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njlauren -> RE: Hosting an event? (6/23/2013 7:14:46 PM)
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I was involved for several years with a large fetish oriented charity auction event, and one thing about any event is it generally takes more work then you think it will, and it isn't really different IME for kink events then it is for vanilla events. Here are my suggestions:
-Decide what you want the event to be, be as specific as possible. If you plan on actually having things go on, rather than just being a kinky get together, then look at what others have done. For example, for a pet event:
-Obediance trials, which means you would need people to judge it (panel's always seem more cool), so you would have to get in touch with people and see their availablity.
-Agility events would require setting up courses (how you do this for pet play in a kink contest, I have no idea), which would require thinking about the course you would want; also, would there be classes i.e male pets/female pets, would it be on a time trial basis with multiple runs, would there be different types of pets (dogs, ponies)?
You get the idea, you need to take your concept and drill down on it, maybe you and tinkerer could get together a small group of people you know and brainstorm... one of the things that made our fetish event work was we had it down to exact details of what what on, it had been going on for a while, tasks were broken down, and we had regular meetings.
-Venue is important, and that isn't easy, even for a charity event. Being in NYC, it was difficult to find space that would work for us, and would be of limited rent, since the whole idea was to make money for the groups we were targeting....and it never is easy.
One of the key things i recommend is finding a place easy to get to, in range of population centers. Places in Indiana, if my geography holds, can tap an audience from a pretty wide area, which is good. Hopefully it is also easy to get to, close to highways and such, a place that requires travelling miles over country dirt roads may not work well for some people.
-Is it a single day event or a multi day event? If multi day, then you may have the headache of seeing if there are enough places for people to stay nearby (unless they plan on camping out, which brings its own headaches)....
-Are food and drinks to be provided by you guys, as part of the entrance fee, or will people be told to bring their own? You could also find someone in the kink community willing to organize food and drink, and have it available for sale, which can be a way to help defer the cost of putting this on....if it ends up making money, the net proceeeds if you want could go to an animal shelter or something like that, that always seems popular with people. I can tell you if it is outside and it gets hot, you have to make sure there is at least water available. If it is outdoors, I would also recommend seeing if it would be possible to have a tent sent up, a big one, for shade, for people to cool off and also in the event it rains, you could still do stuff indoors.
-Have provisions for first aid, hopefully you have someone with skills in the community willing to do this, in case someone gets hurt. Doesn't have to be an ER, but good to have ice packs and bandages and ointments and other basic first aid.
-Make sure to get a decent number of porta potties, you never have enough.
-Don't try to do this yourself, and take the time to plan it right....have a group of people involved, and set designated tasks. Often the hardest one? The people responsible for breakdown, my specialty, after a long day/night, few people will feel all that great about doing this..but it needs to be done, especially if you are renting space. I have worked where we had roughly 30 minutes to get everything broken down, put aways in vans and such, and the place cleaned up, because it opened as a club at that point, and we couldn't delay the opening. Having designated people means it is more likely to get done, instead of "oh, I am sure we'll take care of it"
-Decide what is allowed and what isn't, and stick to that...and yes, have people designated at greeters/attendants/security, all it takes is some people , who may have drank too much or are too full of themselves, to ruin it for others. And yes, drinking is a big one, among other reasons, be careful with that, even if this is a private event, some places can be strict about alcohol being served, even if you aren't charging for it, simply for providing it. If people are allowed to BYOB, it can be a hassle to monitor it.......but in any event, think about it.
Obviously, a smaller event (20 people, 30 people) is a lot easier to do then one drawing hundreds. I agree with others, sometimes campgrounds are pretty good about things like this, there are a number of leather retreats that used camps in the Poconos and such.....and be honest with them what this is about, you don't have to tell them the details, but I would tell them it is for an adult group in the real of alternate sexuality or some such. Some places may not really care, but other's will, and if for example you rent some parcel of land they might be afraid it will turn into another Woodstock, get out of control, so it is important to tell them what you plan on doing (in general), and explain the outline of what you plan of allowing (booze/no booze), time frame, what kind of things you plan to have there (for example, tents, porta potties), how you plan on cleaning up afterwards, made arrangements to haul out garbage, etc, show you are organized.
One thing I have found with these things, normally it becomes evidence early whether it has a chance of happening, if you get together a group of people who said they are interested in helping, and only 2 people show up, it isn't a good sign and you might want to rethink before getting this off the ground. If people seem to be taking it seriously, you see progress as people check in, it is a good sign, but if for example the person or people in charge of finding out about getting a tent aren't doing anything, it is not a good sign.
I know it sounds like it isn't any fun, but believe me, it is, you put something together, no matter how formal or informal, it feels great when it happens (well, okay, the year I decided to wear boots with 5" heels and having to run around and such, that wasn't too smart, I learned my lesson after that one). Get together a group of people you know you can trust, and it can go off great.
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