Creating Ritual: Being the Hosts

Putting on an event can be stressful, costly, time consuming, and sometimes even thankless. I hope this article is able to provide information that may be helpful. As with any social gathering, the time put into planning allows for more smoothly run occasions. That's not to say things don't go wrong, or don't deviate from what's planned, but a few of the things listed below will help you to deal with mishaps and enjoy the things that do go well.

These are the major areas of concern to be addressed: duration of event, publication, location, facilities available, food arrangements, costs, and site rules. I remember many years ago I worked for a county government office and one thing the person heading up the conference planning did was delegate areas of responsibility. The team then set daily goals and weekly goals and met every week to evaluate progress. When they were within 3 weeks of the conference date, they met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Once you have established the dates and times for the event, you can then start publicity. News papers, word of mouth, internet, and flyers (at establishment sympathetic to your cause) are ways that work well to pulicize your event. Media attention, both on tv and news and magazine articles are widely circulated and have the potential to disburse the information widely. Be sure to provide contact information. Email is safest, then PO Box Addresses, the phone can be a problem as it opens you up to crank calls, calls at all times of night, and calls that are harrying in nature. I don't recommend giving out a street address as it provides the least measure of safety. The person who does your publicity doesn't necessarily need to be an artist or even artistically inclined, but it helps. Getting the word out is half the battle. Getting them in is the other half.

Get the location established as soon as possible. Even if you don't have the information when you start publicizing, you can encorporate this information into your publicity afterwards. By providing a contact number, you can give them a means to follow up for further information. Don't forget to update flyers distribute them where the old ones were left previously and pick up the old ones that remain.

You need to eventually nail down what will be available on site. Will there be port a potties, showers, cabins, tenting areas, RV hook ups? Will it be necessary to block rooms at a local hotel? When you finally publish your complete flyer (allow at least a month beforehand), you need to provide this information as well. This is one of the factors that will affect how much it will cost per attendee.

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