Your Secret Guide to Plan a Successful Large-Scale Event

Hosting a large-scale gathering is not a piece of cake. You may have had prior experience with it, but every time you are going to witness unique challenges. Whether it is a product launch, a business conference, industry shows, or music concerts – all of these are puzzles with thousand pieces, each one being distinct, yet co-related in some way. Hence, it is imperative to resort to an extra measure of planning, coordination, and management.

You have to note that bigger events demand everything big. You need to upscale your planning time, budgets, teams and resources. And because your purpose and audience cannot be the same each time; you have to be flexible and adaptable to devise programs that suit your event attendees’ needs.

No doubt, delivering large-scale events are overwhelming. But at the same time, they allow you to reap immense rewards if you execute them right. So, if you wish to stay in the industry for long, strengthen your skill set and follow these tips –

1. Define your concept and scope

The first and foremost thing is always to lay down an overall plan for the event at least twelve months in advance. Some of the aspects to consider here are the purpose of organizing the event, the time duration for which it will be held, the budget limit, event venue or location, number of attendees anticipated on that day, sponsorships, catering booking, and similar other concerns.

2. Assign appropriate team members

As an experienced lad, you may want to handle everything related to the event on your own, but it is best to involve other skilled individuals to lighten the load. So, break your event planning into stages and give a good thought to the number of hands you need along. You might need plenty of smart heads to do the organizing and possibly many more to help with setup, execution, and cleanup of the event.

3. Put together a planning checklist

When it comes to the handling of a large-scale audience especially during a corporate event, take one step at a time. Put together a detailed instruction for your team and volunteers and understand all the things that need to be organized. Focus on one area, sort it out and then move ahead.  Important aspects to take into account for creating an elaborated checklist include event date and time, agenda, schedule, guest speakers (if any), marketing and advertising, registration process, floor plans, signage, decorations, food and beverage and much more.

4. Prepare for the unexpected

During large-scale events, there are higher chances of things going wrong. So, sit with your team and brainstorm all the worst-case scenarios that are possible on the event day. Address them one by one and devise a Plan-B just in case things don’t work out as planned. Be prepared for guest speakers’ fight, lost wifi connection, transportation strike, bad weather, earthquake, fire, overcrowded location, and more of such problems.