An hour of planning did not save me ten hours of doing.
And I wasn’t too happy about that. During the last 20 years I was organizing live events, I never found a good enough tool to plan my event production efficient and effective. So I quit my regular job and started to build one from the scratch.
Failing to plan is planning to fail.
I got into event business roughly 20 years ago. Since I have produced tens of events, participated in hundreds of events and read up on thousands of events. The outcome of event productions show up too often as mediocre or just good customer experience. This is usually due to poor planning or failing to communicate plans to others.
We deserve better events. For that we need better event planning. There are bunch of great event production and project management apps available around. But I never found a perfect app for event planning. This is why I came up with this app. To create a perfect fit for me. To help me to plan and produce better events more efficient and effective. That is doing the right things right. And why not to share this with others as well.
Bonacube App is designed with the following thoughts in my mind.
One. Plans are useless, but planning is everything. Event projects are too dynamic to master with old school plans like endless documents, spreadsheets or presentations. At the moment you save your plan it’s already out of date. And when sharing those plans to others you were always uncertain whether people read, found or understood these plans like it was meant to. There had to be better ways.
Two. Keep it simple. Events are considered as complex projects. But that’s not true. If you break any event into tiny pieces you only find few kinds of things that are connected to each other with idea (why), event content (what) and processes / management tools (how). These few things are either space, staff, stuff or support service. This is pretty much the way I think and do events by myself. (Scroll down to Event Magic Cube to learn more).
Three. The difference between good and great is details. And. At the end the only place where good and great matter is in minds of our customers. For me event planning means planning customer experiences with event. The more detailed you go in your planning, better the chances to grow and make profits with your event.
Four. Always improve. Even if I think myself as a perfectionist in some areas of my work, I am old enough to know it’s better to strive for progress than perfection. For Bonacube App this means that development shall never end. Same applies to event planning and production. Always improve. There are some huge ideas already in pipeline.
Because we deserve better events.
-Jesse Kiuru, entrepreneur
Art of event planning.
A summary of actions we need to take in event planning for producing better events. .
Bonacube is based on my way of thinking and doing event production. I have named this Event Magic Cube.
Five aspects to approach any event project right.
#1 Always start with why
As Simon Sinek said: “People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it.” This applies to events as well as it creates a meaning for everything you do - goals, projects, tasks and acts. If anything, make sure your key organization knows the right answer for your why. After this. it is quite simply to find good answers to what, who, whom, when and how.
#2 Split up your event into six phases
Big live events are multi-year projects including thousands of small and big things to be organized. To make this easier to master, it’s a good idea to break your event project and project timeline into smaller pieces. I split my events always into six phases: idea (bid), planning, preparation, implementation, LIVE and review. I find this very helpful to keep up the logic in event production along the project.
#3 Design your customers’ experience and story prior, during and after the event
The competition of peoples’ attention, time and share-of-wallet gets harder all the time. It should be no-brainer to design your event for your customers. Still. Worth to remind that different customer groups have different needs and
desires. To make your event a success you just need to provide your most important ones extraordinary customers’ experience prior, during and after the event. To getting there, make sure adding some creative and unique elements in your plans and acts.
#4 Identify your things to be done for all key areas
Events are quite simple organs. Those have clear start and end points. In between there are projects, tasks, acts and all kind of things that enables services, experiences, wows and other touchpoints with your customers. To make things happen, I like to organize responsibilities simply. I divide all doing into three responsibility areas named after job titles of CEO, COO and CXO. And all things to do into four key areas that are space, stuff, staff and support services.
#5 Make sure your productivity is high enough with right tools
Do the right things right. That’s simply a recipe for getting great customer experience together with great financial results. A bit harder in real. In order to boost your efficiency and effectivity you need right tools (for you and your team). One of these might be our Bonacube App. Give it a try.