Apr 5, 2024 4:09:40 PM
There will be wide ranging views on the question 'what's the most important decision when planning an event?'. Venue location is always up there, budget, time of year, maybe even objectives. Not many would say where and how you build your program or agenda. But it turns out this will have a massive impact on planning.
It's the why
The program or agenda is the reason you are doing the event, to deliver an experience to your target audience. All planning decisions revolve around the program: What is the most suitable venue, how many people will actually want to come, how much should be spent and what ROE can be expected. The planning team needs visibility of the most up to date program all the time to make good decisions.
One program, many forms
The program ends up existing in many forms. A registration or website, a printed agenda or Event App. As individual schedules for the delivery team, vendors, performers and speaker, exhibitors etc
Where and how you build your program or agenda
So why is it such an important decision as to where and how you build your program? Because this will directly impact on how hard or easy it is to do everything else. If you go the traditional route and build you program in a spreadsheet or even a word doc it means you have to create separate versions of the same information to do everything else. A separate website, print doc, event app, separate schedules. Every time there is a change you have to update all those different docs. It will add hours and hours to your workload not to say your stress levels as you try to keep everything up to date.
Who new?
We asked a large group of event planners how much time they spent managing event docs and no one was that sure. So we went through the process of trying to work it out. The result shocked everyone. Well over 100 hours for an average conference. That's a lot of hours when you are time poor anyway. So next time you launch into event planning give careful consideration to how the program is set up and how information will be transferred from one set of documents to another. Simple things like the naming and order of columns in a spreadsheet can make a huge difference, as indeed making sure your spreadsheet is sortable [no merged cells].
The Joi plug
Not surprisingly the best advice we can give you is to build your program in Joi from the outset. The program builder makes that easier anyway with auto calculated times, drag and drop sessions and webforms to collect info. But the best bit is that everything else is in sync, website, app, schedules all work of the master program . Update the program and everything else updates
We all want to know
Have you worked out how much time you spend on event documentation and managing your event tech when planning an event.? If you have we would love to know.