Rodney Hart: Hello and welcome into Event Perspectives. My name’s Rodney Hart. I’m the host of this show and it’s one of the favorite parts of my role where I get to really talk to other experts in the industry, and today is no different. We’ll be talking to Jeremiah Alger with the National FFA Organization who does a lot of things close to my heart, but I’m sure we’re going to hit topics across the board. Jeremiah, welcome to the show. How are you feeling?

Jeremiah Alger: Good, how are you doing?

Rodney Hart: I’m doing good. So this show, we like to dive into the career paths that lead us to where we are. I feel like events is one of those interesting ones where there are a lot of non-traditional paths that led us to get here. We’ve had some chats. I’m excited to get there. But before we do anything, I like to get our guests warmed up with an icebreaker question. So if you’re ready for that, I’m going to fire one at you.

Jeremiah Alger: All right, sounds good.

Rodney Hart: All right, so let’s start with this one. Dream scenario, if you had an unlimited event budget, what’s one thing that you’d add to your next event?

Jeremiah Alger: I’d like to be able to get to a point where I could get rid of badges altogether and just have an electronic version of check-in where you use your phone as your badge. To do that on our end it would be a lot more scanning to get into events. Currently we don’t scan to get into as many events as we have. It’s more of a verify they’re wearing the badge and maybe see what events are on the badge type of thing when they go through the process. So that’s one thing I’d like to do.

Rodney Hart: So cool, I love that idea. Would you, in this dream scenario where there’s no budget, how do you feel about passive tracking? Would you try and track people where they’re going? Or how do you feel about that in general as it relates to digital badging and people going where they’re going? I feel like sometimes that data is like, it would be awesome to have, but is it worth the infrastructure costs? Or maybe attendees wouldn’t like it. I’m curious to get your thoughts on that part too.

Jeremiah Alger: Yeah, it would be interesting. We did some RFID tracking for a little while with our badges and we found that the value proposition to our clients wasn’t as great as we thought it would be. So we kind of went away from that. A lot of our group kind of already knows what they’re doing and where they’re going when they come to convention. We could probably, if we went to the electronic version where you did some kind of app type thing as your badge, do more of a tracking that way to know what our traffic flow is in the expo hall. I know that’s been a big conversation lately, is the expo hall getting too full? Do we need to try to limit who’s in there and things like that?

Rodney Hart: And I’m sure you’re like me, you can collect a ton of data and there’s always probably a push and pull around how many things you’re either asking for or tracking, but then also are you using it? Once you have it and you’re trying to solve for that particular challenge, I feel like it’s always amazing to have the data to rely on. But I love that idea. I’m going to use that to transition right into a little bit about your background. We’ll talk about what you do at National FFA and your current role. But before we get there, I’d love to start chronologically at the beginning of your career and history in events. Tell us a little bit about how long you’ve been in events and what got you here.

Jeremiah Alger: Okay, I started working in events in 2006. As a kid, I grew up on a dairy farm and I always enjoyed getting the chance to travel and see the world and stuff like that. So going to college, I initially wanted to build roller coasters. I figured if you build roller coasters, you can make a lot of money, you get to travel, see the world, go to different amusement parks. Being the first person in my family to go to college, I made the mistake of not going to engineering school, so that’s not the greatest if you want to build roller coasters. I went to Indiana University and they had a build-your-own-major program. So I started taking some physics and then decided that wasn’t really something I wanted to do. I wanted a more well-rounded education. Then I saw that Indiana University had a tourism management major with a business minor, so I figured I could own the amusement park. And then I did the Disney internship and I was like, I don’t know if I really want to do that either. I like events because events you still get to have more like normal hours, but then you also have the time where you do the actual event and it’s kind of hectic, it’s planned, but things don’t always go the way you want. So I like a little bit of the chaos.

Rodney Hart: You know what, I love that answer. I feel like that’s similar to mine. My intro was somewhat accidental, but what I loved about being in this industry was the phases that you have with events. You have a very organized planning phase, or maybe even before that, you can have big broad ideation. What are we going to do for next year? You’re in that pie-in-the-sky phase and then rubber meets the road, you plan it out, and then there is the lead up and then the inevitable day of where there’s just going to be chaos. You don’t know what it’s necessarily going to be, but you know that there will be something. I need to ask a couple of questions about this Disney internship though. Before I let you go on the roller coaster, because I am a big theme park fan, roller coaster fan. So I assume you are a roller coaster fan.

Jeremiah Alger: Yes, me and my cousin back in the day would go on roller coasters as much as possible. We went to Kings Island, which is great. And we also went to Cedar Point, which is my favorite.

Rodney Hart: Do you have a favorite roller coaster in the world? Whether you’ve ridden it or not, what’s the best one in your opinion?

Jeremiah Alger: I saw they have a new one at Cedar Point now where you go up and the track’s kind of like detached for a second and then all of a sudden it swings down and connects and then you go. So that would be very scary and interesting to see how that works.

Rodney Hart: I was myself a fan of the RollerCoaster Tycoon video game. In that video game, you had a track that detached and a lot of chaos would ensue. So that one maybe is beyond my comfort level. So fascinating to hear how that kind of led you into the event space. I’m curious, was there a moment, having had a Disney internship and seeing the theme park side of the world, where you did your first event or something that, again big or small, that you kind of said, okay, maybe this is the career for me?

Jeremiah Alger: Well, I did the Disney internship. The main reason I didn’t necessarily want to go that route was the hours. A lot of times I was scheduled for the weekends and all my friends weren’t working at the same time. So a lot of times when you weren’t working, you were kind of by yourself. But I always enjoyed the aspects of actually being on site and doing the work on site and seeing the event and the energy that goes around the event. So in college I also worked for the convention center, doing a lot of the setup of the meeting spaces and such. That was a great experience to see what tends to happen at events. And I always enjoy traveling and seeing new hotels and staying in different places. So that’s kind of what pushed me in that direction.

Rodney Hart: It is something special, I feel like. Having been in events most of my career, knowing that all of the things you’re working on, ultimately you get to see them physically take shape. The problems you either do or don’t solve are problems you will see on site, right? By the time on site comes, if you did not solve that problem, it did not go away. And then also just getting to see, I similarly had that reaction the first time I had ordered an idea and then saw it on site at an event. I was like, I did that, that was my idea. So let’s talk a little bit about your role now and your primary focus areas in the event space. Tell us a little bit more about what you do and where you’re focused at National FFA.

Jeremiah Alger: Okay. So at National FFA, I’m the event registration manager and I also do the convention housing. So for housing, I help set up the convention housing blocks and we have so many different groups booking into our convention housing blocks that I have to try to as fairly as possible divvy out what’s available to different groups. And then for the event registration system, I set up all the different events that we have registrations for. We occasionally use a different system if something doesn’t have a cost.

So I set that up and try to make it as efficient as possible for people to be able to register. We have a little bit of a complicated system on our end where we have some large groups, larger than your normal large groups, like 100 or more people trying to all register at the same time for the different events. And then for our large convention, we have 70,000 people total. Most of them are minors. Probably 40,000 to 50,000 of our attendees for the convention are minors. So that adds an added challenge in how do you get them to register and fill out all the information you need and do it in a manner that complies with how you have to deal with minors. So we’re always trying to find a way to make it most efficient for the group leaders to be able to add their names and assign all the items they purchase to their guests.

And then on site, we do a lot of group pickup. There’s also individual pickup, but with group pickup we try to make that as efficient as possible to keep the lines down. A lot of times the group leader will come through and pick up the badges for the 100 people that they registered.

Rodney Hart: And so yeah, that is complicated. I’m kind of thinking through this in terms of registration. So you’re taking these big groups who all kind of check in, or they’re kind of one group but with 100 different sub-guests or components to that one check-in, is that right?

Jeremiah Alger: Right. Yeah, we’ve come up with a way to take membership data so that if they’re on their membership roster, it’ll automatically push over into our system so that we can kind of bulk import all the individual registrations more or less into like a spreadsheet type thing on the form. And then it pushes the names over. We’re still working on a way to more quickly assign items to people, because currently our system kind of allows you to break the rules sometimes and assign things to people they’re not supposed to be assigned to. The logic doesn’t quite work the way we want it to. So that’s one of the challenges we’re trying to overcome, because I try to limit human error as much as possible and restrict what people can do if I’m able to.

Rodney Hart: So tell me, before you got to this role, what were some of the other event roles that you had? Because I think you started by saying you grew up on a dairy farm and National FFA. I’d love to know a little bit more about what types of events you’re running and what the success metrics look like. And maybe a little bit about what you did before you ended up in this role, and then your personal connection to National FFA if there is one.

Jeremiah Alger: No worries. Okay. So after I graduated college I first had a little bit of a hard time finding a job in the field that I went to school for. So I first started working for a medical lab with some of my friends who also graduated college with me. And then fortunately, after a couple of years, I was able to find a job working for an individual travel agency. They did individual travel but also groups and incentives and a lot of high school band events. There I did a lot of their system setup, so I was kind of like their backup IT person and I also built everything in the system that they sold to people. So that was good preparation for this. And then from there I went to the corporate environment. I worked for Carlson Wagonlit Travel on the Eli Lilly account. There I did a lot more compliance type work because you have to show certain things to the government when you’re working with pharmaceuticals and doctors.

Rodney Hart: Yeah, pharmaceuticals, so another not-uncomplicated set of events that you were working on, right?

Jeremiah Alger: Yeah, a lot of rules to follow. And then during the pandemic I ended up transitioning over here to National FFA and I’ve been doing the event registration system setup. I go on site and help set up all the registration for the different events.

We have quite a wide variety of events. We have some smaller events where it’s individuals, like the next generation events with about 80 people who go individually, not necessarily as a chapter. It might just be one person from that chapter, and usually they send an advisor or parent chaperone so the kid isn’t there by themselves. And then we also have an international leadership event. In that event, about 100-plus people go to another country to learn about how they run agriculture there. We’ve gone to places like Australia, Costa Rica, and others.

Then we have our next biggest events, the Washington Leadership Conference. It’s kind of like going to summer camp. You have five weeks of that. Each week is a different set of students and chaperones and they basically go through the same program each week to learn about leadership, get to see things in Washington DC, get some congressional visits, and learn how politics works.

Rodney Hart: Really cool. So I’ve got a couple of questions. One, I don’t know how they keep us out of these international events. For the longest time, before I was in my current role, I managed a lot of event technology. The number of times I tried to get on sales club events in Mauritius or Hawaii or something. It was like, no, we’ll be okay. We don’t need any of that technology for this. Comment number one.

Two, in terms of the events that you’re organizing, are some of the efforts around awareness for future farmers of America, and is it education, is it content? What are those coming to the event actually there for? Are they coming to learn, to meet, to gain knowledge? I’m just curious.

Jeremiah Alger: Okay, yeah, most of our events are learning or knowledge share type events. People will get together, like our next gen events specifically focus on a certain type of agriculture. We do some leadership stuff specifically, which we don’t necessarily think of as agriculture, but how to do speeches and conduct business in a Robert’s Rules of Order type of way. But then we have things where you go learn how to plant crops, or you specifically learn about dairy cattle processing.

And then for the convention, we have student teacher workshops. We also have a component of giving back to the community, a national days of service that people register for, with about 80 different sites people go out to around central Indiana as part of the convention. And then we also have career success tours where people register to go out on those tours. The expo floor is an opportunity to meet with colleges, find out where you might want to go to school to learn about agriculture, or meet vendors demonstrating different products or career paths for the students. So it’s a lot of trying to teach the students what their opportunities are in the future and where they can go to continue their success through agriculture.

Rodney Hart: Yeah, I mean, and it feels like a pretty powerful opportunity for them to get that exposure. Where in your more traditional college career fair, you’re probably going to get underrepresented information if you’re looking to get into that space. Really cool. And also really cool to think about just some of those challenges with those big groups. Massive events, massive amounts of people, but kind of these big groups. I want to talk more about the challenges and things that you’re solving for in your day to day now. I want to ask, it’s going to be the inevitable AI question. I don’t get to do what I do without asking this at least once. So you’ve been doing this for 20 years, you’re doing event registration, customer service pieces, probably some contracting. From a day-to-day task perspective, I’m curious what looks very much the same and what feels very different. And then the separate AI part: are you seeing AI starting to change that process or whether that’s something you see in the near future?

Jeremiah Alger: Okay. One thing I’ve noticed in the last 20 years is it’s nice that a lot of stuff’s more digital now. I can jump on a call and do a meeting with somebody and don’t necessarily have to go in person the way you used to. A lot of stuff’s not kept on paper in file cabinets anymore. It’s more shared, it’s much easier for people to collaborate.

We’re still early in the AI adoption process on our end. I would like to be able to use it to help answer some of the customer service support questions through the registration system. Currently we don’t have that. I joke around with some of my colleagues that people don’t like to read as much anymore as they used to. So if I could put together short little video clips, like TikTok clips, and put those as the instructions in the registration system, that would probably solve a lot of our customer registration questions. But I haven’t figured out a great way to do that yet.

Rodney Hart: Let’s talk about that for a second. I feel like I’m coming up on 20 years myself, but is reading actually getting worse? Part of me goes, am I just getting old and shaking my fist at the sky, or is it actually getting worse? Because it’s like words exist in emails and things like that, but I need to just hash this out with somebody else who’s been doing this for a long time. How bad is the reading problem out there right now?

Jeremiah Alger: We always have a complex debate on how wordy you should get when you put stuff in there. And then ultimately we’ll start making it less wordy, then people want to put more words in. But then it seems like no matter what we do, we’ll have something that says if this doesn’t apply, put NA in the box, and we’ll get a question like, I don’t know what to do, I don’t have an FFA member ID, even though right above it says put NA in the box. So part of me feels like it’s getting worse, but it could just be that I’m getting old too.

I understand that I’m kind of a visual learner, so it’s much easier if I watch somebody do something to be able to copy what I’m supposed to be doing. Where if I read it, I might misinterpret what they meant.

I also have a 16 and a 14 year old, and at times it feels like if they can’t watch a video they’re not even going to try to read. My 16 year old started driving. I said you have to read this manual before you get your license because there are specific questions you have to know that are only in the book. And he was like, man, I don’t know if I want to get my license anymore, because he didn’t want to take the hours it took to read the manual. He just wanted to watch a video instead.

Rodney Hart: You know, and I love that you’ve kind of hit on this TikTok idea. I am with you on this. I’ve seen a platform that has some ways of embedding shorter form video on at least your web pages. But I feel like even TikTok has changed the way that people want that information, because then it was like, oh, we’ll just make a video. And then it’s like, okay, great, we’ve got a great 25, 30 minute tutorial. And again, there is a place for that longer form content, but then I also feel like there’s an appetite problem, where a 20 minute video is no way, I need it in two minutes at most. So it is really interesting how probably those preferences change. I mean, you said 14 and 16 year old, so maybe even a five minute video is too long, right?

Jeremiah Alger: Right. We do have some events where the students can actually register themselves. And I’m finding a lot of students don’t finish the form. They get to a certain point and they just stop. Mostly I think it’s the part where they have to pay and they’re not sure. Nobody told them they were going to have to pay, so they weren’t prepared when they got there. So then I have to send out a lot of “you didn’t finish the form” emails to finish the form, here’s a link to go finish the form.

Rodney Hart: Yeah. And it’s interesting how much human behavior matters, right? To say, well, I built a form and they’ll get through it or they won’t. I find myself always wondering, is anyone actually not coming to this because it was too hard at first and then they didn’t do it three weeks ago and now when they got to it, it’s too late? I’m curious to get your take on that. Is there such a thing as a registration form that’s so bad that you actually lose attendees? Or do they care enough about your event that they’ll suffer through? And if they don’t complete it online, what does that mean for the onsite experience?

Jeremiah Alger: I think at some point you can get it too long and people just get tired of filling it out and they give up. Then they either show up on site and try to get whatever they couldn’t figure out accomplished, or they just decide they’re not coming. We’re kind of fortunate in our organization that we have a pretty fixed base that consistently seems to come, so it’s harder to get them to the point where they’re going to decide not to come because of the form. One complicated thing we have is we need waivers signed for all of our events, and that created a lot of frustration. We’re about four years into that process now, so people are starting to get used to it and it’s not as bad as it was at first. But yeah, I think it is possible to create forms that are so complicated and complex that you probably do lose some people sometimes. But I also joke around that if I made a system that read your thoughts and did exactly what you wanted, you’re still going to have somebody mad that, I was thinking that but I didn’t mean that.

Rodney Hart: Yeah, right. And it’s funny, I think that is really well said. There is probably some drop off, but I think a form can be bad enough that someone says, I’m just going to come and figure it out on site. But I think you really start creating friction at an event, probably impacting a registration experience really negatively by not treating it as, let’s make this as easy and user friendly as possible. You’re now creating an onsite process that’s that much harder for everyone. Eventually someone has to get through that form. Recently I was at an event supporting with some onsite stuff and the form is healthy, it’s long. You have some people who it’s like, well, I didn’t do it, now what do I need to do? And it’s like, you need to do the form. To watch people do it, you can see physically how it’s a tough first experience for attendees.

Jeremiah Alger: Yeah, we try to do a lot of testing with internal groups and different people that we can let go through the form as a test version beforehand, to try to get as many questions and pain points as possible and hopefully limit a lot of that. But I know sometimes, especially for our convention, it’s so large and there are so many different options for people that it can be overwhelming at times.

Rodney Hart: And you kind of hit on this, I’d love to talk a little bit more about it: the large group registration process. How do you do it? And for anyone who’s listening and goes, hey, I actually have that problem too, how are you solving for it? Is it one person picking up 50 badges? Are the badges already printed? How are you solving for that problem today? And are there new ideas or ways that you’re looking to change that process?

Jeremiah Alger: Okay, yeah, for the large groups, we specifically have stuff that funnels them to specific forms that are for the large groups, so that the majority of people who aren’t large groups don’t have to go through that process. On the large group forms, there’s content specifically for those groups to help make their process easier. When it comes to adding the names of the individuals attending as part of the large group, you used to only be able to do it one person at a time. Now we have a way that you can import the data from the membership system over to the registration system, and it kind of creates like a giant spreadsheet of all your names and the different attendee types. If people aren’t part of your group, you can individually add those individuals who aren’t part of your membership roster. So that helps bulk import and speed up that process for the names. And then the next step is to assign the agenda items, which is basically what you purchased for your event. We use agenda items instead of sessions currently.

So we have another screen where it shows all the names that you added through the bulk import process. You check the box, there’s a select all button to make it easier if everybody’s going. But it’s also a bit complicated because you have to purchase the correct amount beforehand. The first part is they come through and purchase everything, and when they get through all their purchases, then they add the names individually and assign what they purchased to people. That’s how we currently do it. We found that tends to make the large groups the happiest and tends to be the quickest for them.

Then on site, we used to do some pre-badge printing for the large groups of 50 to 100 or more. We found that a lot of times people weren’t necessarily picking them up, or they were like, go ahead and print them again anyway. And at this point, our printing system has gotten fast enough that one person can come up and print out those 100 badges pretty quickly. They don’t have to wait that long. So we quit pre-printing about two years ago.

Rodney Hart: Yeah, I mean, I’m totally with you. We’re big fans of printing on demand here, whether that’s late changes or just the actual on-site experience. I remember coming into the industry and people had binders of managing an event. Even then on site, there is something kind of nice about not having those physical badges to sort, categorize, find, and distribute, because all of that can be a time and space challenge on site.

Jeremiah Alger: It would be interesting to get to a way where you maybe had an app and when people are close to being in the building, they could say, print my badges, and then they’re ready for them when they get in there. But that would be next level, and we’re not at yet.

Rodney Hart: I like that idea. I’m jotting that one down. I’m going to send that over to our product team now. The ability to trigger that print and have it tell you where to go pick it up, especially if there was enough geolocation data, I feel like there are tools and technologies out there that probably can make this process possible.

Jeremiah Alger: Yeah, I’ve heard about the facial recognition stuff that some people are starting to use now, but I’d like to learn a lot more about that and see how it actually works.

Rodney Hart: Yeah. So that’s one, I will say, of our events that we’ve done, and I think it’s worked extremely well. Some of the technology that’s there, obviously it’s opt-in, you can choose to do that, it wasn’t the only way to either check in or scan into sessions. But the technology out there is just incredibly fast at identifying and making that process feel pretty magical. You had mentioned, and I think I keep on my desk this little Disney Magic Band, because the idea of how seamlessly they make attendees flow is super important to me. I think all parts of eliminating friction in the process dramatically improve the memorability and the overall experience that our attendees have.

Jeremiah Alger: Right, yeah, we try to limit the amount of time that people have to spend in line as much as possible. Try to make it as quick and seamless, because nobody wants to spend time standing in a registration line when they can go actually do the events.

Rodney Hart: Yeah. All right, so I’m going to transition. We’ve got two things that we like to do at the end of these. So Jeremiah, thank you already for the time and the information that you’ve shared. I’m sure we could continue to geek out on some registration questions. But what I’d love to have you do is share your favorite industry advice or wisdom. This is famously a profession that is not for the faint of heart. I think it ranks up there with some of the more stressful jobs. So I’m just curious to know, what would be your favorite piece of advice for someone coming into the industry or who is new to the industry?

Jeremiah Alger: Okay, one of my ex-coworkers, she was about ready to retire and I was young, like 20 at the time, said to me one time that you have to be able to separate your work problems from what’s going on with your life. So when you go home, you have to have some kind of outlet that you can go do and let the other stuff go. For me, that’s soccer. I go coach soccer, I play soccer. It’s an opportunity to just focus on soccer and forget about everything else. That other stuff will still be there when I come back tomorrow.

Events can kind of go its own direction sometimes, especially with a large group of 70,000 people. But you still have control of what’s going to happen. As long as you plan and set up scenarios for how to deal with situations ahead of time. But even then, you still have to be able to roll with the punches and go with the flow. It takes a while to get to that point sometimes.

Rodney Hart: Yeah, that’s awesome advice. And yeah, I agree. I think that last one in particular, events like to throw things at us. And I’ve learned to train my mind that it’s all right. I didn’t know what it was going to be, but the idea that I’m getting a surprise is part of the plan.

All right, so now the very final conclusion here is whether you choose to accept or not. The hardest part is for me to not follow up. We do a lightning round segment here where I’m going to ask you a series of fun rapid fire questions. Feel free to just answer with whatever is top of mind. And I lose points if I follow up on anything, because I am always told by our marketing team who puts these together that I never follow that instruction, but I’m going to try. Are you ready?

Jeremiah Alger: Okay. Yep.

Rodney Hart: Okay, first question. Who is your dream guest keynote speaker?

Jeremiah Alger: Okay, as a big soccer fan, I would want to pick Lionel Messi. He’s my favorite player. I like him better than Ronaldo. I know there’s a big Ronaldo-Messi debate, but I feel like he’s more of a team player. He’s a better distributor. Ronaldo is more me, me, me, and like a true striker type character. Whereas Messi’s much more about the success of the team and wanting to win.

Rodney Hart: Love it, and we’re starting a war between countries, but it’s great. True or false, you prefer small, intimate events over large-scale ones.

Jeremiah Alger: I actually prefer the large events where there’s a lot going on. I find I like a little bit of the chaos, so the larger events have a little bit more of that. The smaller ones sometimes I find myself getting a little bored because they’re more predictable.

Rodney Hart: You’re just too good at your job. What is one book that everyone should read?

Jeremiah Alger: The best book I’ve ever read was It’s Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong. I know there’s some controversy, but him overcoming cancer when he’s given a very small chance to live, I just find it very inspirational. And I think he did a lot of great work for cancer research if you put the other stuff aside.

Rodney Hart: Yeah, great answer. The best airline is…

Jeremiah Alger: It used to be Southwest because they didn’t have bag fees, but now that they have bag fees, I might have to reevaluate. I currently like Allegiant if I’m flying down to Florida because they’re direct flights and the prices are very good. And sometimes they board from the back and the front at the same time because you fly into these small airports, so you get off the plane faster.

Rodney Hart: You know what, hey, I know why they go front to back, but back to front makes a lot more sense. Window seat or aisle seat?

Jeremiah Alger: I like a window seat just because I like to be able to see what’s going on outside, and sometimes I get motion sick and being able to look out the window helps with that.

Rodney Hart: That’s good for everybody involved. Networking session or educational workshops?

Jeremiah Alger: I prefer the educational workshop. I like to learn and sometimes the networking stuff exhausts me a little bit.

Rodney Hart: Yeah. You have a concert to close your event. Who’s your dream musical artist?

Jeremiah Alger: I would pick Eminem personally. I know he’s not necessarily large-event friendly with some of his lyrics, but I saw him back in 2004 and it was a great show. And his life story is kind of inspirational, coming out of nowhere to get where he is.

Rodney Hart: Yeah. Listen, Jeremiah, you’re picking great answers here. You’re going to make some CEO squirm, but I think you’re going to make an audience happy. If you could host an event anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Jeremiah Alger: The Grand Canyon is one of the greatest places I’ve been to. I think it’s amazing there. I’m not sure it’d be easy to get a lot of people out there to do an event, but it’s a great atmosphere if you can get people out to it.

Rodney Hart: Are you doing it at the top or at the bottom of the canyon?

Jeremiah Alger: That would be fun to do a little bit at the top and the bottom. I’ve only been there twice and both times I wasn’t there long enough to actually hike all the way down. We started to hike down a little bit. But I think it would be cool to do maybe an overnight camp at the bottom and then come back out the next day as part of your event. It would probably have to be a smaller event.

Rodney Hart: Yeah. And some fit people, I’ll say. I had the same experience. They have signs everywhere: don’t try and hike down and back up in the same day. I was there with a friend, we didn’t have enough time, and we were like, should we try? I think we got halfway before I said, let’s turn around. I’m not going to make it. Final question. You have a closing event party. Are you going with live music or are you going with a DJ?

Jeremiah Alger: Most of the time I would prefer to have live music, but DJs are also nice sometimes because you can do a little bit more variety of music to make more people happy. Live music’s always fun.

Rodney Hart: You know, I think I’m with you. Live music. Jeremiah, that was the last question. I promise there’s no other false close. You have officially wrapped up. You are off the hot seat. Thank you so much for the time. I know I found it super valuable. I’m sure our listeners are going to find it super valuable as well. So thank you for joining Event Perspectives.

Jeremiah Alger: Alright, thank you. Bye.