Good event planning requires that practitioners understand the significance that a failed event can have on a client’s reputation. That is why we were shocked to hear that Atlantic Monthly, a perennially award winning publication that has been in print for 150 years, was marking the landmark anniversary with a celebration that seemed designed to fail. The gimmick, and that is a generous word, was to have the 250 or so "VIP" and invited guests grace the stage of NYU’s auditorium and to allow the general public to sit in the audience and watch the party. Those on stage were given food, drink and parting gifts while those in the audience were given commemorative anniversary copies of the magazine.

BizBash, an online magazine for the event industry sums up the event nicely. The New York Observer does so as well, though less elegantly.

Certainly creativity is rewarded in event planning, but this ill-conceived event combined elements of voyeurism and exclusivity that had to have made both the guests and the gawkers uncomfortable. File this one under the don’ts of event planning.