An agile approach to event planning
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Whatever your role, if you work in the events industry you’re all too familiar with the pressure that comes from constant hard deadlines. But it doesn’t have to be that way; there is a way to better manage your events to reduce the stress. In this session I’ll share some lessons learnt from agile software development, and talk you through my approach to event planning, which allows you to adapt, innovate and stay flexible. I’ll show you how you can borrow the principles of agile methodology for event project management, which emphasise collaboration, user feedback and continuous improvement, to ensure that your event is successful and you stay in control.
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An agile approach to event planning
- 1. An agile approach to event planning Annabel Bradford Marketing Communities & Events Manager, Redgate
- 2. Redgate Software 638,735 Users rely on Redgate’s software 91% Fortune 100 companies that use our tools Redgate supports the community – est. 2000 • Sponsorship program for events, meetings, and groups. • Conference schedule of industry and community events where we exhibit at with a crew • Friends of Redgate Program & Speaker Program • Redgate’s annual conference - welcomes hundreds of Database professionals – our customers & prospects • Educates our audience about Redgate products and provides a memorable and insightful event experience • 18 events in 5 years: including US roadshows, US & UK annual events SQL in the City – est. 2011 “The world’s most trusted tools for database changes”
- 3. Today’s session • The #eventprof lifestyle • Traditional event planning processes • An alternative • Agile in practice • Key strengths of the agile approach • Measuring success and continually improving
- 5. Event planning processes - Most common approach to event planning - Setting things out too early can restrict you
- 6. Event planning processes - Times have changed - Being reactive isn’t enough - High attendee expectations - You need to work in a way that supports you, your team, your objectives, and your attendees
- 7. An alternative As Dory says, “…there’s always another way”
- 8. “Agile” “The ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent environment.” There are 12 Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto – The guiding practices that support teams in implementing and executing with agility.
- 9. Key principles that apply > User feedback > Collaboration > Continuous improvement 1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. 6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to- face conversation. 12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
- 10. How to ‘be’ agile Lessons learnt from agile project management at Redgate Innovate • Gather user feedback to improve through innovations Stay flexible • Keep an open mind and collaborate with colleagues Adapt • Change tack to continually improve and exceed expectations
- 11. Agile event planning in reality – tip #1 Customer feedback should guide your next event
- 12. Agile event planning in reality – tip #2 Collaborate using whiteboards and Team stand-ups
- 13. Agile event planning in reality – tip #3 Never be afraid to continually improve
- 14. Agile event planning in reality – bonus tip Communicate the event objectives
- 15. Measuring success and continually improving • Team satisfaction levels • Event KPIs • Post-event retrospectives 5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. 7. Working software is the primary measure of progress. 12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.
- 16. Key strengths of the agile approach Embrace it and adapt your way of working • Less stress • In control • Better work-life balance • More successful events I really can’t pin point any draw-backs
- 17. Takeaways 1. Collaborate via whiteboards and team stand-ups 2. Gather customer feedback to guide your next event 3. Never be afraid to continually improve 4. Communicate objectives
- 18. Thank you Get in touch on twitter @abjbradford Email: annabel.bradford@red-gate.com Slides: slideshare.net/annabelredgate/
Editor's Notes
- Welcome and hello everyone. I’m Annabel and I’m a Cambridge marketer and event prof. I’m looking forward to getting to know some of you after today’s session. But I thought I’d start by telling you a little bit about me: For the past 7 years I’ve specialised in creating, marketing, and managing events and communities marketing for Redgate software. Back in 2013 I earnt a CIM Professional Marketing Diploma from the Cambridge Marketing College. 10 years ago I graduated from Lancaster University with a Marketing BSc (hons) degree, which led me to work in marketing for Scudamore’s Punting Company, and then at Zipcar in Canada, before returning to Cambridge and joining Redgate in 2009.
- For those of you who aren’t familiar with Redgate – we produce technical products for Microsoft IT professionals all over the world. Our tools make working with Microsoft’s database and development technology simple. You’ll be familiar Redgate’s customers. Redgate has been supporting the community and has done since the company was founded. - Sponsorship program for events, meetings, and groups who get together to evolve their knowledge of SQL, .NET, DevOps, etc. - Conference schedule of industry and community events we exhibit at – raise awareness of Redgate, share marketing messages, demo our products, source MQLs, network with influencers - Friends of Redgate Program – community of influencers and ambassadors (non-employees) who support us - Speaker program (employees & ambassadors) empowering presenters to feature Redgate tools when presenting in the wild > I created Redgate’s customer conference back in 2011 which is called “SQL in the City”, and have been event planning and managing the event for the past 6 years.
- Onto today’s topic which is ‘event planning’ and my session is about how to adopt an agile approach to event planning In this session I’ll briefly talk about traditional event planning and then I’ll share my approach, which I’ve adopted based on my experiences of working in a software company. (Here’s what I’m going to cover ….)
- This is us, we all live the #eventprof lifestyle! Who here is busy? Does anyone work long hours? I’m sure we’re all under pressure to meet hard deadlines Does anyone feel stressed? Of course, almost everyone in the room experiences this. And we’ve learnt to accept it. However, consider for a minute what might be causing all of this.
- I think the cause of our late nights and stress is actually the traditional planning process we’ve been using. Traditional methods we’ve all used are Gaant charts, calendar views, to do lists, and more. Doing a event plan for 12 months might seem great, because then it’s over and done with. But once it’s all set in stone, you’re then unable to change things easily. Deciding on a schedule and allocating budget at a single point in time means you’re no longer able to react to changes in circumstances. >>Back in January 2011 I remember planning out the annual event schedule based on us exhibiting an annual event taking place in November (as that’s when it always happens). It wasn’t until the May that the organizers let me know it was due to take place in October. It was a nightmare, the schedule was fixed, I’d already planned to do a different event in October and the budget had all been allocated. Not only did we loose out exhibiting at the event we’d hoped to exhibit at, but also because I’d originally scheduled the event for November I had kept the rest of the month clear, due to the size of the event, so we were then were left with an event free November.
- Times have changed and I don’t believe traditional event planning methods are fit-for-purpose anymore. We need to be able to react, adapt and also preempt things, depending on the circumstances. Having a master plan that doesn’t allow for change doesn’t support this. It halts creativity and causes us stress because we loose control of the situation. Planning can’t just be done in isolation, because you need to take on board learnings as you go. Traditional event planning doesn’t give you the opportunity to gather insights to guide the next event or project. It relies on you doing the research once, which if you’re using this 6 months down the line, you’re working with out of date data, and you’re likely to loose sight of what attendees want. Overall the traditional event planning processes I’d been following wasn’t doing me any favours, so I wanted to find a solution that would help both me, and my events.
- It turns out that there is an alternative way to approach event planning that doesn’t make you swim around in circles. When you see Finding Dory later this month – you’ll here her say “there’s always another way”, and she’s quite right, there is, but you have to go out and find it. I found it through observing my co-workers. I’d been working in a company with lots of software project managers – all of whom were also working to hard deadlines, managing people and moving parts, and aiming to please their end-users. This sounds familiar, right? That’s because it is, we’re all doing project planning – theirs is software, ours is events. There was a big difference, and that was that they didn’t seem stressed, or experiencing the pressure that I was. So I looked and …
- …I found “Agile”. There are many routes to Project management, but the one adopted by lots of software organisations is guided by Agile principles. Here’s a definition of what agile actually means (it’s the ability to create and respond to chance in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent environment)…even the definition of it is relevant to our industry. In your own time, take a look at the list of 12 principles, the nicest example is on the Agile Alliance website.
- 12 is rather a lot, so here’s the 3 key principles that I feel are most relevant to event project planning. User feedback Collaboration (within the team) Continuous improvement I’ll talk about some examples in just a minute, but what’s important to remember is why the principles apply so well for event planning, and that’s because the software industry and the events industry both keep their end-users at the forefront of their minds – we need them to be satisfied.
- A guide is all good and well, but you need to act in order to make things happen. I simply used the agile principles as a guide, and applied them to my event project planning. When you start living by the 3 key agile principles and develop your skills in these areas, you’ll notice you will innovate, stay flexible, and adapt. Working in this way and adopting these traits will take your event planning to the next level.
- Here are some tips I’d suggest you start with tomorrow, which will help you become agile right away. Tip # 1 - Getting things right by the customer is a fantastic way to measure how successful the event was. So what better than to capture it than via an event feedback survey. For every event I’ve hosted for Redgate I’ve survey’d the audience. The average response rate is around 65%, which is pretty decent. Throughout the years there have been questions that have been on every survey, so that we can see the difference over time, however as the events have developed I’ve wanted to understand attendees’ views on different aspects of the event, on the speakers, on the products. It’s this insight that allows me to evaluate whether the event is meeting it’s objectives, whether it’s satisfying the attendees, and most importantly what needs to be improved.
- Tip # 2 – Use a whiteboard and involve your team. Setting it up is pretty quick, once it’s ready ask everyone to contribute to it by adding post-its of each of their tasks. Things should move from left to right as they progress. Starting with the backlog, moving to what’s happening this week, then focusing in on what are you doing today, highlighting what is blocked and celebrating what’s done. The stand ups allow us to collaborate, share and communicate.
- Tip # 3 – Understanding what went well and what went terribly is really important. It’s fantastic when users tell you, but it’s also very important to know what your team thought. Retrospectives are a fantastic way to understand how your team felt the event went and to raise ideas right away. To run a retrospective you need to set up a meeting with as many of the ‘crew’ who were involved in the event as possible. Do this a few weeks before the event has even happened, so that it’s blocked out in everyone’s calendars. Allow 1-2 hours. Gathering insight from a range of perspectives, of the people who were involved in the event will help you understand how the moving parts worked as a whole. It also acts as a great way to get ideas from those who interacted with attendees and saw how things went first hand.
- Finally, remember that communication is really important. As #eventprofs we like to talk, so really this should just come naturally to us! Setting objectives at the beginning of your event planning will help you to determine what’s in/out of scope. Communicate these as widely as possible. I did a blog post recently to communicate this years plans for SQL in the City, and I got a great response, with replies and comments both on the blog and via email. Once everyone internally knows what you’re aiming to achieve they’ll be able to support you. If you gather ideas and insights from colleagues across teams who have various points of view, you’ll be able to explore various options which will then help you determine which avenue will take you towards success.
- If you feel your current event planning process isn’t fit for purpose (you’re stressed) I’d like you to consider approaching your event planning in an agile way. But changing the way you work can sometimes be difficult to roll out, so I suggest you measure the success of your new agile approach as you go. You can use some of the agile principles to help determine how things are going, and check if your new way of working is making a positive impact. Understand how your team is doing, check their happy. Ensure that you’re on track with meeting your objectives, undertake retrospectives after you execute the event, or any major milestone leading up to it, to see if you need to adapt along the way. You should quickly see the benefits of implementing this fresh approach to your event planning.
- Adopting an agile approach will really change the way you work. If you keep the key principles in mind, you’ll quickly see the benefits. The pre-event planning process will become less stressful as you’ll have broken it down. You can review things as they go, get feedback along the way, and know if you’re on track with what you set out to do, but also have time mapped out so you can adapt if you need to, in order to stay in control. Because you’ll always be able to see your progress and know what you’ve got left on your plate, you’ll be able to balance things better, and likely won’t have as many late-nights. Because you’ll be keeping the end-user top of mind you’ll be continually improving along the way, which will result in your events becoming more successful. It might seem like a fairy-tail and too far out of reach, but trust me it’s not. As soon as you start implementing activities that align to the key principles of agile methodology, you won’t go back.
- Here are my takeaways, as well as a cute kitten to remind you that tomorrow is Friday. I want you to walk into the office tomorrow and make this happen. Think about what makes you stressed when you’re doing your event planning, and use the principles as a guide, like I did. Then you can start implementing these activities to make you agile. It’s up to you whether you think this approach is right for your organisation, your events, and yourself. The way I see it is: if you’re able to adopt an agile approach to event planning, you’ll be setting yourself up to achieve overall success for your events.
- …And your event planning will have a fairy-tail ending! Thanks for listening.
- Over to you for questions, or ideas/suggestions – 10 mins!