I’m giving a talk tonight in Calgary to a group of event planners. They want to know how they can use new tools and strategies to plan and manage their events. I’m gonna start with a lil philosophical talk about citizen journalism & media making as well as particpatory group culture and principles and move on to a bunch of tools and tactics people can start implementing today. Here’s a copy of the slides I’ll use.
Over the past 5 years I’ve been involved in various event planning and management activities as a part of my community development work. I’m on the organizing committee of Northern Voice & BarCamp Vancouver. I plan regular PhotoWalks and PhotoCamps for photographers in Vancouver and around the world. I helped organize the first BarCamp in China with Robert Scales and others in 2006 and advise and consult to a variety of other events from the Canadian New Media Awards to South By Southwest in Austin, TX.
Before that I when I was working deeper in the corporate world as a Marketing Director for several software companies event managment and tradeshows also fell under my area of responsiblity. I’ve been planning and managing events large and small for over 10 years now.
Here’s my current list of tools I use to help pull together meetings, events, and conferences cheaply, quickly, and effectively….
– EventBrite – manage registration (smaller: Evite & Mobaganda & Meetup)
– PB Wiki – free hosted wiki that let’s attendees connect and organize talks, rides, couch surfing, etc
– BaseCamp – project management for event team, vendors, advisors
– WordPress – free open-source content-management system to power the event website
– Ning – Create a social network for your event
– Flickr – collect photos of event via tags & groups
– Twitter – connect with attendees, sponsors, & the media. monitor mentions of your event
– Doodle – takes the pain out of scheduling meetings with busy people
– Google Apps – docs, alerts, groups, calendars, etc
– Upcoming.org – great place to list events (also ZVents & Eventful)
– Slideshare – give the presentations from your event life and value after the speaker has stopped talking
– NetVibes – create a dashboard from the RSS feeds generated by all of the above
Also check out this great 48-slide presentation shared on SlideShare by Katie Laird:
Props for sharing your recipe and for all the contributions you’ve made to rallying up events in Vancouver and beyond.
Excellent presentation tonight – from a ‘newbie’ to social media. Can’t wait to try it out.
Thanks for the great Event last night Kris. Just when one begins to think they know it all, another light bulb comes on! Very interesting topic. Kudos!
Laurie