How to be a great event organizer

Do you love organizing events by yourself?

Do you love organizing events because you are happy to see people enjoy the events?

Do you want to organize other events even though the previous ones were not going well?

Do you think it is important to love working with people from different walks of life to organize great events?

 Do you want to share your experience to help others organize their own events?

When all of your answers are YES, I think you are on the right track of an event organizer. You might have never been taught in schools to become an event organizer but if you have PASSION, you can become one.

I myself strongly believe that my PASSION for this “job” (I prefer to call it as this mission) brought me here today – to share with you what I have learned as an event organizer.

If you are reading till here,  you are with me on the way of becoming a passionate event organizer.

My story

I have organized events by myself since 2011. I was struggling to find groups of international people to meetup when I first arrived Girona, a small village in northeastern Catalonia region, beside the River Onyar. If you cannot find it, you can create it. I created my own groups and it became a turning point in my life.

I made an account on Meetup –a platform for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face – to become an organizer to create meeting events on the website.

At the first meeting, there were only me  and one other lady named Lidia who became close to me as my sister later on. She came to the meeting and we chatted together for 2 hours. I couldn’t speak Spanish so we communicated in English. It took me 3 months to find out that actually she could only get 30% info that I shared with her at that day because of my English accent.

Nevertheless, we always had great time together and felt really connected with each other. Even though English –our common language – didn’t help us to get 100% what other said but our body languages and souls helped. The key to connect us was being open, genuine, listening, understanding and giving constructive feedback.

Lidia then introduced to her friends whenever she had chances about our group. At the second meeting, there were 2 more people – Cami and Mauri – Colombians.

At the third, fourth meeting, there were just 4 of us again but the quality overweighed the quality. We got to know each other more and more and became closer every day. Eventually, we became a small family which went out together every week.

Starting with four of us, our community got bigger and bigger. Cami brought some English teachers that he knew to the meetup, Mauri brought his sister to the meetup and I brought someone I randomly met in the gym or library. In each meeting, we discussed different topics, playing different games and then just chitchatted informally. Each meeting was informative, interesting and inspiring. When the number of members increased, I found that it was time to change the way to organize the meetings or to add more activities.

One day, I and Cami went to pick up Tak – a French friend-was going to stay with Cami as a Couchsurfing. We played board game till late and I shared with Tak about our meetup group. Tak really liked the idea and he joined us at our meetup that week. He made me shocked when he suddenly made an announcement that I would cook Vietnamese food for everyone at my house in the Saturday evening of that week. Everyone went to me and gave me a hug and cheers with thanks and said they would love to join.

I was stunned at for some seconds then I went like “Ok, so everyone can bring something also, we will have an international food party”. Just do it. We made it happen.

I created an event with the name “ International food party” on Meetup Website as well as Facebook group.  I went to buy some snacks, paper cups and dishes and prepared some games for the whole group. The most interesting thing was that I bought some creative ingredients to make Vietnamese spring rolls with Jen’s style. There were around 30 people joined the event. Some brought some food, drink, etc. Some brought the most important thing -  themselves and their friends  - as I recommended on our website.  We would never wish for a better time.

My apartment was quite small for accommodating 30 people but my love and happiness had no bounder towards everyone. I was still stunned to see each person walked inside my apartment and enjoyed chitchat with others. I went to Tak and gave him a hug with my deep appreciation. He smiled “you made it”. Later on, International food party was taken place every month and it was always the most memorable event for each of participant. The key thing here is to “just do it”, we can do it, we just need to do it. Everything always starts with an idea.  The rest is our action to make it happen.

One day I met Marta who really loved hiking and she shared with me her experience with wonderful photos. A though just came up to my mind “Let’s go for hiking together”. Shewas willing to help me to share the hiking route with people and to become our tour guide. That night,  I created another meetup group for doing sports. I created a hiking event in both the old meet up and new meetup group. And guessed what, there were more than 10 people attended the hiking. Later on, we went together for hiking every two weeks. Our friendship would never end.

 I couldn’t express how much thankful I felt to each friend who came to our group and brought it to the next level.

With that momentum, I could create a lovely international group wherever I went. In 2015, I went to Malaysia and at the first day I arrived, I had a wonderful meetup meeting with 10 people including expats and local people. Our group then got bigger with more variety of participants as well as activities. 

From a passion to a career

In February 2016, I decided to quite my engineer job to fully focus on my Passion which is to become a speaker, writer, life coach and seminar leader and yes to continue organizing events to bring people in the world close.

That would be one of the most difficult time in my entire life till then which I had to find a way to get paid by fully working on my passion. I kept writing, reading and organizing events. During that time, the most important people in my life – my family – kept calling me home and they made me feel that I would lose them if I didn’t arrange to go back Vietnam to work after some years living away from them. I dreamed about my family every night and I felt an empty place in my heart that fatigued my brain. I knew it was time for me to go back Vietnam to stay for some months at least to pamper my soul as well as my family.

Even though I decided to go back Vietnam but I would only work in the field that related to my passion, period.

A great opportunity came. Vredeseilanden - a Belgium NGO was looking for an event organizer for their fundraising events. I read the job descriptions and I knew I was the right person for it. I shared it with my good friend who I called my “British mum” and she told me “The job was created for you”. As one of the participants in my meetup in Malaysia, a PhD, a great friend, a great teacher, a mum - she wrote for me a stunning letter of recommendation to apply for the position. As we predicted, I went through to the interview round.

I always strongly believed that passion is a great key factor to make a person do a great job. That was my strong equipment that I brought to the interview to win people’s heart. I got chosen for the job. No matter what were the words that the interviewers named for the reasons they chose me, I would argue my passion was the root reason. Passion shaped my actions.

I would never wish for a better opportunity to fully work as an event organizer in an international scale to help participants enjoy the events.

Working as an event organizer in Vredeseilanden in Vietnam is another turning point in my life. I went to a prospection trip with 2 Belgium colleagues to prepare for a cycling trip for around 30 participants. I then finally organized a real trip for a Belgium volunteer group of 12 people. . It is really an incredible experience and a great example of transforming my passion to my career

In this document, I will share with you what I have learnt from my heart, my experience not any schools.

Are you ready to just refer to my experience by your heart, because you love to not because somebody tells you to?

Let’s go.

You love it

The first and for most factor to become a great event organizer is you love to do it and you love to experience the event.. If you don’t enjoy the event, there is no reason to organize it. Love creates love. If you love it, everything you do will be built with love. Participants will love it eventually as they enter the world of love. Even though you would argue that everyone is different so they may not all like the event as the way you organize, I believe that your love and good intention will be still the best way to balance the variety.

You experience it and enjoy it

No matter how well you plan the event, it wont be as great as it can be unless you try it and enjoy it first. That was just a common sense for me until I went to a prospection trip with 2 Belgium experienced colleagues who helped me to turn my common sense become common practise “organizing a wonderful trip by experiencing a wonderful trip”.

We planned to organize a cycling tour in the North of Vietnam in 2017 for around 30 people so we went for a prospection trip to prepare for it. 3 of us with a semi truck and 2 mountain bikes went to find a track and collect all related information in terms of hotels, restaurants, contact points, etc. My two friends had a hard working task to discover all possible roads and choose the best possible roads.  They tried everything, and they chose the best things that they think it would be suitable for participants.

We enjoyed our trip. We want to see our participants enjoy it too. And we are confident about it.

You need to know what you want

I strongly believe it was a crucial factor to contribute to our great prospection trip. I was new and had never experienced a similar fundraising trip before but my two friends were not. They knew what they wanted. They pointed out what they looked for from our prospection trip. They made me become a part of that expectation.

We knew what we wanted so all our following actions led us to the best possible options that we would have.

Therefore, we needed to make a clear goal for our trip.

You need to make everyone in your teams believe and think towards to the mission of the trip

When you have a clear goal, you need to make everyone in our team believe in it and think with us to always find the best possible solutions.

My colleague never forgot to remind me to share our mission with our driver or anyone we met on the road so that they could think towards our mission and gave us the best possible advise or solutions.

You need to be flexible and do whatever it takes

Unexpected things would come anytime. As long as you are flexible to do whatever it takes, you can be still able to make the best use of any situation and guarantee the quality of the event.

The trip that I organized for a Belgium volunteer group lasted for 14 days and it took place during one of the hottest time in Vietnam – July. The hit made everyone feel exhausted and didn’t feel enjoying the trip. 

More stories are coming…………….

So, why don’t you start a meetup from today……….