Tag: event-planning

The case of the surprise graduation rejection

I know this is from June, but it’s still quite relevant given past posts regarding event planning and capacity management.

This story on click2houston.com (KPRC-TV) (archive.org) is about a graduation gone wrong. Some families traveled from out-of-state only to be denied entry due to a lack of capacity, leaving between 200 and 300 standing outside not able to see anything.

It’s an unfortunate situation for everyone. It’s hard for me to fault HISD’s security personnel here, as their job is simply to keep the event safe and to make sure the school district is not legally liable for a fire code violation. I would think based on this rather bare-bones story that the likely cause was a lack of an RSVP system so the district would know what size venue was required to accommodate the crowd.

Priority should have been given to those who came from longer distances. If nothing else, an overflow room with a live video feed could have been made available at another of the Reliant Park venues. (I went to a church some years ago–this was during an earlier part of my life when I was still a Christian–where they piped in video of the service to an overflow room. Technically, this should be possible in 2013 especially if it was possible in the mid- to late 1990s.)

In a larger sense, this underscores the importance of sizing the venue to the expected crowd. I know of at least one university graduation that required tickets for admission to the venue. Was that workable in this case? Would it have still left some people out? Maybe. But I personally would rather family members coming from hundreds of miles away know not to bother making the trip weeks in advance than being turned away at the door.

[Edit 2023-07-03: change broken link to archive.org]

PayPal’s war on OpenCamp: a lesson in trust, business, and event planning

Until now, I’ve had no reason to write about Paypal. A couple of days ago, that changed. This is something every event planner should know about. Even if you are not an event planner by trade this could easily happen to you if you accept Paypal for payment on any kind of one-off event.

The OpenCamp blog posted today about how Paypal has repeatedly and continuously harassed those putting on the OpenCamp blogging/CMS conference in Dallas, TX, at the end of August.

John P. wrote this post, and states in part:

Over the past several weeks we’ve had 3-4 random calls from various people at PayPal, all of whom only identify themselves by their first name, none of whom have direct phone numbers or email addresses, and all of whom are asking the exact same questions over and over…

  • What is this OpenCamp thing?
  • How many people will be coming?
  • Why are you doing this?

Every time I go through the same speech with them. They are aware that we held WordCamp the past two years and have verified the previous registrations those years. They are aware that I personally have had a PayPal account for many years with them, and that I even have the Woopra account through them with far more volume than OpenCamp will ever have.

The article then goes on to explain this morning’s call from “Kathleen” in the “risk department.” As if that was not ominous enough (emphasis mine):

…they view events as being “extremely risky”. She told me that they would “rather close an account than have to eat a couple hundred dollars in disputed charges”. She went on to tell me that PayPal “doesn’t make much money off events”, and the bottom line was that they just don’t care about them.

Now, keep in mind the above: John is a long-time PayPal account holder and has helped host two WordCamps (WordPress-related convention). This is not just someone who signed up for Paypal this year and decided “okay, I’m going to run an event.” And they are still willing to come out and say in effect “we think events are extremely risky and don’t make us enough money.”

I’m not sure who to blame here. I don’t blame OpenCamp, that’s for sure. The theme of this blog’s past postings predisposes me to blame PayPal. I’m sure there are less sincere, less experienced, and less scrupulous event planners out there who have been part of the problem for PayPal. However, in the grand scheme of things, that’s a pathetic excuse to declare war on all event planners that use PayPal to accept payments, particularly the ones that have more than adequately documented that they are for real.

I view PayPal’s unwarranted attack on OpenCamp as “extremely risky” myself. This is not the kind of mess that a PR department wants to be left cleaning up. Shame on you, PayPal. It’s time to do the right thing: unlock the OpenCamp PayPal account, apologize, and quit treating event planners like second-rate customers.