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Managing Travel for Planned Special Events: First National Conference Proceedings
APPENDIX A — CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS SURVEY SUMMARY
Conference Participants Survey Summary
Twenty conference participants provided comments and rankings to the December 1-3, 2004 Planned Special Events Conference survey. On the whole, the ranking was favorable with all noting that overall, the conference was either good (15) or excellent (5) and all but one found that the conference length was just right.
The comments that the participants took the time to provide offer the best indications of what worked and what improvements are needed before the next Planned Special Events Conference is held. Below is a broad summary of the excellent comments that were provided. These comments will be used to help shape the next conference.
The conference planners were particularly interested in learning what attendees thought about the conference design, which featured a new format for presentations. The conference's four concurrent tracks highlighted recommended practices for specific types of planned special events or unique aspects that are involved with the advanced planning, coordination, preparation and management of travel the day-of-the-event. Each track featured a panel session, a technology exchange session, a case study and a session to develop recommendations to improve practice.
The participants noted that though the mix and philosophy was excellent, because the format was so intense, its success was very much tied to keeping to the schedule. The one concern that was noted by several attendees was that there were too many concurrent tracks in the limited amount of time available during the two-day conference.
All of the respondents voted for another conference. All but one favored a conference in 2006. With an interest on various aspects of interagency collaboration and coordination, one suggestion was to tie it more to those aspects that would attract public safety, incident management, or emergency management. With several expressing an interest on interagency collaboration, one option may be to include a tabletop exercise during the next conference. That suggestion dovetailed quite well with another request that asked to incorporate unresolved and/or common problems and issues. The value of such a session would be to have a group work through an outline or indicate a specific or recurring situation followed by a significant portion of the available time to group discussion.
The respondents correctly noted that with event managers at the next conference, the conference discussion could only be far more complete. In addition to expanding the audience, other suggested topics included ones on the permit process as the foundation for being able to plan; cost/benefit; the decision making structure needed during planning for special events; understanding the economic impact of these planned special events, more attention to rural or small municipality events; Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)/Traffic Management Technologies, security, as well as sessions on the traveler point of view. One of the suggested research needs was to examine the value, role and operation of travel information – what are the expectations for mobility at planned special events.
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