Trade Shows

Weezer Performs at NADA Show in Dallas

June 5, 2023

Weezer-Perfomance-Capital-One-NADA-Show-Dallas-Onstage-Systems-Event-Production

Onstage Systems returned to Gilley’s early this year, excited to deliver another killer show. This one was a private concert featuring the iconic band Weezer. The band was here to perform exclusively for the National Automobile Dealers Association during their 2023 annual show in Dallas.And yes, Weezer captivated the audience as expected with their high-energy music, unique sound, and mind-blowing spectacle for the NADA post-convention-day mixer. And it was made possible with the support of Onstage Systems.

The lucky eventgoers got a special treat as Weezer unveiled their debut performance of the cover song “California Girls” by the Beach Boys. It was a special test run with an audience before the band would later perform the hit as part of the tribute to the Beach Boys at this year’s Grammy Awards. The night was unforgettable, filled with incredible music that resonated with the energized crowd. We can sum the event up as the perfect blend of entertainment and camaraderie, with a fun-filled atmosphere for all.

During their electrifying performance, Weezer thrilled the appreciative crowd with a phenomenal setlist showcasing their timeless hits and memorable cover songs. The night kicked off with beloved tunes such as “Beverly Hills” and “My Name Is Jonas.” The band continued to surprise the audience with their version of B.o.B’s “Magic” and Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

Other tunes belted out from this unforgettable setlist were:

Undone – The Sweater Song
Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus
Pork and Beans (with “1 More Hit” intro)
Take on Me by (A-ha cover)
Africa by Toto
California Girls” by the Beach Boys (live debut)
Island in the Sun
Say It Ain’t So

For the epic encore, the band concluded the fun-packed evening with their timeless hit, “Buddy Holly,” leaving the entire audience in awe and cheering for more. Yes, it was a night everyone will remember, that’s for sure, and here’s how we helped it happen.

As an acclaimed audio-visual company, we take great pride in our rock-solid partnership with The Event Nerd team. They trust us to bring their wild and imaginative ideas to life with our creative solutions and flawless execution. And that’s achievable thanks to the Onstage Systems unstoppable team. Our people poured hearts and souls into this project —like all projects before it—in their relentless obsession for perfection. And we can honestly say that Gilley’s event was off the charts! Yeah, we nailed it, just like we always do.

Onstage Systems knows a thing or two about a thing or two when asked to create lasting memories at events. In this case, we strategically placed attention-grabbing LED walls around Gilley’s complex. Our cutting-edge digital displays created an incredible opportunity for the sponsor Capital One activations. In fact, they stole the show, exposing the backer’s branding with a dynamic and visually hypnotic flair. But that’s not all!

We decided to move things up another notch by going beyond the standard offerings. Our team designed intricate hardware and lighting installations that were nothing less than awe-inspiring. This setup guaranteed seamless integration of the client’s branding and decor, blending in beautifully with the overall aesthetics. Best of all, our work here added to the experience without distracting the focus from the event and its sponsors, but it wasn’t without a few challenges.

Our biggest challenge was to create an elaborate setup within a tight 24-hour timeframe. And that meant there had to be faultless coordination across multiple departments, right. Our job was to bring together diverse elements to craft a truly extraordinary experience—so that’s exactly what we did. It took extensive preparation, pre-rigged GT trusses, meticulous design work, and efficient prefabrication. Well…. our skilled and dedicated tech crew pulled off this seemingly impossible task within a single day.

So, Onstage Systems rose to the occasion and tackled the event’s challenges head-on with our imaginative solutions—as we always do. The strategies and techniques used demanded custom fabrication, showcasing how we never back down when off-the-shelf remedies for problems aren’t on the table.

Despite the time constraints, we achieved a stunning, unforgettable arrangement that exceeded all expectations. It’s moments like these that remind us why we love doing what we do. That is, to turn ambitious visions into extraordinary realities, regardless of constraints.

Our love for live event production is easy for all to see in our work. It’s why our partners and clients trust us to bring event ideas to life with creative solutions and flawless execution.

Have a Chat with Onstage Systems and See How We Can Elevate Your Next Event

How to Turn Your Next Event Into A Successful Hybrid Event

September 10, 2021

Hybrid events aren’t going anywhere. The addition of virtual experience components to in-person events looks to be the continued future for the events industry. According to a survey from EventMB, 67% of respondents agree: hybrid is the roadmap for events going forward. In fact, 71% of the respondents said they will continue to employ a digital strategy after COVID concerns pass. So, consider how you are going to evolve your future events by adding a hybrid component.

The critical factor is making sure you are making your event a hybrid event in the right way. For example, a hybrid event is NOT an in-person event with a live stream or video-on-demand replays of the live event. Creating a successful hybrid event means taking both your in-person and virtual audiences into account during event development and programming.

Types of Events That Can Be Made into Hybrid Events

Awards
Career Fairs
Commencements
Conferences
Educational Courses, Training, & Workshops
Expos
Fundraisers
Galas
Networking
Seminars
Summits
Tradeshows
Panels
Parties & Weddings
Product Announcements, Launches, & Demos
Internal events
Kickoffs
Large Meetings
Townhalls

A virtual component can enhance nearly any in-person event to turn it into a successful hybrid event.

The Benefits of Hybrid Events

The biggest pushback about adding a virtual component to a traditionally in-person event is that it will split the event’s attendees, and fewer people will show up in person. But, what we have found over the years is that virtual events don’t split your event’s audience. Instead, turning your in-person event into a hybrid event through a virtual component increases your audience size. The majority of remote attendees to a hybrid event would not participate if the event were offered as an in-person-only experience. When event admission, travel expenses, or simply taking the time away from the office prevents in-person attendance, a virtual experience opens your event to a broader audience.

Hybrid Event Scalability

Another essential benefit of hybrid events is scalability. Many of the growing pains associated with growing an in-person-only event are bypassed by turning your event into a successful hybrid event. Scaling the virtual component of a hybrid event for hundreds or thousands of more attendees is significantly easier and more cost-efficient than organizing the same growth for an in-person-only event.

Improved Analytics

Getting accurate numbers and metrics for an in-person is a difficult and often costly affair. Digital platforms and spaces are built with analytics in mind from day one. Event producers have a much easier and accurate measure of a hybrid event’s digital consumption. Instead of counting people coming in the door of an exhibit hall, many digital platforms can tell you how many people participated, in some cases down to the minute. It is much easier to determine what parts of your event were hot and which were not. These improved analytics make it much easier to plan your next event and rely less on guesswork and gut feeling.

Improved Flexibility

Hybrid events give you increased agility to pivot your event to changing circumstances. Travel restrictions, natural disasters, inclement weather, and shutdowns can wreak havoc on an in-person event. Often these upsetting circumstances can force an event to be postponed or outright canceled. Adding a digital component to your event to create a hybrid event provides you the flexibility, if needed, to move would-be in-person attendees to the virtual programming you already have in place as part of your event with much less work.

What Makes a Hybrid Event a Success?

The primary factor that leads to whether a hybrid event is a success or not is if it is engaging for your audience, especially digital audiences. What can your event do to make it a more fulfilling experience for your virtual audience than watching a live or recorded video stream of the event? Unique elements like behind-the-scenes and virtual attendee exclusive content are an excellent place to start. Can you offer breakout rooms, live chat, polling, or Q&A sessions for your virtual attendees to enhance their experience? Think of how you can turn your virtual attendees from a passive audience into an active audience.

Design Your Event Programming for Hybrid Audiences

One of the best ways to ensure your hybrid event is a success is by designing your event for attendance for in-person and remote audiences. It’s crucial your virtual attendees don’t feel like second-class attendees who are can only access parts of your event. Virtual audiences understand they will not have the same event floor experience as someone attending the event in person. But, think of how you can make their event experience as close to the in-person experience as possible.

Alternatively, you can design your event from the group up as two different experiences. For in-person attendees, you may want to focus on the networking element, meet and greets, booths, and mixers. Those experiences all play to the strengths of the in-person attendee. Meanwhile, remote attendees can focus on speakers, panels, and digital-first workshops. Because nothing stops an in-person attendee from going to these events in person or taking a break from the event floor to participate in a virtual session from their hotel room, consider what exclusive content you can create that caters to the strengths of each audience.

Produce Your Event Like a TV Program

Think of your event as a television show filmed in front of a live audience. Try creating smaller, in-person audience experiences and focus your event budget on increasing the production quality of your video, audio, lighting, and effects for remote audiences. Enhancing production quality in this way will make your hybrid event a better experience for both virtual and in-person attendees.

With this in mind, it’s critical to choose a venue for your hybrid event that has the AV technology, support, and internet quality to support your hybrid event. Experienced, full-service event production companies like Onstage Systems can help you choose a venue and work around any limitations.

Keep Your Programming Fresh

As previously stated, engagement is the number one factor for hybrid event success and success for any event type. Look for opportunities to mix up your programming, keep it fresh, and avoid the bog-standard corporate keynote, breakout, and repeat tendency. New, engaging content is essential when you’re dealing with virtual audiences. Their email, social media, and the rest of the internet are just a click away.

Digital attention spans are shorter than those of in-person attendees. Keep your programming focused and be concise. Keeping your content shorter and liberally structured with small breaks can help keep your audience fresh and engaged for a longer period of time.

Hybrid Event Pitfalls to Avoid

Creating a hybrid component for your event can lead you into some unexpected pitfalls, especially if you’re new to building an event to service in-person and remote audiences. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid when planning your successful hybrid event.

Not Treating Your Audiences as Equals

It cannot be overemphasized how important it is that both your in-person audience and virtual audience feel like they’re getting a fantastic experience from your event. That means you need to go out of your way to ensure each audience has special moments of experiences that give them that sense of fulfillment. To craft a unique and memorable experience for your virtual audience, you can’t just set up a camera and mic and record what’s going on for the live audience. Include parts in your event programming that provide an experience that cannot be duplicated or better executed for other types of attendees.

Scheduling Your Event Without Thought to Timezones

It can be easy to forget that your virtual attendees may be tuning in from a different timezone. If you have a keynote speaker that starts at 8 AM EST, that’s 5 AM for your attendees on the West Coast. This problem is compounded further if you need to consider a sizable overseas audience. Assess the geographic distribution of your attendees and give priority to the most-anticipated parts of your event, scheduling them in the most convenient time slots for the majority of your virtual attendees. You might also consider some early-morning or late-night programming for your event that your faraway attendees to access according to their schedules.

Spending Your Budget in the Wrong Place

Overspending on food and beverage budgets or an oversized venue is not uncommon. Introducing a virtual component to an in-person event can allow you to spend your event budget in new and different ways. Conversely, you must avoid skimping on your A/V budget. A sizable portion of your hybrid event’s audience is dependent on good video, sound, and lighting to get the most out of the experience. People are not going to be happy with a subpar virtual event experience.

Complicated Technology and Tech Problems

Technology issues can be a death knell for the virtual component of your hybrid event. You need the resources to handle complicated technology, tech gremlins, and other logistical issues. These issues can range from picking a venue with subpar internet capabilities, a difficult-to-use virtual event platform, or an amateur event partner. That’s why it’s best to partner with a capable, full-service event production company like Onstage Systems, which has a successful history of putting on in-person, virtual, and hybrid events of all types. A great events partner can help you plan for a successful hybrid event from the start and assist you in picking the venue, software platforms, and equipment to create a successful hybrid event.

Successful Hybrid Events with Onstage Systems

A recent GBTA study found that the number of hybrid events is expected to double compared to last year. Creating your successful hybrid event means partnering with a company you can trust to help bring your event to life. Work with a professional event production company with decades of experience producing all manner of events: from helping put on concert tours across the US for some of the biggest names in music to black-tie galas, corporate conferences, virtual holiday drone shows, and more. Let Onstage Systems help make your next event into an unforgettable hybrid event.

Contact Onstage Systems

Finding an Event Production Company for Your Concert, Tour or Music Festival: What To Look For, How to Vet Them, and What You Need To Know

April 30, 2021

2020 was a challenging year for event production. Many event production partners had to pivot and change their businesses to survive, and others had to shut their doors. Now, as the live events industry begins to spring back to life, there are many pop-up shops and new, inexperienced production companies flooding the market and making it more challenging to find a qualified vendor. That’s why we put together this article with our decades of live event experience to help you know what to look for in an event production partner for your concert, tour or music festival.

Start With The End In Mind

Before searching for your ideal concert, tour, or event production company, make sure you set the relationship up for success. This preparation includes starting early. Pre-production meetings for your event should begin roughly three months prior to the event’s date. You should also take this time to develop a clear vision for your event. Even a veteran event production company can have difficulty bringing out the potential for an event if your vision isn’t clear. You also need to make a checklist of the needs for your concert, event, or tour production. Items for your checklist include:

Sound & Lighting
Crew Size
Interactive Components
What equipment is being provided by the venue
What equipment needs to be rented
Will the event be broadcast, live-streamed, or need to be professionally recorded?

AV Company vs. Event Production Company: Make Sure You Understand What You Are Looking For

Once you have the idea and the rough needs of your event outlined, you should start looking for an event production company. The first thing to identify in your research is that your prospective partners are professional event production companies. Sometimes an audio-visual company likes to stretch its offerings and moonlight as an event production company. An AV company is competent in running event equipment and can help you set up said equipment for your event, but that is where their expertise ends. They are not an event production company.

An event production company does provide equipment setup and operation, but also much more. A full-service event production company can help you design your event from the ground up. Onstage Systems has helped many clients early in the event process with tasks like venue selection and permitting. Beyond setup, an event production company will help bring your event vision to life. They can help you with the design and coordination of your stage, audio, lighting, and multimedia, turning your event idea into an extraordinary audience experience. That’s in addition to providing the nuts and bolts of offstage event production like crowd control and security. Events are far more than running lights and sound. It’s essential you work with an event production partner that can provide the full scope of services your event needs.

Event Planning, Event Management, and Event Production Companies

You also want to make sure you’re looking for the correct type of event production partner. Though they may sound similar, there are differences between an event planning company, an event management company, and an event production company. An event planning company helps on the front end, assisting clients in finding venues, finalizing event dates, hiring caterers, manage budgets, etc. In contrast, an event management company handles the project management side of event production. These companies help with event registration, managing event staff, and resolving onsite conflicts, to execute your event. An event production company focuses on the live, stage presentation of an event. They often work with the presenters/acts, AV crews, and technology vendors to produce and deliver the amazing live experiences at an event, concert, or tour. Generally, the event production company handles all production aspects of the stage production for the client.

Consider Event Production Companies or AV Companies Outside of Your Search Radius

Online research will skew towards your location. That can keep you from finding great event production companies that are outside your metro area, who would be an excellent fit for your event, and who are willing to travel. For example, Onstage Systems is based in DFW, but we help put on events, concerts, and tours from Nashville to Albuquerque. You could miss out on a great event production company partner by centering your research on your current location.

Establishing a Budget For Your Event

One of the biggest questions for a group planning an event is price. Look for an event production company partner whose pricing seems fair and reasonable for what you ask them to deliver for the event. To determine what is right and fair, consider what all your event entails. An event production company provides labor but also may provide equipment, staging, furniture, crowd control, security, and transportation. In addition to those costs, there are creative design, insurance, permitting, and taxes. An event’s costs can quickly balloon, especially if you begin involving multiple event partners like an event production company, event planner, and event management. The more moving parts in your event production, the more expensive it will become.

Sticker shock can drive some groups to search out budget solutions and low bids. But, if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Often a budget price translates to a budget production. The last thing you want for your event is to spend less and feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth. Remember, your event’s success is determined by its impact on the audience and how memorable it is. So spend your money where it will have the most impact, in the event’s production. Engage a full-service event production company early in your event timeline. A good, full-service event production company can help review your budget and suggest ways to use it to provide the best production, “bang for your buck.” They may be able to help you negotiate discounts and uncover additional cost savings to help your event production budget stretch further.

Vetting Event Production Companies

One of the first things you should consider when culling your list of potential partners is event production company specialties. Some event production companies specialize in corporate events like trade shows, conferences, seminars, and product launches. That company is likely not the ideal partner for your summer concert festival. Similarly, you may forego working with an event production company that specializes in broadcast if you’re not planning to broadcast, stream, or record your event. Many 2021 events have transitioned from full virtual to hybrid events, featuring in-person production, crowd control, and live-streaming. So you may be looking for an event production company partner like Onstage Systems that has been doing hybrid events for over a year now, and producing live events for over 40 years.

Experience & Licensing

Once you’ve assembled a shortlist of potential partners, you can start investigating them to find your best partner. One of the best hallmarks to look for is experience. How long have they been in business? Does their track record of work fit the type of event you’re producing? In addition to experience, ask about an event production company’s certifications, licenses, affiliations, and ensure they have general liability coverage and workers compensation coverage.

Online Presence

Delving into an event production company’s social media, website, and old event footage is a great way to get a feel for their event production. You can also learn a lot about the company’s core values, the quality of the people they have on their team, and the quality of service they provide. For example, looking back through our social media, you can learn about some of the challenges we needed to overcome to help produce a 1,000 drone open-air light show in December.

Also, check online for feedback, reviews, and referrals. You should also consider asking vendors, venues, and other event producers if they know or have worked with an event production company. This feedback can help you quickly discover less desirable event production partners.

Creativity

How do the events your prospects produce look and sound? At the end of the day, this is how event attendees and concert-goers will judge your event. Look for an event production partner that is bringing something unique to the event. Look for photographs and videos of their events across the internet to see if they have a wow factor that can benefit your event.

Event Production Company Questions

Once you’ve winnowed down your potential partners, it’s time for direct questions. These questions are in the final step to help you determine if an event production company is right for you.

What are your core services?
What equipment can you provide, and what will you need to rent?
Are you able to travel?
Can you source local labor on the road?
Can you hire/coordinate your own AV labor?
Can you provide a show flow or cue-to-cue document?
Can you tell me about the latest event production trends and technology?
Choosing Your Ideal Event Production Company

Like any good partnership, you have to like and trust the people you work with. In your gut, do you trust an event production company can bring your vision for an event to life? Even after your interviews, if your potential event production partner checks all the boxes but your gut says otherwise, it may be best to trust your gut and keep looking.

Now you are ready to find your ideal event production company for your Spring and Summer event, concert, or tour. In your search, consider Onstage Systems. We have more than 40 years of experience in live events and offer full-service live event production with audio engineers, lighting experts, and technicians ready to bring your vision to life.

Learn More About Onstage Systems Event Production Capabilities