Daniel was so excited to start his new marketing job for a nationally known lighting company. As he was settling into his new role, he had a strange meeting with his boss. Daniel was in charge of the company-wide, end-of-year picnic. He had never done event planning in his life, or so he thought.

Everyone is an Event Planner

You say you have never planned events, but maybe you have planned your child’s birthday party or your parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary. Sure, your job title may not have “event planner” in it; your job description may not have “plan events” in it. However, everyone in some way, shape or form is going to be involved in event planning.

The question is: can you scale the birthday party planning to a company-wide party?

I am here to tell you that it is possible with four foundational components to plan any event.

1. Conceptual Design

Conceptual Design is the process of brainstorming, exploring and researching new event ideas for the purpose of developing it into a tangible event.

In some cases, your company might hand you the basic idea for an event. Or your son might want a Lego-themed birthday. Take these preliminary concepts and get away to brainstorm, explore and research these ideas. If you have a team, take them out with you. Leave nothing off your paper.

You should be starting to fill out these types of questions:

What are the goals?
Who is invited?
When are we having the event?
What is the theme?
How is it financed?

2. Laying the Foundation

Once you have the concepts solidified, just like a house, you need to have a foundation to build upon. These are the details that must be planned long in advance of your event.

Where are you going to have your event? Choose a venue that fits the theme of the event. For example, an arcade might not be the best place to celebrate a 40^th year anniversary.
Who are you going to invite to your event? Do you need to market your event; if yes, how are you going to market?
Is there a special speaker you want to invite? You need to get it on their calendar as soon as possible.
Do you need to rent any equipment? How many tables are chairs do you need and which companies can you use to get tables.
Are you going to have food at your event? Who is going to provide the food?

3. Framing the House

Now that you have the foundation of the “event house” laid, you can start building upon it. Just like a house, you need to add plumbing, putting up walls, adding electrical, etc.

This is the time that you will start to implement things in your foundational event planning.

Scheduling someone to setup and teardown your event
Start implementing the invitations and marketing of the event
Purchase decorations and find a place to store
Do you have any media needs? Are you providing sound or do you need the venue to provide?

4. Finishing Touches

It is now time for executing your plans. How are you going to make this event happen? Here is some ‘day of’ ideas and actions.

Make sure you have a load in / load out schedule. This is a simple document that shows when and where everyone is supposed to be, what projects are supposed to be worked on at that time, and who is responsible.
Have a staff pre-event meeting. Remember that the staff is going to be the first people that interact with your guests. Make sure you are all on the same page to making the best experience possible for your guests.
Create a program schedule, and make sure everyone is aware of changes. From the stage, who is going to welcome everyone and who is going to introduce the speaker? These are important details for the media and production team to know.
Make sure that you take lots of note for a post-event debriefing. We can always learn how to grow and change from our events. Take lots of notes in order to plan your next event better!

The Event House

With these details, you are well on your way to creating an amazing event house! From planning your child’s birthday party to a cooperate event, keeping these four foundational components of event planning in mind will help you create memorable experiences for all your guests.

4 Foundational Components for Successful Events