In this section, you and your team will think about what information you need to collect to plan for this event and learn for future events.
Talk with your team about when your key decision making points will be to ensure that you have the information you need. Some events check that they have the right levels of resourcing in the right places two months before the event, and knowing what drugs they may see is useful information for that conversation.
Look back at the aims you identified in the first section of this guide and find ways to measure how you track against them.
What data do you need to collect, when, and how will you do that?
You might want to review your incident reporting and management plans to ensure they help you to record useful information.
Identify when your key decision making points are and ensure you have the information needed. How you resource your event (eg, appropriate levels of crowd care and medical support) should be informed by data.
Talk with your team about how you can use the data you're collecting to brief your staff, services, and patrons as needed.
Some helpful sources of information are:
The data you collect during the event will help you respond to issues that arise. It will also help you learn how to prevent, predict, and respond to incidents at future events.
Consider how you will collate data in real time and share that with your event team. You may want to allocate one person or a team of people to manage data collection, analysis, and decision making. Try to prioritise information, so that the right information gets to the right people at the right time - avoiding information overload. You might like to revisit the communications section.
Some helpful sources of information are:
Collecting data after the event will help you evaluate how well you did and prepare for future events.
This data could be descriptive overviews, anecdotes, and real data.
Some helpful sources of information are:
This is an important part of the development cycle, although it can be easy to forget to resource it. Consider who will analyse the data you have collected. You might need to bring in expertise to help you.
Make sure that you can get an idea of how effective your plan was at reaching your aim. If you can't, identify how you might be able to measure that better at future events - this is part of the development cycle.
You may want to consider:
Record what you learnt from this event so you can use it to prepare for future events. You may also want to save data files so that it is easier for you to compare that data with future events.
Make sure that you store the information in a place that is easily accessible in the future. You might want to share this with others as well.
Reflect on your process of planning, delivering, and evaluating your event. Identify where it would have been helpful to have had information or made decisions. Build those points into your preparation for future events.
Congratulations, you have finished building your plan.
We would love to hear from you. Contact us to ask questions, give feedback or continue the conversation.
These resources have been created for event organisers, by event organisers. They were commissioned by Health Promotion, Health New Zealand -Te Whatu Ora, and the NZ Drug Foundation helped the working group share their expertise. Much thanks and appreciation to those who've contributed.