Planner Resilience: Michelle Johnson, Anchor Group
Read how meeting and event planner Michelle Johnson of Anchor Group, Inc. became innovative in surviving and succeeding during the Covid-19 pandemic.
How were you able to adapt during COVID-19 when the meeting and events industry got disrupted?
In person events were postponing or cancelling left and right. The simple question of how I will support myself, my staff and my family in the next few months pretty much took up residency in my head in my heart, it’s not like someone had a manual on “how to reinvent yourself in a pandemic” (although that would make a great book someday). I started to join groups, talk to friends in the industry and brainstorm on what I could do. I pretty much taught myself the ins and outs of Zoom but did not feel that was going to be a sustainable future for events, time to expand my knowledge. I took an online course and became certified in Virtual Event Meeting Management with the Event Leadership Institute. Since then, I have been living in the virtual event world and the Anchor Group has produced several large scale production virtual meetings and conferences. We also work with our clients to help manage all their global digital trade show presence. While I truly miss live events, I am grateful for the expanded skill set my team and I have developed. We are ready to tackle the live, hybrid and virtual world of events! Let’s do it!
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where we celebrate the positivity and optimism shown by planners across the industry when navigating the turbulent waters that COVID-19 has brought the meetings and events industry. Keep an eye out as we release more stories like this over the next few months.