Conference Planner, Production Project Management

Conference Planner, Production Project Management

Gartner is searching for a Conference Planner to work within Gartner’s Production Experience and Marquee Content Center of Excellence. This role supports the Global Destination Conference portfolio of conferences.

As the Conference Planner, you will provide administrative, logistical and organizational support in delivering the planning, pre-production, and on-the-ground execution of multiple conferences and projects.  A successful candidate will thrive in a quick moving environment with keen attention-to-detail. 

In this role, the Conference Planner will provide customer-centric project management and overall support at the highest level possible to the team. An understanding of live conference planning and conference project management is essential. Understanding of the Audio-Visual function within conferences is a plus.  

The ideal candidate must have strong organizational skills, ability to work across multiple teams and cultures, impeccable communication skills, and be energetically driven to meet the needs of our team. 

What you will do:

• Support project management for the creation and delivery of Gartner’s keynote sessions by partnering and collaborating with internal stakeholders in Conferences and Research & Advisory, as well as external vendors across multiple Conference portfolios.
• Support project management and liaise with External Speaker Team and AV partners as it relates to logistics and on-site management for Guest Keynotes.
• Support project management as it relates to scheduling outside speaker coaching and or graphic design team (external or internal) and ensure proper timelines are kept.
• All Gartner and Guest Keynotes are to be no longer than forty-five minutes in duration (in most cases). Collaborate/support all parties to ensure script development and timing of delivery meet this criterion.
• Leverage best practices to support live conference/event production planning processes.

• Schedule and participate in pre-production and onsite global meetings, which may be out of typical business hours at times.  Take notes and share any action items with the lead Producer and or wider planning teams.
• Support in managing the production timelines, key milestones, show flow documents and logistics.
• Prepare routine correspondence and forms, such as internal and external briefing documents, logistics arrangements, on-site expectations, script management instructions, and others as needed.
• Coordinate pre-event and on-site logistics including rehearsal scheduling, rehearsal logistics, AV setups, crew catering, and other on-site activities as required.
• Support the team regarding all requirements for all onsite delivery assets including staging, scenic, graphics, audio, animation, and all creative media components.
• Understand and uphold Gartner’s brand with all assets created.
• Communicate any logistical items with internal and external partners such as AV agencies, creative agencies, speaker/performance coaches, freelancers, and writers.
• Assist with budget reconciliation and tracking in coordination with management and finance including collecting and processing vendor invoices.
• Maintain detailed documentation and reports with attendee feedback, wrap-up notes, and debrief reports from all parties who participated in keynote development.
• Proactively engage with the team to pursue process improvements.
• Highly skilled in handling multiple complex and concurrent projects.
• Support internal/corporate events periodically as the calendar permits.

What is expected:

• Support the Producers to help ensure high scores from clients on Keynote in each region.
• Provide a flawless client experience including continually understanding key priorities of attendees and mapping back to those metrics.
• Build and maintain excellent working relationships.
• Deliver exceptional operational efficiency.

What you will need:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
• Minimum 2 years of experience in related field and industry.
• Project management experience required.
• Beginning to end understanding of live conference production and creative content creation preferred.
• C-Level experience is desired – communication and project management, etc.
• Agency experience is advantageous.
• Excellent interpersonal skills - team player who works well with others, together reaching challenging goals under very tight deadlines.
• Client focused - superior customer service skills.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Strong time management skills and ability to multitask - high sense of urgency.
• Effective organizationa