How to use EVAN

The links above, mainly in the drop-down menus, tell you what you need to do at each stage of planning and managing a fairly complex event.

EVAN is, as much as possible, a master checklist, and is based on the idea that event management increasingly uses a master checklist that can be improved over time. This is better than uniquely planning each event from scratch, because it means that you can fairly easily incorporate "lessons learned" into the system. While we can add items (budgeting and publicity are high priorities) and re-arrange them into a better order, it is important that none get deleted.

Some good advice from Eventspool:

Group the Action List and assign each group to the appropriate team member responsible for each action, then set achievable deadlines. Note form is better than lengthy minutes of meetings for this. Once you have created the Action List, monitor it regularly to make sure progress is being made and tasks are being completed. Your event Action List actually forms a powerful agenda structure for your meetings and is a living, breathing document which can be added to during the lead up, on the day, and after the event. If you keep a copy of the Action Lists on file with your other documents you will always have a blueprint document for future events. Eventspool

A word of warning. This is a finite list of specific skills and tasks. It will not replace a sound analysis of the context of specific events, which will let you see the big picture of a particular situation and any unique needs. You need to put them all together. If you can't integrate all the specific skills into a big picture, you're not really doing it. It's like a suitcase that's been unpacked; you can see all the items laid out separately. But you need to put them all together before you leave for the airport.

You can download relevant sections and delete anything irrelevant to your particular event, so that you have a fairly comprehensive list of what you have to do.

Try the "save as" feature on your browser. Saving files and then editing them might produce better results than cutting and pasting straight from EVAN, as it will do more to retain the underlying source coding.

Lists of examples are bulleted with circles, like this:

In this new edition, the language of the text is clearer, redundancies are fewer, the contents are in a better order, and it includes some of the harder to find material on complex events. The improved navigation means that most information is close by.