What a great idea - really!

30 June 2011

I’ve had a few ideas in my time – some good, some not so good and some well, let’s just say my audiences were not quite ready for them! As we all know ideas come and go. Some of us are full of them; others well….it’s just not their thing.

Over the past 20 years I have come across a lot of people who had an idea and it goes like this….we’ve decided to organise an event – it’ll be brilliant, create loads of great PR, generate lots of news leads! And they are right properly organised events can do all of those things.

THEY BRAINSTORM…….coffee gets drunk, biscuits get consumed and yes the ideas flow

So which of these event ideas do you select? Which one is best?

Having made a note of all the ideas generated at the meeting, it’s now time to start sifting through them and reducing this long list of ideas into a shorter list that the ‘event team’ really likes. This will include incomplete ideas that are considered to be of sufficient interest to warrant further work.

With your ideas to hand, it is now necessary to make a more reasoned and honest assessment of the relative merits of each idea.

I suggest you evaluate your thoughts against the following criteria:

1. How well does it match up with your original event purpose and your reason for organizing the event in the first place

2. Audience acceptance (marketing). Try testing your ideas out on a few people who you think might attend and see what they say. Do they like it? Do they understand what they are coming to? Would they recommend it to a friend?

3. Can you afford it (financial)? You now need to start getting some estimates in place to give some idea how much your event is going to cost and or how much money it might raise

4. Can you or your team plan and deliver the event successfully (operational)? Do you have the skills to do it or do you need to buy in and / or recruit some expert help?

A word to the wise – please be honest with yourself and everybody else. Your idea just may not be the best idea; so be brave and let it go, and then be ready to back the ‘selected’ idea 100%. And do try and keep the ‘well I could have told that ….comments to yourself! Not always easy. I know.

So till the next time - keep on delivering the best events you can

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Thank you for reading my blog!

Chris Powell

Director, The Event Expert

“Helping you deliver your own outstanding events”