Events Planning - tick

Just had a couple of days off to run a little party for my 13 year old granddaughter's birthday. A party was all she wanted from me for her birthday this year, says she. Ok, lets make it a good one. This got me thinking about my LinkedIn profile and my hesitation at ticking the Events Planning box under Skills and Expertise. How dare I? But look at the definition of Events Planning in wikipedia.


Event planning is the process of planning a festival, ceremony, competition, party, concert, or convention. Event planning includes budgeting, establishing dates and alternate dates, selecting and reserving the event site, acquiring permits, and coordinating transportation and parking. Event planning also includes some or all of the following, depending on the event: developing a theme or motif for the event, arranging for speakers and alternate speakers, coordinating location support (such as electricity and other utilities), arranging decor, tables, chairs, tents, event support and security, catering, police, fire, portable toilets, parking, signage, emergency plans, health care professionals, and cleanup.

I have been organising the Off the Page Stirling Book Festival adult events for the past six years. Mind you I have a brilliant team working with me! And other teams are supporting us too e.g. Design Team, Young Peoples Team, Marketing Team. We organise the Festival in addition to carrying out our 9-5! After an initial shaky couple of years without funding and little experience apart from organising author events, we are now in the position of putting on a good festival for people; with authors and attendees alike having a good experience at our shows.

All this experience has given me the confidence to organise my own events without getting into any kind of fankle at all. (ok well a little - only natural). Hence the 13 year old's party with eighty 13 year olds in attendance and my own wedding three years ago with about one hundred and twenty guests.  I organised the wedding from January to April whilst training for a marathon which I ran a week before I got married! The things you do to fit into a dress!
So how do we go about it?  Well the principles are the same:

• Look at your budget and stick to it - be realistic
• Look at diary for best date or dates in the case of Book Festival.
• Look at best times
• Decide on numbers of attendees
• Organise the venue
• Market research as to what people want to listen to, hear, see (we always evaluate our events and act on responses)
• Organise the act/author/band/disco (based on market research as to what they want)
• Organise the catering - look to your market audience - what will they expect? Buffet for 13 year olds comprises of sweets, juice, lollipops, crisps, but you still have to have some real food too. People coming to author events don't really expect a glass of wine or a coffee but it would be an added bonus. And if there is a bar in the venue all the better...
• Marketing well ahead - in the case of parties/wedding - let people know the date (people have diaries filling up). Then at least they can keep the date free. In the case of author events and book festivals give little tasters in newspapers, Twitter, Facebook, word of mouth just to get the expectation and interest rising.
• Nearer the event, let the marketing kick in with the invites, direct target marketing, tickets, emails, flyers, brochures
• A week or two before - check everyone e.g.authors, disco, band are ok, happy, remembering they are coming!
• Check on cake, catering, sponsors, booksellers etc.
• A week or two before - visit the venue to finalise arrangements re. lighting, seating, access
• On the day get entry to the venue early to make sure it is decorated (in the case of a party) and comfortable, allowing easy access for wheelchairs etc.
• Make sure enough people are on hand to help on the night - in the case of 13 year old party this meant enough adults to cover door- gatecrash prevention, and toilets - drink, smoking or damage prevention - could apply to most events come to think of it!
• Clean up afterwards - or arrange for this to happen
• Thank people for coming
• Thanks to acts, authors for coming and prompt payment of bills! 
• Evaluate and act on success - Facebook, Twitter posts, photos and newspaper articles - or things that could have gone better - fix for next time

What I aways like to see is people going away from an event with smiles on their faces and looking for more. In other words - customer satisfaction - which come from - Good Customer Service! Oht oh another blog post coming up maybe!

This year's Off the Page Stirling Book Festival runs from Saturday 8th September to Saturday 15th September (guess who's training for New York Marathon on 4th November).

http://www.facebook.com/offthepagefestival

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top

VIRGIL

I attended my first meeting of VIRGIL today (Visually Impaired Reading Groups In Libraries). This is a collaborative project of some Scottish library authorities who got together to share resources for visually impaired (vip) reading groups. The visually impaired want to have the same benefits as other readers by being able to read/listen to the same book at the same time. Quite an expensive option with talking books at £60 a time. Up until now I have been running a visually impaired reading group using Calibre, an organisation who use volunteers to record talking books. This in itself is a great service to subscribe to.

Funding
With VIRGIL each authority commits  to buying one set a year at a cost of around £600. Initial funding was put in by the Scottish Government's Public Library Quality Improvement Fund to buy 33 sets of 10 cd talking books and 2 large print copies. Stock can move between the authorities freely through Articles for the Blind. The books and cd talking books can be bought through the library suppliers and all talking books are read by a professional actor. Funding has also extended to the groups attending the Aye Write Book Festival in Glasgow.


However, similar to the Scottish Reader Development Forum, another benefit to being in collaboration with others is the meet up to organise and run it. So today, apart from coming away with a full set of A Thousand Splendid Suns for my group, I also have information on PENfriend - a pen that reads blurbs on talking books for visually impaired library borrowers - and information on events for Make a Noise in Libraries Week. I also got roped into starting a wiki for all the vip reading groups to contribute reviews to. And we discussed various routes to more funding. In other words another great networking morning!


http://www.slainte.org.uk/news/archive/1104/1104.htm
http://virgilbookgroups.wordpress.com/