GRIDLIFE

As the Festival Director of GRIDLIFE's Festival Tour, it is my job to oversee the management of each event, starting with pre-event planning to on site direction and post-event wrap up and reporting. Some of my responsibilities on this level include:

• Providing clear direction and leadership to ensure the successful execution of festival activities.
• Executing a diverse and appealing program of events, performances, and activities that align with each festival's mission and target audience.
• Developing and implementing a comprehensive festival plan, including timelines, budgets, and resource allocation.
• Utilize strong negotiation skills to manage contracts with vendors, partners, and agencies, ensuring optimal value and cost-effectiveness in event execution.
• Fostering cross-collaboration among internal teams and external stakeholders, leveraging strong communication and interpersonal skills to coordinate efforts and ensure seamless execution of events.

Sometimes the hardest part of planning an event is getting into the knitty gritty how everything works separately and figuring out how those pieces come together to build the bigger picture. Part of my role is to create operational and logistical efficiencies that make the little things easier for my team and each of their departments. This can range from ensuring we have a logistical plan for staff airport arrivals and getting everyone to site through determining the best operational plan for fan egress at the end of an event. Understanding these elements and being able to shift the plan if need be with the help and support of your on site team can make or break the success of an event.

There is no bigger priority than your guests experience within your event. It is what drives your goals, objectives, operational decisions and every plan you put in place. Whether that is your fan experience, your artist experience or if you have other VIP guests you are focused on - understanding the experience from start to finish is imperative.

At GRIDLIFE, we have a variety of attendees that we focus on including: spectators (general fans), drivers (our participants), artists (performers) and our partners. My team and I ensure that each of these experiences has a thought out experiential plan and that each department works together to achieve the goals in place - from parking and entering the gates to getting an artist in a drift car (What does this mean you ask? Check out the video to become insantly jealous.)  

Important in an entirely different way then your event plans is your event budget. Budget management and reconcilation is key - from creating the budget, to forecasting your real costs to finalizing the real spend. Budget management is a big part of my role from an overview perspective but also on a departmental level.

I am not only comfortable working with larger budgets ($1.5 million+) but I can break down a big, scary budget into smaller, more digestable buckets across departments or for those who are not as confident in their budget management abilities. Being able to discuss numbers and understand fixed costs vs variable costs and how the scale and scope of an event effect these numbers is key in making sure your event stays in budget.

You can't have an event without a good team! Events are not a one-man show and I would not be where I am without the help and support of my team. A priority for me when building my events team is finding people who are experts in their fields, reliable and trustworthy so that I can let them manage their departments as needed. Working with each team and then bringing everyone together to understand the bigger picture goals, plans and logistics so that we can create a unique, repeatable and consistent experience for our events is how we successfully execute 5 festivals within a 6 month period.