You’ve planned and planned, the event went off with only the slightest of changes, and now it’s time to breathe. Well, not really. Now, it’s time to learn how to plan an event debrief.
The last guest has stepped out of the room, and there’s a sudden sigh of relief from you and your entire team. Before you lose all of that momentum, there are a few things that you need to do.
Guest Surveys
As soon as the last foot leaves the edge of the property, you want to make sure that you are sending, or have already sent, some sort of guest survey. There are so many ways that you can do this that it honestly makes it a little overwhelming.
There are event management systems that you can use that not only have wonderful tools like email banks, guest lists, check-in codes, but also end-of-event surveys that can be automatically sent! Many of these systems are built intuitively so that it is easier on you, and some may even have examples or help that can get the survey done with lightning speed.
Tear Down and Reflect
With the guest survey out of the way, it’s time to step in, be a leader, and help your team tear down the event. While part of this is leadership, it also gives you time to talk to your team and reflect as a group on what happened. Spend at least twenty minutes, if not thirty, with each member of your team, including the production team, to get a good idea of what was going on behind the scenes that you should know about.
This is going to be a lot to take in and a lot to remember. Ask if you can take notes or record the conversation so you can take notes later. If you have a memory like a steel trap, take mental notes that you are sure you won’t forget.
Write Out the Details
As soon as you can, so you don’t forget, and so you stay on schedule, write down as many details as you possibly can. Make the process interactive so that you can organize details as they come in. One of the best ways that you can do this, and a personal favorite, is sticky notes.
Using sticky notes does add an extra step, but it allows you to add options like color coordination for grouping details together. If you don’t feel like color coordinating, you can still move the sticky notes around and group different details and commentary together based on their theme.
Make a Team Meeting
This is the simplest step of analysis: get team feedback after they have had time to process the event. You want to get the details right after you have an event and then you want your team to process and give you additional feedback. This brings in clearer thinking, careful self-reflection, and more. You can even add in additional questions that you want to ask too.
After your meeting, take the time to add or take away comments from your notes. This will narrow down your results and help you have a more focused approach when it comes time to write out your full debrief.
Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches
There are multiple ways to look at an event, and a well-rounded way to look into an event is to make sure you have quantitative (quantities) and qualitative (characteristics) numbers and breakdowns of your information.
Your quantitative numbers may come from the results of the survey that you sent out post-event. Or, you can assign extremity levels to comments to see what needs to be addressed directly and what can be handled in-house.
Prepare a Full Debrief
The final step! Once you have your numbers, and once you have all of your defining points it’s time to put it all together. There are great templates that you can find and collections of questions that can help you prepare the full debrief, which is much more than we can cover here!
Pat Your Back!
You’ve done it! The post-analysis is now done with a full debrief that you can give to stakeholders and a full assessment from your team. This is a great way to let stakeholders in your event understand the ins and outs of your event and help you with your next event. Really dig deep and use this as a self-reflection tool to push you forward for your next event. Remember, each event builds on itself as long as you put in the work and reflection.
