Czajkowski

Things to do and not do when organising an event a follow up thoughts and reviews to my previous article. Why… well as I said before the list was not complete nor was it a bible. However after taking part in another event I helped to organise I’ve come up with a few more things to bear in mind when running an event. These mostly appertain to the day of the event:

• Have the presenting laptop all set up with a separate login with all of the presentations on it.
• Sticky point, dealing with speakers can sometimes be a lot of hassle, get all speakers to use the one laptop, it’s set up and works with the projector. Unplugging and plugging in another one causes unnecessary time wasting for all those involved.
• Get all presentations a week in advance, I asked for them 2 days in advance and got all bar 2, one of which as the guy was travelling and I knew this. The other I got on the day of the event. In future I’d ask for them a week in advance, and if you don’t get it, pull the person.  Simple as, if one person can do it, so can everyone.
• It may be a case that you have to pull rank with another organiser if things are not running as they should be. Yes it would be nice to let the day just flow, yes it would be nice to let folks just do what they want, but then crazyness happens, and nothing runs well.
• Have a person sitting in the audience who will hold up a car with 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 1 minutes to go. It is necessary to keep time under control, and again some speakers will get the knickers in a twist at being told to shut up and get off the stage as the next speaker is due on. s
• If you are renting a venue give it back to the organisation the way you got it. It sounds simple, but you’d be amazed the way people leave their rubbish behind. Make sure everyone leaves with you, locks up and goes with you. If you leave folks behind you have no way of making sure the place is locked up and left in the correct order.

Again, by no means is it complete. It’s just a few ideas that came to me post SFD.