The event does not start the moment guests arrive. It starts when you move the tables, hang the signs, verify all the equipment, the supplier boxes arrive at the door, and you realize you have to find pens for the check-in area. Neither does the event really end the moment that main event does. When it’s time to clear the room, you need to know where the extra supplies are going, the vendors might need access, and usually, there’s an expectation that the room be returned to some state.
A beginner timeline looks very nice, if on it you only write what the guests see: arrival, welcome, activity, break, food, closing. But, you know what else takes up time? The parts the guests don’t see. If you don’t leave the room for setup on your timeline, then it falls right before the start time, before guests even get there. And if you don’t leave cleanup time at the end, your event just seems to end abruptly and the rest of the room becomes rushed.
Set aside some real time for setup and treat it as an official part of the event. It can be a simple event where you need to open the door to the site, walk it over, sit the tables, hang a few signs, check the sound system, confirm the catering station is set up correctly, set up the check-in table, make sure the agenda board is displayed to the public, etc. Even a quick event can suffer from a 5-minute delay from one supplier in one area and that could affect your guest arrivals and first event block.
Try working backwards from your event start time and that’ll make setting the room up easier for you. You know guests are arriving at 10:00, what needs to be in place at 9:50? What needs to be in place at 9:30 and 9:00? Rather than writing down a broad task like “set room up” you can instead write “tables set,” “signage set up,” “catering delivered,” “supplier delivered,” etc., which are more specific and much easier to manage than one big block of work.
The same goes for cleanup. You want to make sure you give enough time at the end for guests to leave, but you don’t want to neglect the time it takes to pack up the event space. Your event guests will think your event is over when the last guest walks out the door but that is really only half of it. There is still all your equipment, all of your trash, extra supplies that need to be sorted, borrowed items to return, any of your suppliers who need to be picked up, etc. If there are time restrictions with the venue, you need to plan for a time when cleanup must take place rather than leaving it to chance after guests leave and the venue closes for the day. This is also another good time to write down who is responsible for each task so your last hour doesn’t have anyone remembering things that need to be done to close up shop.
You don’t have to make your first timeline too complicated. Try picking a single event that you’ll hold and write it up. Write four sections: setup, guest arrival, main event flow, and cleanup. Set it up to have a start, a main event, a break, and a close but then give yourself enough time for setup in the beginning and cleanup in the end. Set down at least 3 tasks for each. Then see if there is still enough time at the midpoint in the event for transitions, breaks, and time to get lunch and food served and still leave you enough time to close the room up. This exercise is a good way to visualize all of the components and timing of your event so that your event doesn’t seem to begin, or end, when your guest sees it begin, or end.
When your event has setup and cleanup added into it, your timeline is a much stronger timeline because you’ve not only made it so that your event includes all of the parts the guests see, but you’ve accounted for the work before and after what the guests can see too. This will make it possible for you to add confirmations, write out your vendor information better, add task owners for the event and to write out a run sheet to help you manage all aspects of the event, and not just the parts that your guests see and experience.