April McKee Previews the Microsoft Booth at E3
April McKee's official title at Microsoft® is Senior Global Event Manager, and believe me, it's as impressive a job as it sounds. Ms. McKee runs the Microsoft presence at the E3 expo. To grasp what this means, let's start at the ground floor and work our way up.
Every year at E3, Microsoft hosts a booth where they show off upcoming products. This year, the booth takes up 33,000 square feet of floor space. It has two levels, so in actuality, it's almost 53,000 square feet in size. That's a mansion.
It takes approximately 65 semi-trucks and a dozen flat-beds to deliver all the elements of the booth to the show. "It's like building a city," says April. "We design the city, then we manage the logistics of building it, actually moving the city in."
"This year, we're about the games. Everybody knows what the console is now, and we are there to show them our amazing line-up of games."
I had the chance to grab a bit of April McKee's time recently and ask her about her job and about what it takes to make the Microsoft garden at E3 bloom.
Beginning at the End
Where do you begin when you're putting together a show as huge as the Microsoft booth at the E3 Expo? April and her key team members begin planning the current E3 near the end of the previous one. They stroll around the show and look for ways they can improve upon what they've already done. They brainstorm, identify trouble, and take note of what worked well.
Running a show like this can be a logistical nightmare, but April carefully plans what she will need and chooses professional helpers to make it all run smoothly. Her support team actually consists of many different teams. She hires approximately 200 companies to put the show together, run the booth at the Expo, and take it down once the show is over. These teams provide construction, transportation, audio-visual equipment, lighting, design, and so much more.
April attends meetings with all these contracted companies and coordinates their efforts. "Five hours of meetings every day, every day, all day, every day," April says, and she's not exaggerating.
"There's always a new focus for E3,
a different objective,
something new to show."
Forging the Middle
In November, once she has contracted all the arms of her support team, April sits down with the executives and public relations people at Microsoft, and together they come up with a list of the show's objectives. All this initial planning must be completed prior to the winter holidays. After January 1, April and her contractors roll up their sleeves, and the work really begins.
Continued ...
