I figured while everything is still fresh in our minds, we could put together a collection of tips for future planners. Mostly, I'm thinking about the little things.

1. Plan out your raffle prizes ahead of time. Know how many people will be coming, and how many raffle prizes you have.

I thought I might have more... but I guess that's it. I almost didn't post this, but I figured maybe you guys noticed something else.

Get one contact at the hotel who has power to do something and dont rely on what they say, get something in writing.

I got great feedback about the tech sessions, however they might need to be spaced out a bit, it was a long time standing around for all at once.

The drive times were perfect...not too long or too short. I never knew how quickly time/miles go by in a fun caravan.

I'm sure I'll think of more later

Learned another new one at the RRC.

Keep a list of vendor donations and 'door prizes' as they come in. Having this list will let you compare how many participants you have vs. prizes to give out. The last few events have had more prizes than participants, so there is a randomness to which prizes are put together with what other ones.

This list will also let you keep track of who won what at the event.

2011 guys, anything to add here?

yes.

1. When dealing with food vendors make sure to have a back-up plan for the menu. We had asked the Vendor about vegetarians and they said no problem. They can do Egg Plant. Well the price of food (veggie's) went up so they wanted to charge more but I managed to hold them to the original price.

2. Always allow for un-forseen payables. set aside a few hundred if not 500 bucks for petty cash! Gotta have Ice, Coolers, Garbage cans and etc.

3. Keep more than one list of paid participants at the event. The same for Door prize give-away's.

4. Make sure to have a itinerary of the activities!

Thats all I have for now.

Yes! I highly recommend having Drew

I think it was Brett who said figure out all your costs & add 25% to get registration. I think it's fine to have registration be a little higher. I thought we covered everything great money wise. We'll end up with some left over to put onto next year. I'm pretty sure we had everyone that was there pay. Honestly I didn't really double check. I'm still trying to catch up from the weekend. Still have to get the rest of the autoX times up. If anyone missed I know we had a few people pay who didn't come. So it all works out in the end.

Yes having an itinerary is good. I should have done more of a check in registration at the event. Besides handing out dog tags then it would have been easier to know who had payed. I also got a little mixed up at the awards dinner because of that. Oh well while things didn't go perfect. They did go really well