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It's eleven o'clock at night on the day of your event. You've been up since six, and the bed is right there.
There are still a few minutes of work standing between you and it, though, and doing them now costs a lot less than trying to rebuild the day from memory later.
You already have a checklist for the day of your event. Everybody does. It tells you what time the doors open, what time the food arrives in the room, and what time somebody needs to be mic'd up. This post is about the other one: the event evaluation questions you answer at the end of each night, once everything on the first list is already done.
Prefer to watch? The full breakdown is in the video below. Otherwise, let’s dive in.
The other checklist, the one you answer at night
For a long time, I didn't have a checklist like this. I used to take random notes in an app on my phone, whatever I could remember, just to get something recorded. Over time, I noticed I was reaching for the same questions every night, and those questions became the list.
There are three things on it. The day you just had, what people told you while it was happening, and the people who made it happen, by name.
None of it takes long. All of it is easier to answer tonight than it will be next week.
Start with the day you just had
The day itself is the hardest thing to get back later. In a couple of days it's fuzzy, and honestly, sometimes by the next morning.
So start with three questions:
What went well today?
What needed improvement?
What would I never do again?
That last one sounds dramatic, and it isn't. It's the vendor you had to remind about the same thing six different times. It's the coffee that got set out at 9:10 rather than 9:00, when everybody was already out in the hallway looking for it. It's the breakout room that holds thirty people on paper and seats about twenty once all the AV equipment is in there.
Those are the details that decide whether you make the same booking again next year, and they're the first ones to slip.
While you're at it, ask how the shape of the day is going. Does the room layout work for what you set out to do that day? Does the format work? You can see that while you're there in the middle of it in a way you won't see it a few days later, looking at a floor plan from your desk.
Write the answers short. This isn't a report. It's a few lines on your phone.
What people told you without being asked
The next thing on the list is what everybody else was telling you all day, whether you heard it at the time or not. This one disappears fast too.
All day, people give you feedback. Somebody tells you a guest came up to them and said the session before lunch was one of the best they've ever heard. Somebody else says they couldn't hear a thing from the back of the room. Somebody in the food line looks at what's on offer, makes a face, and says nothing at all. You walk past half of a conversation on your way to grab a cup of coffee.
None of that is feedback you asked for, and it's better than the feedback you asked for, since nobody's being polite in those moments. People are being honest and blunt about what they think and how they feel, in their own words.
So, three more questions:
What praise did I hear today?
What critiques did I hear today?
Is the content landing?
Is the content landing?
That last question matters more than it sounds. You chose the speakers, you chose the topics, and you chose what each day was about. Whether that's working is the single biggest piece of information you'll want when you sit down to plan the next one.
Write down the actual words people used, too, rather than your summary of them. A couple of days from now, all you'll remember is the general feeling, and the general feeling is a lot harder to plan from than "I couldn't hear anything from the back."
If you're already thinking about your next event, the free Event Pulse Check walks through the whole picture, from the things to think about at the very beginning through to the day of the event itself, and gives you a personalized read on where your planning stands. It takes a few minutes and you get your results straight away.
The people who made it happen, by name
The first two are about the event. The third is about the people.
Write down names. Your thoughts on the venue, and your thoughts on each vendor. Any issue that came up today that still needs sorting out, and who's in charge of it.
Then your team:
Who's working well?
Who could use a bit more direction?
Who would I like to work with again, and who wouldn't I?
That last one can feel a little harsh to write down at eleven at night. Write it anyway. A few months from now, when you're planning the next event, that list does your sourcing for you, because you'll know exactly who you work well with and who you don't.
Names matter here more than anywhere else. People's names are about the first thing to go from memory. You'll remember that somebody did something spectacular for you, and you won't remember which somebody, unless you wrote it down on the night. If you want to thank them properly once it's over, the way I talked about in what's still open after your last guest leaves, this is where those names come from.
Ten minutes tonight, or an hour next week
All of this sounds completely reasonable right up until it's time to actually do it.
You've been up since six in the morning. That's fourteen hours of answering questions, troubleshooting issues, and checking things off the day-of list, and this is a list nobody is going to check up on. The bed is right there.
So here's the trade. Ten minutes before bed, on a tired brain, while the day and the faces are still fresh. Or an hour a couple of weeks later, on a rested brain, when everything's a little fuzzy and you can't quite remember the details.
It's the same work either way. One version just loses a lot more information than the other.
All it asks is ten minutes before you go to bed, with your phone, your laptop, or a notebook, writing down the details.
Write the questions before the event starts
The easiest way to make the ten minutes work is to have the questions ready before you arrive. Build your list now, while you still have time to think about it, so that on the night of your event you're answering questions instead of trying to come up with them.
It doesn't have to be pretty. It can live on your phone or in a notebook. For years I kept mine in both and pulled them together after the event. What matters is that it's recorded somewhere.
If you'd like to see where this fits in the bigger picture, it's part of the last stretch of an event planning checklist that runs from the first decision to the debrief, and it pairs well with the event day briefing your team actually needs, which covers the morning end of the same day.
So, three things at the end of each day. The day itself, and what went well and what didn't. What you heard, in the words people used. Then the people, by name, and whether you'd work with them again.
If your next event is already on the calendar, take five minutes with the free Event Pulse Check and see where your planning stands. If you're in the middle of one right now, open a note on your phone tonight and answer the first three questions before you turn off the light.
