Event Management Guidelines

Events are our presentation to the world; it tells everyone who we are. Undermining such a fact would affect us dramatically, in this article I will take you through the general steps of how to plan for your own event. For a better understanding I will be using an example, an awards night event.

Planning an event involves 2 stages: Purpose and Process. These stages will affect the whole event going forward.

Purpose: why are you having this event? what are your goals? What do you want your guests to get out of the event? Who will attend it?. Here you need to know the why, is this a private event or public, birthday party or corporate event or a concert, casual or formal!!! Out of that you will know what kind of guests you will have. Here it will be good to use some of your imagination to visualize the event. For example a birthday party can be a casual party where guests can come in shorts, or even formal if it was for a VIP like company CEO. Within our example of the awards night, the purpose is clearer, this is about honoring some guests, and this will be a formal event. But is it international or national event?

When you identify the purpose, you need to specify a starting budget, be reasonable of course. If you have done this before you know some information but if you haven't and you are an earth living human being, go back to the purpose and try to imagine a cost and have an open mind, as it might grow or reduce. Within our awards night, this is a formal event so your budget should include the venue, event setup, awards, event contents... etc. if we are talking about 300 pax your event cost will range between at least USD 100,000 within a 5 stars hotel for a local event to up to few millions if this is an international event.

Now comes the process, this is how you will want this event to come to life, here you have to choose a role, do you want to enjoy it or run all over the place when a small thing is missing like more water is required? Do you want to manage it or operate it? Within our example you will need to hire an event management company to bring your event to life. You also might need to hire a PR company and a Media company.
The purpose of your event will show you the way, the process is your ride on the way to reach your target.

As we know now how to proceed, you need to avoid two common mistakes.

First, based on the size and purpose of your event, do not undermine the size of the task in hand, if you are not an event professional with experience in the field, do not think it is an easy job, this is your presentation, you do not design your cloth, you shop for it. You will need to hire an event management company.

Second, some people would hire 2 or more than one company to execute one event, although I would not recommend this at any level, but if you do so, you will need to identify a company to be the manager of the event and it would be a good advice if their role is only managing the event and nothing more.

These are the Event Planning Guidelines and the common mistakes to avoid.