Roy Yen started his events production company, Soomo Entertainment, in 2000. The company's specialty is producing large public events, such as the 150th anniversary of B.C. and Mexico's 150th anniversary of Cinco de Mayo. As a cultural planner with the City of Vancouver, he organized the Live Sites during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Successfully pulling off big events often requires working with many different groups, so being able to understand everyone's perspective is important, Yen said.
Yen learned this early in his career when he was working on a particularly ambitious deal.
“I was operating from a place where I thought I had the best interests of both parties in mind,” Yen said.
“I felt I was being very considerate of their position, but it turned out I didn't have all the facts in front of me. It appeared to them that I was undercutting their part of the deal.”
With more consideration of how the deal might have looked from the other side, Yen said, the misunderstanding might not have happened.
“As the deal unravelled, I was not able to bring us back to the common place where we had all started.”
Yen is currently working with several groups – not all of which are always on the same page – to create a summer festival in Vancouver's Chinatown. Being able to “sit back and take in all the information” from the different parties has helped him to bring everyone together.
“I've been able to keep them focused on the process,” Yen said. “‘Let's just get together and see what happens.'”
