The Know and the How- Optimising Community Events

so welcome everyone to today's no and the how um presentation um before we dive into today's webinar I just want to introduce myself um I'm Jillian Cohen Lee from F R's partnership team I'm daring in from wery country um in Central West New South Wales I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands that I am on and and also the traditional owners of the lands that you are on today um and thank them for their custodian ship across Millennia um a few housekeeping matters um I also sor

ry um introduce my um colleague miles who's who's said all this up and done all the league work um miles is there as well um who will be facilitating the Q&A a little bit later um so uh firstly just a brief disclaimer about F R's legal responsibilities in providing this information to you today um secondly for you to know this session is being recorded um and will be distributed in the coming days um so if there colleagues um that couldn't make it um then you're welcome to to share it with them

um as as mentioned previously there will be a Q&A session at the end of the presentation um with a volume of people on the webinar today it would be really helpful to put the questions in the chat um in case there are any duplications and uh we will ask that it would either covered later on um in the presentation um but most importantly um I'm delighted to welcome Linda Tilman founder of tilma group um a PE reg Regional tourism and events agency servicing clients throughout Regional Australia Li

nda contacted Tri R last year to see how she could further support remote Rural and Regional communities and I suggested that sharing her incredible knowledge about delivering events in Rural and remote areas would be valuable to our community and looking at the number of people on the call today I think I might have been right uh so huge thanks in advance Linda to you and your team for being here today um I'll now pass over to you thank you um and thank you everybody for joining us um live toda

y um it's very exciting to be able to have this opportunity to connect in with so many people um across Regional and Rural Australia which is really the lifeblood of what we do is we work with people like you um to really uh maximize the benefits that Regional and Rural communities um can gain from tourism and events so really really excited to be able to share um with you today um but before I get started um I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia

um and their connections to landsee and Country uh we pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend the respect to all Aboriginal and tourist straight Islanders talk taking part in this webinar today um I'm coming to you today from Gable country in southern Queensland and my colleague um Kath who is on the line today is coming to you from wader country in New South Wales so in terms of today we've got it was you know trying to prepare for this was really tough it's like there're s

o there're so much we can share events um it's just such a big conversation you know in terms of when we talk about how do we optimize events in communities how do we deal with the challenges that many Community groups are facing in delivering successful events that there's so much that we could talk about so we've really tried to um I guess condense it down to some of the key points and some of the key challenges that we are seeing consistently um in the work that we do um and I guess what we'r

e hoping to achieve today is not only for those of you on the call to really appreciate these big challenges and also know that you're not alone I think that's really important in in particular in Regional and Rural communities is know that you're not alone I guess the key for us and the biggest thing we want to do today is to give you tips on how to turn these challenges into opportunities um and give you some inspiration as well around how others are really optimizing um events within their co

mmunities um so we've got some inspiration from best practice examples and I guess ultimately that final point you can see on the screen now is everything that we do is about how to support events to actually um set up foundations that enable long-term success um so I know that we've got a mix of people on the call today that are from different backgrounds within different Regional and Rural communities um and I guess that's local government we've got community groups um and organizations we've

probably just got interest parties and um I would imagine some organizers of events as well so um I've tried to consider different audiences and different roles that people play in community as well in determining the content we're sharing today um so we've already had a bit of an introduction but just um I guess to extend on that a little bit and to um I guess give some credibility um I am the founder and um developer of tilma group but we've been operating in the regional and Rural tourism spa

ce now for over 15 years um the organization started down in wager in Regional New South Wales and I'm now based in southern Queensland but we we work on projects exciting projects all over Regional um and Rural Australia predominantly with government and predominantly it is really about how do we support tourism development but you can't work in tourism in Regional Australia without having a big focus on events so a lot of what we do is events and events are a real key attraction in many Region

al and Rural communities um they're the hook they're the often the main reason that people first attend or visit um a regional or rural community so that there's that real symbiotic relationship between tourism and events in our communi so hence why um we also do a lot of work in building capacity of event organizers in Regional and Rural communities um and today my colleague Kath um is on the line and kath's actually going to be monitoring the chat box so as I'm presenting if any thought bubble

s come into your mind or any questions please feel free to drop them into the chat box or there's the Q&A area as well cath will keep an eye on both of those and if there's little things that she can contribute along the way she will otherwise we'll hold those over until the Q&A session um at the end so um be as interactive as possible uh and even you know now it's great for people to jump into the chat box and just introduce themselves who you are where you're from and perhaps what role you pla

y in events because I think there's definitely a lot of value in what we can offer but there's also a lot of value in creating those connections um and and meeting like-minded people so I encourage you to be active in the chat box um as I'm talking for the next 20 to 30 minutes um all right I'll just say as well before I dive into this um I've also prepared to allow a a good 10 minutes I'm hoping at least 10 minutes for Q&A at the end um because I want to make sure that we give you exactly what

your um expectations are in terms of outcomes from today's session so um just be mindful of that so any questions that you have you know drop them down pop them in the chat box but please um be prepared to have some discussion at the end okay as I said it was really tough to really condense down this conversation um but these are the things that we are seeing and hearing from event organizers around Regional and Rural Australia and even it's not even really unique to Regional and Rural Australia

I would say event organizers around the country if not around the world are struggling with some um really uh significant challenges at the moment um and it's really I guess what we're seeing is those events that are able to adapt and evolve and actually turn these challenges into opportunities and even reimagine a little bit are those that are setting up for future success unfortunately what we're also seeing is um and it's quite sad when we see it is uh this constant kind of messaging or anno

uncements coming out in the media of events that are not happening they're cancelled um you can see a couple on the screen right now um torama in Port Lincoln in South Australia so um that was an event that um ceased last year um I never know what day it is little Al than what year so forgive me but recently um however I guess they're in a fortunate situation where council's actually jumped in and undergoing a revitalization process for that event at the moment um but you know a long-standing ev

ent like that um you know comes to an end it's quite um significant in terms of its impact on that Regional Community you know other events like tenant Creek show like we've seen a lot of agricultural shows over the last five or so years um just not be able to continue because of resourcing challenges finances um you know even infrastructure um challenges as well um you know even big festivals are struggling so you know Kath was saying to me the morning I haven't seen it yet but there's been a r

ecent announcement that groov and the moo which um is a music festival they've had to cancel one of their or the series of their Regional shows um two months prior to the festival due to a lack of ticket sales and and the constant struggle of increased cost so we're seeing this a lot and I'm sure that many of you have heard of similar situations and I guess what what our whole passion is and purpose is how do we actually support these events to actually work through this um and it's not easy I w

ill say that um but there's certainly some things that can be done to um shift that so some of the things um that we're hearing these four on the screen these are the constants that are consistently coming up is this challenge around how do we remain fresh and relevant um it's really hard for um events to um I guess you know invest in that continual Improvement if we think about Point 2 and three when we talk about lack of volunteering you know Financial viability and having the um finances to a

ctually cope with increasing costs Etc that creates extra pressure which means you know it's hard to remain fresh it's hard to remain relevant it's hard to have the energy to actually do that so we're seeing many events that are really just a bit of a I guess a bit of a rinse and repeat um and as a result they're losing relevance and they they're losing their Competitive Edge um as I said Point 2 and three would be the top of the list all the time for us when somebody comes to us um wanting to t

alk about challenges around their events these are the two that come up volunteering we have a lack of volunteers our volunteers are burnt out there's fatigue within our volunteers and this isn't just unique to volunteers it's also with skilled staff and particularly postco you know there was a lot of people that left the events industry a lot of skilled people that left the events industry in the entire supply chain so it's even a lack of skilled staff Financial viability um you know we're in a

tough climate at the moment and and for events we have been for a while so it's kind of been this Domino of postco you know now we've got cost of living that's you know impacting disposable income and that's one of the reasons groov and the mo was um had to cancel in Regional um Australia um we've got increas in costs um we've got it reduction in Grants I'm not sure if many are seeing that but there's absolutely a reduction in grants available um for events which all of these things just making

it harder to run a financially viable event uh and then we've got the good old succession planning um and we see this a lot and and a lot of these points are actually linked um but what we see is that um for all of those things reasons that I've just mentioned a lot of events don't have the capacity or um the skill to put in place good planning and documented systems and processes so what that means is they they you know having to duplicate things every year or a lot of information is in their

head so it's hard to hand the event over to somebody else so rather than the event being handed over it's just easier for the event to end so there's this real need to put in place really smart succession planning strategies in order for events to have that longevity and exist beyond the current team so they're kind of the Four Points I want to talk about um over the next 20 minutes but before we do that I'd love you just to think about this and put your response in the chat box um think about y

our own Community think about events that you work on or events that you're familiar with what are the current trends and challenges that you're seeing what are the things that are impacting you jump into the chat box it'll be really interesting for you all to see um what everybody's dealing with at the moment and where there's some common themes and I'm going to come back to that um when we do the chat and just see if there's anything that's come up or cath will be keeping an eye on it as well

to see if there's anything that we haven't heard yet that we might want to um want to address in the um chat or Q&A at the end all right let's not talk all about the challenges because it's a bit depressing to be honest you know it's events are hard work they're resource intensive we know that but they are so amazing you know they there's a reason why there's so many people interested in today's webinar because events have so many great positive impacts in our community right they bring new mone

y in they connect our community they generate Community Pride they they are just so fabulous in terms of the positive benefits that events can have in our communities so what we want to talk about is how do we actually turn those challenges into opportunities how can you actually optimize your community events how can you make sure that they have that longevity so I'm going to just go back and talk about each of those four points that um I've raised in terms of the big challenges impacting event

s um and I'm going to share with you I guess just a bit more insight into what we're seeing but more importantly I want to offer some tips um and also inspire you with some case studies and and some great examples of what we're seeing across Regional Australia um from events that are actually working really hard to try to overcome these challenges so remaining fresh and relevant I'm sure this would resonate with many of you this this tension right this tension of you know you have to remain rele

vant but often it's just having the energy and the capacity to remain relevant because sometimes it's just easier to do what we did last year right the problem with that is you lose that um um I guess interest um from your attendees um if it's the same every year and you think about events that you tend attend if they're the same every year it's just after a while you're like why do we keep going it's the same thing so we have this pressure as event organizers to actually continually renew and r

efresh and rethink our event um so what I wanted to share with you now is we call these um I guess macro Trends or forces shaping events so these are bigger picture things so the thing that you need to do is when you think about how do I remain fresh and relevant is you have to step outside your own bubble you have to think about what's happening in the the big picture what's impacting decision making of people attending events what's impacting the industry why do people want to attend events wh

at can I do with my event to be on Trend to be really fresh you can see on the screen right now these are things that come up for us all the time the first one I've kind of talked about which is this building pressures like events are risky they're increasingly competitive um and as I said they're resource intensive so yes this makes it even harder to invest in continual Improvement and to remain fresh but we have to be mindful of that we have to be really smart in how we're organizing our event

s the second point is quality over quantity and this one's always really interesting um and I've been thinking about this a lot lately because we're seeing so many big events like Mass Gathering you know thousands of people really struggling in terms of you know compliance extra compliance extra costs you know it's almost like the bigger you get the harder it is so I challenge you to think about quality over quantity and it's not always about more people sometimes we get caught in this frame of

mind and perhaps it's be governed by kpis around grants or I'm not sure but we get caught in this frame of mind that you know success is how many people come so think about quality over quantity and even from a local government perspectives those of you joining from a local government perspective often what we say to councils is it's not always about more events in the calendar invest in what you already have and enhance the quality of the event and the quality of the experience that you're offe

ring and think about can you get more value out of less people and I often think about you know this terminology that farmers use around yield over volume this is essentially what it's about it's a numbers game sometimes when you have more people it becomes harder to run it becomes more expensive have a smaller event that's a higher quality event that perhaps you can charge a little bit more for you know really special experiences um travel with purpose or this term conscious Travelers now this

is a trend actually you know what it's not a trend it's probably just becoming a necessity um and we've reached this point where a lot of people are really conscious of the impact their travel and decision making has on the environment there was some research done that showed um 34s of Travelers are seeking sustainable options so there's lots of research coming out from a tourism perspective but it is exactly the same for events so there there's this growing expectation um that your event will b

e responsible so we've got to think about that with our events I know that makes it even harder it's another thing to think about right but it's so important so when we're thinking about how do we keep our event fresh and relevant we need to be thinking like our um attendees what's important to them and that's something that's becoming universally important particularly for younger people climate change sits in that same kind of bucket you know it's becoming more and more important for people in

making decisions about how they travel and and things that they actively participate in we're also seeing this trend around active life Lifestyles and health and well-being which is great people are really embracing healthier Lifestyles you know there's this real desire to maintain physical and mental health so you think about that and you're probably going well what does that mean for my event unless I'm like a sporting event or a triathlon or or something like that but it's thinking about you

know healthy food options and what are you doing to actually embrace that for um your attendees and the last one there once again I wouldn't say this is an uh a trend it's it's absolutely something that is really important to every event um today is that our events should reflect um the diversity of our community so inclusion is really important when we're thinking about our events and and accessibility so that's just kind of I could talk about this for a long time in terms of Trends but I just

wanted to share with you some of the things that we're seeing um you may have others that you're seeing on a local level as well um the important thing is that you recognize these and not all of them may be appropriate to your event but you need to recognize those that are and think about how does that impact my event is that important to my attendees and what can I do to embrace that as an opportunity I'm going to give you a little tip now first of all before I talk about this um 15% which I l

ove the most important thing for you to do in terms of uh you know reimagining or even just keeping your event fresh is to ask your attendees what they want that sounds so simple and you're probably thinking I'm sitting in this webinar and she's telling me to just ask people what they want bam so many people overlook this and um get caught in you know the their own little bubble so you've got to do that post event review process you've got to ask people what is it that they want what could we do

different what could we do better also look at benchmarking um so look at what other events are doing whether that be in your local area your state Australia wide or even globally be inspired by what others are doing find some events that are similar to yours perhaps in other areas and follow what they do connect and engage with them and then finally the 15% rule this is not mine I can't claim that this is my um tip or strategy but I worked with um the Gary Pumpkin Festival uh in Queensland a f

ew years ago and this to me was like this absolute Golden Nugget they have what they call a 15% rule so what they do every year after their event they do their post event review process they analyze all their feedback and data um and determine what people are suggesting cu get all these radical kind of suggestions right their policy or strategy is every single year the event has to have 15% new content so what that means is they look at their program and they go okay we've got to look at 15% new

for next year's event that could be you know introducing a new element in the into the program it could be taking an element out of the program or really rethinking element within the program it could be retheming something so they look really closely at the experience that they're offering and they make sure they've got 15% new content within that program how cool is that so what that does is every year there's a little bit because I guess the key for that is when I say reimagine and remain re

levant I don't expect you to change a whole event so that idea of going okay 15% we could do that it may be 10% for you you may have a different figure in your mind I think the key is every single year you should be looking at some element of new and freshness based on the feedback that you've got all right let's move into volunteering Challenge number two um so volunteering or human resourcing in general um as I said is a real challenge particularly for events we're resource intensive right um

we can't automate everything you you know it requires physical labor to deliver successful events there's so many things to be done um as I mentioned before I would say that this would be the number one challenge it's hard to know which is probably number one this one or finances probably both of them together um particularly for community events and we often hear you know we don't have enough volunteers the young people in our community just aren't volunteering or older volunteers are not open

to change and won't accept younger people in you know we hear all of these things around challenges with volunteering what's really interesting is volunteering has changed and I I honestly just don't think that we're adapting to the changes that have taken place in society around volunteering so we need to think different about volunteering volunteering Australia did a whole heap of research and if you haven't seen that jump on to the volunteering austral Australia website there is a whole heap

of research that they released last year um on volunteering why people volunteer what motivates people to volunteer why they don't volunteer one of the things that came out of that which I think is super critical for events is this term that they call Casual volunteering what casual volunteering means is um that and and sorry I should say first of all it actually identified that people are more interested in casual volunteering then they are in permanent volunteering roles what that means is peo

ple are prepared to volunteer but they only want to volunteer when they know it starts here and it ends here and there's a very clear understanding of what that role is and how long um it goes for so they call it casual volunteering so I look at an event and I go you know if volunteering on the gate at your event for three hours on event day would be casual volunteering as opposed to joining your committee and being part of the entire planning stage of your event um which I would see is more per

manent volunteering because you don't know when it's going to end in most cases you're kind of signing up for life so there's this real interesting shift where people are more interested in casual volunteering and you're probably seeing that with your events it's easier to get volunteers to actually come and help on the day of the event to do a specific role in a specific shift but it's hard to get people to commit to the committee right that's what we're seeing so these are some tips you can se

e them on the screen right now um you need to know what you need there we go again Linda with her simple tips that you need to know what you need and what I mean by that is you've got to have a really clear structure and roles that are defined and clearly defined start and end times I guess what we don't want to see or we want to try to avoid is that that blanket kind of plea for volunteers you know when you get desperate and you're like oh my God and you put something out in the newspaper or on

Facebook saying we need 50 volunteers for our event come on everybody get together and help us out not saying that doesn't work it will bring some people out but that's what we need to shift away from and start to think what do we actually need so break your event down into small roles or portfolios or what I like to say is small chunks and cther be having a laugh at that but you break so you think about the event you go our this is event planning of Linda's Festival how do you break that down

into smaller chunks so it's not just planning lindus Festival it's you know um the the music um and the stage it's it's organizing the food trucks it's you know managing the gate it's um running the bar it's you know you kind of start to break it down and you break it down even further so you're really starting to break it down into small roles so you'll start to really quickly see where you need people and and the types of people that you need it takes a bit of work to do this but once you do i

t once it's done you don't have to do it every year it sets up a really good clear structure for your event what it then enables you to do is have a really targeted approach to recruitment I've seen this work so many times rather than actually do that blanket plea that I mentioned you know we need 50 volunteers actually once you know what you need you can identify people within your community and actually go and have a coffee with them or go and sit down and say look we need someone to um you kn

ow look after the Facebook for our event we know that you're really good on Facebook um you know it probably be an hour or a week and you give them that information in more specific detail and the response rate is going to be much higher than just saying we need 50 people to come and help our event because they don't really know what's they're in for the other thing to remember is retention is much easier than recruitment so you have to look after your volunteers so really think about simple thi

ngs like celebrating their birthday you know acknowledging them for their efforts and another one that we don't often think about is even if volunteers are playing a small role in the event make sure they feel valued and you can do that by asking them to contribute to the bigger picture so continually ask them for feedback on the entire event give them opportunities to contribute and they feel like they're part of it they're not just here doing this little role but they're part of it and they're

contributing and what they contribute is really valuable there's a whole thing I mean that's all about leadership and managing teams and that you know that kind of um skill set so there's a lot in that but essentially if you can retain the volunteers that you have and you've got less volunteers or fewer volunteers that are really productive and passionate is going to be easier to manage than having you know double the number of volunteers that are running around a little bit chaotic not really

knowing what they're doing so it comes down to structure a bit of a case study I wanted to share with you and um this is more relevant from a council perspective but I encourage people you know to have this conversation with other events within your area and your Council because every event struggles with volunteers so don't try to um manage this problem on your own this is where we have conversations with Council about taking a lead to support events within their entire community and this is an

example Western Downs um Regional Council um in Queensland um they introduced a volunteering program um so essentially this is all about they wanted to work smarter in terms of volunteer recruitment and retention for all of the events within the Western Downs it's a pretty um I guess Rich events area so they've got lots of events so they now have uh an event volunteer program um and really what they've done is they've built a bank of volunteers um or a pool of volunteers to assist um events uh

Across the Western Downs to support that they also created a toolkit on how to manage volunteers that's available for for their event organizers and in that one of the biggest tips believe it or not is the importance of having those clear roles and they offer templates Etc in that as well for their events um and they have also have volunteers that are local but also traveling volunteers so they use it as an opportunity to attract people that are traveling through the region to volunteer at local

events as well have a look on their website if you're interested in having a look at that so it's Western Downs Queensland you'll find their website and it's under volunteering opportunities um but yeah if Kath if you have access to that you might be able to drop it into the chat box for everybody to have a look at great way so work together don't think you have to work independently get together as a a cohort or a group of events and look at how you can create some kind of volunteering model t

hat supports all of your events our third one is finances um look I think the biggest thing here is as an event organizer you have to think like a business whether it's a community event or not the big thing that I often see in many communities is this mindset that as a community event we can't charge people or as a community event we're not charging people our event has to be free we can't charge people and I really challenged that thinking because how can you survive how can you pay your bills

constantly if you have no Revenue I know what your answer is to that grants but the other red flag for me is the Reliance on government grants and support it's not sustainable you really have have to think like a business we have to change that mindset it's not saying you know every event because I appreciate there's certain events that are really about you know could be about disadvantage people within your community or you know it's an event that is specifically about bringing Community toget

her and if there's a ticket price they're not going to come I totally appreciate that I'm not being ignorant to that but we have to be thinking how do we continually be financially viable in the future and it doesn't necessarily mean every part of your event has to have a ticket or some kind of monetary um value you can have free community components and then you can have ticketed elements so it's just thinking a little bit different so really change the mindset around not for profit and communi

ty and think and operate like a business so it's almost like getting this balance my other piece of advice is you do need to reduce the dependence on government and that can be scary like we do boot camps around Regional Australia and and we often say to um events we say Okay imagine your budget right now or get a pen and paper out think about the line items in your budget and the revenue in your budget now what we want you to do is remove government grants from revenue what does that do to your

bottom line think about that if you took grants out all together what would that do to your bottom line because it's not guaranteed right grants are never guaranteed that's really important to remember so we talk about you've got your own revenue streams that you own and you have borrowed or third party revenue streams because that's not guaranteed so we need to start to reduce the Reliance on that it has a role to play absolutely and we need to start to increase our own revenue streams in the

current climate that's not easy I appreciate that but we've got to just change that thinking so think about your own revenue streams and like I said before it doesn't mean you just have to have you know put a big fence around your event and charge a ticket to come in have a look at what other events are doing they're being quite smart and you can have Community free community elements and then ticketed elements and you can have Vib VIP experiences and um you know all different types of things th

at make up your event but enable you to bring in um Revenue through a user pay model so it's that quality over quantity as well people will pay for Quality experiences so thinking about like I was saying before around that yield and value are you getting the maximum yield from attendees at your event and obviously this depends on the type of people coming to your event but is there the opportunity to increase value from them and I'd also encourage there's other models out there so there's also y

ou know we like this idea of having dispersed model events where you've got you know you don't just have your event in one location you might have all these different events happening across the place you might have different Community groups or businesses within your um region organizing events and they all fit Under the Umbrella of your um event and you can consider things like marketing contributions where you know commercial businesses run events as part of your um overarching festival and t

hey contribute um a fee as part of the marketing contribution which I've seen work um in many areas in terms of a case study I love using this one because I just think it's tick so many boxes for me um when we talk about finances um I talked before about having you know uh VIP type experiences so the mount Isa Rodeo um I've just realized I'm using lots of Queensland examples for obvious reasons apologies everybody not from Queensland um but if anyone else has other great examples please share th

em in the chat box manisa Rodeo they actually added additional experiences to generate um new Revenue it was also to build on the experience but it was an opportunity as well to generate Revenue um so this is an example of um you not having to just have a ticketed event or not you can actually offer a mix um I know Mount Isa Rodeo is pay to get in but this they do this as a VIP experience and it sells out every year because it is on Trend and it's giving people you know an immersive experience w

here they get to go behind the shoots with a a retired cowboy and really get to see what it's like behind there the energy you know and meet the Cowboys and see what it feels like and they pay a premium price to have that additional experience so really interesting to see um you know what events are doing in terms of adding VIP um experiences I'm going to just go through this quickly because um I am conscious of time but succession planning is our last point and what I wanted to ask I'm not sure

if the poll um is going to work for us on these this technology oh it's already up good job look at that um I'd love everybody just to take 30 seconds to answer this question if you had to step away from your role in your event tomorrow for whatever reason could someone else step in and take over yes they could do it easily no way everything's in my head yes but it would not be seamless and I was actually generous putting that third option in there I wasn't going to and if anyone has any commen

ts of that I'd love you to put it into the chat box this is a question that really gets events thinking you know when we're talking to events in boot camps it's like what would happen because this is one of the big challenges around succession planning is a lot of stuff we keep in our head you know we're often thinking oh I'll document that later or it's or it's just easier for me to do it rather than ask somebody else to do it and then we get to this point where so much is not documented that i

f something did happen uh it would be really hard for someone to step in and pick up that event all right well I'm going to stop it there so we can see um 18% said yes easily big congrat congratulations to you guys awesome work that means you're doing a great job at documenting processes and systems and you can probably just have a little nap for the next couple of minutes while I do this next slide um 5% are saying no way it's all in my head thank you for being honest um and you know I think th

at you've definitely got some work to do but um there's some great strategies to for you to put in place in terms of you know preparing to have somebody else come into your event yes but it would not be seamless 76% so a lot of you have said maybe you've got some stuff documented um you know maybe it's a little bit outdated and we see this all the time but um it's so important for us um sorry I just realized I hadn't shared the results of that but you can see that on the screen right now so a lo

t of you are in this um yes but it would not be seamless category thank you for sharing that now the reason I asked this question as I said is because it really is about documenting everything and having in place good systems and processes I often think about events like it's not rocket science to organize an event but it's a lot of work and it's stressful and there's a lot of moving parts we use this analogy of spinning plates you imagine somebody with like 10 spinning plates in the circus righ

t that's what it's like to organize an event you've got all of these things going on around you you know one Falls everything comes crashing down um so that's why it's so important to have good systems good processes and good documentation um so really document everything and this is a this is a process you should go through document everything once again once it's done once you don't have to keep doing it but having you know good event management plans a really good team structure um timelines

with key dates and deadlines um and look at where you can use technology to enhance efficiencies and this is an example um Sano um down in Victoria yay not Queensland um they went through a process last year where they went and they revitalized their entire event and they documented everything and they got the most people on their committee that they've ever had because everything was in in order yes the event was fresh and exciting um but they had everything documented and systems and strategie

s in place to improve efficiencies so I really encourage you to think about what do I need to do in order to be able to step away and let this event live on forever and that's all I have for you today but I appreciate time um but and I'm always I'm so sorry I always talk too much um but I'd love just to see kther were there any really key questions um that have come up in the chat box that we could address Look Linda there are lots of there's some really really good discussion going on in the ch

at box and that people are responding to each other which is really wonderful and it was good to see a lot about the challenges and the comments that were coming through it was mainly around volunteering and finances but there were still some other good ones I just wanted to bring up but I actually don't want to waste time for questions but there were things about the effect of covid and um how people aren't uh are committing to sorry I'll just actually find postco people are more conscious of s

lowing down and not attending every event and lack of lack of understanding this was one of my favorites as how much time events cost and the time and resourcing um to put them on so I think there were lots of good comments in there and I'd encourage everyone to go back and look through them because there were some really good hints yeah good job yeah that's an interesting one um if anyone has questions feel free to pop your hand up and we can um unmute you sorry if um I'm taking over the Q&A he

re um that point about people not really appreciating I hear that a lot um I don't have an answer or a solution for that other than you know just continually um sharing you know and we need to make people aware of how much is involved and the cost of running events and you know do what we can to really stick together and support one another and and really make more people aware of what goes into running an event because it is a lot of work a lot of energy a lot of money there was another good co

mment and statement regarding we don't have enough people to break down even into roles even on the day and this is again another comment and I guess my response to that would be sometimes breaking it into really small roles will attract other people but if you are simply in the place where you don't have the population to support that that's when you have to look at streamlining your event and only taking on the capacity of what you actually can do yeah good one cath yeah um Linda there's also

a question um in regards to a template for an event management plan um is there is there anything that you can recommend there are any tools um online or otherwise that might be helpful for people yeah we absolutely and at risk of self-promotion um we do have a lot of tools and resources and we do have event management plan templates so um yeah happy to talk to anybody about that but also just look online or talk to your Council as well um I also find a lot of councils have great resources and t

ools so I would do that first chat to your Council because also often councils have their own style of event management plan in terms of what their requirements are to consider um so I would definitely chat to your council do some searching online event people are also so generous you know in terms of sharing so ask other people we also have a free Facebook group um it's called Regional events Hub and that's a really good resource so you can join that for free and there's people that are in even

ts all over the country that share information on there and I find that's a really good place to go and you could say for example in that instance you could put in there um you know I'm looking for a template to do an event management plan does anybody have any suggestions and people will come to you and go hey I've got this or check out this link or so check with Council join the Facebook group or other Facebook groups and ask other people um for their advice um and yeah you can also tap into w

hat we have to offer as well yeah that's great that's some awesome tips um this one might be good for that Facebook group as well um Liz Hill has on the Q&A um destination Highway events tourists that travel from A to B which drive past our community or stay overnight how to capture these um in the timeline of their Journey West or back East that's I don't know if there's a quick answer to that one but um that's hard that all comes down to timing you know it makes me think of um big red bash in

birdsville and um H God now I've just had a mind blank charville charville which is kind of they they are halfway between Brisbane and um birdsville so what they do is they organize event an event called halfway there shindig soal um and and essentially they time that knowing the travel patterns of people coming out of Brisbane or the East Coast traveling out to birdsville to capture them as they're making that trip and encourage them to stay a night in charlieville to spend money and enjoy thei

r Community it's a really great example like similar to what that question is referring to I guess it comes down to timing and travel patterns and sometimes the travel patterns of those tours can differ um but I guess it will also come down to marketing if you kind of if you vaguely know the timing pick a date and get the word out there because they'll plan around it so if you've got a date and you've got a great experience to offer promote it as you know stop on your travels enjoy this event th

ey will stay because they're looking for things to do um Che out what charville do it's awesome halfway there shindig I hope they still do it this was a couple years years ago such a great idea very clever there is another question in there um from Tiffany how do you balance your time as a sole event coordinator running a large event and Catering to your volunteer needs my answer to that Linda and then if you want to add on to it is in that case I would actually try and get a volunteer volunteer

event coordinator so try and actually get one someone to help you that specifically looks after your volunteer teams and some of the larger um EV like Denny UT Master have done that really successfully yeah I think you've answered that k a lot of value in having someone manage your volunteers it's a big job but if it's done well it's so um powerful for your event all right I feel like we've exhausted everybody thank you Linda that was absolutely fantastic um just so wonderful to um be able to b

enefit from your huge um experience and and knowledge base so really appreciate and you and and Kathy taking the time to to chat to everyone today um as a reminder and we will be sending around um a recording of um today so look out for that in your inbox and and feel free to share with others that perhaps weren't able to make it um and yeah just really appreciate uh the T group being here with us today have a wonderful day everyone thanks everybody thanks everyone