Jason Preston
Writing

Three lessons from putting together a local event

Jason Preston · 2 min read ·

[Image removed]Although I’ve been part of putting together and marketing both the Blog Business Summit and the Web Community Forum conferences over the past two years, this is the first time I’ve attempted to host an event entirely by myself.

The Pitch, which happens September 18th, 2008, will hopefully go as well as those other events. Of course, it’s free to attend, which means I don’t have to spend so much time trying to convince people it’s worth the money.

Still it is an experiment, and I’m as much curious to see how it goes as I am invested in its success. Here are three tips I would offer to anyone else looking to host a small, local event:

  1. Venue first - figure out how big you want your event to be (10 people? 30 people? 70 people?), and then find an appropriate venue and check their calendar. The venue and its capabilities---is there Wi-Fi? a Projector? Stadium seating? A microphone?---will play a large part in defining what your event will be. Look carefully for places where you can host an event for free. They can be found, and for a small event it’s critical to keep your cost low.

  2. Confirm a few attendees before launching - with a new event, especially a small one, it’s critical to launch with some momentum. In other words, people love to be the 5th or 6th on a bandwagon. Get friends, family, or close contacts to commit to a date before you announce the event, and make sure people can see that others have already signed up.

  3. Use a free event service - sites like Upcoming are great for managing guest lists. The less friction the better (think one-click purchases from Amazon), so picking one with wide adoption in your target community is important. Also, having one official guest list is essential for events that have a max capacity - it’s nearly impossible to manage who gets in and who doesn’t if you have 50 attendees on 4 different lists for an event that can only accommodate 30 people.

If you’re interested in the future of publishing, be sure to follow the conversation at Eat Sleep Publish, and if you’re in Seattle, don’t forget to put your name on the guest list for The Pitch this September. Space runs out at 25!