The Hub and Spoke Approach to Streamline Your Event Planning

[00:00:00] So Tess, do you know what a hub and spoke is? No. Well, kind of like a wheel going round and round. It has one central hub and then that central hub connects to absolutely everything. Really? Yeah, do you have any idea what I'm talking about? No.

[00:00:22] You're listening to The Event Tech Pull Up, the show that brings you the good, the bad and the ugly of event technology with your hosts, Tess Vismale of iSocial X and Keith Johnston of i3 Events. All right. So the hub and spoke. The hub and spoke. That sounds so fancy. I know, doesn't it? But it's actually a pretty simple complex, a pretty simple whatever.

[00:00:49] Basically, when people are planning events, and we find this all the time, especially when a new client brings us on, is we will help them set up a hub and spoke. And basically, a hub and spoke is the hub is a master repository of everything for the event. And these can be files. These can be links.

[00:01:16] These can be images, logos, right? You need one central spot where absolutely everything lives so that in the morning, basically, you're going to log into this hub. And then from there, you can get to all of the parts of the event that you're planning. Hmm. Make sense? Yes. So it's the nerve center. Exactly. Control. The command center.

[00:01:46] There you go. Almost like the war room. Well, actually, the real world, the war room you have at your event is the hub of your event, right? So it is kind of the same. And we're going to talk about a couple of tools that Tess and I both have used. While these tools are great, we're not saying that these are the tools you should use. They are the most friendly in describing this process. Right?

[00:02:14] Some people, we have one client, for example, that uses Google Workspace. And so within a folder in Google Workspace, they have a Google Sheet that has all their links. But then they put all their logos and everything within that folder. These are actually tools that are built, specifically built for this type of project management. And their Tixio is one. Okay. And? Bubble Up. Love.

[00:02:44] Love Bubble Up. Love. Let's say it. Because, and let's not, I mean, we can't leave out old school Evernote. We can't leave that out. Evernote would work the same as a Tixio or a Bubble Up. Yeah. Trello, kind of. Yeah. Notion would do it as well. Where we would have a Notion board that would be your hub. But what are the advantages? Okay. Right.

[00:03:08] And the first advantage to planning an event in this fashion is you have a unified workspace. Okay. And what does that do? No more hunting through emails to find all your shit. So it's almost like Google Workspace is where I have my space. And that space literally has that event in it and everything dealing with the event. Yeah. All the links. All the things.

[00:03:35] So within Bubble Up or Tixio, for example, you might have, you know, a folder for a particular, let's say you plan many, many events. You may start with one folder where you keep everything. But when you click, the thing I love about Bubble Up is that when you put in a link, it brings in the image of the link. I love that. Which it can then sit directly next to a file. Right. Right? So everything is visual. It's a very visual way to look at everything. Yeah.

[00:04:02] And I like also with Bubble Up, you can do like a roll up too if you ever had to present real quick. You could show people whatever you needed to show them. And then you can invite people in to share that space. It actually makes it really easy to onboard people. It does. As well as it, it's very safe and secure. So it's almost like you're locked down into this world and everyone plays in the world. Similar, I mean, you could do the same thing with Slack, but it's very, very different.

[00:04:31] I think Bubble Up for these reasons is a different kind of experience. Yeah. Well, and actually point number two on this one is actually why Slack, why tools like Bubble Up and Tixio are better than a Slack, which is intuitive organization. Yes. Yes. Right? You know, when you go in, I mean, using a tool like Bubble Up is so simple. Right?

[00:04:56] You create whatever folder, and it has that old school folder design, which a lot of people like, but it's literally, you can just start dragging stuff in there. Yeah. And then subfolders. Color coding is one of my favorites. Oh, yeah. Color coding. Because I love the colors, and the colors are really good. And then Tixio offers, what, nested folders? Yeah. Folders. Yeah. Now, I think Bubble Up does now, too. Oh, okay. So you can actually have folders within folders. But again, it goes back to that. You're not hunting for anything anymore.

[00:05:26] No. Right? You know, whereas, you know, back before you were using a hub-and-spoke method, you know, somebody might have sent you, and here's a prime example. We work with Valley Expos. They're actually here in Illinois. They do the show floor for one of our client trade shows. And they will send a link that is to the exhibitor kit. Well, how many times does, you know, they'll get, they put, they did all their work.

[00:05:53] They put that beautiful kit together online, and they send you that link, and you, it's in an email. Yes. Right? And then you're like, ugh. Like, why I gotta go through all of that? Right? And if you're not good, you know, I think our last episode was when we were talking about becoming tech savvy, and email, learning how to use, if you're not really savvy at email, you might be hunting for that. Yeah. For a while. Or, or if it's like PC Name Tag, where, you know, I have someone at PC Name Tag I work

[00:06:22] with, but whenever they send proofs and things like that, it comes from an email address that's like proof at PC Name Tag dot com. So, well, I go look in my contacts email, and it's not there. Right? So, but this actually allows you to put, and you can even do checklists and things like that in a Tixio. I know. For like proofs. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Like, you know, you can say to somebody, hey, is this approved? Click, yes, it's approved. Perfect. So, you know, and that goes right into, you know, both offer a collaborative ecosystem.

[00:06:52] Yeah, they do. It actually lets you think about those features that kind of enhance your communication transparency so everyone can see and the stakeholders don't feel like, oh, well, you're working in silos. You don't have to stop to give people briefings. You can give them access to the things that they actually want to, which should make your planning process a little smoother. Yeah. And with all these tools, right, whether it's a Bubble Up, a Tixio, you know.

[00:07:21] Even Google Workspace is doing really well, because guess what? What? Last week, they actually rolled. Wait, chicken butt. They rolled out where you can do a signature. Yeah, they did. That is pretty important. Right? Yeah. So when you're talking about approvals, you could have that within your spaces. Where you have sign-offs. Sign-offs. Well, and one of our favorite event planning tools, Joy. Mm-hmm.

[00:07:47] You know, I was on a call with them last week, just before the holidays, or just before the new year, rather. And one of the things they're working on is something very similar, where you can put in all of the links to other tools that you use. Are you serious? Yeah, because they're not dumb enough to think that they are the be-all and end-all of tools. They know that people are going to be using other tools while they're planning an event. So it was based on that hub-and-spoke mentality that they're like, you know, we should put that in there.

[00:08:17] Well, I can't wait for that to roll out. We'll have to talk about that on the show when it comes out. Yeah. Well, we're going to have to have Rob on. Yeah. And that kind of brings us to accessibility and flexibility. Yeah. Here's one of my favorites. And this is, Bubble Up's app is probably one of the most beautiful mobile apps. It is. Because you can see it, and stuff is not cut off. No, it really is.

[00:08:46] And it's really funny. You know, you'd think for all the praise we're lavishing on, like, Tixio and Bubble Up, that we would use them for every single event? Yeah. No. And you don't. And you know, it's so funny, because you hooked me on Bubble Up a few years ago, and I got so hooked. And then they made a shift and a change. And then I was going to try and come out of it and go somewhere else. But then I was like, I don't like anything else. Right. Like, then I'm like, forget it.

[00:09:16] Well, and you know, at that same time. Oh, wait. At that same time. And I remember what it was. Bubble Up went from, they used to have a, they were freemium products, where they had a free tier and they had a paid tier. Right. And they got rid of the free tier. Yes. They were like, fuck it. Oh, sorry. You gotta pay. You know, too many people are on the free tier. And you stayed on the paid, and I kind of went out of it, because I'm like, you know, I was being a douche. And now I'm back. Like, because it's like, you know what? It works.

[00:09:45] Well, and I think that switch happened before I had a change of heart on freemium products, where if anything is mission critical to my business, now I pay for it. Absolutely. I do not use free products. No. Because I want terms of service. Yes. I want. Yeah. I want the service. And if something goes wrong, I want to be able to. But the reason that I don't use it across 8 million clients is, this is a value add for me, right? I would not charge a client to use a third party product like that.

[00:10:15] Yeah. Yeah. So it would just get extremely expensive. Yeah. So if you are, if let's say that you're an in-house planner and you have a team of 10, BubbleUp is going to be very, very, very cost effective. Yeah. Very, very. So the other thing that a Hub & Spoke can do for you are most of these tools are designed with integration first. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:40] So they integrate with 8 million other tools to automate a lot of processes, right? Like you can say, oh, if somebody, if, if I have an email attachment that has XYZ in the subject line, the attachment will automatically be added to this. You know, if a new file is dropped in this Google Drive folder, it is sucked on over here. Right. If Dropbox does this. And it's separated from if this, then that.

[00:11:08] So not the third party Zapier tools, but we're talking about within the actual tools themselves as integrations. Yes. You do not have a third party integrator between the two. Right. Which while I love Zapier, it breaks all the time. Meaning that you're always re... And when I say all the time, I mean once every three months, you have to go back and reconnect apps. Well, if you're gone for a week and you don't realize it, that whole week of stuff didn't get synced. Yeah. And then you have to go back and do it again.

[00:11:37] So Taxio offers Script Center for no code automations and tasks. Yeah. Like Linksharing. Yeah. Yeah. Which is amazing because that's what people want. Just drop me a link. Give me a link. Do this with the link. Yeah. Oh, and the other thing is, and I know that these are all of the ways that these tools can be helpful, but access. Right? Right. You know, the access that you can give to a vendor is different than the access that you

[00:12:04] give to a staff member. Yeah. You know, maybe you have somebody who only comes on once a year to work on registration, right? Okay. They only need the registration folder. That's it. So that's all they have access to. And they don't need anything else at all. And because you are controlling everything from one central location, your life gets so much easier. You can spend a lot more time drinking wine and eating chocolate.

[00:12:59] Yes. You can find the application on our website.