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After every event we ask academy HUB clients what worked for them and what left them cold. Some responses prompted us to change something, others simply made us smile. We’ve picked out the most interesting ones, because the details are exactly where you can tell whether an event ran smoothly or fell flat.

When you hire a space for training or a corporate event, you think about capacity, equipment and price. And then the big day arrives and something else entirely decides how it goes. Whether the room feels comfortable, whether there’s something to eat and whether everyone can actually find you. Over the years we’ve built up a fairly precise picture of what delights people at events and what can spoil an otherwise brilliant day. Here’s the pick of what’s landed in our feedback inbox.

The enemy called temperature

If we had to crown a winner among the complaints, it would be temperature, hands down. The scenario repeats itself at every larger event. Whoever sits near the air conditioning is freezing and reaching for a jumper. Whoever sits further away is fanning themselves with the programme. Half the room is begging for more heat, the other half would happily throw open a window. A temperature that suits everyone simply doesn’t exist.

You can get very close to it, though, if you know about it in advance. It helps to think about where people sit, to set the air conditioning before anyone arrives, and to be able to warm things up or let in some air on the spot.

The sounds you only notice once it goes quiet

One of our most instructive complaints concerned the dishwasher. Our dishwasher is very quiet, but during certain kinds of event, where people work in concentrated silence, even a faint, drawn-out sound starts to grate after a while. Ever since, we’ve known that for some formats it’s better to simply leave the dishwasher until later.

It’s much the same with the coffee machine. Picture the situation. A participant arrives late, the event is already under way, and on the way to their seat they signal to the assistant that they’d love a coffee. What now? Oblige them and disrupt proceedings with the grinding of coffee beans? Or politely decline and offer the coffee at the break instead? There’s no single right answer. It depends on the particular client and the type of event. That’s why we agree with clients in advance how such situations will be handled, so that no one has to improvise on the day.

The coffee machine earned us one more complaint, namely that it grinds the coffee too slowly. The truth was rather more prosaic. The lecturer in question had arrived late, was stressed, and pinned the delay on the slow coffee machine. Sometimes the feeling that “something here isn’t working” has an entirely different cause.

Too little food. Too much food. And the wrong food

Catering is a chapter all of its own. One piece of feedback says there was too little food. Another, from the same season, that there was too much. That there was too much meat. That there were too many vegetarian dishes…

The solution lies in communicating properly with the client. Together, in advance, we go through who’s coming to the event, whether it’s mostly men or women, whether the crowd is the kind that will appreciate heartier refreshments, and above all what intolerances and dietary restrictions there are. A coffee break then fits far better than a one-size-fits-all “a bit of everything”. Food, after all, is one of the things people remember from an event for a very long time.

Then there’s one more scenario, the one that genuinely saddens us most. Occasionally an organiser decides not to order a coffee break at all, insisting coffee and water will do. But as the day wears on, hunger sets in and participants start glancing around the space, hoping at least a biscuit might materialise. At that point we have to explain that the food simply wasn’t ordered, and it’s uncomfortable for everyone. For the guests, who spend the break dashing to the nearest shop for something to eat, and for us, because we feel that awkward moment just as they do. That’s why we’re always glad to discuss with clients beforehand whether the length and intensity of the programme all but calls for some refreshments. Sometimes a few extra open sandwiches do more for the mood in the room than anything else.

The journey to academy HUB Prague is part of the experience too

We’re located in a courtyard, and that has two sides to it. The lovely one: it’s peaceful here, even though we’re in the very heart of bustling Karlín. The less lovely one: some sat-navs stubbornly get our location wrong, and a first visit occasionally means a little lap around the block.

We solved it our own way and filmed a short video that guides you to us more reliably than a map. We took a similar approach to parking. We have four spaces in the garage, which isn’t enough for a larger event, so we work with the multi-storey car park right next door and with the Mr. Parkit service.

Ring the bell, please

To reach us, you have to ring the bell. To some it seems at first like a pointless obstacle. But we’re glad of it, because it’s precisely what lets us guarantee our clients maximum security. No one can just wander in off the street, and the organiser has the certainty that we know about every single arrival.

Wi-Fi that has to carry 30 people and artificial intelligence

Weak Wi-Fi is the modern equivalent of cold coffee, a small thing with a real knack for annoying people. For us it was a genuine challenge. At training sessions focused on working with AI, 30 people routinely connect at once, all pushing data at the same time. We had to boost our original connection substantially, because “fairly good” Wi-Fi simply doesn’t cut it for a programme like that. These days we can handle a full room with ease.

Comfort

One of the loveliest questions we’ve ever been asked went: “How soft are your chairs? Will I last sitting on them for eight hours?” The question is actually rather clever. Anyone who’s sat through a full-day training session on a hard chair knows this is no trifle. We take great care over our chairs, so you’ll be sitting on comfortable wooden chairs by the TON brand.

Comfort isn’t something we think about only at the table. After lunch a slump descends on a lot of people, and even a seasoned manager sometimes welcomes a moment’s peace. So the sofa doesn’t go to waste here either. Lecturers and participants alike are happy to flop down for a few minutes and gather their strength for the afternoon session. We don’t have so many sofas that everyone could fit at once, but anyone who needs to switch off for a while will find a spot.

What we take from all this

It isn’t the big things that decide whether an event succeeds, but the details. Temperature, sound, catering, the quality of the Wi-Fi, the route to the door. That’s exactly why we ask in advance and listen after the event, even when someone gives us an earful about the coffee machine. Because honest feedback is the most valuable thing you can give us.

If you’re planning an autumn event, we’ll gladly take care of all this for you, ideally before it even occurs to you to worry about the temperature by the air conditioning. 🙂