Planning Company Forums : Basic Steps

For the last month I have been preparing for this week’s Content Marketing Forum, which we host for the benefit of our expansion stage portfolio companies. There is a plethora of work that goes into planning these events and ensuring that they run smoothly from start to finish. What follows is a brief overview of the basic steps that go into planning these forums and, in general, these basic steps can be applied to most out of office meetings you coordinate.

1. You need to have a general idea of the goal of each event. Are you focusing on content marketing, sales, business development services, venture capital financing, raising venture capital, etc.? Once your general idea is settled upon you can begin choosing your specific subtopics, finding specialists to be speakers, and building out the overall meeting agenda.

2. Get a workable estimate to attendee size. Will you be hosting 20, 40, 60+ people? An estimated headcount is necessary for determining the type of space needed to accommodate them all. This information will also help determine the overall room set-up for the meeting (u-shape, classroom, rounds, crescents, etc.)

3. Send out RFP’s (Request for Proposal) to local meeting locations. Hotels are an easy choice for one-stop shopping as they include overnight accommodations, meeting spaces, in-house catering, and in-house audio visual teams. Other locations, depending on the number of attendees, meeting needs, and overall budget, can include museums, convention centers, and your own companies offices (to name but a few).

4. Send out your invitations for the meeting and track responses.

5. Once the meeting space is set move on to the catering menu. Remember to include vegetarian options on your menu. Set the break and lunch times according to the overall meeting.

6. Figure out what collateral information needs to get printed for the meeting and make sure you have enough supplies to support this amount of printing and binding. This is also a good time to ensure you have any additional non-tech supplies the meeting needs: easels, large pads of papers, markers, etc.

7. As the meeting date nears do your final preparation and final check: Triple check that all individual speakers are attending your event and get a copy of their presentation(s); check that the meeting room is going to be arranged the way you need it to be; make sure the A/V needs are finalized and the A/V arrangement is settled; make sure the catering is finalized; lastly ensure that you have correct and accurate name tags for all attendees.

This is only a small and basic portion of what goes on behind the scenes during the planning of a large meeting for OpenView Venture Partners. Subsequent blogs will highlight specific steps and offer a more detailed look into the planning of company forums. Today I am in the final countdown leading to tonight’s forum cocktail reception. My last minute tasks: ensuring power cords are under all meeting tables, getting an extra row of chairs placed in the back of the meeting room for late comers, checking the accuracy of my attendee count, finalizing name tags, etc. Today is all about ensuring that I have crossed all my t’s and dotted all my i’s.