was encouraging me to share this story with the audience. I thought about it for two days while we were on site, and I decided that they were right. We have a lot of new people in this industry, especially since the end of the pandemic. As part of my lifetime acceptance speech, I thought that it was appropriate to let everybody understand that even though I was lucky enough to receive that award, we are all human. Things will go wrong in this business and you can't run from it, but this was the lesson: if you have a plan and you stick to it, thinking through all of the things that could possibly happen, you still can't be prepared for every single scenario. Here is the key: If you surround yourself with good people, it is amazing what can be accomplished and overcome. I received a lot of praise that week for pulling it off, but to be perfectly honest I kept telling people I was the least important person in terms of recovering from that situation. All I did was bring the right people in to support me, as I tried to do with every event we'd done for almost 30 years. I am so thankful to my team not only for overcoming the truck accident but also for once again exceeding expectations and wowing such a critical audience in our industry. Scott Frankel is the President of Animatic Media, an industry leader in event production and sought- after speaker at industry events. Since 1996, Scott and his team have produced events for clients of all sizes, from Fortune 500 conferences with thousands of attendees to smaller road shows and events. Scott is an innovator in the event technology space is also the 2025 Special Events Gala Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
The aftermath of the truck incident on the road. Photo courtesy Scott Frankel
The Animatic team found workarounds to intricately set the stage in time for the show. Photo courtesy Scott Frankel
Team pride A day went by and I hadn’t mentioned the disaster to our good friends at Catersource + The Special Event, but it wasn't more than a day later that I received a text saying that they had heard something happened with the truck and was everything okay for the event. I had decided early on not to worry the client about this incident. If you think about that—and the level of confidence it takes to do that—you must appreciate how good it made me feel, so proud of my people. In other cases, my policy has always been if something goes wrong, be honest and upfront with the clients and bring them into the problem, telling them how you're going to try to solve it. Over the first few days of set up, people approached me saying they heard the rumors, and I would show them some pictures and tell them what happened. Everybody
course awkwardy added a wild card to my panic. The person on the other end of the phone was a member of my team whose voice seemed to come back into focus, like emerging from being underwater after those 30 seconds. It was at that point I realized what an amazing team we had built. Had I focused on what he was saying to me, I wouldn't have needed to run through those 30 seconds of internal panic. My team had already figured out 80% of what we needed to have happen, so we would not miss a beat. And with my entire team on board, overcoming the other 20% would never stand in our way. The key here was to source the equipment locally with as many other vendors as needed to replace the gear. By leveraging a deep and trustworthy network of partners, resources—and even competitors—we were able to source almost every piece of equipment needed.
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SPECIAL EVENTS SPRING 2025
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