Give the people executing on the ground bullet points, not paragraphs, and get your real feedback from them.

technique — attributed to Jaclyn Bernstein

The emotional engineering behind a successful event, the seating that produces a perfect unplanned toast, the detail that makes a stranger feel already known, only works if the people carrying it out aren't drowning in information they didn't ask for. Bernstein insists on bullet points for the server, the driver, the AV technician standing next to a nervous speaker, never paragraphs. She also treats their feedback as more reliable than the client's: the driver, the bartender, the person meeting a plane at six in the morning are the ones closest to the moments a client will remember without ever knowing why they remember them.

For anyone designing an event who evaluates success only through the person who signed the contract.

information-design, execution, feedback-loops, frontline-staff