Glossary Term -- Agenda

Welcome to Planner's Pointer's. Planners Pointers is a blog and talk cast to help beginning event planners with their event planning. Give them ideas on planning better events, books to read and websites to discover.

Each month I would like to share words commonly used by professionals. The words along with their meaning will be from the APEX Industry Glossary.

The Convention Industry Council is the organization of 33 associations coming together to exchange information among the meetings, convention and exhibitions industry. One of the initiatives is APEX, Accepted Practices Exchange to develop practices that reach industry wide. One of the practices is a glossary of terms used in the industry. The goal of the glossary is to standardize the definitions of words used by the meetings industry.

This week's word is Agenda:  A list or plan of items to consider, decided, undertaken or accomplished at a meeting or event.  Agendas are generally formal, structured lists and may include a time schedule.

A simple agenda might look like this --

Time	Event	Location
8:00 AM	Continental Breakfast	Junior Ballroom
8:30 AM	General Session	Main Ballroom
8:45 AM	General Session -- Election of officers	Main Ballroom

Other Agendas would add speakers, topics, and length of time

Another term you hear used in place of agenda is schedule. 

Determining the agenda for any meeting or event should be done very early in the planning.  In my experience it should be done right after you set the goals of the meeting. I believe one way to show how you are to carrying out the goals of a meeting is through the agenda. 

That your Planners Pointer for today!