During planning of the 2023 edition of RiskWorld, the annual show of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, the group’s chief events and sales officer, Stuart Ruff-Lyon, CMP, DES, faced an unusual complication. 

Over the event’s late-April dates at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Taylor Swift would be performing for three consecutive nights at the Mercedes-Benz Dome right next door. That translates to 80,000 revelers on the move each day, right across the parking lot from the GWCC.

As a result, “we implemented a lot of new safety and security enhancements, such as training all onsite personnel in de-escalation strategies and making sure we were directly connected to all local authorities,” he says.

The good news was that RiskWorld’s enhanced risk-management plan worked exactly as intended for its primary purpose: keeping the Swifties at bay. But on the final day, an unforeseen emergency knocked the 10,000-person show sideways.

This article was originally published on CEN’s sister brand, MeetingsNet. Read it in its entirety here.

Lead photo: RiskWorld 2024’s opening-night reception in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter

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