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clipped from ezinearticles.com Event Planning Checklist Tips The key to successful event planning is being resourceful and avoiding uncertainties. The more you research your available resources, the simpler it is to overcome any obstacles to your objectives and pull off the perfect social function. When putting together any social function, business party, special event, or mini festival, you can’t begin advertising or producing promotional material until you have chosen and contracted a fitting location. Likewise, it would be putting the cart before the horse, to sign up a speaker or book your entertainment before your event visions have been brought clearly into view.

If you’ve thought about becoming an event planner, this guide is sure to help.  As you go through each of these points, think about whether you have the personality, organization skills, creativity, and attention to detail that a success event planner needs to have:

10 Tips On How To Be An Excellent Event Planner

There are lots of perks to being in the event planning business - find out if you have what it takes but reading the above article.

Among the more successful Social Networking sites is LinkedIn, which is like a professionals’ version of Facebook (more business oriented, less social). Among the categories listed on their site is a major section titled Conferences and Event Planning, which includes Conference Planning, Conference Venues, and Event Marketing and Promotions.

Margaret Core shared her success with marketing her BIO 2008 Convention using LinkedIn, saying “We have more than 500 new email contacts because of the Linked In page we created for our convention.”

Read the full post at:

Still Loving Linked In

(By the way, she also had a group page up on Facebook - you can see the details by following the links in the above post).

They say there is nothing new under the sun, but entrepeneurs sure do find ways to mash up old ideas in new ways, and starting a business via crowdsourcing certainly qualifies.

Usually, when trying to launch a new business, or get a new product off the ground, the typical hunt for venture capital or institutional investors takes time, patience, perserverance and a LOT of work.

It’s refreshing to hear about a new business model termed ‘crowdsourcing’ which taps the power of social networks in a way big corporations could only dream about.

Upstarts: Launch Your Own Apparel Company for $50 - The apparel brand, which is still in the design phase, is using a creative business model, known by a variety of names like crowdsourcing, crowdfounding, and community managed, that raises small amounts of money from a large group of …

Read the above article for the full scoop, but the practical upshot of this business model is to get large quantities of people to contribute small amounts of money for input and managerial control of a new product line or business.

Crowdsourcing is also used for mass collaboration projects like Wikipedia or simply designing a new graphic or logo, but raising capital using crowdsourcing may be the ticket for a budding entrepeneur to get started using ‘other peoples money.’

Event Planning involves a myriad of details that are not so easy to remember. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an Event Planning Checklist you can refer to when planning your next event? This handy event planning guide will surely help keep track of all the steps necessary when gearing up for your next event:

Event Planning Checklist

The best thing about this checklist is it gives you time frames and a schedule to adhere to so you know when to accomplish each of the steps along the way.  Don’t forget the promotional items imprinted with your company or event logo, etc.

The following list should save you time locating the type of event planning and event management tool you need for your upcoming event. Most of the sites listed here are not entire front-to-back solutions, in that they may lack some essential functionality that you require. Some are simply directories of events or event venues, but event planning and management features are soon-to-be released, so they are listed here.

These are listed in no particular order:

1) http://www.eventwax.com

A free, online comprehensive event planning and management site. Allows you to create an event and will host a website for your event (you can custom format with your own CSS), or you can link to your own site, lots of ticket pricing options (like Early Bird, Group Discounted, etc), integrated with PayPal for ticket purchases, creates mailing lists and email templates for invitations to be sent out and handles RSVP replies. Includes an RSS feed to track event activity and XML export of your data.

2) http://www.eventspace.com

A free, online event space directory as well as an event service provider directory. Also allows for creating and sending invites and finding upcoming events. More features to be released.

3) http://www.pingg.com

A free, online event management site with outstanding invitation design features, invitation sending, RSVP management, guest list management, photo sharing, reporting, but lacks the ability to handle processing payments for tickets at this time (coming soon).

4) http://www.eventbrite.com

A comprehensive, mostly free online site for planning, managing and marketing your event. Processing fees per ticket sale are charged, but more ways to pay for tickets are available than the other sites offer. Also, lots of event marketing functionality built in that other sites lack.

5) http://eventsbot.com

A mostly free online event management site. Allows for customization of hosted event webpage only with Premium account option. Handles event ticketing and emailing invites, but lacks robust invitation creation features. Has some event promotion features.

6) http://www.lovento.com/en/

Mostly a multi-national event guide and event venue directory and review site. Publishing of your own events coming soon.

7) http://purpletrail.com

A free, online event management solution that has unique features like a desktop application to download so you can stay on top of invites and other communication, chat features and event consensus features so attendees can all agree on a place and time, robust invitation design and sending features, but lacks ticket purchasing and other more business-oriented features.

http://www.activeciti.com

A free, online event management site more for social events than business events. No invitation creation or ticket sales functionality, but has basic event registration and calendar features.

9) http://www.ipartee.com

A free, online event management site for sending invites and tracking guests but lacks robust invitation creation and business-oriented features like ticket sales. Unique in that an event venue owner can publish and promote upcoming event details and gather feedback from attendees.

So, the next time you have an event to plan and management, check out some of the above sites to see if your job can become easier by utilizing one or more of these free tools.