What is your experience in organising events?
Do you have any tips or recommendations?
Have you encountered problems while organising events?
Let’s talk!
I’ve done a few! Some thoughts on music-oriented events… Will come back later + add more!
I’ve made this ‘a wiki’ - I haven’t done this before here but assume that means others can edit it too?
Promotion
- Sell tickets in advance, it helps you gauge how well your promotion is going (even though most will probably shift the day before
- You can sell tickets on more than one platform (e.g. residentadvisor, eventbrite, locally-focussed ticket website), for extra reach
- If you find another enthusiastic organiser, cherish them, they’re rare. Lots of people like the idea of organising, not many are up to putting in the all-consuming work of making an event happen
- Even if you want to have a free party, in some sometimes people are more likely to show up if there’s a low ticket price
- Having a guestlist is a great promotional tool. Add local influencers/organisers to the guestlist and ask them to help promote. For a first event in an area, this is a good way to build up an audience
- Encourage other people on the bill to help promote
- Make a facebook event as a way to spread the word too, although don’t trust that people who click ‘going’ will show up. In the past I’ve stopped promoting an event because I thought too many would show, and then had a pretty empty room
- Social media boosts are an efficient way of reaching people
- Collect emails, having a mailing list is still massively more important way to get the word out than social media
- Make something great and people will be back and bring their friends!
Sound tech
- If you don’t have a sound engineer, it’s not really rocket science, but
- Watch out for ‘phantom power’ on mixers. Make sure it’s switched off at all times or everyone’s equipment could be fried
- If you get nasty hum, try
- running the laptop without your power plugged in
- ask for a ‘DI box’ with ‘ground lift’
- unplugging the HDMI/VGA to see if it goes away…
- use a usb sound module (focusrite 2i2 is good value)
Money
- Running workshops can be a better way of raising funds than live events
- Try not to overload the programme so there’s more to go around (I’m terrible at this)
- Try to save some money for yourself (also terrible at this)
- Fundraising via grants etc can be great but I think is different depending on where you are…
1 Like
Hi! I started writing a guide to ‘how to put on a gig’ recently… you can take a look on google drive - any suggestions welcome!
2 Likes