During this workshop we will discover, solve and implement organizing a party congress for fictional Dutch political party FDP. Once every year the party organizes a congress to discuss certain topics, vote on the party course, and have a good time with likeminded people.
In the past, this has been a hassle and a mess. It is up to you to do the right thing, the right way.
Divided into MoSCoW priorities.
- Users MUST be able to plan the event
- Users MUST be able to invite members to the event
- Users MUST be able to invite members to the after-event dinner
- Members MUST be able to decline their dinner invitation
- Users MUST be able to produce a list of voting members
- Members MUST be able to allow voting through a mobile app
- Users SHOULD be able to invite beneficiaries to the after-event dinner
Budget is four hours. Attached is our data that should be imported.
Every year, I'm responsible for planning and organizing the event. I get in touch with the suppliers, contact the venue, find sponsors, and generally arrange for everything to work out. If something goes wrong, no matter what, it's my head on the line.
Last year we had a major incident where people who weren't allowed to vote got hold of a machine and voted on party decisions! I mean, it's one thing if they vote for the bureau decisions, but party decisions are really off limits. We faced a major inquiry after that and had to clean up for months to come.
We hope to invite a lot of beneficiaries this year, to make up for it and get some good publicity going. We still have to find something to keep them occupied during the voting, but that shouldn't be an issue.
I really hope the new system will take a lot of work out of my hands. Processing the invites and turning down the members who are too late always takes so much time, and it's always disappointing too.
I take care of everything finance. Invoicing members, sending reminders, processing transactions, reporting, etc. When the yearly party congress event is due, I make a list of all voting members for the organizers.
Last year we had a bit of a blunder with the voting. We accidentally had a list of all members that had an invoice, no matter if they actually paid. We got in to some trouble for that I heard, but I don't think it was that big of a deal.
Other than that I don't really have to do much until the event creditors need to be reimbursed.
When people show up for the event, I check their ticket and guide them to the right area. Non-voting members sit on the other side from the voting members, and we have to make sure the voting members have their voting devices. It would be great if there was an app for that.
After the event, when the social dinner starts, we again have to check people's tickets because there are much fewer available spaces for the dinner.
Before the event, we make sure all members know that it's coming up again by sending them mailings with the topics and the happenings during the event. We've had some issues in the past with attendance. You'd say a party with 10,000 members could get 1,000 people to show up, but recent years have shown declining attendance. Last year was good, though.
During the event, we're in charge of talking to the press and making sure the press doesn't bother the party officials. We also make sure the photo agency takes plenty of good pictures and we're also doing a charity dinner this year.
Afterwards we write up the official post-event conclusion notes and send out a final mailing thanking everyone for their participation.
Oh and all the while we make sure the social media is kept up to date.