Events 101 — Who do you need to run a successful event?

You can’t have much of an event without people, so who do you need to make an event go well and how do you get them there? Here’s my thoughts and learnings from nearly 3 years of running tech events in London.

The people you may need breakdown into four categories:

• Organisers (incl helpers/volunteers)
• Attendees
• Content (speakers, panel members, pitchers etc)
• Sponsors (This is a pretty big area that I’ll cover in a separate post!)

Organisers

You’re looking to start an event and it’s something you have a keen interest in and you know why you’re doing it. Unless it’s a very, very basic event format, you’re going to need some help!

The vast majority of events have 2 or 3 co-organisers, these are the people that have a shared responsibility for the whole event. It is vitally important that they also have a shared vision and all understand what the event is trying to achieve. Setting this vision and purpose from the outset helps everyone work towards the same goal. It is very similar to the “the why” I described in the first post, there has to be complimentary motivations otherwise you may get organisers pulling the event in different directions.

Finding co-organisers may be easy, it’s likely that if the event is in an area that you are passionate about, you already know some people that would be happy to help you (obviously it’s best to pick people with this shared interest). If you don’t know anyone, a good way to find people is to get on and run the event! You’ll then be able to meet the people that come along and see if they are interested in running the event with you, this acts as a very effective filter for the right kind of people. A great case in point is when I went along to Silicon Drinkabout, after a few weeks I spoke to the organisers (who weren’t yet called 3beards) and asked if they needed any help, they were happy to have me join the team.

In addition to co-organisers, you may need extra help at the event, in the beginning, these people can be friends (not necessarily interested in the event topic) but you may find that there are people that want to help from the event attendees (but not want so much responsibility as becoming a co-organiser). Either way, it’s important to think about the different areas you’ll need help with: registration/sign in, hosting, refreshments etc etc).

Attendees

If you’re starting an event from nothing, then you’re going to have to do something quite compelling to get people along. If your event scene is anything like London’s then there are multiple events every night of the week, not to mention competing with people’s social lives.

You have to decide what sort of people you’d like to be at the event and what (if any) incentives, filters and barriers you’re going to put in to make sure that it’s those people that attend. A good place to start is to think about what would draw you to a new event (I’m assuming that you’re running an event that you’d like to go to!) There are many areas to consider:

• Speakers & Content
• The other attendees
• Location/Venue (maybe it’s on Google’s rooftop etc)
• Competition/Giveaways
• Cost of the event

Each of these can act as a filter or barrier to different types of people attending. You would expect a centrally located, free event with a great speaker and free food and drink to be popular, but perhaps the community you are trying to reach aren’t based centrally and would have to travel to get to this event.

You have to carefully consider how the incentives you put in place may attract people. Drawing from my 3beards experience, a good example is Silicon Drinkabout; as we’ve been around for a while, we’re lucky to have quite a few offers of sponsorship, but we don’t actually want the event sponsored every single week. If there are free drinks at a Friday night event every week without fail, then the event will have the reputation as somewhere to get free drinks on a Friday night and that’s not what the event is about. It’s about like-minded people meeting up and enjoying each other’s company, whether they have to pay for their own drinks or not.

You always need to consider your event’s purpose when structuring the incentives, what might seem like a good idea may actually have a negative impact on the people attending and the event itself.

Content

This is probably the most important element of your event and generally you’re going to need good people for it. These might be any of the following:

• Subject matter experts
• Industry leaders
• Popular commentators/Journalists
• Startups (for pitching events)

You could also count your attendees as content, if it’s a social or networking event.

All in all, there’s a lot of people that could be involved in your event and you can’t just expect them to come because you’ve invited them. In the same way that you have to think about the reasons that attendees may want to come to your event, you have to go through the same process with the people that form your content. However, with these people you can be a bit more targeted and scientific about it.

How to attract good speakers, panel members etc (event content):

• Always start with your personal network, this is going to be your easiest way to contact people and the one which you’re more likely to have a good success rate with.
• In the absence of a warm introduction, you can use social media to approach them, it’s important to engage them first, then ask them if they would be interested in attending once you have built up some rapport.
• Attend other events that they are speaking at and approach them, if the conversation goes well, then ask them if they would like to join your event. You can also look at the range of events they may have spoken at for guidance.
• Find out specifically what they enjoy talking about (or if they just enjoy talking and “being the expert”), they’re more likely to accept your invitation if that fits with what your event is about.
• You can also use previous guests and speakers to validate your event when asking future guests i.e. “Following on from our succesful event with CEO of NextBestThing.com, we’d like to invite you…”
• As well as this, you can also use expected turn out or previous metrics (engagement, attendance etc) to validate your event.

A few final thoughts on the people of events:

• It’s important to remember that unless you have a marketing budget or outstanding content, you’re unlikely to get 100 people to your first event.
• If you’re running a free event, be aware that you’ll probably experience drop off (signed up people not actually attending) of around 30–50%.
• Make sure that you look at the reliability of your speaker/content, if you have an event that focusses on one person, then you had better be pretty sure they’re coming!

Finally, when it comes to your attendee numbers, start small in both your expectations and targets and use the first events to perfect the format and learn the ropes. There will ALWAYS be something that doesn’t go to plan, better to iron out those wrinkles in front of 30 people than 300.

If you missed it, I covered Where to start and the “why” of events here.