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CHANGE; INCLUDING YOUR OWN
The event industry as we know it today is occupied by a committed and traditional field of experts who are mainly focused on continuity and value. They ensure stability by building on relationships practices that in the past helped launch previous events. The events themselves have become businesses. But in order for event planners to survive in today’s growing experience market they need to evolve. There is a tested and proven better way to design events that includes quantifying the abstract, empathizing, and planning for change.
Whether you are a CEO, the owner of an event, or a designer, in employing the methods we describe, you, too will make a change for the better—in your practice, in your results, and in your career.
Many of the advancements you make will be individual, but we can identify a few aspects that will be innovative to many. First, the Event Canvas is a visual tool. Creating a visual overview will ensure a transparent process that is easy to share and allows you to involve, include, or inform others by simply taking them through a clear visual process. Thinking visually allows people to gather around a problem and to constructively build a shared model for a complex idea. The Event Canvas uses a specific visual process that gives you direction by cutting the process into different modules, helping you to ask the right questions at the right time and exposing the insights needed to make conscious choices.
Second, you will be able to identify and articulate what is commonly elusive to most, and therefore neglected. Event planners often focus on the logistics and execution of an event, because these are quantifiable, but will neglect what we believe to be essential: the subjective experience, the abstraction of behaviour, and the journey of behaviour change. These seem to
be unquantifiable, that they are not able to be evaluated and addressed. This is a mistake and the Event Canvas will change that perspective. With it you can map the needs of people participating in your event, their desires, and their expectations. It is a tool that will allow you to put into words the shared change you want to realize with your event.
And third, the Event Canvas is a unifying tool. It will keep a team focused, together, and on a track that leads through each and every consideration necessary in designing an excellent event.
