022 - Event Planning in the Dark

Have you heard the one about five accountants planning a community event…?

Hey Friends, welcome back!  I JUST got done coordinating an event (with a group of other fabulous people, of course) to gather ALL our #TaxTwitter friends together in one place for the 2nd year.  It’s called the Tax Retreat and our executive committee this year has ALL new people. And we were 95% enthusiasm, 5% any practical experience.

This is the story of how “How hard can it be?” turned into “Hi ChatGPT…”.

Wait, what are we doing here?

One of the first ways that we leaned into GenAI was in setting up the subcommittees.  We had the Executive Committee but we suspected more folks would want to attend this year.  And A TON of folks wanted to pitch in and contribute.  So, obviously we needed subcommittees.

I asked a ‘Event Planning Consultant’ persona walk me through subcommittees needed and their assigned tasks.  I completed the exercise in both ChatGPT and Claude, cleaned it up and added adorable emojis.  We had this document to refer back to as a starting point for how the tasks were divided.

…but, in hindsight, we may not have needed AS FORMAL of subcommittee structures.  Here’s the thing, I never explored with the ‘Event Planning Consultant’ persona whether subcommittees were even a good idea. Also, I could have used it to foresee any challenges with the subcommittees so that we could plan ahead.  I didn’t use the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ on the front end to save us foreseeable headaches in the future…

The other issue – you can create all the documentation that you want – as we all know, GenAI loves to Gen - but if you don’t actively refer back to it then its just words with pretty emojis.  So, in addition to creating documentation and surfacing hidden challenges, I would also recommend exploring best practices for implementing.  Humans are going to human in predictably human ways. 

What was the question again?

When we started exploring venues, one of the fantastic applications of GenAI was to figure out what exactly we need to ask about.  Because, and I don’t know if any of you have planned an event at a hotel, there’s lists upon lists of things to ask about and keep track of.  It’s not just “here’s your conference room, good luck!”.

(Any experienced event planners have probably died laughing by now after reading this).

If you try this approach, I’d recommend the ‘Ask me Anything’ prompting technique – set up your scenario and then add to the end of your prompt, “What do you need to know about _________ to help me ask questions?”  This does two things – it gives the GenAI tool more context about YOUR specific situation, but it also helps you find questions you didn’t even know you didn’t know.  You know?

The other tip I’d add is - ask the GenAI tool to format the final result (you’ll probably want to chat back and forth for a bit) as a table with the questions in the first column and four additional columns – ‘Contact’, ‘Date Contacted’, ‘Response’, and ‘Notes’. 

(Extra hint: If you have the paid version of CGPT, you can request a downloadable Excel schedule.)

I don’t even know what to say…

One of the other surprising things about an event is HOW MUCH communication has to go out.  You want to set your attendees, your sponsors, your speakers up for success.  You want to celebrate the event so everyone that wants to come knows about it.  You want to give direction to volunteers so they can do the thing without feeling lost or confused.

(I can’t say that I was always successful, and it was because I didn’t lean on GenAI ENOUGH, not because I leaned on it too much.  Once again, I thought I knew what I needed to know but didn’t know what I didn’t know.  You know?).

The ways that we pulled in GenAI as our first-draft copywriter:

• Social media content ideas/wording

• Sponsor packets/guides

• Speaker information guides

(I want to emphasize that this was a “WE thing” in using GenAI – everyone leaned on it for their own projects.  Nobody said, “did you try using ChatGPT for that?”  These are all folks that have been noodling with GenAI for a year now and its now a default tool.)

And, as always, GenAI is first draft, not final draft.  It provides all the words, you make it sound less like the robot.

A tip – use the adjectives ‘concise’ and ‘easily understandable’ to limit the number of words and (hopefully) add some formatting.  I’ve found the more words you make folks read, the less they understand.  (And yes, I am a total hypocrite in saying that which is how you know this wasn’t GenAI generated.)

We could have used GenAI for far more copywriting and I’ve already started a list of problem-solving exercises to go through with it.  The goal is to make sure everyone gets enough information to feel comfortable they know what’s happening but NOT TOO MUCH to be overwhelmed. 

The Human is Still Needed in the Equation

Throughout all of these exercises, GenAI was a tool that we used to make something that seemed impossible feel possible.  But, to speak to a point I made initially, you can make a million documents, you can prep for EVERY scenario, you can think you’ve asked EVERY question… and you will STILL be surprised by the unexpected and STILL need to problem-solve with other folks. 

We pulled off (with the help of A TON of friends) an event that was very special and we were able to overcome a lot of our blind spots and communication needs with the support of GenAI.

But I don’t do Event Planning

Fair!  But I bet you DO have events and projects and people and communication and things you don’t know and new ideas you want to roll out.  The beautiful thing about GenAI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot is they are like legos, you just mix up the words to create new things.

What are you planning on using GenAI for this week?

Happy Chatting!