Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to start working on the details. And I’ll start by kicking in an open door: the key to success is professional attitude and good management. Let’s get started!
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Assembling a team
You could organize the whole event on your own, but you really don’t want to. You need at least a sparring partner who can challenge your ideas and give other insights. I recommend putting together a small event team on which you can rely on. Some advice in a nutshell:
- Build a core team, you don’t need to include everyone from your school. Only include the people you need and who have an added value. Each added face is an extra opinion as well.
- Choose people for their skills or expertise, not for their talent in capoeira. Is the mom of one of your young students a marketeer? Include her instead of the Instrutor with an ego.
- Give everyone clear tasks and responsibilities. Let everyone have a voice so they feel valued and part of the team. That also means being able to take advice from your team.
- Make sure it’s clear who’s the leader. That’s probably you. You are the final decision maker, but don’t be a dictator. There should be a level of autonomy, but not everyone should be making budget decisions for example.
- Communicate well and often. Organize recurring team meetings to discuss the general progress of the organization. Start meetings with clear topics and goals. Make notes in the playbook and conclude the meeting with concrete actions assigned to people.
Next to your core team, you might need the help of volunteers before, during and after the event. Volunteers aren’t typically included in the team meetings, but they execute a set of tasks the event team needs help with. For example, offering sleeping places, making sandwiches during lunch, manning the registration desk, … Put together a clear briefing for each volunteer with what is expected from them at which point in time, this can be a one pager. Hold a full team meeting (briefing) with the core team and volunteers in the days leading up to the event, so everyone gets aligned. If you work with volunteers, make clear agreements on whether or not you will provide compensation for their work (this also goes for your core team of course).
Personally I try to avoid asking my students to “work” during the event, as I believe they should enjoy the event to the fullest. So in most cases I rely on the parents of our students and friends/family outside of capoeira. If our students pick up tasks during the event, I make sure they don’t have to miss any of the workshops..
Size of the team
Now how big should your core team be? It depends on the type and size of event you’re hosting but I prefer having a smaller team of involved people over having a big group of people who don’t carry any responsibility. I’d say 3-5 people would be best. If you decide to include more than 5 people, then you’re probably organizing a really big event and you will have more work yourself managing the team.
Some roles that need to be filled in are (one person can have multiple roles):
- event manager
- marketeer / designer
- secretary: does all the administrative work, keeps all documents up to date, fills in the necessary paperwork, …
- networker: someone with a good network in the capoeira community to reach out to teachers and generate a buzz.
- fixer: someone who does all smaller errands, makes sure things get where they need to be, the person you can call to solve logistic problems.
- budget owner: the bookkeeper, manages the bank account, keeps a close eye on the budget, makes sure the right people get paid in time.
Simbora Camará was organized by just two people: me and my buddy. It was quite some work, but also very efficient as we are perfectly in sync with each other. This doesn’t work for everyone. We did rely on 10+ volunteers during the event for all kinds of tasks.
Communication within the team
It’s best to establish a consistent and clear communication channel to which the whole team has access to. A WhatsApp chat group can be sufficient for day-to-day communication and short updates, while you may want to use email for longer messages
The thing that I always try to avoid is that the channel gets polluted with offtopic conversations, like memes and gifs. So I always put forward a rule stating the chat is only to be used for event related questions/updates/… Beware not to overdo your communication. If the frequency of messages is too high, people might start ignoring the channel and thus miss important updates. Also avoid having long discussions in the chat group. If things need to be discussed at length, set up a (virtual) meeting.
Managing the budget
By now you’ve made a budget estimate and probably already iterated over it a couple of times. Now that you’ll start making expenses soon, how do you go about managing your budget? In the end you’ll want to know how much money you put into the event and how much came out of it. It really comes down to a simple principle: document all your expenses and earnings and be consistent about it.
When possible, I like to set up an empty bank account specifically for the event. That way I can very clearly see what came in and what went out, without having to filter out unrelated transactions.
From day 1, create a tab in your main spreadsheet where you document your expenses. Note the date, reason and amount. If somebody advanced the money, write down whether you still have to pay it back. Regularly check whether your budget estimations still fit your current expenses. And if not, take immediate action. Ask for receipts for all payments your team made, so there can be no discussion on where money was spent on.
Do the same for your revenue. Write down each bit of money you’re receiving: tickets sold, sponsorships, investment from your school’s account and additional sales during the weekend.
Material list
You will need a wide variety of stuff. Ranging from spare berimbau strings to scissors, tape, a coffee machine, tables and chairs, and everything in between.
It’s best to think about this well in advance. You probably will have to buy, rent or borrow some things and you don’t want to do that last minute. My “trick” is to repeatedly go over the event in my mind, step by step, visualizing the venue with its different rooms and trying to think of things I need within different categories (eg furniture, multimedia, training material, …). And whenever something pops into my head like “shoot, I have to remember to get this at the store”, I immediately add it to the list.
If you borrow items from people, document who you borrowed it from and when you have to return it. Where possible, label the items with the owner’s name so things don’t get lost. And please don’t go out buying expensive gear that you’ll only use this one time, chances are you can rent or borrow this from someone.
When someone says they’ll take care of certain items or equipment, note it in the list so that you have a good view on who’s responsible for bringing what and clearly add it to their personal list of tasks & responsibilities (the one pager I mentioned above).
In the conclusion of this series, I’ll share a material list you can use as a starting point.
Timeline and schedule
We’ve come to the point where it so often goes wrong: planning. You can have the best concept in the world and the most amazing teachers present. If you don’t have a good flow throughout the day, I will regard your event as a failed one. Thus, don’t assume anything and be realistic when working out your planning. Be punctual and time-aware during the event.
It happens too often that the organization announces a certain schedule beforehand, promising a certain amount of workshops, but when the day comes there are too many and too long speeches, too many breaks, a boring long warm up with the entire group and maybe half of the workshops that were promised. And if you’re really unlucky, the day is concluded with 3 hours of troca de cordas. Just painting a picture here (and maybe venting some frustrations), but that’s how it often goes. People do not want to pay for that, you get a bad name and future editions of your event will be unsuccessful. Simple as that.
Thus, I can only so strongly advise you to make a realistic planning and deliver what you promise. We all know mestres like to talk a lot and extend their classes to a maximum, but when their time is up, it’s up and then you’re going to have to make sure they keep to the schedule.
When organizing SImbora Camará, we promised 4 workshops per day plus a long roda. And guess what people got? Yup, 4 workshops per day and an awesome roda. The only complaint we got was that people were too tired at the end of the weekend. (ha!)
Making the planning is not just about the schedule of the activities, but it entails the full timeline of events leading up to the weekend and continues after the closing speeches. Some examples:
- When do the volunteers arrive?
- When does the registration desk need to be prepared?
- When will the PA system be installed?
- How long do you account for shower time after closing the event?
- When do you need to be at the airport to drop people off?
- …
Zooming in on the event schedule itself, start by outlining the flow of the day. Don’t plan just the workshops, but plan the whole day. How does the day start and end? What activities do you plan? When will there be breaks and how many? An example:
- Arrival of participants and registration
- Welcome speeches
- First workshop
- Roda
- Lunch
- Second workshop
- Break
- Third workshop
- Roda
- Final speeches
- Showers & getting dressed
- transportation to dinner/party location
- Arrival at location
- Start dinner
- End dinner
- Start DJ
- End of party
Then, start adding time slots to these events to reach a planning. I tend to plan in blocks of 15 minutes, that gives me enough detail and allows for some wiggle room. Always factor in some margins. For example, If you end a workshop at a certain time, the next workshop won’t start at exactly the same time. People need to get a drink, switch to another part of the gym, the teacher needs to go to the toilet, … I can’t stress this enough, but take everything into account: the time it takes to give the welcome speech, everyone getting dressed, splitting up the groups, .. If you advertise that workshops start at 10AM, what time do people need to be dressed and ready?
And just like with your budget estimate, iterate over your planning again and again. DIscuss it with your core team and finetune it until everyone feels confident. Again, a well planned event will do miracles for the experience of the attendees.
You might think I’m exaggerating a bit, and probably I am. But for me this works and gives me confidence that everything will turn out just right.
Backups for different scenarios
When putting the entire organization together, I can recommend creating some alternate scenarios in case you are met with unforeseen circumstances or when things go wrong. Turn it into a game with your core team and see how many “what if…?” questions you can come up with!
What if your main teacher suddenly can’t come? What if half of your volunteers don’t show up? Maybe your mestre suddenly decides he wants a bigger say in the organization and starts taking things over? What if you run out of food in the middle of the day? What if someone unexpectedly calls to say he’s arrived at the airport awaiting a pick-up? What if more people decide they need a place to sleep on the day itself? And so on …
I’m not saying you have to account for every possible scenario, but it’s good to think about these things and see if you can come up with viable solutions. Even if you haven’t defined a concrete solution, the fact that you’ve thought about it or discussed it will help you when the “uh-oh” moment comes.
Printing T-shirts
For some reason, there’s a big tradition of handing out t-shirts at events. Most of the time, the idea is that every attendee wears the event t-shirt so that everyone has the same uniform during the event, which looks cool on photos. They’re often included in the ticket price and capoeiras regard them as collectibles and trophies. If done well, a t-shirt is a great way to create visibility for your brand/group/event as people might wear it after the event. I really like my collection of t-shirts, but from an organizational point of view they’re quite the headache.
For starters, you need a good design, as nobody wants to wear an ugly t-shirt. Then you have to find a t-shirt that has the right quality, fit and cut. You have to decide how many t-shirts you’ll print (are you going to make extra?) and you need to have enough per size so that everyone can get a t-shirt their size. And are you going for a unisex fit or not?
I’ve had several bad experiences with t-shirts I received. Some ripped at the seams during the first day of wearing them. Others were so thin you could see everything through them (often not ideal for women), while with others the print came off after a first round in the washing machine. When I started designing and printing my own shirts for events, I made it my mission to always use a (semi) premium brand. The cost is a little bit higher, but I’ve seen people wearing these shirts for years in a row.
Cost
Offering t-shirts is a costly affair and probably takes up the most of your budget, aside from the teacher fees and the venue’s rent.
When using a fabric of decent enough quality, the total product cost can easily add up to €10 or €15 per printed shirt. And depending on the printing method used, you’ll pay for each color that is printed. If you decide to go for basic fabric quality and a simple printing method, you can get the price down to €5 to €10 per piece.
If you want to order 100 t-shirts, the cost will quickly go above €1.000, so you really have to factor this into your ticket prices. All this of course heavily depends on your region. I’m mainly talking about prices in Western Europe here.
Other downsides
If you’re attracting a lot of capoeiras from outside of your own group, there’s another downside to consider. After dealing with sizing tables, designs, costs, … the event finally comes up, you hand out the t-shirts, everybody wears his and seems to love it. Great!
But what after the event? Most groups have a rule stating you can only use the group’s own shirts in classes and at events. So when are people going to wear your shirt exactly? Chances are quite high your shirt ends up somewhere in the corner of a closet and there goes your exposure.
You could consider making an unbranded t-shirt (without your group’s logo and name), but chances are thin your group’s leaders will allow that.
Alternate goodies
Providing t-shirts can be a hassle and a budgetary risk, so it might be good to think about whether you really need to hand out a goodie. Maybe your event becomes simply more attractive if you can drop the price with €5 or €10?
If you really want to offer a goodie, then you could look into other, more creative, ideas. My teacher once handed out mini towels with a small drawing printed on it. They were the perfect size to dry off sweat during training and everybody loved it. We also once gave out custom water bottles wit ha custom print. I’ve also seen silicone wristbands, metal coins to be used as dobrões, … The main advantages here are: no fuss with sizes, you can print in unicolor, and the unit price is lower than that of a decent shirt.
Onto the next part
Now that we’ve looked into the practical organization of a capoeira event, it’s time to start focusing on a marketing strategy. That will be the topic of the next post in this series!
— Vinho