Event Organization

tutorials
Published

June 10, 2022

Purpose of document

This document aims to provide tips, ideas and resources to support event planners in organizing their event, and gives recommendations on what to think about and consider during the process, but does not restrict their creativity and freedom in how to make their contribution to the group.

What it means to organize an event

As an event planner, you take on the organization of one event at a time, so it involves a short-term commitment. You have the freedom and responsibility to create the content and structure of your event according to your own ideas and preferences, as long as they fit within the vision and values of our group. The amount of time it will take to organize your event depends greatly on the content and format you choose – e.g. organizing an informal discussion requires less preparation than organizing a technical workshop. Organizers in support roles can help you with the logistics, promotion and technical aspects of your event.

Where to start

The first two things you should think about is what topic you want to organize around and with who. At this point, your idea does not have to specific, but you should have a general idea of the content you’d like to cover. You can look at our Event Planning document for inspiration - to see what topics our members are interested in discussing and what topics we have discussed at previous events. While you can organize an event alone, we strongly recommend you find at least one co-organizers, so you can bounce ideas of each other and share the organizational tasks. To find co-event planners, you can post on Slack and ask people to join you, or reach out to people you know (inside or outside the group). Once you have your topic and co-organizers, you should pick a date and time for your event. There is a table in the Event Planning document with suggested dates & times based on the availability of our members, so we suggest you pick one of the proposed times, but you are free to organize at any time that is convenient for you. Please fill in your topic and organizer team in the row associated with the time and date of your choosing. Once you have done this, an event coordinator will be in touch with you to see if you need any help.

Critical Path—handy organizing tool

Organizers in the previous year have created a handy tool for keeping track of the tasks, timelines and people involved in organizing an event. This also provides a great overview of all aspects of the event you need to consider and sets out an ideal timeline for organizing events. We recommend using this template to create your own organizational overview and share it with all co-organizers in an online, editable format, so you can all keep track of who is doing what and by when. Not all aspects might be relevant for you, though, so you can use this as you see fit – or use your own organizing routines. You can find this tool on our OSF/GitHub page: https://osf.io/235ks/

Purpose of event

A great starting point for designing the specifics of your event is to think about the purpose or desired outcomes you want to achieve. Common purposes for our group events that you can consider are learning more about certain Open Science practices, building connection/sharing experiences, critically examining research culture, developing certain skills and providing peer support.

Event format

For each event, we ask you to start with a land acknowledgement to recognize the Original Peoples of the lands we live on and the history and present day impacts of colonialism. We also encourage you to do a round of introductions/check-ins at the start of each event, as this can help us get to know each other and lower the barriers for taking part in interactive aspects of the event. However, it is up to you to decide if and in what format this would be most appropriate for your event. Lastly, we strongly recommend you plan a short break in any event that is longer than 1 hour, so everyone gets a chance to stretch their legs, use the restroom and refresh so they can fully engage in the second half of the event as well. Apart from that, we leave the content and format of the event up to you. Below are some formats that we have used in the past or plan to use in the future, to give you some ideas – feel free to mix and match and use multiple formats to create an engaging event.

Basic elements

  • Welcome & land acknowledgement
  • Check-in/introductions
    • Ask everyone to share their name, pronouns and their response to the check-in, if they feel comfortable
      • Check-ins can be simple and short (.e.g one word description of how you feel), or longer/more specific (e.g. what is a good thing that happened to you this week?)
      • This round can also be a good opportunity to get an idea of participants experience/previous knowledge with the topic

Mix-and-match elements

(non-exhaustive - feel free to come with other ideas, which can then be added here)

  • Round: sharing circle that gives everyone the chance to share/respond to a question/prompt
    • Can be done with the whole group or in smaller groups
    • Duration of each round depends on the number of people participating (estimate 1-3 minutes for each individual, depending on prompt)
    • Good for: getting to know each other, building connection, getting an idea of everyone’s experiences/previous knowledge
  • Presentation
    • Generally with the whole group, but can be done in parallel groups, if appropriate
    • Suggested time duration: 10-20 minutes
    • Preparations: Find speaker(s)/prepare presentation
      • Powerpoint template available on OSSSG GitHub/OSF
    • Good for: providing participants with basic information about open science practices, additional resources to look at and sparking discussion
  • Small group discussions
    • 3-5 people (in breakout rooms while online)
    • Suggested time duration: 15-25 minutes
    • Preparations: discussion questions & facilitators
    • Good for:
  • Speed-discussions : a series of one-on-one conversations
    • 3-5 sessions of 5-10 minutes
    • Brief conversations with others in the group one-on-one
    • Preparations: conversation questions
    • Good for: getting to know each other, sharing experiences/ideas, checking in with each other
  • Whole group discussion
    • Variable length - we advise to stay within 20 minutes, as such large group discussions limit how much everyone can speak, and therefore usually cost more energy and are less engaging for most participants
    • Good for: sharing/integrating what was discussed in smaller groups, Q&A periods
  • Informal discussions
    • Create a space where individuals can freely ‘move around’ and join/leave different groups when they want (e.g. on gather.town)
    • Provide ideas on what participants could talk about, but leave room for anything to be discussed
    • Good for: talking about broad/current topics, sharing experiences/ideas, building community
  • Social activities (e.g. games, movies)
    • Create a space for people to interact freely and engage in social activities
    • Good for: relaxation, getting to know each other, building community
  • Tutorial/walk-through – show participants how a program/practice works
    • Variable length - we advise to stay within 45 minutes to leave room for opening/closing the session and interaction
    • Use parallel sessions if multiple programs are introduced that might be relevant to different subfields
    • Good for: showing participants how certain open science topics work in practice
  • Workshop – teach participants how to use certain programs/practices
    • Interactive session aimed at helping participants acquire new skills
    • Variable length - we advise to stay within 45 minutes to leave room for opening/closing the session and interaction
    • Preparation is more time-intensive than tutorial
    • Good for: learning skills, practice peer-teaching, collaboration
  • Brainstorm : collect ideas on a specific question/topic
    • Recommended to use shared document (e.g. jamboard file) where everyone can see and add ideas
    • Recommended to be done in smaller groups
    • Suggested time: 10-20 minutes
    • Good for: promote divergent thinking, setting priorities, getting feedback
  • Project working space
    • Get people together to come up with and/or work on Open Science related projects
  • Hackathon
    • Get people with a shared interest together to co-create something – this can be any of a number of things, including

Aims to keep in mind when planning sessions

As event planners, you are given much freedom in how you want to fill in your session. The group has specific aims and values that fit better with some than other structures, therefore we ask you to keep these in mind when planning a session.

  • Interaction:
  • Inclusivity:
  • Focus on practical steps:
  • Support vulnerability:

Facilitators

During each event, there should be a Main Facilitator who welcomes everyone at the start of the event, makes sure everything runs smoothly during the session and closes the event at the end. This can be anyone from the event planners group, or someone you invite to take on this role (e.g. post on Slack to find volunteers, or get in touch with people directly). For online events, we also recommend having a Chat/Zoom Facilitator who can keep an eye on the chat, share links and resources there and set up breakout rooms if applicable. We recommend that this is the same person who creates the zoom room, as they will automatically have all the permissions needed to fulfill this role – of course, these permissions can also be granted to someone else. If you are planning any activities in smaller groups, we also recommend having Breakout Facilitators, who know what is supposed to happen in each breakout session and are able to (re)start the conversation when it dries up. See this facilitators guide for more tips & guidelines.