You know your proposed ‘event type’ and have produced a one-page ‘event outline’ as a starting point. You broadly know the format of your proposed event and have some fairly firm outline ideas for the main stream and diversionary attractions and other content. You must now undertake a review of the detailed requirements needed to deliver that event.

Brainstorm the requirements

Working from the event outline, you must discuss, review/brainstorm and list in detail everything you think you need to deliver your event. These are ‘the requirements’. Whether the requirements are a model aircraft runway, football pitches, tents, a cycle racing track, 75 gate staff, an accountant, four sheep, or ski jumps etc., you must list everything that is raised. This review method attempts to identify the detail of your proposed event, extracting and documenting every possible requirement of any description.

For the requirements brainstorming session, the ‘scribe’ should note down each requirement idea on a yellow Post-it” note (the yellow-coloured notes will be useful later). Anything that is raised should be noted on one of these notes. Don’t dismiss or ignore any suggestion or idea during the brainstorming session. It may not be kept in the final list of requirements, but for now it may trigger a new thought that could later on point at a missing requirement. For our example event, our brainstorming list of requirements might include the following:

• tents
• food
• money
• exhibits
• collecting bins
• bank account
• players
• transport
• good weather
• rubbish skips
• brass band
• hire van
• celebrity guest
• double-decker bus
• team uniform
• loudspeaker
• ice-cream van (attract the kids, and mum and dad will come too).

Note – If there is a need to clarify why an item is listed (as in the ice-cream van above), do it now. The explanation alongside the ice cream van clearly shows that somebody thinks the ice-cream van will increase attendance. Better to explain why it was raised now while it is fresh in your mind, than try to remember some time later, why somebody thought having a tightrope-walking aardvark at the event was so important to its success!

Apply common sense

This is an opportunity to reconsider and decide if it is worth continuing. In the worst-case scenario, if while brainstorming your proposed event you find that you have no idea at all - stop now.

For example that festive idea of an ‘Xmas Reindeer Rodeo’ sounded exciting and profitable when it was discussed in the pub after the last club meeting. Unfortunately, having brainstormed it, all we came up with were questions and doubts, with no answers at all!:

• Are there any reindeer in the UK?
• Can you rent a flock of reindeer?
• Come to that – do reindeer come in herds or flocks?
• Do reindeer bite?
• Could a reindeer gore a spectator with its antlers?
• Are reindeer expensive to buy and feed?
• Do I need a ministry licence to keep reindeer?
• Do I need a local authority licence to train reindeer?
• Would the animal welfare groups let us have the rodeo?

In this example, the brainstorm result clearly shows that though it sounded like a good idea to begin with, team members don’t have sufficient experience, knowledge and contacts in this subject to organise the event and make it a success. Stop here and start again with an event type that you are more familiar with. Not all cases will be as clear as this example, but you will soon realise if you don’t have the skills, knowledge or funds to organise a proposed event.

The bottom line is that if you find now that to run your event you just have to have a troop of 20 performing elephants it may be time to start thinking of an alternative event, or at least taking another look at that event objective!

‘Classes’ of requirements

When no new ideas for ‘requirements’ are forthcoming, move on to the next stage. Change to a pad of new blue Post-it” notes and brainstorm the separate ‘classes of requirements’ you might have. Write each classification on a blue Post-it” note. Thus in our example we might have generated the following classifications:

• staff
• tents
• site
• transport
• equipment
• cash float
• exhibitors
• food sales.

Collate and sort

Take some large blank flip-chart pages and stick them around the room. You are going to assign one flip-chart page to each ‘classification’ of requirements (or assign more pages if it is a large classification). Select each blue ‘classification’ Post-it” note and stick it at the top of its own clean flip-chart page. When that has been done, start working through the requirements (yellow Post-it” notes) and stick them on the appropriate classification page.

Working with the examples above you may find you have the groupings below. Note that at this point some classifications have few or no requirements and some requirements do not seem to really fit into any of our classifications!

Staff	Tents	Site	Transport	Equipment
	Tents	Rubbish	Transport	Loudspeaker
		skips	Hire van
			Double-decker bus

Cash float	Exhibitors	Food sales
Money	Exhibits	Food
Collecting bins	Players
Bank account	Brass band

Unclassified Requirements??????

Good weather

Celebrity guest

Team uniform

Ice-cream van (attract the kids, and mum and dad will come too)