Make sure everyone can make it with GatherGrid

Setting the time for an event can be a bit of an hassle. Coordinating the needs of everyone involved is a tedious job and there are not many tools to help.

Gathergrid helps in polling the best time in an elegant fashion.

How does it work?

Needless to say that once you have found out your time amiando would be the best method to host your event.

Have a look and tell me what you think!

Link to Gathergrid

The Compact Calendar 2009

We love being organized and we love even more those tools that help us in being better Masters of Ceremony.

Getting things done is not a title of a book for us, neither a desired state: it’s a given.

David Seah released the Compact Calendar 2009. A nice template for you to print out and use for the rest of the year. It will make your workflow easier.

It comes in different versions according to your local holidays.

Download Compact Calendar via davidseah.com

5 Free event mangement templates

Photo by: perhapstoopink

I know sometime this blog gets too techie. Open source, online platforms etc. For those who don’t want to struggle with complex platforms and so forth here are 5 free templates to use with Microsoft Excel and Open Proj.

WBS, Gantt and Budget. All in one

Download OpenProj and get this template I prepared for you.

Event Toolkit

Are you unsure on what to bring with you at your next event. Be it a wedding or a wine tasting tour you will find a great collection here.

Wedding Work Breakdown Structure

An all time favorite. WBS is a must for weddings.

Event Budget

A simple budget template from Microsoft

Marketing Campaign

A good template to track your marketing campaign for Excel

For more have a look here

Finally… Amiando!

I talked in the past about trying to find an open source, free and complete alternative to expensive EM software.  Well Amiando it’s the closest solution to that. They have released a new version of the already great platform. I must admit it kicks asses, to use an allegoric phrase.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think an open source solution would be great but these guys did exceptionally well.

Who should use Amiando?

Mostly those working with events up to 400 people, both professional and not. If you don’t want to bother yourself with messy accounting and looking for a straightforward solution, it does not get any better than this, should you organize a party, a meeting or a conference.

Flexibility

They created a module system in which you add the modules you need. That answers to one of the most painful issues with events. Every event needs different organizational tools. The platform is flexible enough to accommodate very different needs.

Ticketing

They started with the ticketing service and then expanded on that. They addressed the major issue with Paypal. A lot of organizers had troubles with using Paypal for ticketing. They keep Paypal as an option, but they developed their internal payment system in which they take care about everything, invoicing and International VAT charges included. Wow.

Web 2.0 and Social integration

Finally I don’t have the feeling of being in 1997 while looking at an online platform. These guys nailed the concept of integration with Social Media and Networks. You can actually add Youtube videos or Flickr photos. If you use Facebook you are pretty much used to that but in our field we are talking big news! You are actually able to share information on major social networking websites, get buttons to promote your event as well as

Support

There is a free of charge number to avoid mess ups.

Directions

Very easy just add the address of the location and a Google map.

Amiando Website

Get a free copy of the Events Toolkit

I recently compiled a toolkit from all the interventions on the blog. It can be used as a cheat sheet for events.

As I think that the best way to get EventManagerBlog content is via RSS feed, I decided to give away the pdf only to subscribers.

If you don’t know what RSS is visit this section.

There are two way you can subscribe to EventManagerBlog

- You can subscribe to all the content by clicking on the Full Feed icon at the top right corner of the page or alternatively you can click here

- You can subscribe to Partial Feeds by clicking to the small icon next to each category.

By subscribing to the Full Feed you will also get a Link Roundup. This is a weekly post with useful links I’ve found on the Internet and usually related to Event Management.

In order to get a copy of the Events Toolkit you should send an email to itsbeenalongtime (@) gmail (dot) com and tell me what was the best article you read on this blog?

I’ll reply to you with a copy of the Events Toolkit for you to enjoy!

New Events Toolkit can be found here