Nikolas
Stepan.
Multilingual event manager and hospitality operator. I run cultural, gastronomic and luxury-maison events end-to-end — 156 events and 20,000+ participants in 2025, four working languages, from 50-person curated wine pairings on a heritage estate, to a 500-seat regional gastro festival on a main public square, to a multi-city couture tour through Prague, Budapest and Rožňava.
Five operating positions.
Event management is one discipline practised across five organisations — a cultural-creative association, a manufacturing & workshops company, a 14th-century castle under reconstruction, a luxury maison, and a regional hotel operation. 2025 footprint: 156 events, 20,000+ participants. Each role is end-to-end: programming, venues, suppliers, budget, marketing, day-of, settlement.
GemMark — GemArt's operational & marketing arm
Operational and marketing arm of GemArt, a cultural-creative association in Slovakia's Gemer region. I run the full event lifecycle — programming, venue contracts, supplier panels, budget, multilingual marketing, day-of production, post-event reporting — across eight event categories. 2025 delivered 156 events and 20,000+ participants.
Gemcraft — glass & ceramic manufacture · workshops
Director of the manufacturing and crafts company that supplies the events programme: hand-blown glass, ceramics, silvering, painting. I manage the workshop team, inventory, kiln cadence, and the B2B/B2C workshop programme — half-day team-buildings for 8–20 people, drop-ins, school programmes, multi-day intensives.
Vodný hrad Štítnik — 14th-century water castle
Co-steward of a 1432 defensive water castle under active reconstruction, operated today as a cultural and entertainment venue. Co-responsible for venue programming, the heritage-tour experience (anchored by a Flutter SK/EN/HU companion app), site logistics and visitor flow.
Csetneki Maison — multi-city luxury runway tour
An original luxury-maison project anchored on Štítnik lace, brought together with four artists across textile, painting and ceramic disciplines. I co-curate the collection, sign venues across Prague, Budapest and Rožňava, run artist contracts & logistics, brief the press, and operate front-of-house.
Apartmány Nad Kostolom — hospitality operations
Several months in front-of-house and operations at Apartmány Nad Kostolom — reception flow, guest relations across SK/EN/HU/DE walk-ins, F&B service coordination with the on-site lobby bar, supplier and housekeeping liaison, daily settlement. The hands-on hospitality counterpart to the cultural-event production work.
Klaštor Cultural & Creative Centre — Rožňava
Recurring venue partner for exhibitions, vernissages and the Osudy umenia art-film festival. Coordination with house staff for tech, ticketing, catering and bilingual signage.
Eight event categories.
A 2026 snapshot, built on a 2025 delivery of 156 events and 20,000+ participants. Cadence is multi-weekly through summer and monthly off-season. Each category has its own permit, supplier and capacity profile — but the operating discipline is the same: a single source-of-truth brief feeds budget, marketing, day-of run-sheet and post-event report.
| Category | Format | Capacity / session | Count 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Csetneki — luxury maison runway tour | Multi-city couture runway · invite-list FOH · press | 200–500 | 3 stops + 2027 series |
| Festivals & gastro | Public-square festival · wine festival · Fašiangy folklore | 50–500+ | 5+ |
| Wine & gastronomy | Curated 6–8 pour + cheese pairing · multi-course supper | 40–90 | recurring |
| Exhibitions & vernissages | Group shows · student openings · catalogue · live music | 60–200 | 6+ |
| CESTA MODERNY — painting cycle | Multi-month weekend course · visiting artist · final vernissage | 15–30 | 8+ |
| Workshops — ceramics, glass, silvering | B2B team-building (half-day) · B2C drop-in (3 hr) | 8–20 | 13+ |
| Summer Academy | Three parallel youth schools (5-week footprint) | 80–150 youth | 3 tracks |
| Osudy umenia — art-film festival | Multi-site rolling festival · screenings + Q&A | 250–600 across sites | 1 weekend |
Multi-city tour · 2025–2027
Role · co-curator & co-organiser
An eleven-look luxury maison built on Štítnik lace — a heritage craft developed by the Szontágh sisters from 1905. Brought together with four artists: textile designer Vlasta Žáková, painters Alexandra Atlasová and Martina Štěpán, and Prof. MUDr. Svatopluk Adámek (UMPRUM Prague). The looks combine historical lace redrawn through digital + machine embroidery, upcycled textiles, ceramic ornaments from the Gemcraft workshop, and a finale on the "fragile inner armour of the feminine."
What I delivered, end-to-end:
- Curatorial brief — 11-look concept order, designer medallions, runway script.
- Venues — historic Prague palace setting; indoor production permits in Štítnik / Rožňava; fire-safety sign-off for runway lighting.
- Artist coordination — contracts, accommodation, transport, riders, payouts.
- Supply chain — ceramics from Gemcraft workshop, embroidery from Vlasta's atelier, paintings sourced; one-source-of-truth inventory list per look.
- Press — regional + Prague + Budapest media; one-page release + image bank; embargoes managed per stop.
- Front-of-house — guest list, RSVP, seat allocation, walk-on cards, photographer brief, hospitality flow.
- Marketing pack — SK / CZ / EN / HU posters, social cards, runway-order PDF, designer medallions, press kit.
Result. 2025-12-13 teaser show in Štítnik stress-tested the supply chain at hometown scale; 2026-04-22 Prague stop in a historic palace setting; 2026-05 Budapest exhibition; 2026-06-26 official collection launch in the Gemer region; Vienna · Prague · Budapest planned for 2027.
5th edition · 27 June 2026
Capacity 500+
A one-day regional food festival on Rožňava's main public square. Five editions in, the festival has become the cross-border anchor for the Gemer gastronomic calendar — Slovak and Hungarian visitors arrive from both sides of the Slaná valley.
Production scope:
- Municipal public-square permit — sanitation, waste plan, fire/electrical clearance, MoP liaison.
- Stall map with electrical run, water, queueing flow; 25–40 regional producers recruited.
- Stage programme — folklore ensembles, live music, cooking demos.
- Bilingual SK/HU signage from the main road inwards — measurable cross-border footfall lift.
- Cashless payment partner; one queue plan per stall cluster.
- Volunteer roster, single WhatsApp group, one printed run-sheet per shift.
What I learned that I'd carry to Budapest. Food events live or die on flow. The stall map + queue plan + cashless partner is half the production. Bilingual signage at the road edge is what actually pulls cross-border guests.
Summer + autumn programme
40–90 covers · curated 6–8 pours
Curated wine tastings on a historical heritage estate, often combined into multi-course suppers with regional gastronomy partners. Designed for premium small groups — corporate clients, cultural-tourism audiences, the Csetneki press circuit on its Rožňava stop.
What goes into each tasting:
- Sommelier or certified-pour staffing; pre-selected 6–8 wines with bilingual tasting notes.
- Glassware procurement — count, back-up, on-site cleaning.
- Cheese & charcuterie pairing — local producer partner.
- Liquor licensing & responsibility-pour rules.
- Multi-course supper option — partner kitchens, allergen log, table service plan.
- Hard capacity cap at 90; we sell out before we oversell.
Why it works. Hard caps protect the experience; bilingual notes (SK + EN, HU on request) let cross-border guests follow the pour at their own pace; the supper add-on raises AOV without thinning the host's attention.
Glass · ceramics · silvering · painting
B2B (8–20 / half-day) · B2C (3 hr slots)
The workshops sit between hospitality and manufacturing. B2B groups — corporate team-buildings — book half-day formats with a take-home piece; B2C drop-ins run on a kiln-driven rhythm. The same floor that supplies Csetneki's ceramic ornaments runs four-disciplines of hands-on programming.
What I manage:
- People — workshop team scheduling, payroll cadence, holiday cover.
- Inventory — clay, glaze, glass cullet, paints, kiln consumables with reorder thresholds per material.
- Kiln scheduling — bisque + glaze firing rhythm sets available workshop slots.
- Bookings — landing pages per format; auto-confirmation; reminder cadence.
- B2B sales — Outbound to Slovak and Hungarian SMEs through dedicated outreach pipelines; per-school-type variants for school programmes.
- Add-ons — catering, photo bundle, "take-the-piece-home" boxes; AOV rises 30–60% on corporate bookings.
- Compliance — fire-safety, insurance, minor-participant waivers, allergen disclosure when food is on the floor.
Weekend · July 2026
Audience 250–600 across sites
A weekend art-film festival that roams between three small cultural venues in the Gemer region. Short-form documentary, artist talks, screening discussions. A small festival that moves attracts curious audiences from each village along the route — total throughput beats any single-venue equivalent.
What we produced:
- Line-up with curators; screening rights secured.
- Three venue contracts; rolling schedule with intentional buffer for audience travel between sites.
- Mobile projection rig + sound + blackout solution for non-cinema venues.
- Bilingual host scripts SK / EN; live translation on Q&A.
- Press release; regional + Bratislava media list; in-house editorial cover from Gemer Times.
- One WhatsApp group, one printed run-sheet per venue, one FOH lead per site + a connecting runner.
Lesson. Q&A is the actual product. Films are the bait. Projection-rig redundancy matters — every venue is a different room with different acoustics, light leak and power.
July–August 2026 · 5-week footprint
80–150 youth · 12+ facilitators
Three parallel youth summer schools — ceramics, drawing/painting, music-theatre — running over a five-week footprint with a joint vernissage final weekend. The full residential apparatus: accommodation block, three meals a day, materials kits, parental waivers, daily transport, and a photo-report-as-marketing loop.
Operating playbook:
- Facilitator roster — contracts, accommodation, lesson plans, materials lists.
- Accommodation block — youth + facilitators, gendered rooms, dietary list.
- Materials kit per child — at 130% buffer; youth always over-consume.
- Parental waivers + youth-programme insurance + GDPR-compliant photo consent.
- Three meals + snacks daily; allergen log; catering partner.
- Daily transport between dormitory and workshop / studio.
- Three mini-showcases + joint vernissage; daily emailed photo report to parents (auto-built).
Effect on next year's enrolment. Daily photo reports become the marketing — parents share into their networks; the following year fills before public open.
End-to-end production.
Every event runs across the same four phases. The discipline isn't taste — it's the spreadsheet, the run-sheet and the WhatsApp group, and the rhythm of getting all three to match.
Pre-production
- Venue scouting & contracts
- Artist / supplier rosters & riders
- Municipal permits, MoP, fire-safety
- Budget envelope & sponsorship outreach
- Insurance & liability
- Catering & wine partner sourcing
- Glassware, AV, runway tape, signage
- Volunteer roster & staff cover
Marketing & press
- Brand brief → bilingual / trilingual pack
- SK · CZ · EN · HU copy & signage
- Posters, social cards, runway-order PDFs
- RSVP & ticketing operation
- Press list — regional, Prague, Budapest
- One-page release + image bank
- Embargoes per city stop
- Multi-channel social rollout
Production day
- Floor plan & flow
- Tech check — sound, lighting, projection
- Front-of-house & door management
- Photographer / videographer brief
- Translator on standby (HU / DE / EN)
- Live multilingual hosting
- Run-sheet + single WhatsApp channel
- Incident & weather contingency
Post-event
- Photo / video edit & delivery
- Press follow-up & clippings file
- Email newsletter recap
- Visitor / participant feedback survey
- Artist payouts & settlement
- Supplier reconciliation
- Sales record & CRM update
- Lessons-learned debrief
Five working tongues.
Triple-bilingual events are a logistics problem, not a translation problem. I run a single source-of-truth document per event across print and digital, and I host in the language the room is in.
Why this role, and why now.
I delivered 156 multilingual events with 20,000+ participants in 2025 across Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary — the Csetneki tour passes through Budapest on every cycle, Gastro Gemer Fest pulls cross-border footfall from across the Slaná valley, and our wine programme is built for international corporate audiences. The Budapest role is the move from commissioning the venue, the press list and the bilingual pack to doing the same for an international event-management company at scale, with French- and Spanish-speaking clients I can host directly.
What runs behind the room.
I treat operational tooling as a competitive advantage. The same spreadsheet discipline that protects a wine tasting's hard cap also protects an entire summer-academy roster.
Ops & admin
- Excel & Word — fluent daily use
- Google Workspace
- WhatsApp Business per-event groups
- Single-source run-sheet template
- Per-event budget templates
Booking & ticketing
- Upgates landing pages & RSVP
- Auto-confirmation & reminder cadence
- Guest-list & seat-allocation grids
- Capacity caps & waitlists
Marketing & press
- Postiz multi-channel social
- Bilingual / quad-lingual press packs
- One-page release + image bank
- Catalogue & runway-order PDFs
Compliance & safety
- Municipal permit liaison
- Fire-safety sign-off
- GDPR-compliant guest data
- Insurance & waivers
- Allergen logs & responsibility-pour