EXPOsed Conferences™ Podcast

Episode 03. Create a Conference Management Plan and Stay In Your Zone of Genius

• Kristina Daniele • Season 1 • Episode 3

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On Today's episode of EXPOsed Conferences™ Podcast I'm talking with Katie Matusky, Productivity Expert and owner of Entropy Organized.  Katie redefines what work life balance means for modern women and serves her clients as an experienced advisor. She teaches them to curate vivid, connected, meaningful lives one system at a time.  Today she will be sharing her secrets to curating a conference project template so that everything gets done on time and she'll also be spilling details about her 100% rule to design so executing is easy and so you CAN do it all without getting burnt out!   

"I really feel passionately that having the right plan in place and the right systems to run your conference will make a huge difference in your experience of it as well as the quality for the attendees." - Katie Matusky

Click HERE to learn more about Katie Matusky, Entropy Organized and follow her on Instsgram @entropyorganize for more great tips!

On today's episode we will expose...

How to Create a Conference Management Template so that Everything Gets Done On Time
-Why you should have Conference Management Template
- The 3 phases to setting your plan in place
- The organizational creative projects tool that has flipped productivity on it's head
- The most important piece of putting together your  project that you can share with your team
- How you can set action items for your team and then translate them into a actionable takeaway for attendees
- How you can avoid Roadblocks and Scope Creep
-Tips for consistently following up with your team so that they stay on track

How to Use the 100% Rule to Design so Executing It is Easy
-The 100% Rule and the Project Management Principle
-Give your team actionable deliverables
-How to create a collaborative process with your vendors to develop your conference management plan
-Unique tips to easily document staff tasks or later upload an employee for a future event

UPDATE (5.21.2019) Shout-Out to our friends @milanoteapp who heard about EXPOsed Conferences Podcast and have since shared their Event Brief Template & Event Planning Template to help all our listeners stay organized, understand your objectives, design the overall look and feel of your event and help you plan accordingly so that you can avoid any mistakes on the big day!  Click HERE to access the brief.  And to see more about Milanote and it's capabilities check out their website

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Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome to EXPOsed Conferences™. I'm your host Kristina Daniele, thank you for tuning into the podcast where we are going to be exposing current trends, challenges, and the futures of conferences as well. I'll be having candid conversations with industry experts that will elevate your event and help you create partnerships that expand beyond the calendar year. I'm really happy to have you listening today and help you benefit from today's episode as well as future episodes.

Speaker 3:

Welcome to EXPOsed Conferences™. Today I'm talking with industry expert in life strategist Katie Matusky, her company Entropy Organized, redefines what work life balance means for modern women. Katie serves your clients as an experienced advisor. She teaches them to curate vivid, connected, meaningful lives, one system at a time and on this episode she'll be sharing her secrets to curating a conference product templates so that everything gets done on time, but we'll also be spilling details on her hundred percent role to design. So executing is easy and so you can do it all without feeling burnt out. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me and Katie, thank you so much for having me, Kristina. It's a pleasure. You know, if I can just say that I'm actually really delighted to have you on here. I think just in this industry alone, the idea of being burnt out is true testament of what we're doing. You know, we're running a thousand miles a minute at all times and just that alone just makes me excited to see what we can do to re-energize and reinvigorate ourselves so that we can continue to do what we're doing, but do it at or best.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely, and so much about your experience as an event or a conference organizer is impacted by the logistics. You have a solid game plan. If you are someone that knows that 100% of what needs to be happening inside that project is there, it is going to make the experience of setting up, building, running, and eventually offloading that conference. A much more pleasant thing. I really felt passionately that, you know, having the right plan in place and the right systems to run your conference will make a huge difference in your experience of it as well as the quality for the attendees for the people coming.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. Conferences are never easy, especially if you're the person that's in charge of handling it and even being part of the team. Again, we tend to move thousand miles a minute, then we typically work not only months ahead but sometimes years ahead. So in the planning of that, just trying to figure out what's the most effective way to do so.

Speaker 4:

Yes, absolutely. And I think that, you know, the foundation of this, the thing that I would recommend is to have a template or your process the first time you put this together, it's not going to be perfect. And then it will be something that you continue to sort of go back to different iterations of and, and to tweak. But I think that really the foundation of getting this under control is to have a template of the project, of, of everything that you have to do from start to finish for running a conference. And it has to be on a timeline. It's not enough to have a bunch of tasks loaded into a sauna sort of willy nilly. You really want to have the phases of this project and what is the minimum timeline you need to get it off the ground.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. And so where does somebody even begin?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. You know, it's something that I find that a lot of my clients struggle with too is is you kind of have this like huge vision, right, for what this conference could be or what this event will feel like. What are the goals? And then having to translate that into, you know, almost daily action steps can be so overwhelming. And the way that you would go about doing that is, you know, the first run your dry run, when you're setting up this project template, it's not going to be complete. It's just the way it is. You're, you're going to have to, you know, do the best you can, but constantly be adding to it as you go. So that the second time around it is complete. It is 100% and the way you would do it is I would first break it into phases. So the first phase might be, you know, the initial decisions that you have to make regarding what is the venue, who are the headlining speakers off and when you're running a conference or an event, you want to make sure that you're booking the speakers for the next year before the current year's conference even happens, that you can book tickets at the conference for next year. So you know, all of those big pieces that you need to get into place would be phase one. It's kind of like the build it phase you're developing what this conference theme is, where are you going to host it? Who's going to be running it? Who is your team? Who are the people that are going to see this thing through with you? And sort of it getting all of those pieces together and then moving forward it's going to be a lot of promotion and and as the months go on, you book the the correct vendors that the correct time and that's why I strongly recommend that that project template is really a timeline. I also recommend that even you're going to have some sort of accountant or someone helping you with the budget and that's great, but it's not enough to have a breakdown of the budget just by what the type of cost is. You actually would need a second breakdown that is in order of month. So whenever you need to be delivering deposits or you need to be making payments on something for the conference, you know exactly how much money you're spending every single month as you move through this project.

Speaker 3:

So what are you using as your template or using excel or using a word doc, what are the tools that you're using to create the template?

Speaker 4:

Well, it's depends on the organizer. For me personally, in my work with clients, I do really like to use software called Milanote.

Speaker 3:

Can you explain that to us? What's the difference between that platform and then using an excel spreadsheet?

Speaker 4:

Yes, so I use Milanote and that is spelled m as in Mike, I as an INDIA, l as in Lima, a as in apple and as in Nancy, O as Oscar, t as in tango, e as in Echo. What I like about it is it's free form. So it is not a spreadsheet based system. The tasks in it are not nested. So if you have like a headline, like you know, books of photographer, then every task you have to do below book that photographer is clearly seen. Instead of nesting it behind other tasks, like the spreadsheet based systems, you can easily upload moodboards images, you know, your social posts, the things that you're putting up for marketing. All of that stuff can be v you know, visually you displayed on different boards. You can have all of the information for the conference, like the brand's colors, the fonts, basically the whole style sheet that everything around it can be in boards that are easily accessible to everyone. You can edit Google documents inside it, which I really liked because it allows for you to kind of have this very focused work experience where you can have, you know, when you're writing the program or whatever, writing meeting notes, you can just write them in the Google doc that inside Milanote there, you don't have to leave the platform to perform your work and nest type forms into it. There's just really nothing else like it on the market. They, they've completely flipped productivity apps on its head and what they've developed is really special. So I do strongly recommend using it to plan all of the aspects of your event in it. It allows you to kind of have the visual clarity that I think is the difference between conferences that go well and conferences

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's awesome. I've ever heard of that. That's pretty neat. I'll have to check that out.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and I mean you can still link your excel spreadsheets. There's nothing that would prevent you from continuing to use things that you're comfortable with, but it would just give you this added element. But I find that the most important thing is that you have visual clarity on the project and that it's something that you could easily share with your team.

Speaker 3:

And so these are broken again, you said by months and then what are some of the other columns that you're putting in there?

Speaker 4:

So it's the month, the phase and you kind of want to look at each phase is its own beautiful piece of the journey, the first month when you're building it. That's also a really good time to think about what are those special extra touches that we want to add to this event? What are the things that would really put this over the top? How are we going to set ourselves apart from this 5 million other conferences that are happening this year? And so it's not just the tasks of things that you have to do, but it's also at each point in the process. How can we make the experience for the attendee that much more special? How can, what can we do? Whether it's through the the welcome guide when they first get their tickets and they first purchase. If you can give them like a beautiful welcome guide like here is what this conference is about. We are so excited that you're coming or it could be how you make arrangements for travel. Making sure that you are not only offering places for people to stay, not just like the hotel but also offering to hire cars for people when they need to go out to dinner or to maybe offsite events. You know there's always different extra things you can add to the experience so that when your attendees are there they have nothing to worry about. Other things to think about would be trying to get action steps from your speakers so that you could hand your attendees at the end of the conference, their action plan for using every single thing that was covered in that conference. If you could give them one that was like their action plan to execute everything they learned, that would be a really nice touch and everyone has different goals. Some people are there to network, some people are there to find leads, some people are there to gain visibility, but whatever it is, you want to make sure that they are all walking away with an action plan that really makes the best use of their time because unfortunately people get so caught up and then networking and the running around that often, they never really translate the notes that they're taking into action stops. And if you are the one conference that stands up and says, we want to make sure you take action on everything you learned, here's your guide, here's everything. You know, every speaker has provided for us a checklist of things that you should do so that you can take things to the next level based on what they taught you. That would be a really special thing. The first step is to look at it from a logistics standpoint. So you get your budget in there, you figure out what your timeline is for the big pieces and the, and the main like just structural things you have to do like catering and, and all of those random things. But then the second layer is you go back and you think, well how, what about the experience of every, you know, attendee, how can we make this amazing? I then the third layer is all those finishing touches. You know, how can you make it beautiful? How can you make sure you have the right staff in place so that if you need to block off a door that people aren't, aren't supposed to go down or if you're supposed to, if you have enough people for coat check just making sure you have the right number of humans and the right places so that everything just runs as smoothly as possible.

Speaker 3:

You know, I love that you mentioned that there's three layers to it because you know, I think a lot of times in the planning you get caught up in all the little steps in the details of running the event, but looking at it from the experience of the attendee and making sure that they also walking away with their goals being met as well.

Speaker 4:

Yes, and I, I mean, you could even include part of that in the welcome guide. I believe that conference people, people that are running events, they're passionate about creating great experiences and I think that sometimes the logistics of the event can trip them up and so if you can set yourself up to where the first thing you do is figure out your timelines and your logistics, that gives you the room to play for layer two and layer three it gives you the space to then cause you know everything is going to get done on time. Now you can go back and really make everything special and it helped your events stand out

Speaker 3:

For a lot of different conferences there. They're running on different timeframes. Some are only planning a few months down the road. Others are planning gears out whether some of the roadblocks that people can run into as they're sort of mapping out this conference template.

Speaker 4:

You know it's like any other project that the two big things that are going to trip you up is not properly estimating how long things will take and scope creep. You set out and you decide you're going to do something and then before you know it, a piece of the project has just expanded and expanded, expanded. Before you know it, you're like way beyond the timeline and the budget and everything you were supposed to do for that one aspect of the conference. So managing those two things, the first thing where you're trying not to underestimate how long things will take, I always recommend if you're not sure if it's something you've never done however long you think it's going to take, you add 30% so if you think it's going to take you three weeks, make it four and your plan. Because typically we underestimate what we can accomplish in a week or a month, but we overestimate what we can accomplish in a day. So I would say that anytime of vendors giving you a timeline, add 30% to it, you want to make sure that you're covering yourself because you would rather have stuff done early then to be scrambling at the last minute and trying to like get this conference together on due date in tears. We don't want you to have to go through that, so make sure that you're kind of like padding your estimates for what realistically will actually be your timeline. And then the second piece where you're trying to make sure that you're keeping scope creep in check. The second that you catch yourself going down that rabbit hole or you see that this has expanded to something that was much larger than you originally agreed to, you have to make a decision that you're either going to hire this out and someone else is going to do it and you're going to add to your budget and adds that bottom line of what this conference is going to cost. Or you're going to figure out how you can make it as close to what you originally planned as possible and make notes for next time. You know, here's an idea we had that we could really take this over the top next year. It is okay to put things down because unfortunately if you spend too much time on that one thing, it could really impact the rest of the project. It's nice to have that sort of checks and balances. Absolutely. Another thing that I think is important while we're on the topic of checks and balances is making sure that you are super proactive. So if you are a booking with a venue, I recommend that you fly out, you know, three months ahead and you do a walk through that venue with the person that is your onsite person and you talk about everything. There is no such thing as being too prepared or asking too many questions and the more you can clear up ahead of time, the less issues they're going to pop up. Leader. Um, and that's another piece where I was talking about like having to have someone block a door. Like if you don't go through that, walk through and talk to them about your plan, you're going to have stuff like that pop up where suddenly they're going to tell you that you have to make sure that no one walks into hallway B and you didn't have had a time know that so you didn't have a human on hand to do it and now you're having to relocate somebody for something that like, of course they can't just block off the door. Someone has to stand there all day. And so you want to make sure that you're being proactive with the venue, with all of your vendors and with your staff. Making sure that everyone is completely aware of every piece of this plan and how it's going to come together. There is no such thing as too much communication and making sure that everyone knows where everyone else is supposed to be. So having that final timeline where each human that is a part of this giant conference has the timeline, not only for themselves but for everyone else. So they always know where to find everyone else. You know it's a huge resource that because if an emergency happens and you're not able to get to your radio, someone knows where you are and they can send someone to you. So I just, yeah, I think it's really important to be proactive and to make sure that you're, you're giving people as much information about how this event is happening as possible.

Speaker 3:

I think that's a great point though, is actually going to be my next question and just who is this information shared with? As I just shared internally with your team, where are you actually sending out to your vendors as well?

Speaker 4:

I would include the vendors. I don't think that the vendor's going to have an issue with you giving them more information. I think that your photographers should have a shot list. They, you know what I mean? Like there is, yes, you can hire a photographer to shoot the event, but you should also be giving them a list of shots you want to make sure they're taking and make sure that they don't need helpers. People that are going to wrangle guests for group photos or are you going to have someone extra on hand to hold everyone's cell phones so that they can all get their selfies, you know, all of those things matter. And so I think that sharing anything that will impact the vendor, at least for the hours that they're there, you should absolutely share your contact information, where you're going to be and maybe you know, the top three people around you. So they always know where to go if they need help. It doesn't make sense to leave somebody with a fire and have no way for them to even figure out how to start to deal with it.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. Good point. And I, I agree. I think sometimes you go into an event and there's so many different, again, moving per that everybody needs to know where to be at what time. Yeah, great point. So when did you start getting conference template set up and you've sent it out to your vendors? What's the expectation of using this?

Speaker 4:

I think the expectation is that it's updated in real time. So if you book a vendor that should be updated, if you have a call with them, those meeting notes should be in the template so that everyone can see that you have that meeting and this was what was discussed and I think that by sharing things like that, then if they have questions, they can leave you comments and the template and you can go back to that vendor and say, okay, I followed up with my team and we had a few more questions for you. There's never too much communication and I think that when you make a solid effort to involve everyone and just constantly updating, the other thing is to just have regular meetings. You should be having a meeting probably once a week where you're checking in on that week's action stops and is anything not done? Is Anything on hold? If so, why? You can't do everything. You do need a team, you need people to to help you run this, but that doesn't mean that you can't check in once a week and really get a handle on what is happening in this conference. Where are we at with this plan? If you don't check in at least once a week, that's when things can get out of hand because you may be assuming that something's done or that someone is handled something and they just haven't gotten to it or they ran into a roadblock and they're not sure how to get around it. So kind of touching base regularly is definitely expected.

Speaker 3:

What other tools or resources are available to make sure that these different goals and being being met?

Speaker 4:

Sure. So in that meeting, you'll know right away if someone's behind, so they'll be coming and they'll say, this is done, this is not done. Here's why. So as soon as that meeting is over, whether it's you or your assistant, someone should be sending a followup email to the entire team that was in that meeting saying, here's what was discussed. Here are the action stopped that everyone needs to cover for the next week. And then it making sure that you as the organizer is the lead is following up with those people that were behind like two or three days later and saying, okay, then a few days, where are we at with that? You want to make sure that you're constantly staying on top of things because unfortunately if you, if you let things go and you don't keep up, that communication and that piece of the project could continue to slip. Having like a consistent followup process is really important.

Speaker 3:

How about for people working on multiple events that overlap or have different timeframes?

Speaker 4:

So each event is its own separate project with a separate timeline and so if you've assigned those tasks, if they know what their pieces are and when they're do, they should have no trouble planning their week so that they're starting their project work in to accommodate all of those deadlines. The main thing is that visual clarity. They have to know what is their part in this event and what are their deadlines and if they know those things, even if they're running five events, town events, 20 events, it doesn't matter. All of that stuff is timeline base, so they should be able to go in check each event, assign themselves tasks for the week to keep themselves on track. Now you're kind of getting into that like time management piece, right? Because you're kind of expecting the people that are working for you to be able to manage their time in a way that everything does get done.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. Is there anything else they conference planners should know about that you wanting to talk about the conference template before we move on to you're a hundred percent role to design?

Speaker 4:

No, I, I think we've covered it. I think that, you know, the only other thing I would say is if you could come up with some sort of a book that you hand your team a week before this thing goes live with every single note that they could possibly need. Having a resource like that would be huge, hugely valuable because again, there's no such thing as too much information and having them have something that they can actually like grab and run to if they need to look something up instead of like searching on their phone for that email, it would make a huge difference.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's nothing like being at an event and having a thousand questions thrown at you from attendees or from a speaker or from somebody on your team and not having all that information at your fingertips.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. That's the one time that you would maybe not go digital and unless they all have iPads, in which case you can make it a pdf.

Speaker 3:

Okay, perfect. So you're a hundred percent rule to design. Can you talk to us a little bit? You mentioned there might be some overlap. Yeah. Yes,

Speaker 4:

So it's actually a project management principle. It's not something that I created, but basically the hundred percent rule is when you are, when you're done creating this template for yourself and you've gone through the three layers, you go back and you make sure 100% of the things that have to be done are in there. So if the project is vague, if, if the tasks that you've put in there are something like week three, schedule the social media, that's when you run into a nightmare because that's not specific enough. It shouldn't, you should say, you could add like a headline that says schedule the social media campaign, but then underneath that it should be 90 days of Facebook posts, 30 days of Twitter. You know, what is the exact action plan for that? And that's what we mean by the hundred percent role. It's you have to make sure that every tiny little thing is actually accounted for in this project because those are the things that are going to prevent you from going over time, over budget or underestimating how long this stuff is going to take you to execute.

Speaker 3:

Okay. So having like a headline and then breaking those items out.

Speaker 4:

Yes, because the headline alone is not enough clarity for you to correctly estimate how long these things are going to take you. It also gives your team actionable deliverables, right. And this is the big difference between being busy and being productive because you don't want them to go into their office and work on social media for a week. You want them to go in there and deliver 90 Facebook posts and 30 you know what I mean? Like what is the plan? So they know when they're done so that they can actually show you what they've accomplished for the day and everybody's clear on what the expectations are. It's not a small feat. Coming up with this project template is, I am not going to lie to you. It takes time and it, and you're going to have to do a dry run where it's not going to be 100% but then the second time, if you're taking all those notes and you're translating them into your project, the second time, it could be pretty darn sure close.

Speaker 3:

And I love that you say that because it is easy for people to get overwhelmed. But knowing that and start to build it and as you know, you do your next event, go back to it and use that as your template to start.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And when you're done with that event, like the first thing you should do, I know it, like the last thing you're going to want to do is look at all this stuff anymore. But the first thing you should do after you have your celebratory bottle of champagne night that it's over the next morning we'll wake up, pop a couple Advil and look at every single note and start adding to that project and really download everything that you thought about how that event, when, what you need to do better or different next time. Uh, what are some things that you need to change and really get it on. Get it on that project template because that is going to serve you on the next project. And again, you know, yes, it is overwhelming and yes, it takes time. Um, but you don't have to do it alone. So if you know that you are booking a social media person and you're trying to figure out what is the social media game plan for this conference, have that person help you develop that with you? Like you can sit down with them and say, well, what do you think we should do? How many posts should we be doing? You know, what should be the structure of this campaign? And then that one meeting, should it give you enough that you could go back and create that piece of the project? It doesn't mean that you have to sit there and create all of this just off the top of your head. Another thing that you can do too is start having your team tape themselves. So if they're performing their work as they always do, instead of asking them to give you a list of things that they do, ask them to record themselves just going through their work and then you can either hand it off to an assistant or have them go back, watch the recording and document what they actually did to complete that specific task. That's an easier way when people start to get overwhelmed or they feel like they're not going to remember everything that they did. Just have them record themselves doing it like they always do.

Speaker 3:

That's a great idea. I love that. Yeah, it, it's, it takes the pressure off. Yeah, for sure. And it's an easier way for somebody else to kind of learn the position with. It's another way of kind of learning it as well.

Speaker 4:

Yes. Because now once you have it documented on video, you can use that to train new people. So you are spot on with that. That really brings training to a whole new level. Now you can upload an employee that's never touched a conference with you before and you can give them all these reference videos of of all the different things that they would have to do that, you know, a video walkthrough. So they're not constantly coming back to saying they're not sure how to do it. What's awesome. It's all about bringing it together so that you have lots of things on your plate.

Speaker 3:

And I love that point about the vendors too, you know, I think a lot of times people think they have to do everything themselves and you're right. You're absolutely right. Whether it's getting your programming team or your vendor or whoever it is that you're working with, they are the experts in that section of the event. So allow them to give you the timeline, not necessarily taking that along and then compiling those notes in those deadlines and that information into your conference template, not necessarily being, you know, trying to create something without really having the knowledge behind it.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely. And then you'll become that's the beauty of this though, because now when you take that approach and you go to those vendors, you are creating a collaborative process. This is no longer, I'm hiring you. Here's what I want. This is, I'm hiring you. I want this to be the best event ever. Could you please tell me about your process and what you're thinking and then it again, if you read that over and you're like, why still need somebody in this section? You can talk to them about that. But at this point you've made it a relationship and you've made this working experience that you're developing all encompassing. You know, maybe they'll have ideas that you've never would've thought of that just take her conference to the whole next level because you just asked for some feedback and, and what their process, what they think it should be.

Speaker 3:

Again, just another great tip from you. I think this has been even eye opening for myself. You know, there's a lot of things that you try to do as a planner to make things run smoothly, but it's always helpful when you hear the different ways that other organizations or other people were doing things and it's are definitely super helpful. Yep,

Speaker 4:

Absolutely. And I, I think it's, you know, the special thing about what you do is when you can get sort of these main things down and, and you have these project templates and you've got great PR training programs for uncoming staff and you've got great relationships with your vendors. Not only does running these events become easier, but allows you to really stay in your zone of genius. You're really able to oversee the big thing without having to put out all the tiny fires.

Speaker 3:

I really appreciate you coming on tonight and sharing all this information about the conference planning template and 100% design. And I do think, you know, the planning and organization and events will run much smoother with with these items.

:

Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to exposed tune in every Tuesday to hear a new episode and join in on the conversation exposed conferences, podcasts that buzzsprout.com.