The Taste of Carmel is an annual event that benefits the Chamber of Commerce in Carmel. It is held at the Carmel Mission Basilica, where the recently sainted Junipero Serra, is buried.

The Taste of Carmel is growing every year. With a total attendance of over 850 people, more than 130 exhibitors, and a growth rate of 17-percent year over year, this is an event that is showing no signs of slowing down.

Each year the setup of the venue should include the same layout of tables, chairs, stage, dance floor, and audio/visual equipment. Every event like this has a person or a map that defines the next year’s setup.

A year is a long time, so mapping helps replace memory in a business scenario like this. If there were no diagram or map made, the next year may mean that no employees are familiar with the setup.

Event continuity, year after year, is very important to most event managers.

The familiarity for the guests is a fairly minor reason that this is done—the main reasons are for the successful planning and setup of the next year’s event.

Click below to explore the maps (orthomosaic and digital surface model):

The flight

This year, I mapped the event with a DJI Phantom 3 Professional and DroneDeploy.

The nadir imagery flight that captured the straight-down images took about 7 minutes to fly based on the grid pattern that was automatically generated by the DroneDeploy app.

The low-level, oblique imagery flight added an additional 3–4 minutes to the capture time.

One map was flown at the end of setup day. We executed a final mapping mission minutes before the event started.

The total time from start to finish on each of the mapping tasks was about 20 minutes from arrival to completion.

Enhanced productivity

The Taste of Carmel is a wine and food event that kicks off a weekend of events held by the Carmel Chamber of Commerce. Gerard Mattimoe is the Chair for the Taste of Carmel. His company, Glastonbury Audio Visual Inc. handles the equipment setup and operations for the Taste of Carmel.

Speaking to Gerard, you will find out that diagrams are hard to understand and even harder to make. Most of the time, the previous year’s annual event setup is only known to the ones who worked it the previous year.

In this case, a high-resolution 3D model of the event created by a drone makes things much easier for following years.

The measurements are useful but Gerard said that by just looking at the 3D model and orthomosaic map, he could easily tell an 8-foot table from a 6-foot table.

When asked what was the most useful aspect of the maps we did this year, Gerard told me that, “Being able to show someone the lighting setup,” so they understood what was desired was up at the top. The event team needs to not just know where the lights need to be placed but the correct colors for each area as well.

When you think about it, that is the purpose of all maps and diagrams—we’re trying to convey more information than can be communicated in any other way.

In this instance, lighting ‘trees’ are designated for a specific location. The lights they hold are designed to light up a specific area of the venue. The time needed to describe how this works must be taken with care but can be radically reduced with this unique type of event mapping.

Party time

In summary, when you give clearer instruction and everyone understands what the end result should look like, you also reduce setup time and labor costs.

Savings is a direct correlation to the size of the production and setup time involved — the larger the event, the more the savings.

Mattimoe estimates that having the drone map his event this year will save him between $1,000-$2,000 in labor next year by reducing the amount of time it will take for pre-event setup coordination.

The ROI for saving time during an event almost always means a better show and a lower bottom line cost for the promoter, A/V company, and the venue. Cheers.