Note: Some ONA Local events are currently happening virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic for the health and safety of our community. We’ve rounded up a list of resources to help you design engaging virtual events, for groups that choose to host them.

ONA Local events have three principal goals: hospitality, networking and learning. Some events may be more networking-focused while others may be more learning-focused, but hospitality will be the foundation that holds your event together. We’ll dive into each aspect and give you some tips to accomplish each below.

Hospitality

Many of the main factors deciding whether an attendee feels like the community is “for them” actually come down to hospitality. It seems mundane, but it’s obvious when it goes wrong, and there are lots of simple ways you can dazzle if you get it really right.

The biggest aspects of hospitality come down to:

1. A safe and welcoming environment
2. A professional atmosphere
3. A fun or inspiring venue that’s suitable for the program you’re hosting
4. Refreshment breaks for anything that’s three hours or longer

Here are few ideas to make people feel at home.

Networking

Even if your primary goal is training, build in time for networking. ONA members say their top reason for attending events is to meet peers in their area of expertise, experts to inspire their thinking, mentors, coaches, thought partners and people to hire or who are looking to hire.

A few ideas to facilitate networking at any event:

• Invite people hiring or looking for work to give a 30-second pitch
• Prompt people to answer an icebreaker question. The founder of CreativeMornings made this free tool for event planners to print custom icebreaker nametags, and curated a flickrpool of prompts for inspiration.

Learning

We believe that ONA Local organizers on the ground are better equipped to understand what their communities and colleagues want, so ONA provides little oversight on programming. When you’re planning educational events, here are some key elements to keep in mind:

Strive for diversity in program topic, presenters, level of expertise, and platform. Think outside the box on who you’re reaching out to and the format of your presentations. Think about diversity in terms of your calendar for the year — if you’ve invited mostly speakers who are from one newsroom or experts on one topic, can you broaden your speaker pool or subject matter?

Think about the lessons your attendees will be able to use tomorrow, this quarter and this year…

… But since this is ONA, our members expect us to be on the cutting edge of new trends, so consider addressing tools and processes your members may not be using yet, to prepare for when they become status quo.

Mix up the session styles you do. Studies show 80 percent of event attendees prefer an active, participatory experience, and 20 percent prefer a lean-back experience. Since you can’t do everything in one event, take that approach to your calendar. In other words, if you do five ONA Local events in a year, consider making four of them interactive session formats, like a Table Talk, and one a passive experience, like a panel or a lecture. Check out all the event types we’ve done at our conference for inspiration, and look at the Steal These Event Ideas section in this toolkit for templates on how to pull some of them off yourself.

Break out of the panel! Everyone thinks they have to organize a panel to make a successful event, but the truth is, panels are tough to pull off. There’s a lot that can go wrong: one person dominates the whole conversation, or if everyone on the panel has the same opinion it can get boring and drag on, or panelists get stuck in traffic. It’s a lot to wrangle, but if you’re set on a panel, here’s how to do it right:

1. Make sure it’s very diverse. Make sure everyone has a strategic purpose for being on that panel and is bringing a new perspective to the mix. Diversity includes gender and race, of course, but also geography, expertise, years of experience, medium they work in, etc.
2. Get people who are going to disagree. They shouldn’t all have the same opinion about the topic, or else it doesn’t need to be a panel.
3. Get a very strong moderator. You need someone who can cut off the bloviators and dig into the interesting parts on behalf of the audience.

Be reasonable about what you’re asking from attendees. Can your guests reasonably achieve what you set out to do in the time allotted?

Look to local expertise. Who in the area is innovating? What sorts of lessons and best practices can they share?

Be solutions-oriented. Focus on generating ideas to address challenges, even if they are imperfect, rather than lament the status quo.

Have a topic in mind, but not a speaker? Ask members of your community, or ask Meghan for ideas. Often there’s someone we can introduce you to in the wider ONA community.

Resource Alert! You can use this event planning worksheet to help you design each event you’re planning.