5 Books Every Event Planner Needs to Read This Holiday Season

Amy Barone, Sr. Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau Software, shares her event marketing secrets in our A New Era in Event Marketing webinar with Harvard Business Review and AdAge. Below, she gives an inside look at how Tableau  grew and scaled a high-performance event program.

I get asked all the time if I have any book recommendations specifically for event planners. And while event planning how-to guides are definitely useful (and serve their own purpose), there are so many great books out there that relate to the events industry – specifically how in-person experiences can be incredibly transformative, even in the smallest parts of your life.

With the holidays coming up, you may find some extra down time on your hands (pause for mini celebration), so I’m sharing my top five favorite books that every event planner should read at least once.

Some of the concepts may seem abstract, but there are ways to connect each book’s concepts and ideas to an event and what it means to throw a meaningful one.

Get your read on:

Ten years later, our annual conference attracts nearly 20,000 customers and partners, our company has grown to 4,000 people, and we have a first-class marketing team with dedicated event professionals who are the best in the biz. Events have been a crucial part of our brand and help us better connect with our community, evangelize our customers, and ultimately grow our company.

Here’s how we did it:

I first heard about Radha Agrawal because she’s the founder of Daybreaker (they started on Splash, and I'm super proud that they were one of our first Hub users) – an early morning fitness and wellness experience that promotes community and connecting with the people around you.

As event planners, we know the power of in-person experiences, and BELONG is all about creating them in your personal life, too, through meaningful connections. In this book, Agrawal walks through how to find, connect, and build a community with the right people.

You should read this if: you’re looking for a book that relates to your personal life and your professional life (and if you love beautiful illustrations).

Image: Penguin Random House

Priya Parker wrote this book because she noticed a disconnect in our everyday events – specifically the way we spend time together at work, at home, and in our daily lives. We have small (or big) moments of gathering every single day, and they often feel mundane or meaningless.

But she believes we can transform these small moments of gathering into meaningful experiences of human connection and productivity. The Art of Gathering will really make you think about what it means to gather – whether it’s in an elevator ride with strangers, sitting at your desk at work, or making your next event a memorable one.

You should read this if: you want a fresh take on what it means to create a meaningful experience.

Image: Conference Matters

Into the Heart of Meetings is similar to The Art of Gathering because it focuses on the idea of human connectivity, but this book takes a scientific lens on what meetings are and how you can maximize them.

The authors use more of a methodical approach to explaining what a meeting is (first and foremost a tool for communication, rather than just a logistical operation) and how you can organize your meetings to reach their highest potential.

Whether you host multi-day conferences, VIP dinners, networking events, or educational workshops, every event planner will benefit from rethinking what a meeting is and how you can make the most of these opportunities to bring people together.

You should read this if: you’re more systematic when it comes to planning your events.

Image: Google Books

If you haven’t heard of it, Open Space Technology is a way of organizing an event in a way that promotes a group of people to work towards a collaborative solution to a problem.

The book dives into a step-by-step process for facilitating an Open Space event, which can be especially effective at large conferences. Every event planner should keep the Open Space method in their back pocket (because it can be highly effective if done right), and this book is the all-in-one guide to getting it done.

You should read this if: you want a new strategy for organizing guests and their experience at your events.

Image: designworkplan

You might not know what the title of this book means, but you’ve definitely experienced it before without even realizing it. Wayfinding refers to how we orient ourselves at any place, and wayshowing is a more accurate way of defining this – including the signage and symbols that direct us to where we want to go or what we want to see.

Think of signs in an airport leading you to the right gate, or the signs in a grocery store that lead you to the right aisle. A lot of the elements discussed in this book – for example symbols and typography – can be directly implemented into your event design strategy. When I create a floorplan for an event, I always think about the concept of wayshowing and how I can optimize how guests make their way through the experience.

You should read this if: you love the small details, and especially when it comes to designing the on-site experience.

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.

At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.