannot.

Brogan: But that kind of practical consideration has to play, I presume, into the dynamics of the event itself.

Smith: Yeah. You have to think about everything you might be doing and that might need to be done. So, once I pick my outfit for the day, then usually maybe I’ll head into the office. If I’m assuming it’s a D.C. event we’re talking about, I’ll head into the office. I’m sending final notes. I’m making sure, if someone is flying in or traveling, that they’ve left OK, that there are no issues. I might even check the weather and see what’s going to happen. I confirm with my venues or my vendor to make sure everything is on track. I go through lists. Usually we have our ticket sales. And then we have a guest list, and I want to make sure that I have everybody on the list who should be on the list, and that that’s communicated to the venue well in advance so there are no issues.

I’m sort of running through a list of supplies that we might need. We don’t have a lot of big props for most of our events. But there’s always some stuff, whether it’s drink tickets for the preshow cocktails, or some silly gag that the hosts want to do onstage. I mean, in Atlanta, they decided the week before we were going to host they were going to show what a contested convention looks like. And they did it with candy and the audience. And so, that had me running around Atlanta in my rental car for like two hours going from store to store to find enough candy to do a contested convention. And it was really fun, and it paid off, and I’m so glad we did it. But those are, you know, the things that you have to do the day of. I buy some snacks and beverages to have in the green room, because our shows are very often right when the hosts are hungry and tired. And we want them powered up, and lively, and ready to go. So.

Brogan: What kind of snacks do you pick out?

Smith: It depends. If there’s a lot of people, I’ll get some fruit platters and stuff. But a basic one, it’s going to be like maybe granola bars, trail mix, some fruit, and some bottled water, and iced coffee if anybody wants it. Like, those are sort of the like, standard go-tos.

Brogan: So, not whiskey?

Smith: No. We do drink - we encourage drinking at our events. The hosts very often have a beer onstage with them. So, I almost always will buy beer as well.

Brogan: So, all joking about that aside, do you think that that helps loosen up an event?

Smith: Yeah. I think it really helps. I think everybody should take a little drink before they get onstage to talk, because most people are naturally nervous, and maybe they’re questioning what they’re saying in advance. I think it helps a lot. We do a lot of our events in the evening. It’s very natural to have like a happy hour cocktail and then a drink. Not all of the hosts drink, I should say. I’m not accusing anyone of anything. But I think it does help. I think our happy hour conversations are always more lively and fun than our daytime conversations where everyone is in a conference room and in between sort of their work shifts. There’s just something about it. It feels more conversational. You’re talking to a friend over a drink.

Brogan: Right. At what point do you head over to the venue?

Smith: Often three hours before the event. And if I’m traveling out of town for an event, I usually get there the day before and go through the venue and make sure everything is as it is, and if I need to change the chairs onstage. or figure out the seating, or if I’m missing a prop or something. I always want to give myself the time to fix it before the show time.

So, I usually get there with a tech person, or the podcast producer, perhaps, who’s helping with the audio. And we’ll show up about three hours. We get everything set up and plugged in. I’ll do a venue walkthrough. If there’s a green room, I’ll make sure it’s comfortable and tidy. And I’ll set out the granola bars and the trail mix. And I always just want to troubleshoot. If we have audio clips or video clips that we’re going to play during the show, I’d like to test them in advance. And then I usually have the hosts come about an hour/ an hour and a half before the show. Depending on when the doors open, we want to have at least 45 minutes onstage getting comfortable, testing everything, walking through anything that they might have planned before the doors open.

Brogan: What else are you looking at? The venue chairs, lights, sound system?

Smith: Yeah, exactly. We check the staging. We have very simple staging. We don’t have big scenery. So, I want it to be nice. I want the chairs to be comfortable. I don’t want the hosts to be slouching. But I don’t want them to be like, tottering on the edge of a stool the whole time.

We check the house lights. I want to work with the hosts to make sure they can see as much of the audience as they want to. And it depends. You know, sometimes we do shows in a small bar with 150 people, and then you can see everyone. And sometimes we do big venues with 1300 people. And it’s just a very different scenario. So, I just want to make sure the hosts are comfortable. I think the people onstage have the hardest job. I just set the stage for them, and then they have to entertain a lot of people and make them want to come back for more. So, I just want to make it as easy as possible for the people that are onstage to not be thinking about the silly things that might happening onstage or in the audience.

Brogan: So, you’ve done all your pre-checks. You guests and your hosts are all there. They showed up on time. They’re not on the Hill voting. What kind of briefing do you do with them? Do you talk through the event itself with them beforehand?

Smith: Yeah. We usually talk through a few things. We often, I’m usually onstage with them during sound check. And while we’re talking about the chairs, and the microphones, and the lights, we’re going through things like, “OK, you’re going to go on first. You’re going to be introduced by this person. When you do this candy convention thing, this is what’s going to happen. Here’s where the supplies are.” So, we kind of talk about it in advance. I always do a very detailed run of show, where I kind of project to the minute when things are happening and who’s in charge of what.

They’ll all have a copy with them at the show. I’ll often tape it up in the green room or backstage so people can refer to it. Especially if I have guests coming on and off. Like, if it’s a very typical live podcast with just three hosts onstage, it’s less necessary because they get onstage and they run with it.

But whenever I have people coming on and off, I have a lot of notes for people to refer to. And I stay backstage. I never go and sit in the audience. I’m usually standing right in the wings, in case anybody needs anything. Making sure if there are guests that need to go on and off that they know what their cues are. To make sure the hosts know when their cue is to go onstage. That sort of thing.

Brogan: How do you make sure that things run on time? Especially if you’re backstage and the hosts can see you, or whatever.

Smith: Yeah. That is a problem actually. A lot of the hosts, the people who have podcasts, they’re pros. They have a really good sense of time and how long it takes to do a segment or a show. But generally, there needs to usually be a way to communicate. Sometimes I’ll flash, like, a yellow light at them with my iPhone so they can see like, “OK, you need to start winding up.” Or red, “You’re running over time.” I do that.

Brogan: Do you prime them on what those - the semiotics of those flashes beforehand?

Smith: Yeah, exactly. You need to. Otherwise, they’re like, “Why am I getting a yellow light?” Yeah, with people who are new to doing live shows, we do tend to go over that during the sound check and the rehearsal. And some people are more…they want more guidance on when to stop and when to move forward. And some people really, they got it.

Brogan: At what point do you get to relax?

Smith: After the show is over, and there’s thunderous applause, and then everybody comes backstage, and I give them all high-fives. And then that’s like—they’re relaxing, I’m relaxing. And it’s usually been a really long day by that time.

Brogan: So, an event—you’ve had your thunderous applause. You’re backstage. You’re high-fiving everyone.

Smith: High-fiving.

Brogan: You’re finally relaxing a little bit. What are the last things that you have to do to close the event off, to make sure that it ends successfully, that you don’t get billed for destroying the green room or whatever.

Smith: Yes, yes. Trashing the green room, always a problem. We - there’s a little bit of tidying up. Often I will donate any leftover green room supplies to the crew. If there’s not a crew, I might toss it or take it with. Just a little bit of tidying up and congratulating everyone. And thanking the venue host usually is the final, final note. And they always have to stay and clean after we leave. So, they probably have a longer [day] than me.

Brogan: So, you are really good at your job. I’ve worked with you on these Future Tense events, and I’ve been to other events that you’ve organized. But presumably, you go to other events sometimes, organized by other people. There must be details there that drive you crazy. What are your biggest pet peeves or irritants when you’re at—we don’t have to name any names—but when you’re at an event that someone else has put together?

Smith: Yeah. I always assume that it must be terrible to be a movie critic, because you can never just enjoy a movie. And I feel that way about events. I do notice all the details. I mean, sometimes I notice and am very impressed by, “Wow, I love that they did that.” And I’m learning from what other people did. And I like the flow of this event. I like how they checked people in. I mean, I notice the silly things because I really care about the experience. So, I take a lot away from events that way. But I do tend to critique in my mind. I mean, it’s always the same things. Lack of diversity I unabashedly judge. And if they’re not on schedule and they’re not respectful of people’s time, I really don’t appreciate that.

So, you know, the same things that I’d want to watch out for in my own event, it’s usually because I see it in other events. And I’m like, “Oh, I wish people would do better with that.” And running out of ice in the cocktails.

Brogan: That’s the worst.

Smith: That’s the worst.

Brogan: You can never have too much ice.

Smith: Agreed.

Brogan: So, people want to find out more about what you actually do. Where on the Slate site can they go to find that information?

Smith: That’s a very good question. Go to slate.com/live. And all of our events are going to be posted there.

Brogan: That’s slate.com/live.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Working. I am Jacob Brogan. This is the final episode of our current season of the show. But we’re working on something really, really cool that we hope to be debuting soon. Stay tuned for more news.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast. Our email address is working@slate.com. You can listen to all six seasons at slate.com/working. This episode was produced by the superb Mickey Capper. Our executive producer is Steve Lickteig. And the chief content officer of the Panoply network is Andy Bowers.

* * *

In this Slate Plus extra, Faith Smith tells us about her early efforts toward an upcoming event, Slate’s 20th birthday celebration.

So, do you have anything coming up that you’re especially excited about?

Smith: Yes. I am very excited because I get to plan a really awesome birthday party for Slate, because we are 20 this year.

Brogan: We’re 20?

Smith: Slate is 20, people.

Brogan: So, we can’t drink at this party.

Smith: No, we’re underage. So, it’s going to be a sober party for the 20 year old Slate.

Brogan: Is it really going to sober?

Smith: No. No, we’ll drink.

Brogan: So, where is that event going to happen? Do you know yet?

Smith: It’s going to be a really awesome party in New York, just celebrating Slate’s success over the years, and inviting all our friends that have contributed, and all of the people that have been a part of it. So, I think that’s going to be really special.

Brogan: How is doing a party like this different from planning a big public event, like the ones that you do for the podcasts?

Smith: So different. Well, first of all, I have a very discerning audience for this party that I have to face the next day in the office. So, it has to be pretty awesome. You know, I don’t think of myself as a party planner, actually. So, it’s a little different. But you know, I’m excited.

I think the core things that people look for are a great experience. They want to be surrounded with people doing interesting things and saying interesting things. It’s going to be a very cocktail party. We want—you know, I think we get all of friends and family in the room, it’s going to be amazing no matter what. And then I just want to have some, like, good food and drink to go with it.

Brogan: Are there any special considerations that go into planning something like that, related to the theme, to this—honoring this 20th anniversary?

Smith: Yeah, I think so. I think you can’t just have a party, although that would be fun. There’s a lot of brainstorming going on right now about how to show 20 years in a physical room from an online magazine. And I think we’re going to come up with something really cool. Sort of using the space to walk people through the evolution of Slate over the years.

Brogan: That’s super exciting.

Smith: Yeah, it will be.