Avoiding Event Mishaps: Checklists Are Critical to Manage Your Event

Celebrities and performers of every type frequently make news for their demands at venues, both ahead of and during shows. These “riders” or checklists are a set of requests that the entertainer sets as criteria for their performance. 

Typically filled by the hosting venue, these riders can include everything from room temperature to bottled water brands and specific meal ingredients. Among some of the odder demands are natural incense sticks, a lifesize cardboard cutout of the celebrity, and a bottle of Cristal champagne with bendy straws to drink it.

And while these demands can sometimes sound vain and petty, there is one legend from the music industry that illustrates the value of these checklists. In this case, the venue didn’t meet the requirements, the show was canceled, and the promoter had to cover those costs. As it turns out, this condition was critical, as it was related to a potentially major safety issue!

The brown M&M incident

During Van Halen’s 1982 tour, the band had a rider for David Lee Roth that required the venue to provide M&Ms, but with all of the brown ones removed. This demand generated the expected publicity, with Roth characterized as a typically demanding celebrity.

But here’s why the demand wasn’t as crazy as it sounds.

Van Halen was the first band to take 850 PAR lamp lights around the country on tour. The band members were concerned that many of the older big city venues that were built in the 1950s and 1960s couldn’t accommodate the giant production the band was touring with. If the venue didn’t have enough load-bearing capacity or adequate power supplies, the crew’s safety could be in jeopardy.

Roth and the rest of the band knew if there was a brown M&M in the bowl on the catering table, it would be evidence that the stage manager and event production team had not read the rider completely or carefully and were careless about details. If there were any brown M&Ms in the bowl, the band undertook a line-by-line check of every item before they went on stage.

The importance of checklists and what to include

Checklists have proved valuable in a variety of fields, such as medicine and corporate business, as well as for event production. They help keep you organized and on task, keep you on schedule ahead of and during a show, track progress, ensure nothing slips through the cracks, and help your employees understand exactly what is expected of them.

Event production is a series of coordinated mini-projects, many of which are interlinked. All of the steps within these mini-productions, including everything from green room setup, event lighting, to AV equipment, must be executed precisely and in a specific order to ensure a successful event. Checklists are crucial when it comes to reducing errors and documenting accountability for post-mortems and reviews.