Events 101 — Where to start & the “why?”

At 3beards we‘ve run a huge number of events ever the last three and a half years and often get asked the how, why and what of event running. So I’m going to be writing about my take on it all over a series of posts, of which this is the first one.

Where to start

This bit’s easy. If you’re looking to start running an event, then the first thing I would recommend that you do is go to a lot of events.

Don’t just let them casually wash over you, think about the quality of the event and how you feel about it as an attendee:

• Was it easy to get to?
• How did you feel when you arrived?
• Did you know what was going on and did it run to time?
• Was it what you expected/what it was promoted as?
• Was it useful?
• How could it be improved?

As well as the above, look, listen, learn and notice all the parts that you would usually take for granted as an event attendee:

• How many people are running the event?
• Is it obvious who is in charge/directing proceedings ?
• Are the venue staff helping?
• Who’s doing what (check in/refreshments/hosting/greeting people etc).

You will need to at least consider all of these elements before you start to plan your own event.

The “Why?”

So you have a feel for how other people are doing it and what it might take to do, but what next? I believe you should start with the “why?”

Why do you want to run an event? There are various people and organisations that run events, broadly categorised as:

• the community
• a company/organisation (whose purpose isn’t events)
• a for-profit event company

Community people run events for their community because they love what they’re involved in and want more interaction, exploration and to meet all the other people in their field that share their interest and passion.

Organisations run events because it feeds into or is related to whatever their main business is. The reason may simply be brand awareness or it could be to help educate people in their field or to build their network and sometimes…it’s a straight up sales event.

For-profit events are pretty straight forward, they’re run as a business, so you would usually expect the quality of event to (roughly) correspond to the cost. Clearly there is some interest in the subject matter, but the main driver is profit.

Obviously that’s a fairly simplistic view, there are plenty of blurred lines between those categories, but you get the idea.

Make sure you know your own true motivation for running your event, this is pretty important, because it will inform your willpower and dedication when the going gets tough!

It’s probably best to look at your motivations from two points of view:

• What’s in it for me?
• What’s in it for everyone else? (and how much does that drive me)

There are very few people that will be able to run a successful event if it is of no benefit to them personally. This is not a bad thing, it’s just a fact. If that benefit is simply that you get to learn more about your area of interest, then that’s absolutely fine. It could be that you meet more people than you would usually, which is also fine. If you are honest and transparent about your motivations, then you shouldn’t have any problems. It’s very likely that your motivations will influence your event, irrespective of whether you are conscious of them or not.

As an example of the “why?” here’s how Digital Sizzle came into being: Bryce, Ben and Mike randomly met at a “Tweetup” and decided that the event wasn’t that great, they had to sit on the floor, their ticket cost didn’t cover any refreshments and the only good thing about the event was that they met other interesting people. Their motivation for starting Digital Sizzle was to put on a better event and give people a place to genuinely meet in an environment that didn’t feel like “networking”. Clearly this has the benefit of them meeting a lot of interesting people too, as well as the reputational benefit of being the organisers. I’d describe this as a “complimentary motivation”.

Complimentary motivations are where the answers to “what’s in it for me?” work in perfect tandem with “What’s in it for everyone else?”. The event organisers are benefitted by the event in a way that helps them personally without that being detrimental to the event in any way.

If however, you have a personal motivation that isn’t in line with the purpose of the event, one of these motivations usually has to take preference. There are two ways that can play out:

• You focus on the event’s purpose and lose interest because it’s not fulfilling your personal motivation. Event fails.
• You focus on your own motivations and the event suffers. Event fails.

This is an over-simplification (and of course events evolve and your own personal situation changes too) but it’s worth thinking how you can bring the two to work together or at least without materially impacting each other.

At the other end of the scale, are contrary motivations — this is where achieving your purpose categorically means the event not achieving it’s purpose. This is to be avoided at all costs! An example would be: you create an event to bring together people from all areas of the art world, but you only really do it to make as much money as possible, but by putting a high margin ticket price on the event, you only attract the people that can afford to come, not a good cross section of the community.

So in summary:

• Learn about events
• Make sure you understand your own motivations

There’s plenty more to talk about with events, I’ll be covering the who, what, how and probably sponsorship too in later posts. If you’ve got any questions, just let me know!