Designing Effective Events

Events are a great way to bring your community together. They’re an opportunity to celebrate together, to socialize; for existing members to get to know each other better and newcomers to come out of their shell in a welcoming environment. 

Your goal is to understand what your server wants most from them: what kind of events will do well, how often they should be held, and how to know what’s working and what’s not.

Types of Events

Events are any scheduled occasion for your community to come together, typically employing Stage Channels. Any event will rely on your community to work. The question is: are you relying on their interest? Or their participation?

On one end of the scale, you have casual events where your audience is a major part of the show. Examples include:

• Karaoke Nights 
• Open Mics
• Storytime
• Organized Games 

Your community is doing the hard work here, so your main task will be to figure out how you want to manage their participation: do you want to have participants reserve spots? Raise their hands to go next? All talk over each other?

Once you’ve got a solution that works, you and your community might want to run these as regularly as once a week. A schedule’s always a good idea, but a simple @all or @everyone when you’re getting started should bring people in either way.

On the other hand, you have structured events, such as:

• Q&As
• Seminars
• Town Halls
• Interviews

You can and should allow your community to take part in these, but people aren’t showing up to take the spotlight: they’re showing up because they’re interested in the subject matter.

You’re relying on people to get excited, so plan these events well in advance and schedule them publicly at least a week before. Ensure you have enough moderators on hand to enable effective audience participation—you want to let your community shine without letting the event go off the rails.

Understanding Your Goals

There’s no one way to measure how successful an event is. Server Insights might give you some useful answers, but your goals will tell you what the questions should be. For example, you might think about:

• Did People Show Up? Don’t just look at numbers. Ten people attending may not sound like a lot, but if it’s half your server, you’re definitely on to something.
• Did People Participate? If people seemed shy, think about ways to break the ice. People are more likely to start taking part if someone else gets the ball rolling.
• Any New Faces? Did any newcomers participate? Or are the same people taking part every time?
• Did They Leave Wanting More? Was there interest in a follow-up? Is this something you might do regularly, or should it remain a one-off?
• Could They Have Gotten This Anywhere Else? Did the event feel exclusive to your community? Are you rewarding them for being a part of it?