Organise an Event

What is ALEx Europe?

ALEx Europe is a joint Rotary/Rotaract fast-growing project born in Stockholm in May 2019 to spread leadership experience across Europe.

The ALEx acronym stands for Accelerated Leadership Experience, both an outstanding knowledge sharing project and an easy-to-organize and fun event. An ALEx Event is an accelerated format because it takes only a few weeks to organize it and one day to execute it. An ALEx Event is applied leadership, because directly reported by Rotarians, Rotaractors and prospective members around Europe through storytelling. ALEx Europe propagates on the web all the experience, in form of short videos, to all the current and future Rotarians and Rotaractors in Europe and around the world.

Does my club need ALEx?

Any Rotary or Rotaract club can potentially run an ALEx Event without much effort, since the format is easy to plan and execute, not to mention well-documented. The advantage of organizing an ALEx Event with your club is that you can offer a live leadership training to your members or perspective members, near or exactly in the place where your club meets. The organizers will benefit from the experience of running a project that is well-structured and manageable with limited resources, which can be directly successful and a good showcase for the club’s activities.

Furthermore, an ALEx Event is a club project with an accelerated format, because it takes only a few weeks to organize it and one day to execute it. Isn’t it nice to be able to run a successful project/event so quickly?

First steps

The first driver for a successful event or project, both in case of an ALEx Event, is to form a team and to find the right motivation to succeed together.

Working solo cannot give the same results than sharing time and experience with a larger team.

A good team needs to be competent, with a rich and diverse set of personal skills counting as general experience and specific knowledge about the project/event to be executed (in case of an ALEx Event, please study this handbook).

If you have already worked with your team on a different project, it will be easier to readjust a little and start working right away on the ALEx Event. On the other hand, if the team is new, it is always a great idea to begin with a team building activity, where each member of the team gets to know one another and gives a chance to the leader to assign the right tasks to the right person.

A leader was mentioned. There is no successful team without a leader capable of keeping everybody on the right track. A team can be as democratic as possible, but there is no orchestra without a conductor capable of seeing the whole opera and keeping the tempo. If you lack a true leader in the team, identify the most motivated person to execute the ALEx Event and trust them to be the leader you need.

The team

  • Leader

    A Leader is a highly motivated Rotarian or Rotaractor who wants to successfully organize an ALEx Event with their club.

    An ALEx Leader has the responsibility of forming and leading their ALEx Team, requesting an authorization to run an ALEx Event (which includes the choice of the event name, theme and date) to the ALEx European Team and managing their club’s ALEx Event from planning to execution.

  • Location Manager

    An ALEx Location Manager is a highly motivated ALEx Team member who has the responsibility of finding a proper location for their club’s ALEx Event.

    An ALEx Location Manager is ultimately responsible for the decoration of the location, dress code, food and drinks, safety instructions and all that will be needed to run the ALEx Event from a logistic perspective.

  • Speakers Manager

    An ALEx Speakers Manager is a highly motivated ALEx Team member who has the responsibility of finding expert speakers on the ALEx Event theme and motivating them to participate to the club’s ALEx Event for free.

    The ALEx Speakers Manager takes active contact with the speakers and mediates all the communication with them regarding the ALEx Event, facilitating their speeches, accommodation and any particular requests.

  • Production Manager

    An ALEx Production Manager is a highly motivated ALEx Team member who is skilled in video production.

    Together with the ALEx Location Manager, the ALEx Production Manager makes sure that the location suits a good quality recording (audio and video) of the speakers and eventually theirs slides. If background music, microphones, or any other communication devices are used during the ALEx Event, the ALEx Production Manager makes sure that they won’t interfere with the speakers’ recordings and that anything relevant to each speech will be recorded.

  • Finance Manager

    An ALEx Finance Manager is a highly motivated ALEx Team member who has skills in making simple project budget and balance and keep track of the expenses while compensating with ticket sales, set at an appropriate price, and sponsorships (jointly with the optional role of ALEx Sponsor Manager).

    An ALEx Finance Manager establishes an ALEx Event budget with the ALEx Team prior to the ALEx Leader delegating each financial relevant task to the ALEx Team members.

  • Website / Social Media Manager(s)

    An ALEx Website and Social Media Manager is a highly motivated ALEx Team member with good skills in web and social media content editing and publishing.

    Each ALEx Event can have its dedicated website and social media channels, given that the costs of such
    services don’t exceed the budget.

    The most important job for an ALEx Website and Social Media Manager is promoting the club’s ALEx Event ans speakers in the cheapest and most effective way. A plan can be drafted together with the whole ALEx Team or simply with the ALEx Leader.

    If the workload becomes too much for a single person, the role can be split in an ALEx Website Manager and an ALEx Social Media Manager. The separation of responsibilities is clear from the names, however they might need to work closely in order to execute two parts of the same plan.

  • Promotion Manager / Sponsor manger

    An ALEx Promotion Manager is a highly motivated ALEx Team member who has skills in marketing and sales. It is required to sell enough tickets at a price that would cover the costs in the ALEx Event budget  reaching the full capacity of the ALEx Event location He can also Act as  Sponsor manager who can exploit a large network to bring sponsors.

Event organization

Event date

Picking the right date for the club’s ALEx Event is fundamental. Try to avoid working hours. Typically a late evening or a weekend can be easier to book for personal activities than taking a day off work. Of course, knowing the target audience can help determine a better choice for a date.

From the ALEx Event date will depend all the deadlines for the ALEx Team members. The countdown starts.

Event topic

Picking the right theme for the club’s ALEx Event is also fundamental. Try to relate the theme to a list of potential speakers and their topics instead of looking for speakers based on a fixed theme. The theme will be useful to set the program and promote the event, more than to recruit speakers. Of course, some speakers might be interested to participate given a specific theme for the event, so be ready to satisfy their needs.

From the ALEx Event theme will depend the ALEx Event program and the workshops content.

Location

The ALEx Event location has potential to attract participants, so it can be exploited for the promotion campaign as soon as a deal is closed with the hotel, university or company/institution. Remember that if the ALEx Event name depends on the location, this will become priority number one to start the whole project, together with a potential date (the location needs to be available).

Another factor to count in is the number of participants allowed by the location. One drive could be to set an expected number of participants and then find the appropriate location, or, the opposite, find the cheapest solution for a location and then fix the maximum number of participants accordingly. The number of tickets sold determines the budget for the project, unless there are any sponsorships.

You want to go further and jump in? Get some additional details in ou hadbook.

Get the handbook