Properly planning and organizing events are the roots for creating a memorable and successful one. The most detailed and well-thought out events are the ones that have the best chance at succeeding. Most administrators don’t take the time to properly plan and organize their events, will you? Hopefully this ForumBlogger article will aid you in your quest to creating an amazing and exciting event on your forum.

Create a Rough Idea of What You Want This Event to Be

You want to be able to start somewhere before speaking to your staff members on your forum. The first thing you should do is jot down a few key things about the event and anything that you think would be important to discuss when speaking with your staff. Make sure you have a rough idea of the amount of work that will be needed from the staff members and what you plan to put on the table.

Announce It to Your Staff

Once you have a rough idea of what you want this event to be, it is time to announce your plans to the staff. You could post this announcement in the staff room, or by any other means of staff communication. This can be a simple “get ready” announcement, with some of the details you drew up. Make sure they have a decent idea of what you are planning, you don’t need to go into detail at this point, that will come later on, but make sure that you give enough information so that there isn’t much confusion about what exactly is going to happen.

Plan a Staff Meeting

After the staff know what you are planning, it is time to have a meeting with them to start working on the details. Planning the staff meeting could be done in the announcement if you want. Make sure that the most amount of staff members can be online at once during this meeting, because the more people, the better. This meeting is where you give your detailed notes to your staff, and allow the event to become something better. Allow you and your staff to brainstorm possibilities for the event. How could you make it better? Is this necessary for the event? Will adding this thing be good or bad? Those are the types of things you should be talking about in your meeting. You want your staff to grow together during this process and you want the best possible event plans to come through. That is what you are planning, so make sure you are prepared. Do not go into the meeting empty-handed with no clue of where to start the conversation.

I would suggest having this conversation over some sort of chat system, because it is extremely easy to archive that conversation. It is also the quickest and most efficient way to have a conversation like this.

The Staff Meeting

Note: remember the techniques to use to help motivate your staff, don’t just start talking about the work first.

Once you have your meeting, make sure you have Microsoft Word, Notepad, or something similar to those programs opened. You want to make sure you keep track of important elements talked about in your meeting. I always kept Notepad opened when I talked to someone about project plans and it helped me a lot for the future. Jot down anything and everything that will need to be remembered.

You want to make sure to leave room for brainstorming between everyone. I’m sure that once you give your event plan details, there will be some great ideas and discussions that will arise. You need to be the leader of the discussion at all times. Make sure the things discussed are relevant and beneficial to the overall plans.

Once the meeting is over, save your file and post it on the forums for quick and easy access.

Setting Up Event Planning Forums

Now that you and your staff have a good idea of how you are planning this event, it is time to set up specific event planning forums. I’ve had up to 23 planning forums, but I doubt you will need as many. You will need an “Event Plans” forum where all the general information will be held. This is where you will keep most of the plans so that it is easily accessible by all of the staff members at any time.

I suggest you set up the following topics in the “Event Plans” forum:

• Deadlines – this is where all your important deadlines will be posted. You will probably need to be consistently updating this topic and you will need to remind your staff to keep looking at it.
• Specific Jobs – If a group of individual has a specific task that they need to fulfill for this event, then have a topic for each group/individual. This is the easiest and most efficient way to do this. That person or group will just need to keep checking that topic and it will be easy to relay information between you and the staff team. You can also keep deadlines there if needed.
• Uploads – most events need some sort of uploads, for things such as banners, signatures, etc. so the best way to manage this is to keep one upload topic where everything can easily be managed and accessed. With this setup, you won’t need to dig through countless topics and posts to find uploads your staff had for the event. If it seems that you will need to upload a lot of things, consider a whole upload forum for better organization.
• Your Personal To-Do Forum/Topic – I found this to be extremely helpful when planning large-scale events on forums. You will most likely need a place where you can put down all the information and have it ordered as you like. I would set up my own forum for this sort of thing, where only I had access to. This allowed me to do whatever I needed to keep organized for this event. I suggest you do the same as well.

Now You Have Planned and Organized Your Event

You have all of the necessary tools and steps to accomplish your plans now. Take your time and never rush your them for the event. You want to make them as detailed as possible. Remember, you only have one chance to pulling this event off, you might as well make it great! Properly planning and organizing the event is the root of a successful one. The more time you take planning and organizing it all out, the better it will turn out to be.

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3. How to Receive Direct Feedback From Members
4. Successful Staff Communication
5. Break The “Most Members Online” Record – Achieving Your Goals