Eight Tips on Organizing a Great Event

You can't overcome human nature and the reality is that people don't read memos and documents. They ask questions you've answered three times previously. Their needs change or they won't plan ahead. And you will often be expected to read minds. Anticipating problems helps to a degree but you will still have to do things on the fly. It's not personal or designed to make your hair hurt so just roll with it. Have every contact phone number at your fingertips. Carry copies of menus. Write up checklists for each day. Keep contracts, receipts of deposits and copies of banquet orders, etc., on hand. Make extra copies of agendas and other meeting materials.

We had a couple of folks flip-flop about attending the events one evening. Rather than get frustrated, I just added to the headcount and bought more tickets. Then I cheerfully communicated with their assistants. No big deal!

6. Everything is Your Job

Roll up your sleeves because you'll have to collate documents, pack up office supplies, print documents for attendees and quite a bit more. There's no use fighting it because little details like these can be the difference between guests feeling positive about their experience and wishing they never showed up. Even if you have the luxury of some assistance to handle the details, the responsibility is still yours.

I planned to have welcome gift bags for attendees when they checked in. That meant picking up some gourmet popcorn from a famous place nearby but there was no one else on-site to lug the 32 individual bags ten blocks back to the hotel. So I got some good exercise that day. When one attendee had trouble with his room safe, he came to me. Rather than fob him off on the hotel, I called my contact and arranged to have someone from the hotel come to our meeting to escort him back to his room to deal with the problem. Then I followed up to make sure the situation was resolved to his satisfaction.