David Adler (@DavidAdler) is the C.E.O. and founder of BizBash.
A death toll of 769, plus 934 injured. Those are the startling figures from last week's stampede during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. And it is a grave reminder that tragedies can happen at any time, at any event where large numbers of people are gathered, whether formally planned or not. When I read about disasters like this—or even incidents like the one at the Summer Ends Music Festival in Tempe, Arizona, where the stage rush caused injuries, or the recent curtain collapse with Carly Fiorina—I can't help but think of it from the point of view of an event organizer.
What would I do?
How could I have prevented something like this from happening in the first place?
How can I make sure that it never happens again?
Those questions would haunt me daily once the shock wore off if I was involved in the planning of events that go off the rails. It is not about whom to blame, indeed, as an article in The Atlantic argues crowd behavior is wildly unpredictable. It is, however, the responsibility of everyone involved to be prepared for potentially deadly situations.
As we faced the throngs of people who crowded the streets for Pope Francis’s visit to the United States last week, as well as when we face the high-impact events that are happening every day, it underscores the importance of being well-rounded event organizers. One minute you are involved in programming joy and entertainment, and the next you could face the biggest disaster of your career.
I have always said that event organizers are really more like “mayors” than just planners. An event is a living, breathing ecosystem fraught with challenges of any human endeavor. We need to make sure that we take dealing with our constituents seriously since they put their trust in their mayors to ensure their safety.
We as an industry need to do more to know how to react appropriately and plan to mitigate the risk of everything from crowd control to health emergencies and, yes, even to responses to terrorism.
A few years back, I was trying to lead a movement to bring event safety to a higher level. We sent an email inviting event professionals to training on security and emergency services. The response to the initial email was fantastic: More than 1,000 people signed up to attend the event in Los Angeles at Paramount Studios’ beautiful theater. We had some the best experts on the topics assembled. The big disappointment was that of the 1,000 people who registered, only 100 actually showed up.
As a leader in the event and meeting industry, my purpose in speaking out now is to emphasize the grave responsibility we have to prepare for any possible situation when we bring people together for any purpose. It is as much the obligation of the senior executive to ask the right questions as it is for the volunteer to know what to do in case of an emergency. Let’s make sure that the latest tragedies serve as a wake-up call for event organizers around the globe to take what they do more seriously at all levels of planning and execution.
