The Latin Grammy Awards: Confidently Managing VIP Guests with Social Tables

The Latin Recording Academy is an international, membership-based organization dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for Latin music and its makers. In addition to producing the Latin GRAMMY Awards, the organization hosts the annual Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year Gala.

The dinner welcomes over 1,100 Spanish and Portuguese-speaking recording artists, musicians, producers and creative professionals to an intimate evening that celebrates the year’s most influential individual. “The Person of the Year Gala attendees are our highest profle members,” says Adrian Diaz, Manager of The Latin Grammy’s.

“Pre-Social Tables, we did what many planners today still do: our seating operations were done on an Excel grid,” says Diaz. “I was updating our lists until 2 hours before doors open, when I would have to print 6 different lists, sorted by first name, last name, table name - you name it - then had to manually distribute them to our entire staff. Aligning updates between multiple teammates and multiple lists was stressful and challenging.”

The last straw came when the dinner moved to a new venue with two entry points. “Managing two separate check-in stations with paper lists opened us up to vulnerability that we had never known before. The opportunity for duplicative check-in, perceived max-capacity, and gate crashing was real — I needed to close that weak point, so I began looking for a new way to manage attendees and seating.”

Diaz and his staff turned to Social Tables for it’s ability to synch check-in data across multiple entry points, update floor plan on the fly, and identify seating opportunities in real-time, on multiple devices.

Once guests are seated in the software, Brillhart’s team distributes the list to a local seating card vendor, adding special attention to detail to the event. “Social Tables is a collaborative tool that is intuitive and easy to use that allows us to collaborate with our vendors, staff and clients to produce a seamless event. It helps us be more effective and efficient for every party involved in our events.”