Event design is a new approach to systematically decompose and recompose the success of events. By using the #EventCanvas template, one can identify where and for whom the event can be innovated. It is a handbook to document, discuss, and design events worth attending, and illustrates good event design.
Organizing an event might sound easy enough but it is not. Especially when you want to design an event that becomes a memorable and meaningful experience for its participants. This is why we have so many events that are...let's be honest here... boring. With the "Event Design Handbook" you get a toolbox that allows changing your event from one of the many to the one your participants will remember and talk about long after. It's full of examples, easy to read, fun to return to, and certainly a book anyone who thinks of events should get and read.
For anyone who plans digital events (virtual events), you know how hard it can be to move a team away from "just recreating" an in-person event online. The tools, techniques, and processes contained in the book are a great first step for planning any event and are of immeasurable help in walking teams through moving in-person events online. It provides just the right balance of knowledge and real-world examples to help tease out how to use the information.
Howdy people of goodreads, If you ever thought I wished I had not spent the money on going to that event as I did not get anything out of it. Or you have produced events only to have mediocre responses from attendees. Or worse still, you are like me and experienced the frustrations of both several times a year like a never-ending nightmare of ups and downs, then this book is for you. Even if you never create, or design events, it is worth reading to confidently be able to reference the book to someone else that there is a better way!
I was right there, attending events and in the best case scenario walking away thinking that was amazing but forgetting everything I learned within 2 weeks, or attending events and walking away feeling deceived as the event did not live up to the hype. On the other side of trying to be an event producer I wanted to have a great experience for everyone. Sometimes we had amazing results and others I was left shaking my head wondering where did we go wrong, or why did we bring in that speaker and so on.
The writers of this book get it! But they also get that you do not have the time, energy, and patience to read a bunch of fluff theory that requires years of trial and error to start getting results. Although, you do get the theory, this is truly a handbook. You can open this book up and start using the process provided, with no other training or experience to create great events. I helped a friend of mine walk through the process for two different events. After him trying to tell me let's do this that and the other thing and throw it altogether and it will be awesome, I said to him whoa! That all sounds amazing dude, but let's slow down and try out using the event design handbook to walk through the process, worst case scenario we spend a couple of hours to realize this does not work.
Well we walked through the process (this was my first time) and we both stopped in amazement. We realized this is how we can create a journey for our attendees based around a story. This is incredible, and we were so much more confident in the prototype we created being something people would pay for and enjoy then what he was originally thinking. Comparing the new prototype using the event design process to the original was like night and day. The original idea felt very choppy (no storyline), like we would have just been trying to throw a bunch of stuff together, and reviewing what else was being offered in the market we realized the original idea was not original at all, and we had no interest in being copy cats. The new idea had people going on an adventure where they were the heroes of the story for the event.
Thank you to Roel Frissen, Ruud Janssen, and Dennis Luijer you guys are amazing, this book has changed my life forever, and my friend keeps coming back to me saying when is the next time we are going to design an event together!
The Event Design Handbook provides an overview of the Event Design Collective's comprehensive system for event design. The sequence of actions and corresponding resources for facilitation of actual design sessions are quite powerful.