Event, Conference and Meeting Planning Guidelines: 10 Steps to Success

Every event whether it's a meeting, party, seminar, conference, charity event, or your high school reunion will have common threads regardless of what it is, where it's held, when or why it is happening. The following common threads are found in every organized event. Make sure you plan each of the following steps thoroughly and you are guaranteed success.

1. Plan Your Vision: Your vision is the main reason and focus for having the event? It is a combination of your goals and objectives.

2. Set the Goals and Objectives: A goal is the general purpose of the event that provides a road map for the planning process. An objective is a measurable, attainable target that contributes to the accomplishment of the goal. An event can have one or multiple goals and objectives.

3. Select a Site: Location, location, location! Every event needs a site! Pick the location to match and support your vision, goals and objectives.

4. Create Promotion/Marketing Materials: You must get your message out. You need to get the basic information to the right people in the right amount of time so they know when to show up, where to go, and what to do when they get there. The message could be as simple as the date, time, and location via the telephone or as complicated as a multi page brochure for a multi-day conference with numerous events combined in one event. Or perhaps some major TV advertising and sophisticated website design for online registration.

5. Identify Your Participants/ Guests: Without them, you would not have an event. Whether they are invited guests, paying participants or required attendees, people will be coming to your event. Know your audience and target them carefully.

6. Create the Agenda/Timeline: Whether it is written down or planned, every event has a timeline. There is always a starting point and a finishing point. This is detail outline of the activities. What is happening from hours before the participants arrive to the follow-up when the event is complete. And it is the schedule of what is actually happening throughout the event. The agenda can be two types. The one the participant receives and follows and the one that the people working the event receive and follow. This tells people where to go, or what to do when you get there.

7. Establish a Budget: Money comes in and goes out. With some events no obvious money will be coming in, such as a wedding or company social. Create a budget nonetheless to make sure not too much money goes out. For larger events, budgets are a must especially when profit is one of you objectives. Without a budget it is hard to set guidelines and measure results.

8. Select the Food and Beverage: It may be a pitcher of water and mints at a one day seminar, a sit down dinner for 10,000, an all day concert where vendors will be brought in to serve the public, coffee and doughnuts at the morning sales meeting and/or soda, cookies in the afternoon for an all day conference, or appetizers served during a 3 hour cocktail party for 700 people. This is a wide and general segment of an event and will vary widely depending on the vision, goals, and objectives and of course, money.

9. Arrange for Transportation: You may need to transport 800 people from 10 hotels to the meeting site twice a day or it could be just getting yourself to the site on time. You may need to arrange the travel needs for the entertainment, speakers, and VIP's, including picking them up at the airport. Or this may include contracting with an airline for discount airfare or negotiating with rental car companies for special rates to offer to your participants.

10. Hire Staff/Volunteers: This could range from checking in your participants for your workshop, or 100's of volunteers at a conference or sporting event. It could be the caterers, musicians, florists, cleanup crew, equipment setup, valets, ticket takers, MC's, speakers, or the balloon lady. It almost always takes more than one person to successfully coordinate an event.