Closing Down the Event Project Stage

Closing down the Event Project Stage requires effort and planning - it’s crucial for organisational reputation and following up on commitments, promises and making resources available.

At the end of the event

Attendees should be made aware of any activities which need action from them; for example, the Event Lead will be gathering feedback or following up with them about speed blogs.

Also, if you’re aware of other events or a follow-on event, making attendees aware of these will help meet the wider goals and objectives of your organisation.

Sponsors and volunteers should be thanked again at the end of the event.

After the event

Soon after the event, there are some tasks that can be done straight away and some other which might take a bit more time to complete.

If the Event Lead collects feedback, then forms should be ready to send the next working day after the event - the danger of leaving this for longer than a week is that people will start to forget what happened as they get back to their normal routines. Ideally, the email asking for feedback with a link to the feedback form will be ready before the start of the event.

For larger events, the Event Lead may request blog posts about people’s experiences at the event. This request should also be made in the week following the event.

A full report of the event can be time-consuming to produce, so it’s worth thinking about which type of report you want; e.g. a paper on major themes, an event report that has a ‘being there’ style, or a summary of resources produced and available from the event. From experience, writing the report can take up to four months after an event like the Collaborations Workshops, as the content is dependent on reviewing what happened and other resources made available.

If resources (such as presentations, video recordings, speed blog posts and outputs from a hack day) will be made available, then these need to be commissioned or collected and prepared. You also have to decide when to publicise the materials (e.g. as they are made available or when they are all ready) - this should be part of your publicity plan.

It’s important to take the time to make sure that the financial side of the event is completed. Ensure that all income from registrations is recorded, collected by the platform you are using to handle this, and paid out / transferred to the (e.g. institutional) account you’re using for event finances. Invoice any remaining sponsors and check that they have paid. Make sure that all invoices from suppliers are received, checked and paid. Check that there are no outstanding items or liabilities to be discharged (e.g. refunds). Once this has been don,e you can update your event accounts to provide a final statement for the event, which indicates any surplus or deficit. The final statement can be compared against the initial budget of the event and help plan subsequent events.

When are you done?

When all of the outputs you planned to produce are available, you can consider the output side of the event done.

For outcomes, the Event Lead may want to track longer-term changes – for example, a longer-term survey (~after six months or a year) for attendees might be useful to assess the impact of your event.

Once you have produced your final accounts for the event, you can consider the financial aspects complete.

If this is all you planned for, then the event is done.

It is possible that page hits, resource usage, and citation of the report might feed into tracking broader organisational impact and those in charge of this should be made aware of these resources.