Organising Events Training
2010
I can’t believe it is actually summer time already! Can someone please tell Mother Nature that it’s supposed to be warm! This time a year ago I was in school preparing for exams, and now I am watching relatives and friends going through the same. In saying that Mr Jack gave me a test of my own.
I came in after my Easter holidays and was asked to help develop a training programme for volunteers. Jacky told me he was delivering a day’s training to a voluntary group in Rutherglen called CommunityMatters. Knowing how I became interested in events he asked me to use my experiences and new found knowledge to help create a tailored pack that would then assist CommunityMatters in organising their own range of events - International Women's Day, a Youth Film Festival, Community Consultation meetings, Fun Runs.... and many more.
I was not just abandoned to have a stab in the dark, Jacky has delivered events training to organisations such as Learning and Teaching Scotland and the NHS and so I was able to have a look through the training materials developed for these and adjust the materials to suit the voluntary sector. We were also able to use a lot of the materials we produced to help a primary school build their own events team.
Having worked here for 6 months I thought I pretty much knew the basics of organising an event. After all I have been told that 80% of every event is the same, it’s that additional 20% that make the event what it is.
I never thought about how difficult it would be to actually write down everything you know, In a way that people will be able to understand. When it came to it, I had to think about how I felt at school organising my first events, and how the information I was now preparing for the volinteers would have been so useful to keep me on track and less stressed.
I took a note of all the different aspects of event management, Venue, Delegate and Speaker Liaison, Venue Layouts, Job Roles, Funding, etc. and looked at how I could best describe each one.
I started by thinking of the 5W’s (Why?, Who?, Where?, When and What?) not forgetting the 6P’s of Planning - Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance!!.
It then came to my attention that most of our management time is spent in liaison with venues, speakers or delegates, if not all at once.
Once you know why you are running the event and what the objectives for it are, you then consider the people you want to attract to it. This is where the When kicks in. Not much point organising an event for a particular audience when they can't come to the event. e.g. Would you hold an event aimed at the elderly late on a Friday night in the centre of a busy town? After this point you start thinking of an appropriate venue and, in the voluntary sector, that comes in many shapes and guises. But that’s, maybe, the easy part!
Once you find the venue you need to sort out everything else, there is the room layouts to consider, catering, AV, ease of access, Health and Safety, the list goes on and on.
So I made a mind map. If anyone else was to look at it, it would make no sense at all, just a jumble of words and lines but obviously it worked because I got everything together in time for Jacky to deliver the training.
Soon enough I will go on and get to tell you all what I put into the Trainee packs and also the Resource pack, and hopefully you can tell me what you think of it.
But for now it is over and out and back to actually doing some work.
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