Once again I must say I was very impressed with the services provided by our Master of Ceremonies, Peter Pixie (aka Peter Berry), and his lovely (and well dressed) assistant Rachel. Very few MCs actually make the performers, special guests, and event attendees alike feel so welcome and appreciated. Peter Pixie, on the other hand, actually researches performers and Special Guests to ensure he is familiar with them and their work to some degree before the event.
At the event he tries to find the performers and panelists and asks them in person for more information about what type of performance, panel, or lecture they have in store and for any special preferences about how they are introduced. He then does a fine job of convincing the audience that they should really be excited to have this person before them. He also announces events before hand with that rare talent of a voice that carries well and quite clearly without being unpleasantly loud or intrusive even in a large room full of people.
All of this I knew before he ever worked for us as I have performed and presented material at events before where he worked as the Master of Ceremonies. What I did not know, was that Peter is also so organized and capable of adjusting to the rapidly changing landscape of a convention floor that any event that had it’s performers and necessary equipment in place was sure to go smoothly whether I or any of my program staff made an appearance or not. While Murphy’s law does not take a nap around this “Pixie”, it does eventually just give up and go away as he manages to fluidly sidestep all such conflicts with humor and panache!
I let my event organizer know that it was amazingly helpful to have someone so dependable, because when I or my staff made our routine pre-event sweeps looking for problems, late performers, missing privacy screens or malfunctioning sound equipment etc., we simply go fix any problems we encountered before those sections of the program happened and not worry that other events would not go well without our direct supervision. It reminded me of having a fine Executive Officer or very experienced First Sergeant in the military so The Commander and his Lieutenants could command, prepare, and fix a last minute crisis yet everything looked to the paying customer as smooth as silk.
To give a more specific example, one of my special guests had trouble with their room in a sold out hotel on New Year’s Eve. While the event organizer went to arrange getting the hotel to correct their mistake, I spent time making sure the guest knew how much we valued their services and contributions to our event.
This was not a task I could delegate and be sure it was done well enough. As a result, I actually missed much of the “Steampunk Fashion Show”. While this was happening my second in command, the artistic director, was busy doing her most critical job of calming and coaching first time models before they hit the runway.
In spite of all this, I was surprised to find that I felt no apprehension as I had faith that if any problems arose, the Master of Ceremonies, Peter Pixie, would find a pleasant and amusing way to overcome them. My faith was justified when I arrived to find that the show went off without a hitch and no one even noticed I was missing. For once I didn’t have to worry that things might go terribly wrong if I wasn’t there every moment.
In other events, where I or my second were available and chose to be highly involved, Peter performed just as smoothly without so much as a ruffle even if we gave him a bit more assistance than he actually needed. In fact, he often caught things that might have gone overlooked and corrected them on the fly while making any oversight correction appear to be as carefully planned as every other aspect of the performance or show.
As such I welcome any event organizers, program directors, or meeting planners interested in Peter Pixie’s services as MC to directly contact me at covenantofthekraken@yahoo.com as I will be delighted to give him a good reference and discuss our reasons for such high satisfaction with his services in more detail.
No comments:
Post a Comment