Project Play 2024
Cal Ripken, Jr. speaks with Orioles broadcaster Rob Long at Project Play Summit 2024.
Photo: Howard Korn for the Aspen Institute
Introduction
Project Play, an initiative of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, is dedicated to building healthy communities through sports. Each year, they host the Project Play Summit, their premier event that brings together over 600 attendees and 100 speakers for two days of insightful programming. The summit is a vital platform for sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and inspiring action within the sports and society sector.
However, organizing such a large-scale event comes with its own set of challenges. The Project Play team needed to coordinate a vast amount of people, information, and logistics to ensure the summit's success. This included managing multiple sessions, speaker details, and private event RSVPs, all while maintaining seamless communication across their team and with external stakeholders.
Recognizing the need for a more efficient solution, Project Play turned to Hand-Off. Our platform is designed to centralize event information and automate tedious tasks, allowing event professionals to focus on what truly matters – creating impactful and memorable experiences. By integrating with Cvent, a leading registration platform, Hand-Off provided Project Play with a comprehensive toolset to streamline their event planning, speaker management, and private event RSVP processes.
Challenges
Managing the Project Play Summit involved coordinating a vast amount of people, information, and logistics. The Project Play team faced several challenges:
Content Planning: Keeping track of multiple sessions, speaker RSVPs, presentation materials, and communication among team members was time-consuming and prone to errors.
Speaker Management: Managing invitations, collecting bios, headshots, names, and titles, and ensuring all speaker-related details were up-to-date required significant manual effort.
Private Event RSVPs: Handling invitations and RSVPs for invite-only events was cumbersome and lacked efficiency.
Integration Needs: Seamlessly integrating with Cvent, their chosen registration platform, to ensure data consistency across systems was critical but challenging.
Solutions
Hand-Off allowed Project Play to manage all programming and sessions in one place. They tracked speaker RSVPs, collected slides and presentation media, built run-of-show documents, left comments for teammates, and track communications between their team and speakers.
“The Hand-Off session manager was a game changer. It allowed us to easily keep track of all of our content and programming as it evolved. Because Hand-Off helped keep information organized, it felt like we were two weeks ahead in our planning. It made internal and external communication much more efficient saving valuable time, especially as we got closer to our event. The entire Hand-Off team could not have been more responsive or pleasant to work with.”
Speaker Management: Hand-Off enabled Project Play to manage their speakers efficiently, from tracking invitations and RSVPs to collecting bios, headshots, names, and titles. Hand-Off became the single source of truth for all speaker-related information. It can generate call sheets as well as track travel and accommodations.
“Hand-Off streamlined speaker management and communication processes. With significantly less manual data entry, we saved valuable time and were able to eliminate easy but common errors. We only just scratched the surface of the speaker management features of Hand-Off and look forward to maximizing them at our next event!”
Private Event RSVPs: Using Hand-Off, Project Play managed all peripheral, invite-only programming efficiently. They quickly deployed custom-designed invitations and easily managed RSVPs. The Hand-Off/Cvent API integration allowed Project Play to seamlessly push data from one platform to the other.
“It was incredibly convenient to be able to manage private events, create email invites and track RSVPs all in the same platform as the overall event. It streamlined a lot of processes that used to live in different platforms and spreadsheets. ”
Integration with Cvent: The integration between Hand-Off and Cvent was crucial. Project Play could push registered speaker data and confirmed session details to the Cvent mobile app. Additionally, they could pull attendee data from Cvent to send personalized invitations and manage RSVPs for private events through Hand.
Results
The implementation of Hand-Off yielded significant results for Project Play:
Improved Efficiency: With Hand-Off, Project Play streamlined their event planning processes, saving valuable time and resources. They no longer had to rely on manual methods or juggle multiple spreadsheets and documents, leading to increased efficiency across their team.
Enhanced Collaboration: Hand-Off facilitated better collaboration among team members by centralizing all event-related information and providing a platform for seamless communication. This improved coordination and ensured everyone was on the same page throughout the planning process.
Reduced Errors: By eliminating manual data entry and providing automated workflows, Hand-Off helped Project Play minimize errors and inconsistencies in their event planning and speaker management processes. This resulted in smoother operations and a higher level of professionalism in their events.
“Hand-Off kept our team organized as our annual Summit took shape. It gave us a place to store information that would otherwise be spread across a web of spreadsheets, emails, and documents and made it easy to coordinate scheduling.”
See how Hand-Off can revolutionize your event operations.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Project Play Summit 2024 emcee Greg Olsen.
Photo: Howard Korn for the Aspen Institute
