Have You Got Enough Security?

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking past the Melbourne Convention and Entertainment Centre (or Jeff’s Shed as it’s known) and there was a melee in progress.

Horses, protesters, police and conference delegates were all in the fray. You can see some news coverage about it from SBS by clicking this link.

From my perspective, it did seem that both parties were too enthusiastic and unfortunate delegates got caught up in the cross fire. Some were pushed to the ground and others spat on by the protesters.

I am not deny the rights of the protesters to be there and I am not denying the right of the police to keep the peace. But what does need to be considered is the impact on the event.

While the event organisers considered their event a success (they were quoted by SBS as saying it was “business as usual for our 7,000 delegates”) it definitely attracted some unwelcome attention for them.

Let’s extrapolate that to your event.

You are after the Goldilocks level of security. Not too little, not too much but juuuust the right amount. As you can see in the video above, the level of police presence is intimidating. But it did seem to match the intimidation of the protestors.

If you are running an event that may need security, how do you measure the Goldilocks Amount?