Event Architects To Know in 2024 -Josefa Martinez, NeighnorWorks America
Josefa Martinez, of NeighborWorks America, discusses how she builds and plans meetings and events in the evolving hospitality landscape of 2024.
Luke Whalin
Aug 16, 2024
Welcome to the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series, where we highlight event professionals making waves across the events industry to share lessons learned and raise awareness of their invaluable contributions.
Name: Josefa Martinez
Company Name: NeighborWorks America
Job Title: Manager, Event Strategy Design
Can you briefly tell us about your background in event planning and how you got started in the industry?
When I started more than 25 years ago, meeting and event planning weren’t a formalized profession. As a matter of fact, it was hard to even find a university-level program that supported it. I always said I didn’t choose meeting planning. It chose me. Like many 20-somethings, I was searching for a profession that gave me a sense of belonging. During a period as an administrative assistant, I got a taste of planning small-scale meetings and special galas, and I found my place of belonging. From there, I enrolled in a certificate program from George Washington University in event management, which was one of the few universities that offered a program of this type. From there, my fate was set in motion.
How do you go about selecting the perfect hotel or venue? What factors weigh most heavily in your decision?
Selecting the perfect hotel or venue really stems from a needs assessment of the event. Before envisioning your venue, you have to determine your specifications, which boils down to creating a list of:
• Must-haves.
• Nice-to-haves.
• Extra bonuses.
It is also critical to have a well-thought-out request for proposal (RFP) that clearly outlines your minimum criteria in easy-to-understand language that makes venues want to partner with you. The decisions that weigh most heavily is whether the venue meets the minimum criteria to execute a successful event. Of course, having the minimum number of sleeping rooms and meeting space is a must, but other factors driving success are establishing projected cost and a desirable location.
What does the initial planning phase of securing a venue look like for you? Could you walk us through your initial steps?
What common financial challenges often arise when organizing an event, what strategies do you use to mitigate them, and how do you avoid them?
The initial planning phase starts with establishing a partnership with Convention and Visitors Bureaus or Tourism Bureaus (CVBs) and national sales reps. This step is mostly overlooked, especially for meeting planners first entering the profession. Establishing a good rapport with your salespeople is a must, as they will be your cheerleaders in getting your RFP in front of hotels and convention centers, which are key to your success.
Here at NeighborWorks America, we have a unique sourcing process from many organizations. It was created on the basis of leveling the playing field and evaluating apples to apples. In the beginning, we were bogged down by sifting through sales packages to find the data we needed. This was awful and took a lot of time. Now, we create an RFP narrative document that clearly outlines our needs and asks venues to submit their bids by answering questions and uploading supporting documentation. The responses are then scored, and our top contenders are determined.
Budget, budget, budget. This is something that is constantly running through an event strategist's mind. We hear cash registers in our heads every time we spend. As with many nonprofits, being fiscally responsible is at the top of our minds. Additionally, since NeighborWorks America is a Congressionally chartered nonprofit, we must ensure we’re responsible stewards of that funding. Our event management and planning budget is very lean, and we think outside the box to get what we – and attendees need – from our Training events and convenings. In the contracting phase, costs are mitigated by negotiating discounts and rebates for services and products. I’m speaking of items far beyond comp rooms and the occasional 10% discount on food and beverage. Think about things like marketing and leveraging the CVB. It is important to lock in prices with multi-year contracts for venues as well as auxiliary vendors such as audio/video and transportation when possible.
How do you leverage technology to boost efficiency during the planning, execution, and post-event stages? What does your “event tech stack” look like? (For example, using Survey Monkey for surveying attendees post-event)
As you can imagine, technology is a very big budget item, so we are placing it as a luxury item instead of a must-have in our planning. We have many manual processes that could be automated, but given our unique nature, it is difficult to find an off-the-shelf program that can service all of our needs. Until then, we use programs like online surveys, spreadsheets, and databases.
Do you use frameworks, templates, or other tools/documents to help you stay organized and manage the event planning process?
Yes, we use mostly Microsoft products and create our own templates to stay organized. We recently discovered the use of generative AI tools to increase productivity when writing activity descriptions and brainstorming networking ideas.
Do you have any specific strategies or insights for enhancing the attendee experience at your events?
I’ve always said that to make an event or activity memorable, you need to engage the attendees’ senses. This means engaging their sense of sound, sight, or touch. This elevates their level of experience and creates excitement. In addition to creating excitement, you need to think about the level of engagement in the activity. Have a good mix of low and high-engagement activities that meet most people. For example, you may want to host a self-led walking challenge, which is low engagement, and a roundtable discussion as a high-level engagement activity. While planning, pay close attention to your past responses on post-even surveys and evaluations as they pertain to networking activities. And be willing to experiment with new ideas at your events.
Effective communication is crucial in any planning process. How do you ensure you and your event stakeholders are always on the same page?
You probably heard, “Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.” Well, meeting planners and our stakeholders don’t always speak the same language. We have different priorities, which is understandable, but we should always approach our communication with transparency, directness, and mutual respect. As long as you think of win-win solutions and take your stakeholder needs into consideration, you should be able to meet in the middle. However, if this approach doesn’t work, be prepared to have difficult conversations and guide them into collective solutions.
How do you facilitate networking opportunities among attendees? Are there any specific tactics or strategies that you recommend?
What's your go-to plan for handling emergencies or unexpected situations during an event?
Can you share an example of a significant challenge you faced while planning an event conference and how you overcame it?
Everyone knows that outside of the content, networking is the second reason why we attend events and conferences. It helps when you know your attendee demographics when planning networking activities. Do more women attend specific events? Do you have more young professionals or seasoned professionals? You should also look at the time blocks available in your schedule to plan networking activities. Don’t just plan a big evening reception and think you are meeting your attendees’ networking needs. By surveying our attendees, we found that many of them valued networking activities that extended their connections beyond the event. Some are interested in smaller curated activities that allow for organic connections, while others are looking for fun activities that touch on health and wellness, exploring the city, or unexpected experiences. Whatever the event, look to balance your networking activities throughout the event/conference and be intentional in your planning.
Safety is top of mind for everyone. Just listen to the news. Before creating an emergency plan, you first need to understand the duty of care for your attendees. Engage with your general counsel to understand what needs to be put in place based on the duty of care. Then, meet with your venue partners to understand what measures they already have in place. At a minimum, meeting planners should receive an emergency preparedness briefing from each venue on their existing plan. We normally have our briefing during our pre-convention meeting. Venues should already have plans in place for big situations like an active shooter, weather disturbances, and fire, as well as small situations like slip-and-fall accidents or protestors.
Don’t wait until an emergency happens to figure out what to do. Understand the steps from the venue, such as what sounding alarms mean and when you should call the police versus engaging venue security.
Additionally, every organization should have its own emergency plan. If you don’t, at a minimum, you should communicate what to do in case of emergency and document circumstances via incident reports for those sick and slip-and-fall cases. At NeighborWorks, we publish a safe spot for each Training conference. This is a spot outside of the venue where employees should meet in case of an emergency in order to be accounted for and wait for instructions. We also took the time to create an emergency preparedness plan for our Training conferences, which will be implemented this year.
During a period of budget cuts, we learned we could no longer afford the very popular networking reception at our Training conferences. Attendees looked forward to this reception, which was one of the few gatherings we offered that was a lot of fun. During a staff meeting, we thought we needed to find a way to bring the fun back to our Training conferences, and the Participant Engagement Activity Committee was born. The challenge was to plan activities with little to no budget. This is a committee of cross-divisional staff members who gather to brainstorm ideas for engaging our attendees. We have done fun activities like Double Dutch and photo opportunities with miniature ponies. I have the pleasure of leading this group and nurturing their creativity while adding value to our Training conferences.
What are the typical steps you take in the post-event phase?
We host two in-person events called NeighborWorks Training Institutes and one Virtual Training Institute each year. Our close-out process includes debriefing the post-evaluation responses and noting
1. What went well.
2. What needs improvement?
3. What needs to be removed?
4. What needs to be added?
What key performance indicators (KPIs) do you use to evaluate the success of an event?
The key indicators of success are normally determined by our leadership and should be communicated before each event. We normally have a registration goal, a number of certificates obtained goal, and a financial goal.
What advice would you offer someone just starting their career in the meetings and events industry?
What I would say to my younger self and anyone entering meeting planning is to view your failures as learning experiences. So much of meeting planning is out of your control. For example, you can’t control the weather or global disturbances, such as a pandemic. You can plan the most wonderful and exciting event and then have to go into contingency planning because something happened. This is the part of meeting planning that you can’t learn about in a book. You have to rely on your experience and sometimes just go with the flow.
Also, despite what your outside colleagues might think, you are NOT going to live it up in a luxury suite eating bonbons. In your journey, you are in for many long hours and dealing with people's unrealistic expectations. Keep a smile on your face, keep pushing forward, and keep being creative