What else is possible?Some questions I’d ask before you book anything for 2027.
It’s easy to open last year’s event plan, change the date and start working through the checklist, but before you do, what if you asked:
Is this the event we’d create if we were starting from scratch?
Your attendees have more choices about where they spend their time than ever before. So whether you’re planning a conference, employee event, fundraiser or customer experience, the question isn’t only How do we get people to attend? It’s How do we create something people want to be part of?
Before you open last year’s binder…
When was the last time you asked whether the event is still doing what you need it to do?
What would make someone choose to spend their time with you?
Are your sponsors part of the experience—or mostly logos on signs?
Where are people participating instead of just watching?
What would someone still be talking about on the drive home?
You don't need to have the answers. Sometimes you just need someone in the room asking better questions.
Moments + Merch
Better Questions
Some of the questions I'd ask before you book anything.
These are some of the questions I'd ask if I were sitting at your planning table. Nothing here is complicated. That's the point. Most of them go unasked because the date is already booked and the agenda got inherited from somebody who left two years ago.
Use them without me. Type your answers right in. If they're good, you just saved yourself a season of planning something nobody wanted.
How to run this
- Put it on the agenda for your next planning meeting. Give it thirty minutes and don't let anybody open the venue contract.
- Read each one out loud. Out loud matters. The silence after a question is where the real answer lives.
- Write down every answer that starts with "well, we've always." Those are the ones worth pulling on.
- You won't get through all twelve in one sitting. Nobody does. Three good ones will change the event.
Before you plan anything
Be specific. Name the thing. A kid's baseball game. A night at home. Somebody else's event.
If nobody decides this, they'll talk about the parking.
About the room
About the point
About what they take home
That item goes home and sits on a counter for two years. It's a channel. Treat it like one.
Question Twelve · The last one
What else is possible?
Ask this one out loud, in a room, with the people who plan it. Then sit in the silence for a second before somebody fills it.
It doesn't work because it produces a wild idea. It works because it gives everybody in the room permission to say the current version isn't landing. That's the part nobody wants to go first on.
When you're done
Look back at what you wrote. Find the answer that surprised somebody in the room, or the one that made everybody go quiet. That's your event. The rest of it is logistics.
Want somebody in the room asking them?
Some teams take this list and run with it. Some want a person at the table who asks the uncomfortable one and doesn't work there. That's me.
Event Strategy Lab
A half day on one event, or a full day on your whole calendar. You leave with a direction, not a to-do list.
Let's head to the labFull Event Partnership
When you'd rather not do this alone. I come in as an extension of your team and stay through the whole thing.
Let's talk about your eventNeed to step back before you start planning?
A half-day or full-day working session designed to get your team out of execution mode and looking at your event differently.
Bring one event and we'll rethink it together. Or bring your entire event calendar and we'll look at where your time, budget and energy are going and where there may be better opportunities.
Half-day: Focused on one event
Full-day: Focused on your entire event calendar
Already know you need another set of hands?
Maybe you don't need another workshop, you need someone who can take the ideas and help make them happen.
I become an extension of your team, helping move the event from strategy through planning and event-day execution so your team doesn't have to spend the event running around solving problems.
I've spent more than 20 years in marketing, events and branded merchandise, and I've spent a lot of those years being the person in the room asking, “But why are we doing it this way?”
Now I own Moments + Merch, a creative event agency that helps organizations rethink how they bring people together.
I don't believe every event needs to be bigger, flashier or more expensive. I think it needs a clear reason to exist and it needs to be designed around the people you're asking to show up.
Hi, I’m Mel.
Have something on your 2027 calendar you’re already thinking about?
Maybe it's an event you've been doing for ten years and 2027 is finally the year you want to try something completely different or your team knows some events are working for the purpose they are created. Either way, let’s talk!
Would you rather skip the form? Grab time on my calendar!
