Event Selection

Decide whether an event happens, and in what form, before any money moves. Most of the money lost on events is lost at signature.

When to use

• A sponsorship deck landed in someone's inbox
• Choosing between formats for a goal ("we want to do something for these accounts")
• Annual planning, evaluating a slate of candidates
• Somebody senior wants to do an event and nobody has done the math

Inputs

• Reads: workspace/program/charter.md, workspace/audience/target-list.csv if it exists
• Needs from user: the event, the cost including travel and staff time, the attendee list or a credible estimate, historic conversion rates if any exist

Workflow

1. Do the arithmetic first

Before any discussion of creative, booth design, or theme:

Target accounts attending (verified, not the organizer's claim)
  x realistic meeting rate (15 to 25% with good pre-work)
  = meetings
  x historic meeting-to-opportunity rate
  = opportunities
  x average deal size
  = expected pipeline
  x win rate
  = expected closed revenue

Total cost:
  sponsorship or venue
  + travel and accommodation
  + staff days at loaded cost      ← the line everyone omits
  + creative and production
  + shipping, insurance, collateral
  + follow-up time
  = fully loaded cost

Pipeline and revenue are two different numbers. Report both, labelled. Expected pipeline stops at opportunities times deal size. Applying win rate gives expected closed revenue, which at a 25% win rate is a quarter of the pipeline figure. Calling the win-rate-adjusted number "pipeline" understates the event by 4x and will lose you the budget argument against a channel that reports pipeline honestly.

Staff days are usually the second largest line and are almost never counted. Four people for three days including travel is twelve loaded days.

Verify attendance independently. Organizers quote registration, which includes staff, press, and sponsors. Ask for expected attendance and title mix, and net out sponsor and exhibitor staff. Twenty exhibitors at four to eight staff each is a hundred bodies who are not prospects.

2. Apply the standing rule

If you cannot pre-book fifteen meetings, do not buy the booth. Send two people with a coffee budget and work the hallway.

This is the most valuable sentence in the skill. Attending without sponsoring produces a comparable number of qualified meetings at a fraction of the cost at most events, and it is available right up until you sign.

3. Score candidate formats

When the question is "what should we do" rather than "should we do this", score each candidate 1 to 10 on five weighted criteria:

Then score the shortlist on Impact, Confidence, and Ease, out of 30. The confident thing you can ship this quarter usually beats the ambitious thing you cannot staff.

docs/formats.md carries the economics and failure modes for eight formats.

4. Check the calendar and the collisions

Two events at T-4 weeks in the same fortnight will both be under-run. Check the annual calendar in the charter before saying yes.

5. Write the decision

Not a recommendation. A decision, with a named decision maker:

EVENT / FORMAT
Recommendation:      GO / GO WITH CONDITIONS / NO-GO / ATTEND WITHOUT SPONSORING
Expected pipeline:   $n  (opportunities x average deal size)
Expected closed rev: $n  (pipeline x win rate)
Assumptions:         <every rate used, and where it came from>
Fully loaded cost:   $n
Meeting target:      n, derived from <arithmetic>
Conditions:          <what has to be true, e.g. the five diligence answers>
The alternative:     <what we do instead, costed>
Decision maker:      <name>  Decision date: <date>

Always include the alternative. A no-go with no alternative gets overturned by whoever wanted the event. A no-go that says "instead, send two people and host a dinner for a third of the price, here is the expected pipeline" wins the argument.

6. If it is a go and money is changing hands

Route immediately to sponsorship-negotiation before signature. The five diligence questions are conditions of the go, not follow-up tasks.

Output

• Writes: workspace/events/<event>/decision.md
• Prints: the arithmetic, the go or no-go, the meeting target with its derivation, the conditions, and the costed alternative

Rules & quality bar

• Arithmetic before opinion. No recommendation without the expected-pipeline calculation
• Staff days are in the cost model. Every time
• Verify attendance independently of the sales deck, and net out sponsor staff
• Fifteen pre-bookable meetings or no booth
• Every no-go carries a costed alternative
• Never invent a conversion rate. Use the company's own history, or mark the assumption and show the sensitivity
• Be willing to say no out loud. This skill exists partly to talk people out of things

Related skills

• Reads: event-program-setup
• Hands off to: sponsorship-negotiation (if paid), event-budget, then the format skill
• See also: docs/formats.md, docs/metrics.md for the meeting-target arithmetic