In this episode, you’ll learn how technical production effectively merges with event planning through constructive communication and a spirit of service.
Cameron Magee shares the critical role of saying “no” as technical production teams strive to serve event planners. His journey from a young volunteer at his church to owning a national event production company informs his experience with common pitfalls in event production, the necessity of early and deep engagement with A/V teams, and the unique dynamics of managing an event from the production perspective.
Cameron is the owner of avad3, an A/V event production company he first formed from his college dorm room, that now serves nationwide events and the people who plan them.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
[00:00:00] Rachel: Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo, the podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events.
[00:00:22] I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host. In an industry where our instinct is to always say, YES, this episode's guest shares the value of saying and hearing, NO. Cameron Magee, owner of event production company avad3 approaches the technical aspects of events with a teaching mentality, and he's about to teach our listeners best practices for avoiding audio and visual pitfalls,
[00:00:46] understanding the event production process and making customer service the foundation for technical support. So let's get into the fundamentals on this episode of Event Experience.
[00:00:57] Well, our guest today has been living out his passion for live event production since 2002. Coming from a background in photojournalism, video, and media, today he is the owner of avad3 based in Arkansas and serving the entire United States in event production. I'm pleased to welcome Cameron Magee to our microphones. Cameron, welcome to the Event Experience Podcast.
[00:01:29] Cameron: Honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:30] Rachel: Thank you. And as I always do, since I give the super high-level introduction to our listeners, I like to toss it over to our guests because you know yourself best, and we want to get to know you better.
[00:01:42] So, introduce us to you with your current title, the role for your company, and what your company is all about. We'd love to hear about it.
[00:01:49] Cameron: I just got started when I was a really, really young person. I was volunteering at my church and wandered up to the sound booth and just started running the sound and running the lighting and running the lyrics. And we had video cameras at our church back in 2002 and I got started that way.
[00:02:06] Since then, I almost immediately just fell in love with production. People fall into the events industry from different paths, but production, you're either kind of cut out for it or you're not. And I was just immediately drawn to it. And so, immediately started trying to find other ways around town to do production.
[00:02:24] Of course, being from Arkansas, it's not exactly LA or New York. There's not a lot of opportunities here. And so I had to kind of accidentally become entrepreneurial a little bit and just start asking, “Hey, the peewee football game, can I record and sell DVDs to the parents?” And as a 12-year-old, they're like, that's adorable.
[00:02:40] Knock yourself out, kid, you know, and I started running sound for choir concerts and local weddings and little things like that. And I've just never looked back. I'm 34 today. I've been doing production longer than not at this point, but just got started in my church and just absolutely love being with people on their biggest days of the year, doing the technical stuff that for most event planners is kind of a foreign language.
[00:03:04] Rachel: I have to say, I would love to get a poll if I could for our listeners out there. How many people got started through church? And the reason I bring that up, that was actually one of my first forays into this kind of event production. I remember when our church would use PowerPoint really inventively, like we're basically making music videos using PowerPoint, if you can imagine, like just the animations.
[00:03:32] And so it just, it feels like that would be a really easy gateway for a lot of folks to be like, Hey, I like this whole events thing. So I love that you shared that part of your experience.
[00:03:43] Cameron: Yeah. And I think you know, a lot of us still volunteer non-profits and things, but a lot of nonprofits maybe only have like one or two or maybe three big events a year. But when you're serving in a church, no matter what religion or congregation or faith background you're in, you have a show every week and you have to make that happen every week.
[00:04:00] And people are coming on Sunday morning, or Saturday night, or whenever your church is. And so, there's something about just getting a lot of reps that either you're cut out for it or you're not. And for me, I was, and it sounds like for you, you were too, Rachel. That's great.
[00:04:13] Rachel: That's right. And like, like we said, I bet we're not alone. So it makes all the sense in the world. So I'd love to hear from our listeners about that and on Bizzabo social and things like that. I want to switch into some get to know you questions. They give us a little bit more insight into you as a person. And possibly as a professional we'll see which does lead me to my first question of that.
[00:04:34] What are your go to on the ground event day shoes. What are you going to be wearing when you have to be running everywhere for 14 hours?
[00:04:41] Cameron: I'm wearing them right now. That's so funny. And I love, I hope that you ask this of everybody. The shoes are so important in our industry. I'm wearing On Cloud Cloud 5 s. It's the most expensive pair of shoes I think I've ever bought. Even my boots. I play in the 90s country cover band, even like boots.
[00:04:57] I don't spend this much money. But I swear by these, they're bright white. Because other than that, I'm in head to toe black. I mean, I'm wearing head to toe black right now. Actually thinking about him just as home, but head to toe black, but bright white On Cloud 5s is a big believer in those.
[00:05:11] Rachel: I know I've heard that mentioned. Yes, we asked this question. We have been, I think for several months now, which I hope if everyone listens to this podcast for no other reason than to hear like, what's a good pair of shoes I can buy? Because you're so
[00:05:23] right, in this industry, it is about protecting those feet because they're
[00:05:27] put to work. All right. What are you listening to, watching or reading these days that you can't put down?
[00:05:34] Cameron: I'll do this one quickly, ‘cause this may be less relevant to folks. I consider myself first and foremost, an owner and a leader and a business owner and a team leader. And so, anything by Dan Sullivan, specifically one book is Who Not How. I just love it. I picked that up a few years ago, and continue to go back to it.
[00:05:53] And now I'm kind of, I don't know how many books down the rabbit hole of Dan, I've started attending some of his events even, and just really loving the leadership and entrepreneurial spirit of Dan. Again, that may not be super relevant to this group, but Who Not How I think is broad enough that anyone can learn from it.
[00:06:10] Rachel: And like I said, I think people do, they check in on here and be like, well, I need something new to tap into. And we get all kinds of answers on the spectrum and you just never know, it's probably relevant to somebody. But well, knowing how you got started in event production tell us a little bit more too, about like, what avad3 is about today.
[00:06:26] Like what kind of services do you provide for today's event experiences out there?
[00:06:30] Cameron: Yeah, today we're really proud to serve events all over the country doing audio and video and lighting and staging and streaming and all the technical production things for events from coast to coast.
[00:06:40] We're still proudly based in Arkansas, which sounds absurd. There's not a ton here. But what is here we love to do. My wife and I are both from Arkansas. We want to raise our two boys here. And so we're here but we go all over the country. And what accidentally has happened business wise, that's made a ton of sense is we're smack dab in the center of the country.
[00:06:59] If you draw a bullseye, I think it's like Oklahoma City would be the center. We're four hours from there. So we're really, really centrally located, which is strategic. Arkansas has a relatively low cost of living. And so we've been able to be competitive as we bid, even driving semis all over the country and flying the crew and using local crew too.
[00:07:17] We've been really competitive there, but we're running a national event production company from our backyard here in Arkansas. How that came about was when I was in college. I just always thought of this as a hobby. My parents aren't entrepreneurial, they're not technical. They've had just steady full-time jobs their whole lives.
[00:07:33] And I decided to kind of give this a try from the dorm room where I really formed the company. And just kind of a classic story of forming the business in the dorm room and buying a trailer and putting a couple of speakers in almost like a little DJ setup, not a DJ at all. And just humbly, just one at a time, just doing one event after the other, doing some video production. Just steadily have grown the business along the way. So that's kind of how I got started, kind of the present state of the union, so to speak, and a little bit the founding story there in the middle.
[00:08:04] Rachel: Love it. And thank you too. One reason I love talking to our guests is we do learn so much more about the people behind putting events on and kind of what brought you into it why you are where you are today, even geographically speaking.
[00:08:18] Right. But just kind of how it figures into uh, Your life story, which is super important. And like, we already said, very relatable and everybody can kind of see themselves and like, yeah, that's how I came up to. And one big reason we do this podcast. We're all on a journey together to keep honing our craft and, keep learning and, keeping on the journey that we're on. So I loved hearing about your background with that. So, I want to ask you some stuff too. And this, you know, knowing that we have listeners of pretty much the entire spectrum of experience, right? We might have some people who are like you were when you were younger, like just getting into like, Ooh.
[00:08:53] Let me help put on events, whatever size, shape, and form they are all the way to people who've just been doing it for decades like yourself. But do you ever find that event planning, you know, air quotes, event planning, and then event production are used interchangeably? And if they are, do you think that's accurate or inaccurate to say?
[00:09:15] Cameron: Yeah, that's a fun question. You know, when we first started, I'm just a big nerd, you know, I'm a geek. And so I am the opposite of a DJ. Like I said, I'm also not that great of an event planner, so to speak. You would not want me to plan your wedding, which I think is where a lot of people kind of cut their teeth.
[00:09:32] I'm not the event planner type, but what I am really big on is that I'm really big on the end user experience. And I'm really big on customer service and what I learned kind of those 2 words event planning versus event production. Typically event production really gets put in a box.
[00:09:48] Those are the men and women behind the curtain behind the drape line. And all black, that we're all black on purpose and everybody sees us. And they're technicians. And, we'll speak to them when we need them, you know, and they're they don't really speak unless spoken to, they're kind of quietly in the back or maybe the experience with a sound guy or something is that he's a grumpy guy or something like that, that they're grumpy.
[00:10:10] And that wasn't okay with me. I'm really big on serving. I'm really big on that we're all here to serve. And we serve different people in different capacities, but each of us, our jobs and our roles are all about serving others. And so that's where we accidentally started kind of realizing that we were doing more than just kind of the A/V, like putting it in a box.
[00:10:29] Even early on one of my first hires. And as we kind of grew the team slowly over the years we coined this person as a production manager. And that's a production term. I think a lot of crews have a production manager, but at avad3, a PM actually acts a lot more like an event planner. And I didn't know that at the time.
[00:10:46] Again, we're in Arkansas. We're on a bit of a desert island. I didn't have a ton of examples to go off of. I just kind of built the business with a blank canvas. But what we've been told over the years is, man, you guys are really swimming upstream. You're kind of thinking, coloring outside the lines, thinking outside the box and doing more, more for us than just making sure the microphones don't feed back and the video doesn't freeze and the slides don't get queued at the wrong time.
[00:11:09] And so some of our more recent hires were I guess we're 13 this year, have been literally hiring event planners and putting them on our team and saying, Hey, we can actually teach you the tech. We're hiring you for your people skills and for your project management skills so we've really blurred that line.
[00:11:26] But I think traditionally, you know, listeners from wherever they are in the country or world or whatever, traditionally, those are very separate things. I think event planners are very different than production managers, but we kind of choose to add value because we're so passionate about serving that we don't want to just handle the A/V.
[00:11:43] We want to think a little bigger and lean into bigger picture things like y'all do.
[00:11:48] Rachel: Yeah, it's a great answer to that too. And that makes a ton of sense because I mean, if I were to equate it, I am not myself an event planner. I mean, I can plan an event just because I can, doesn't mean I should, you know? But I think of our audience of event planners.
[00:12:02] So then, I can think of somebody who's like in marketing who knows how to do marketing, like just generally knows how to do it all. But are they necessarily like a video editor or a graphic designer? Maybe not. They need someone who's more of a specialist in the tools that trade uses an output, which absolutely impacts marketing, but it's a specialized skill.
[00:12:25] And I like, you know, how you mentioned there are event planners out there and some of them may know all the production and the A/V aspects, but you can teach them that it's not necessarily, Oh, everyone across the board, all event planners listening to this podcast are also event production specialists.
[00:12:41] No, you know, and, I liked that you drew that distinction that there's obviously some scope there as far as training and knowledge and gaining that expertise based on what they work on. So super helpful.
[00:12:54] Cameron: Absolutely. And I just think from all the event planners that I've met over my career, the events that we've gotten to do, usually the tech stuff is the event planner's weakness.
[00:13:03] A lot of event planners, maybe loved food and bev and so they got in the catering route or they loved venue management or they love analytics.
[00:13:11] And so they're more on the registration side and tracking engagement and things like that. People get into it for different reasons. But I haven't really met an event planner yet who's super techy.
[00:13:22] And so, what ends up happening is there ends up being almost a translator needed, kind of a communication breakdown between the big picture, macro level, visionary event planner and the A/V team.
[00:13:35] And, I've just always been a teacher, my degree is in teaching. I love teaching. And so I've always kind of found myself being a little bit, the translator, even if I need to translate to their client or something like that, kind of explaining things of why we're gonna have the rehearsal the afternoon before instead of the morning of, and some of the more soft skill things.
[00:13:52] I love teaching and educating about technical things instead of just getting put in a box. And so I think that ends up being the people that I choose to then hire and build my team. And then that translation really empowers and helps the event planner. I'm just really passionate about being a little bit more full-service than just the A/V.
[00:14:12] Rachel: Yeah. Well, and gosh I'm sure your clients appreciate it too. And especially if you have that approach with anyone you're working with as well, I mean, it makes the entire experience a little bit better. You're good at what you do, but you're not, creating a firewall of like, well, yes, but you can't access what I know.
[00:14:26] It's like, no, let me, let me bring you along. And the more everybody knows, it's like, what was that saying? The rising tide raises all ships. And so you're really treating it that way. I'd like to ask you this. So, maybe I'm asking this because sometimes, when we focus on negative stuff, that instantly brings eyeballs more than, Oh, it was so positive.
[00:14:45] So we can go either way with this, whatever you're comfortable with. But I was going to ask you if you could share any story or experience about where a lack of or poor event production led to a poor outcome.
[00:14:57] Cameron: I love that question, Rachel. I think it's good. I think any good story, any good movie has to have a villain, you know, any, any good plot. There has to be something we're up against, you know, there has to be a fork in the road where we're either going to win or lose. We hear those stories all the time, we've really invested in our marketing and our website and our reach.
[00:15:13] And so we get to meet more and more people with each year. And we had someone referred to us the other day. And I got to sit in on the call. They were brand new and somehow they had someone who had heard specifically my name. And so he said, Hey, we want to meet Cameron at avad3 instead of just talking to our normal sales team.
[00:15:27] And so I was on this initial sales call, and it was, eye-opening to hear some of the same stories that I heard when we were three years old and five years old, that these folks who come to us and say, Hey, here's how it went last year, and here's why we're looking for somebody new. Nobody in the back could hear.
[00:15:45] And in fact, we couldn't even get everybody to take their seats, you know what, when it came time, and we know when we needed to play this key video for, kind of a big ask, a big moment in the program, it didn't work. And then, we brought in this really talented presenter, this speaker, they actually said they won't come back anymore. That's such a terrible experience with the crew whatever this crew was that
[00:16:06] we had used last year. That was one client in like a 20 minute zoom call, just a few weeks ago. and so we get to hear those horror stories all the time. And a lot of those stories are actually pretty timeless.
[00:16:17] Like I said, I was hearing those 10 years ago and they're still timeless today. Those are the reasons people start looking for a new vendor. And I'm sure there's listeners who have a great vendor and that's awesome. Stick with them. That's wonderful.
[00:16:27] But when people are looking, it's usually because something went terribly wrong.
[00:16:31] And I've kind of become a student of that and studied that almost scientifically over the years. Like what's going wrong here? What's going on? Because there's thousands of very technical, very gifted people, audio, video, lighting technicians all over the country. So how could this be?
[00:16:47] But I think it's a breakdown in some of the soft skills of communication between us that, maybe the client is saying, Hey, we need to just, we don't have time for soundcheck.
[00:16:55] We need to just do it. This presenter is a big deal. They don't soundcheck, it's okay. It's fine. We don't have to sound check with them if it's Magic Johnson or whatever, whoever it is, you know, we don't care. We get to work with Fortune One. We get to do things with the president of the United States.
[00:17:07] We get to do things with really big people. They don't have to literally do it, but we need their aid. We need somebody to come out and do this to make sure that everything's okay. And so I think a lot of those soft skill-type moments are really where things go wrong. And that's why, again, we focus so much on service and on customer service and on communication and being personable and kind and listening really well because I think there's a lot of technical crews, but when the event planner's weakness is the technical stuff, they don't really know where to kind of communicate and how to push back, and how to work together and listen to recommendations.
[00:17:39] And a lot of technical minded people are quite introverted, which I can relate to. And so they may not push and then. You kind of find out during the show that things didn't go really well.
[00:17:49] I've been saying lately and this has been kind of misquoted and misconstrued. So I want to say it really slowly that I love telling people, no, I love telling a client no, and I think that a lot of us are taught and they didn't play like never say no, always say yes.
[00:18:02] And always find a way, but we learned a lot during COVID when we were doing all the virtual stuff. People will just keep pushing for like, and let's do this and then we would love to tell you no beforehand, instead of you finding out during the show, but I think that's a lot of where these A/V horror stories come.
[00:18:19] If I start a podcast, it'd be about like, A/V horror stories or something. And a lot of them come from the event planner saying, Hey, can we just, and know this and kind of stacking all these, just these little things onto a pile. The crew is not pushing back or saying no, and then before you know it, then you're just kind of headed towards failure.
[00:18:36] And so, I love telling a client no in planning and finding those limits or yes, and it would take this too rather than finding out in the show but I think that's key. And I think that's what's not normal with event production 'cause technicians love to be competent. They love to be smart, love to say, oh, that's a challenge, and I'll definitely take it on and it's gonna be great.
[00:18:55] But then things crash and burn, you know?
[00:18:57] Rachel: We'll be right back with more Event Experience after the break.
[00:19:01] Rachel Moore: Hey event professionals. Do you want to hear more from the industry's top event, experience leaders? Don't miss out on future episodes of the Event Experience podcast by Bizzabo. Hit subscribe, drop us a review and share this episode with your friends and colleagues. The Event Experience podcast by Bizzabo. Where events come to life.
[00:19:24] Rachel: We're back with Cameron McGee to infuse a little sci fi nerdiness into this notion of hearing the word, no
[00:19:30] Well, I'm going to exhibit my equal nerdiness to your nerdiness. This reminds me I don't know if you ever watched StarTrek.
[00:19:39] Cameron: I'm a Star Wars guy. I'm not a Trekkie, but I'll hang with you.
[00:19:43] Rachel: Okay. Well, hang with me. I'll explain this quickly. So there's this running gag in the early days of Star Trek through all the shows where there's always a chief engineer, and the captain's always like, give me warp 10, give me warp nine.
[00:19:57] Okay. I can do that in two hours. I need it in 10 minutes. And then somehow they do it. Except it finally got to one of the series, Star Trek Voyager, where they had a chief engineer and the captain's like, okay, I need it. I need this. She goes, okay, it'll take eight hours. And then the captain's like, I need it in six.
[00:20:12] And the engineer turns and says, when I say eight hours, I mean eight hours. I will not get it done. And it was like the first time in the entire franchise that an engineer had actually said no. You're not going to get it in six hours. I said eight. And I think of that again equal nerdiness, but there's just such a, I think it's so important what you just said.
[00:20:35] It's not, no, I won't. It's no, I will do what you need, but it's going to take this to do it right. Which is a huge thing.
[00:20:46] Cameron: So often we're so, we have such a defensiveness towards production folks is what I found from other clients. They get such kind of a wall, a thick skin because they're so used to, I just love to quote like the grumpy sound guy, the person who says no, some crews love to say no, they love to say no to all sorts of stuff you want to do.
[00:21:01] And that's not what I'm proposing at all. it's not that's like, okay, well we just must not work with really high profile people. Well, actually we do.
[00:21:07] I've told the Secret Service No, I've told fortune one that we've told people. No, but no opens a gate to “What would it take?” What's in the way? Did we not ask soon enough? Should we ask sooner next time? Is there still I mean, anything's possible. We can overnight ship. We can stay up late. We can anything's possible, but we just want to make sure that we understand the compromises that yes, if we do that, yeah.
[00:21:30] What we need to probably do is delay breakouts dot. Or what we need to probably do is let's cut this from that because that's going to give us the bandwidth. And I think that it's important to have such a trust with all of your vendors, all your partners that you use in event planning and often there's such a mistrust with production with the technicians, because it's such a foreign thing. It's hard to trust what you don't understand.
[00:21:53] And that's what we just love to do. We just love to help the planner understand. They don't have to turn into fellow nerd or geek like us. We want them to understand enough that they're empowered to then make those decisions because production is such a huge part of every budget too.
[00:22:05] It's sad to see so many budget dollars going to waste when things aren't planned and crews aren't listening and you don't discuss things early enough. When you book the crew three weeks out instead of three months out or three years out. And you have all this waste because you haven't given the crew a chance to listen to your priorities.
[00:22:21] So again, I don't want to just keep chasing that soapbox, but I think there's a ton of potential to find something that you know the least about, for me, it would be, I love floral. I love flowers, believe it or not. I'm a big flower guy in our house. But I don't know that much about food and bev.
[00:22:35] And so, if I was suddenly planning our own event, like our birthday party or something for me, I don't know what event we would plan, but some event that I would plan, I would, probably find somebody who really knows food and just tell them, I don't have a clue about this,
[00:22:46] Rachel: Yeah.
[00:22:46] Cameron: But I'd love for you to be an expert.
[00:22:48] And I think often event planning, we don't understand A/V. And so we actually discount it, we give it the least budget, the least time, the least attention. And that could actually be a pretty big gap.
[00:22:59] Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you're, laying up the next question I have for you really beautifully, because, you know, we've, covered that, there needs to be a trust, that, event planners, it's not bad if you hear no from your event production or A/V team you know, they're probably working within a confines of saying, do you want it good?
[00:23:17] Or do you want it fast? Sometimes those two are not achievable, but I'd love to ask you, if you have the ear right now of event planners out there particularly ones, many of whom probably don't have that production or A/V expertise what should event planners today remember about when they need to incorporate good event production into their experiences when they need to work with like a team like yours?
[00:23:39] Cameron: Yeah. And this, this isn't just for us. Like you said, this is for a team like us. Maybe it's, you have a production partner that you love and have been working with for years, or maybe you're looking for a new one or whoever it is. I just want to encourage folks to engage production a little bit sooner. And a little bit more deeply, and I think a lot of vendors would say that. And there's only so many hours in the day. There's so many meetings you can have. But when something is as expensive as production, which it gets really expensive, really fast. And I'm sorry. Like, I apologize that the equipment's expensive and the crews are large and that I understand it is expensive and you get what you pay for and all those things.
[00:24:13] But when something is that big of a slice of the pie chart in the budget. I wouldn't neglect kind of delaying to choose who you're going to go with. I would decide early and then I would involve them quite deeply. I think so often again, the communication breakdown, it's just, well, we're going to need some mics or we're going to need the screen over here or whatever.
[00:24:30] And it's so, discounted instead of you'd be amazed how creative production people can be. I think they get typecast as, as nerds. I'm jokingly calling myself a nerd here. But even engineers are creative . Look at some of the bridges and crazy buildings and things that have had to be built over the years,. Give an engineer a challenge to be creative .
[00:24:49] And surprise yourself with the outcome. And so I think early in planning, it's amazing when folks will come to us and say, Hey this event's 11 months out. We wanted to go ahead and get started. We just had the event 30 days ago. We weren't happy. We need the new person. We just want to start talking now.
[00:25:02] It's amazing. We say, Okay, well, you may not have been happy because what you have allocated, you're actually just stretching it too thin. And that's not our sales people trying to get more money and saying, Hey, why does this have to be a four day conference? Why don't we do a three day conference?
[00:25:13] You can use the same budget, have a higher production value, but let's not have an opening general session at 7 PM on the first night. Let's just make that the next morning because you just shaved a whole day off of your time. And so you just gave yourself a, whatever that is, a 25% or 33% budget increase, a steroid shot in the arm, but those are decisions.
[00:25:32] You can't really ask the A/V team for stuff like that three weeks out. You know, when you've published registration and you, you certainly wouldn't normally ask them that. Who would ask a powerpoint operator? What do they think about the opening general session time? But with our clients, we work with them for years.
[00:25:46] That's the type of counsel and advising that we're able to give. And it's, it's amazing. Even some of our largest events, the influence we've been able to have, and we just quietly, we don't need the credit. We just quietly whispered in our clients ear and they take it to the committees and the clients and everything.
[00:25:59] We don't need the credit for who came up with the idea, but it's amazing how influential we're able to be with breakout rotation schedules, things just, you know, we wouldn't ask the production person, but when you say, well, in this city with this union at this venue if you can actually delay that in 30 minutes you're going to save tens of thousands of dollars.
[00:26:16] When an attendee raises their iphone and snaps a picture to post to their Instagram or Linkedin of I'm at this conference, you want that picture to look as good as possible and the union being an overtime or double time eating up your budget is not helping that Instagram post look sexier.
[00:26:29] Rachel: I love it. All ties together. I really appreciate it too. You're teaching motivation, the foundation of who you are as a business person and just as a professional in this particular area is really, coming through so loud and clear, which is great. I mean, that's a huge reason we even do this podcast, so we can learn from the experiences of people who've been doing this for a while and then the different kinds of experiences they have.
[00:26:53] Cameron: I'm really passionate about young people, about 18 to 25 year olds. And so I would just kind of chime in here. If there's a young person listening, or if you're not a young person, you probably know one.
[00:27:02] I'm really big on young people trying a lot of different things in the industry. I'm amazed how many event planners and professionals Just kind of go with their gut and kind of just go with whatever job they fell into. And they're just kind of still there in five or 10 years and then have that midlife crisis or, you know, it's time to start a family or you move or whatever.
[00:27:20] And they never get back to it because they weren't really plugged in. I just love encouraging this to 18-25 year old age group to try a lot of things. And I would just ask if you're young and you're listening to try some event production things. It's amazing. You don't have to be a nerd like me, an audio engineer, a technician.
[00:27:39] There's so many roles in the production industry that I think you would find interesting. We've converted a lot of executive assistants into production. We've converted a lot of different types of people from different industries into production who love it now. We've had to do that because we're in Arkansas.
[00:27:53] There's not a huge amount of production professionals here. We've had to convert people, but I'm often amazed at how late in careers people are trying things. And so I would just close by saying, if you're young, try a lot of things, try things in production. If you're an event planner, try things. In production, it's amazing, and not all of the roles are extremely engineering based.
[00:28:14] And then it's just kind of a plug that I would say just professionally for our company on the way out is we love all the RFPs that we get to bid on all over the country, and we would just love to be a third bidder on something. if you're working on a project, you're saying, Hey, we've been working on this, or we're a public institution or whatever.
[00:28:28] It has to go out to bid or whatever. We would love to be a third bidder. It's amazing how often people are surprised. Little avad3 from Arkansas, we go all over the country. And so, anytime you're working on RFP, I'd either love to bid on it or we'd love to help you just draft it. Just be kind of an objective third party outside.
[00:28:45] If you want us to look over it, even if we're not going to get to bid on it, we would love to help speak A/V for you so that you're getting really accurate bids. It's such an expensive part of every budget. And so we want to help people with that. And we're happy to help all the way from Arkansas.
[00:28:58] Rachel: Nice. Excellent.
[00:29:00] Where can our listeners find and follow you online?
[00:29:03] Cameron: My last name is a little unusual, so I'll spell it. My first name is Cameron. So Cameron Magee, Cameron C A M E R O N M A G E E. You can certainly find me on LinkedIn. I'm certainly active on LinkedIn, but I don't necessarily cover a ton of event planning content.
[00:29:17] I mostly talk more about leadership and running a team. We've got almost 50 people now at our little business. And so I'm very passionate about just being a good leader. I would point them more towards our company's LinkedIn which is avad3, A V A D 3. “Avad” is Hebrew for serve.
[00:29:34] And then you put a three at the end. So avad3, that's going to be a lot more event planning type content. Uh, If you look me up on Facebook, you're just going to get pictures of our kids. We've got a four and five year old boy. And it's just pure, kid shenanigans on Facebook. So probably LinkedIn.
[00:29:49] Oh, it's great. And probably if you can get to mine or get to our company, I would favor the company page for stuff to actually help you grow in the industry.
[00:29:58] Rachel: Cameron takes us back to school with his skill up advice for event planners.
[00:30:12] Cameron: I would encourage to almost schedule a career day. Do you remember like an eighth grade when you had a career day and you just, I don't know if your school did this, but like we got to go spend two days.
[00:30:23] My eighth grade teacher, I don't know how she pulled us off, but turned us loose all over town and we got to go spend two days job shadowing someone And that impacted my life. I mean, that completely changed the course of what I was looking to do
[00:30:36] just by getting two days in kind of walking in someone else's shoes and what I think I would recommend, I think so often we fill our time with meetings and we fill our eight to five with a very normal cadence.
[00:30:50] I don't know if you'd have to take a vacation day to do this or something, but I would go job shadow a very technical person on a show. Don't go to the show and job shadow the event planner and geek out on the registration and stuff. Go sit backstage and realize the stress on the crew when keynote speakers don't turn in their slides on time or realize the stress on the crew when, when a presenter is going long and we're missing the transition, the breakouts, or I would encourage kind of on-the-job training by literal shadowing of a very, very specific technical person on a crew somewhere.
[00:31:22] It is amazing. I'm 34. I hope when I'm 54, 74, that I'm still as much of a sponge and a student, a lifelong learner. And so I believe whether somebody's listening and they're 20 and they're in college and kind of working through this major, or they're 80 and they're still doing it and loving it. I would encourage you to kind of walk a mile in someone else's shoes, get on a crew. Go shadow somewhere very technical, and just be a sponge for one or two days.
[00:31:49] And it is amazing what you can glean and you can start to understand. Okay, that's why they had a whole day for load in or that's why they having such an early call time to be ready for this big moment with our VIP or what have you. I think we value continuing education and we go to these webinars and listen to these podcasts and kind of do these low hanging fruit listen along type lectures, but I would go be hands on because in my experience, the greatest human need is to understand and be understood.
[00:32:17] Go understand someone who's very different than you on a technical crew. I guarantee, you'll be surprised as long as you don't get a grumpy one, most production people that I've met, whether their degree's in teaching or not, they love to teach because no one ever asked them to teach.
[00:32:34] They've got so much knowledge and information. And just to get to have an eighth grader sitting next to them, whether you're an eighth grader, you're 80 to say, Hey what are you doing? And what are you working on there? It is amazing what they can teach you. I continue to learn from our crews and our freelancers and our union people all over the country with over a hundred events a year, coast to coast, you dropping in all sorts of events.
[00:32:55] I continue to learn and be amazed how much production people want to teach. Which disheartens me and says it must be on the event planners to then to ask. It must not be a shortage of the production people being willing to teach. It must be a limiting on the event planners of being curious and asking those questions and the best event planners that I've ever met are the curious ones.
[00:33:14] So what I would say. I know that was a long answer, but it's a short one thing is go shadow a technical person or a crew on a show.
[00:33:21] Rachel: Mm
[00:33:21] hmm
[00:33:22] Thanks again to Cameron Magee for joining us on Event Experience. And thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social and subscribe, rate and review us wherever you're listening.
[00:33:34] Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends. You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcasts. On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
