As someone who has organized many dozens of events, and attended hundreds, my core thesis for running a good event is: "Make events attendees want"
The only good events are those made specifically to benefit the attendees of the event, not for the sponsors, not for the organizers.
There are many different formats for having a good event, there are lots of basic things that are important to get right. All of those things can seem intimidating, for good reason. It takes a special type of person to get all of the details of an event right.
That said, the events that I have enjoyed the most are the ones that I know were built solely for the benefit of the attendees.
This has been a tricky insight for me to get. Every event starts out as one to benefit the attendees. The issue is that at some point as an organizer, you need money: Finding a space to host the event, providing food, providing infrastructure. All of these things require money and once money is involved, you have to make a compromise somewhere to get that money.
The typical compromise that an event will make to get money is to get sponsors. Sadly, the traditional model for sponsorship is one that will insidiously shift the focus of the event from one that is built to benefit the attendees, to one that is built to benefit the sponsors.
To run an event that doesn't suck, you have to make the event for the benefit of the attendees.
2. Safety needs: security, safety (both in the practical and the psychological sense)
3. Belongingness & Love needs: while this is something we cannot control, making space and time for actual contact between people might be a good idea. Can be combined with the things in point 1
4. Esteem needs: Feeling of accomplishment (the actual content of the event needs to give the audience something new and valuable)
5. Self-actualization: Again something we cannot easily control, but there might be ways of having the attendees actually do something themselves in a creative and/or productive sense. But my guess would be that if you rocked the first 4 points, this one is a nice extra.
Too many events focus mostly on point 4 and forget the importance of the first 3.
I’m the author. I never thought about the Maslow connection, but now that you’ve made it, it is TOTALLY on point. Thank you!
There’s one aspect of all this I didn’t mention in my post but it’s germane here: this is a group of men and women whom I LOVE in a way you’d have to be another veteran or maybe a cop or a fireman to appreciate.
We’ve bled together. We’ve buried the same friends. So I don’t have to work very hard to muster up the emo stuff at the very top of Maslow’s pyramid. I FEEL it. And so the audience does too.
That’s probably pretty hard to fabricate if it isn’t already there. But if it IS there, it’s a pretty powerful foundation for a host relationship.
> 3. Belongingness & Love needs: while this is something we cannot control, making space and time for actual contact between people might be a good idea. Can be combined with the things in point 1
This is part of what ensuring that panels are representative and do not just consist of the first four or five white males you can think of. Ensure your speakers come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, and even consider people to keynote who can provide lessons from entirely different professions and walks of life.
Every event starts out as one to benefit the attendees
Not so sure. Events like Dreamforce and other company-branded and sponsored events seem to have started with the goal of making more money/selling more stuff, and then had to go figure out how to make it look appealing enough that people would attend. (Though I still don't really know why anyone would attend Dreamforce.)
If that was the only goal of event organizers, they would set up a gigantic party with nothing else in it, as that is what attendees “want”. However, this might not be appropriate if the event is, for instance, a programming conference. The goal of a programming conference could be expressed as building professional contacts (i.e. contacts based on the other person’s professional capabilities), and spreading knowledge and advancements in the programming field. However, if you ask attendees, almost nobody actually asks for this, and instead only ask for fun parties with lots to drink. If the organizers only listen to this kind of feedback, the result would not fulfill the purpose of a programming conference.
Here's what's actually needed for an event to not suck:
- Plenty of free water
- Plenty of food, preferably free
- Plenty of seating space
- Plenty of bathrooms
- Clear indications as to where all of those things are placed
I'll attend almost any event if I can sit down with a drink, some food and make small talk with people and maybe even network! And even if your presentation is empty and boring (as most of them are) I will still remember your event as a decent one because I was able to enjoy it my way and get something out of it.
If offering food intended to serve as a meal, organizers should ask for food allergies and make sure those people are covered, including proper labelling of the food that's offered. This usually affects other attendees too, since it just sucks to know a colleague will have to go hungry until he can get McDonald's at 11pm because no one knows what may or may not contain nuts (or worse, gets wrong info and ends up having an anaphylactic shock)
Same with mobility impairments. Organizers should make sure every important space is accessible if they have attendants in wheelchairs etc., including toilets.
It’s not enough to just make the event accessible to those with disabilities and make the food accessible to those with dietary requirements. You need to advertise it. If you don’t advertise it you’ve done it for nothing.
Nobody is going to rock up in a wheelchair unless they know they’ll be able to get in the door.
If you aren’t saying what dietary requirements you are catering for in event descriptions then anyone who has them is going to eat beforehand.
If in order to make your event to be accessible you require extra actions before the event on the attendee then it’s not accessible.
Airlines are the worst at this. At so many of them if you have dietary requirements or accessibility needs you have to make phone calls, send emails or go to obscure desktop only sections of their website after booking. If you want to be accessible then provide the information upfront and learn the right things to ask for in order to make requests seamless.
When I'm involved in running an event, my number one priority is an abundance of decent food and a variety of beverages. You don't want your guests feeling anxious about whether they'll be able to snag a bag of goldfish crackers before they run out. Also, even if you're trying to throw a healthy event, it's good to have at least some of the provided food and drink be decadent. For example, buy several cartons of sparkling water, but at least one carton of coke. Once a few people start walking around with a coke, other people will see it and suddenly feel thirsty, even if they have the impulse control to grab a water instead.
For my daughter's birthday party I bought a case of coke, diet coke, and dr pepper free, just to cover the sweetener preferences of all the parents. That's on top of reduced sugar juice boxes and plenty of sparkling water varieties. Off course we had to cancel the party because of preschool germs, so now my trunk is full of party supplies...
Lack of seating (outwith the conference rooms, I mean) is the absolute worst! Actually, I don't think I've ever attended a conference where there were enough seating and tables, which is super annoying at lunch time.
Exits to the outside get left open (probably because of those legal or fire code restrictions) but such things as exits to another level get blocked this way. Even just doing this to entrances has the same problem--the maps aren't going to say that the entrance is blocked, and there's seldom a good enough sign to make this known.
Went to a great Google event where you got a bag only as you left. In fact I wasn't even aware there was a bag until I was leaving and one was nicely passed to me. Had some nice bits to share around the office, and also some things I still have to hand. And a Google home mini - a chunk of the people who came with me moved to the Google home devices after that event, after being amazon people before.
Ah, but you don't know if the bag of tat contains vital information (event schedule, car park code...) until you've already left the registration desk.
You go to the conference registration desk, you tell them who you are. They hand you your name badge, and a bag.
The bag contains various things - printed schedule, lanyard to hang your badge from, and whatever assorted tat the conference sponsors have paid to have put in there.
For some conference attendees the bag is convenient, because when they visit vendors' stalls and get handed leaflets and brochures and free pens; and if they didn't have a bag it'd be inconvenient to carry.
Of course, different conferences have different norms - free-entry trade shows will often offer attendees bags as talking to vendors is the whole point. Academic conferences won't. Fan conventions might or might not, it depends. Beer festivals will offer beer glasses instead. Cosplayers never have visible bags, although they sometimes have giant suitcases.
My only rule with goodie bags is that the sponsor items should be things that people will need anyway and that need to be replaced often or you need multiple of.
Good examples are pens and spiral notebooks, one can never have too many. Really bad things I have gotten are rubber wristbands and a "phone holder" that was supposed to hold the phone in place while charging.
Also emphasis on the "replaced often" part. Most people will probably use a bottle opener or a keychain thing, but they only need one. What is the chance that they needed one right before the event and that they will keep using the one the event gave them? Or for example, water bottles seemed like a cool idea when I first got one from an event, but now I have 5 water bottles with sponsor logos and I still only use the one that came with my carbonated water maker.
This article doesn't suck. I've been on event staff quite a bit, seen 'em take all sorts of forms, and from my experience the author here is right on the money. Worth reading and believing.
The poorer events I've been to were generally marred by attempts to bring some special extra goodie of some sort, while failing at the things the author emphasizes: deliver competently and in a timely manner the salient things YOUR EVENT is about, while caring for the attendees.
It's really that simple. Your event is the purpose. If there's meaning to it, you're the one who has to bring that meaning. In doing that, you serve the attendees your message, your purpose, with a due respect for not so much THEIR purpose but the fact that you're proposing to replace whatever else they might be doing with your thing.
End result is not about whether they went away bribed with goodies, but whether going along with your purpose ends up seeming to them like time well spent. Ideally, they're so into sharing the experience with you and others, that they end up counting it a great, treasured experience.
This reminds me of how my friend Nick Gray throws parties. If you're in Austin - you've probably been to one of them.
He's got a pretty good overview on different types of events to host (sometimes personally the details feel overkill to me but it's like an SOP for your social life and it works (https://party.pro/happyhour/)).
If you're trying to upgrade your social life & build more connections - his book is easily worth it several times over (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544530072).
It also doesn't look good that they put a clip from said virtual event where its clear they couldn't kick out of Bluetooth headset mode and proceed to have all your attendees listen to them in glorious 1990s PCM quality.
I’m the author. I guess that was sort of my point: as long as I got what turned out to be the IMPORTANT stuff right, nobody really cared about the audio. I mean something like 80% of our attendees were multiple attendees!
In that SPECIFIC use case remember: it was a Zoom call. So with a good headset and a quiet room I was already top 20%, audio-wise.
Once you get that far, what you have to say and how you say it are WAY more important than whether you can rock a little extra baritone.
This is a sentiment that reads well but isn’t really true. Listening to bad audio is very fatiguing for people and it asks much more of them than good audio does, if you desire their attention.
Video doesn’t matter as much. It’s very nice to have but you can get by with poor video. People can mentally fill in the blanks. But audio is not negotiable; audio quality is directly representative of your respect for your audience.
Totally agree, audio quality is super important. I'm an audio engineer so of course I'm biased, but high quality microphones, amplifiers, speakers and engineers (operators) make such a big difference at any event. Proper lighting is also very important. There's no need for big bright lights. Dim all of the lights down, and add a touch of color with room uplights. Make sure it's not so dark that folks can't see the ground well (tripping hazards) but make sure it's dim enough so that it creates a relaxed atmosphere.
I was curious what SNL factoid you were referring to -- here is the snippet from TFA in hopes others find it interesting or at least convenient :)
> Simply put, an event’s format is a plan for the event, expressed in units of time. For example, every episode of Saturday Night Live follows this exact format. The format is so consistent that, in 45 years of weekly run time, the show deviated from its published format only nine times.
Great article. I have hosted hundreds of happy hours, dinner parties, cocktail parties etc. Here are a few things I'd add:
- Name tags. Please, please use name tags. They might seem "formal" or "corporate" but they're also inclusive (no cliques!). I'd rather feel awkward asking someone to wear a name tag than feel awkward forgetting their name.
- Consider hosting on what I call "non red-level days," aka days that are NOT socially competitive. Socially competitive days or "red-level days" in America tend to be Thurs, Fri, and Sat nights. Also holidays and long weekends. People schedule big stuff on these nights. Make your party easy to attend: host it on a Monday, Tues, or Wed night.
- Set a start AND an end time, and mention both when you collect RSVPs and send reminder messages. End times help get people to show up on time. They also give people an easy out to leave.
- 2 hours is the best length of time for an event like this. I like 6-8P or 7-9P.
- Get a group photo! You'll be proud of your event. And you can use the photo when you invite people to your next party.
- Don't forget to send reminder messages to everyone who RSVP'd leading up to your event. I like sending my reminder messages 1 week prior, 4 days before, and then on the morning of.
Good luck!! I think more people should host parties and happy hours. It changed my life and helped me build a network and relationships to launch my last company, Museum Hack (sold 2019).
I recently self-published a book of every little tip and trick from hosting events to teach you how to host your first party. The book is called 'The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings' and it has 230+ reviews on Amazon and Audible here-- https://amzn.to/39rfb2V Happy to give a satisfaction guarantee for any HN readers. You can Venmo request me @nickgray and email your receipt to nick@party.pro if you don't think my book is filled with actionable, tactical, extremely practical advice for hosting events. You can read the first few chapters on my site here https://party.pro/book-readnow/
OK good luck!! You should host a party!! Your event will be awesome!! We could all use some new friends these days.
Eh, I've tried organizing events. I don't have the real estate to host, so that means locking in 6-8 attendees for a restaurant reservation two weeks in advance. That means interacting with the same 3-4 people and their partners. I quit after about ten attempts, and have not been invited to anything myself since. I don't think anyone actually enjoyed those brunches.
> - Don't forget to send reminder messages to everyone who RSVP'd leading up to your event. I like sending my reminder messages 1 week prior, 4 days before, and then on the morning of.
I'd perceive that as too many. Leave out the one 4 days before and it'd be fine IMO.
with all due respect: no I disagree and here's why.
The number 1 fear of a new or first-time event host is that nobody will show up to their party. People are TERRIFIED to host, they often DO NOT host, because of this. Or, worse, they worry that only 3 or 4 people will show up, and their event or party will be awkward.
What I've found is that the best way to get people to ACTUALLY show up (besides obviously throwing a great event with great people) is to remain top of mind. Does that feel a little spammy? Maybe. But each of the reminder messages helps to show that you take your event seriously. It shows that you're going to put on a thoughtful event.
I also include little "Guest Bios" in this message 4 days before. Guest Bios are like my Secret Weapon to getting great attendance. I wrote about them here: https://party.pro/guestbios/
I've hosted hundreds of events and sent thousands of reminder messages. I have never once been told, "You spammed me with too many reminder messages for a free party!" Instead I've seen around a 95% attendance rate, from the number of RSVPs to the actual number of attendees at the event.
Often times the advice about hosting a party seems obvious or counter-intuitive. And I think your response of "That's too many!" is, like, I think a lot of people feel that way? But I believe keeping an event top of mind is important if you're serious about having good attendance. Hope this didn't come across as an attack! I just want people to have a great event- and a lot of that simply boils down to good attendance. Open to pushback if you still feel strongly against it.
I think it is a fine number. In my experience people need a ton of reminders. More than you think. I would contact people multiple times and always someone would forget. If you are not top of their memory stack, they don't remember.
Here are my two cents about events, in-person and virtual.
- Please, no fake influencers. If you give off the vibe that you are selling something or promoting yourself, I have already turned off or logged off.
- Emphasize the message. No long introductions. What is it you are telling me? I am here for the earth shattering message you said you were going to tell me. Fill in the details later.
- Your monologue should be finished in 20 minutes. The interesting part is the Q&A. Be prepared for the Q&A. Yes, the audience will ask stupid questions because we didn't get what you were telling us. Repeat your message ad nauseum until we get the point.
- Wrap up and give us an email so we can contact you.
I'm a big fan of Q&A, but I really hate conferences where Q&A is where people go and promote themselves or their project (or fake-influencers, as you say).
"I work on X (usually with a 10 min intro) and would really love hearing your thoughts on our project/product"
Discouraging self-promotion goes a long way (besides saying "I work at X")
We solved that problem by giving every intro a VERY tight time constraint, 2 min I think. I’d make ‘em stay inside those lines, but then I would also find an interesting point in their speil & ask a leading question to draw them out for another minute.
So nobody drones on and you maintain control of the format, but everybody still feels like they got to say their piece in front of an interested audience.
Oh also: there was often a previous attendee on the call with a similar or complementary story. So I would often make that intro right there and use the opportunity to get a quick update from that person.
It made for a really organic flow and the sound bites were short enough that nobody got to be boring for long. Not even me. :)
100% agreed. It's noticeable and wonderful when there's enforced "No Self Promotion" clauses with conferences or talks. Improves the quality of questions and discussions immensely by giving space for people with real questions.
Interesting bullet points but I keep clicking on these kind of headlines waiting to hear someone come up with a good method for how to balance an IRL audience with real time remote online participants in a way that fosters interaction. It's not even common to let remote attendees into Q&A etc so there is rarely any benefit vs just watching the event vod on youtube. It's an unnecessary blocker to a potentially much bigger audience and reduces the overall value of assembling people with like minded interests together in the first place.
Chaos communications congress has remote participation helpers sitting in the back and monitoring the official remote participation channels to today questions.
I’m the author. That’s something we always wanted to do, but the show kind of ran its course before we had a good opportunity.
FWIW, I wanted to do that BECAUSE I had the sense that the format we were already using would work well for a combined online/IRL audience. Basically treat the whole IRL room as one Zoom caller, with the camera focused on whom ever had the mic.
If I were to try this again with an IRL component, I’d definitely use this framework as my starting point.
The primary component of an event must be to know what its purpose is. After the event, if everybody had fun and would go again, but nobody learned anything new or met any new people, would the event be considered a success? The referenced “RINGKNOCKER” events would not be, since they had other explicit goals. The event must be designed to be fun to attend while maximizing the actual goal of the event.
Far too many people seem to believe that the goal of any and all events is simply “fun”, and leave it at that.
My teams' weekly syncs take a similar format to this.
At a high level, the structure for the larger team (10, full remote):
* 3-5 minutes unstructured social banter
* 5-10 minutes general team update
* 10 minutes individual updates
* 5 minutes review recent releases and new bugs
We've followed that format for years, and I think one of the greatest things I did is guarantee that I'm not talking at them for the full 30 minutes. In fact, each person contributes for at least a minute in their individual update. I'll often have someone else talk about something they've been working on as the general team update, and always have the person who identified a bug talk us through it. As the host, I only need to come up with a few minutes of content per week and keep the flow of the meeting going.
The one point from the article that I disagree with (at least in the context of my meetings) is the necessity of strict timing. Some meetings only need to be 20 minutes, and I'm not going to artificially extend it if it isn't necessary. Others go over time by a few minutes, and while some people may need to drop early, the meeting is recorded and agenda/notes are published so they can be easily referenced as necessary.
The key to producing a great virtual event is to understand that you are actually producing a TV show, and lean into that.
The linked blog post makes that point implicitly by comparing to Saturday Night Live. I want to make it explicitly: virtual events ARE shows.
That doesn’t mean it needs to be SNL or Game of Thrones. More like a newscast, probably, for most events. Watch Meet the Press or one of the evening cable shows, or even a network nightly news show to get a feel for the pacing, how they mix monologue, dialogue, and canned video, and any little extra details like lighting or transitions.
The biggest thing is that a minute is a really long time in a TV show. The networks cover all the most important news of the day in one 30-minute broadcast (more like 22 min of content after commercials are accounted for). Why do you need 90 minutes?
(It’s ok to go for 90 minutes but you better account for the value of all 90 of them.)
The mission was to create connections between shipmates and comrades-in-arms who couldn’t get together physically due to the COVID crisis. We hosted over 80 weekly Zoom calls that brought together thousands of people who learned together how to activate a powerful network they ALREADY had, but hadn’t learned how to leverage.
Running RINGKNOCKER was an incredible experience, all the more so because I was able to do it from my home on the island of Bali!
Like all good things, RINGKNOCKER eventually ran its course: attendance dropped as the COVID lockdowns came to an end, and we decided to finish on a high note rather than run it into the ground. While the RINGKNOCKER operation is firmly in the rear-view mirror, the community and I continue to benefit from the connections we made during that time.
I’m a software engineer by trade, and I won’t pretend to possess some arcane secret about running great events. But if RINGKNOCKER taught me ANY important lesson about hosting events, it’s this one:
Brilliance is a nice-to-have. NOT SUCKING IS ESSENTIAL!
The only good events are those made specifically to benefit the attendees of the event, not for the sponsors, not for the organizers.
There are many different formats for having a good event, there are lots of basic things that are important to get right. All of those things can seem intimidating, for good reason. It takes a special type of person to get all of the details of an event right.
That said, the events that I have enjoyed the most are the ones that I know were built solely for the benefit of the attendees.
This has been a tricky insight for me to get. Every event starts out as one to benefit the attendees. The issue is that at some point as an organizer, you need money: Finding a space to host the event, providing food, providing infrastructure. All of these things require money and once money is involved, you have to make a compromise somewhere to get that money.
The typical compromise that an event will make to get money is to get sponsors. Sadly, the traditional model for sponsorship is one that will insidiously shift the focus of the event from one that is built to benefit the attendees, to one that is built to benefit the sponsors.
To run an event that doesn't suck, you have to make the event for the benefit of the attendees.