What happens when the event app crashes, the Wi-Fi disappears, and the entire schedule lives inside the technology that just stopped working? Apparently, "blame the vendor" is not a contingency plan. Rude.

Jen Santos, host of Mayhem & Method, sits down with Vinnu Deshetty, founder of Event ROI Coach, to talk about event technology, data, and the very human chaos behind both. What starts as a conversation about a failed mobile app quickly becomes a deeper look at planning for tech outages, understanding how attendees actually behave, and choosing tools based on real needs instead of shiny features.

They talk about offline access, attendee communications, survey data, AI-assisted analysis, and why event tech needs a dedicated advocate before everyone arrives onsite and starts frantically refreshing.

Top Takeaways from Vinnu & Jen's convo:

• Plan for the app to fail: Offline access, backup schedules, and clear attendee instructions beat panicked printing every time.

• Use the tech you can actually support: More features do not automatically mean a better event. Sometimes gamification is just an expensive button nobody had time to configure.

• Collect data with a purpose: Digital surveys, paper forms, onsite conversations—use whatever works for the audience, then make sure the results do not quietly die in a spreadsheet.

Links:

@event-roi-coach on LinkedIn

@EventROICoach on YouTube

This episode was produced by Audiotocracy Podcast Production.

What do you do when the AV truck shows up… and half the gear is missing? Then the second truck shows up with the wrong cables. This is just one of the ways event production keeps everyone humble

In this episode of Mayhem and Method, Jen sits down with Elias Puurunen, founder of Tractus Events, to talk about the beautiful disaster zone where hybrid event production, in-house AV, missing equipment, fire alarms, and client expectations all collide. What starts as a fairly straightforward three-day conference with breakout rooms, cameras, confidence monitors, and streaming quickly turns into a lesson in why "preferred AV provider" does not always mean "show-ready."

Elias walks through how his team stayed focused, used the delay to troubleshoot what they could control, kept the client insulated from the chaos, and still pulled off a smooth show once the doors opened.

Top Takeaways from Elias & Jen's convo:

• Trust your AV Spidey Sense. If the boardroom quote makes no sense, the rest of the gear list probably deserves a very suspicious eyebrow raise.
• Control what you can, fix what you find. Waiting on missing equipment? Great. Time to test cues, signal paths, streams, and all the tiny gremlins hiding in the setup.
• Emergency plans are not optional decor. Even in the case of fire alarms, evacuations, VIP security, and internet outages, event pros don't panic. They plan, radio, reroute, and maybe emotionally recover later.

Links:

tractusevents.com

@eliaspuurunen on LinkedIn

This episode was produced by Audiotocracy Podcast Production.

You know your event app is having a moment when adoption drops from "everyone's using it!" to "does anyone have a paper guide?"

In this episode of Mayhem & Method, we get into what happens when a shiny new messaging feature becomes a sponsor spam cannon. Fun for literally no one.

Host Jen Santos is joined by Josh Vande Krol and Marty Choate, co-founders of Intrivium, for a story that starts with great app engagement and quickly turns into attendee mutiny. When sponsors and exhibitors discovered they could message and request meetings with basically everyone, they did exactly what event pros fear they'll do: they messaged basically everyone.

What follows is a very event-tech-flavored disaster involving overloaded calendars, abandoned apps, furious executives, 5:00 AM fixes, and the hard-earned realization that "engagement" is only good when it's not making people want to throw their phones into the nearest ballroom trash can.

Top Takeaways from Jen's convo with Josh and Marty:

• Uncontrolled features become chaos features. Messaging, meeting requests, notifications, networking tools—great in theory, disaster in bulk-send reality.
• Bad attendee experiences have a long memory. Even after the fix, people may not come back unless you communicate clearly, rebuild trust, and maybe give the app a fresh coat of "this is totally different now" paint.
• Mayhem makes the method. Rate limits, permissions, ticketing systems, sponsor controls, and better comms usually exist because something went sideways first. As is tradition.

Links:

www.intrivium.com

@JoshVandeKrol on LinkedIn

@MartyChoate on LinkedIn

This episode was produced by Audiotocracy Podcast Production.