How to plan a new event

[HyperSprite]

Start with a location, it should have safe, free (or close to it) parking if possible and restrooms (as a bare minimum) and some kind of refreshments if you want people to stay any length of time.
Pick a date with enough lead time for people to get excited about it, check the calendar here for a clear day (it is hard to get people to do more than one event per weekend).
Pick a time that would be convenient even if someone had to drive an hour to get there (for instance 5:00pm on a weekday is going to be tough for a lot of people but 7:00 is not as bad, 7:30 seems to be a sweet spot because most traffic is lighter after they open up the carpool lanes at 7:00pm.
Post your plan to the Calendar forum (the admins will link it to the calendar and add the "I'm Going" button. 
Finlay, monitor the thread and answer questions for people.

If the event goes well, it is a fairly easy process to do the same thing again.

Chris

[ToplessRed]

New MINI owner here -- just picked it up just last Thursday. Before then, I spent a lot of time planning events for BayAreaZ3. My experience is as follows:

1) Pre-drive the routes about 2 weeks or so before the date -- road conditions can change.
2) Use FRS's -- drive leaders/sweepers should have quality units. If you paid $15 for a pair of FRS radios from Costo, nobody will understand a single thing you say. And if you don't have a copilot to point out road hazards/bikers/oncoming traffic, get a headset. (Bring the $15 Costco ones along anyways for those who didn't show up with FRS radios -- at least they will be able to hear the chatter.)
3) Don't ever make a turn without seeing the car behind you in your rear mirror. It's ok if you lose sight of cars in twisties as long as there's no intersection where people can make the wrong turn. But the moment you hit one, pull over and wait if you have to.
4) Sweeper (the car the comes at the end) should be your most experienced, most knowledgible (of the roads) driver. Sweeper must also be a semi-asshole as he/she is the designated traffic blocker to keep your group together. (When coming up on the convoy waiting at the side of the road, don't pull over -- just stop and block traffic to let the group head out again as one.)
5) Try not to make the events only driving + food. People can only take so much of that before they burn out on it. If you look at events (both past & upcoming) @ bayareaz3.com, you'll notice stuff like tours of Hearst Castle, Blackhawk Auto Museum, train ride through the forest of Santa Cruz, multi-day vacation trips to Kings Canyon, Seattle and so on.

And most importantly... get an events section in the Photo Gallery here. Nothing makes a non-particpant want to show up more than seeing pictures. Yes, I'm sure people post photos on the messageboard -- but the non-hardcore owner won't probably ever see them. For examplle, since I'm new, I have not kept track of the messages and I don't have the inclination to track down old messages to view photos from past events. Put all the event photos in an easy to find place (add a new gallery section called events and then also add a link to it from events) and you'll have people slobering to join in on the fun.

Hopefully, I can not only join up on some of the events here but even lead a few (after my 1500mi breakin period of course). Maybe I can even setup a joint MINI+Z3 event for twice the fun.

[HyperSprite]

Welcome ToplessRed!

While I realize it is not directly connect to this site (although there are links to in every past event I've attended and some I have not) www.hypersprite.com has a pretty comprehensive picture gallery of club for the last three years or so.

Don't take this the wrong way but this thread is titled "How to plan an event" and 1, 2, 3 and 4 are about how to run an event. 1, 3 and 4 we  do already, 2 should perhaps be discussed in a separate thread. As a matter of fact, I am starting a thread on 2 over here http://forum.moasf.com/index.php/topic,1219.0.html

Chris