Ask lots and lots of questions.

“If you want to come up with lots of ideas, ask lots of questions.”

Someone a lot smarter than I am said that. I’ll extend it though, and say, “If you are writing a plan and want to make sure you don’t forget something, ask lots of questions.”

I could easily write 100 questions to give you examples, but here are 23 – if you ask these questions at the beginning of the planning process and revisit them from time to time, you’ll generally come out way ahead:

1. What are my key objectives?

2. In what ways does this event need to support my business objectives?

3. Which individuals, businesses and organizations should be involved with this event?

4. How do we use this event to create new relationships and strengthen existing ones?

5. What are the possible locations?

6. What qualities do we need the location to have?

7. How many attendees do we need to be successful?

8. What is our budget?

9. Who do we need to make happy?

10. What could we do that would be special?

11. What are the things that could go wrong?

12. What do we need to accomplish with the agenda?

13. Who/what should we consider to be part of the agenda?

14. What have others done at similar events that we might want to emulate?

15. What have others done at similar events that we want to learn from/avoid?

16. What kind of food/drinks do we need?

17. What could we do that would be unusual?

18. What will people expect?

19. Where can we cut costs?

20. In what areas should we be sure not to skimp on cost?

21. How can we use technology to further our goals for this event?

22. What can we do to green this event?

23. What are the accessibility issues?