Create your first event: three steps, one required

Step 1 — Basics: what, when, and where

Give the event a title and pick its type: summit, gala, and so on. The type sets the event’s physics, meaning sensible defaults for pacing and vocabulary and the chips you see on the next two steps, all adjustable afterward. Pick it before you fill in the rest: changing the type later in the wizard resets the audience, vibe, must-have, and call-to-action choices to that type’s defaults.

Then set the event timezone, from a short list of common zones or by typing any other, and the start and end times, which are entered in that timezone. The city or venue is optional.

This is the only step with rules. Continue checks for a title, a start, and an end that comes after the start, and if one is missing it says which. Nothing else in the wizard can stop you.

Step 2 — The room: who is in it, and how it should feel

Pick the audience from the chips your event type offers, then say how many people you expect. If you are not sure, enter a range: the “expected” number plus an optional “up to” maximum. A range is honest input, and honest input is exactly what the planning tools want.

Two sliders set the feel: formal versus relaxed, and calm versus high-energy. There is also a “wide dynamic range” option for events that want both big highs and quiet, reflective lows. Think a gala with a raucous auction and a moment of silence in the same night.

Each event type also offers must-have chips, the segments your event cannot skip: a testimonial, awards, the pitch itself. Tick the ones that apply and they will be built into any drafted schedule.

All of this can wait. “Skip for now” takes you straight to step 3, and the room can be filled in later from the event.

Step 3 — The goal: the ask, the walls, and a last look

If your event has one moment that defines success (a donation ask, an enrollment pitch, a signup push), capture it here: the type, the ask in your own words, and an optional goal number. FlowGenius builds the whole event backward from this moment. If the event has no specific ask, pick “No specific CTA” (the event type you chose in step 1 will have suggested its usual ask here) and success is measured by attendance, retention, and feedback instead.

Below it are the immovable times. Some times are locked before planning starts: catering arrives at 12:30, the venue closes at 10. Add each one with a label and a time, and mark it HARD or FLEX. Hard constraints are walls; the show bends around them. Flexible ones are furniture: good to know about, but they can move if the schedule wants them to. If nothing is locked in yet, add none and move on; anchors can be added later.

The step ends with a quick review of what you have entered, with an Edit link beside each part that jumps back to its step. Then two buttons, and both of them create the event: “Create event →” and “Skip for now — create event.” The second exists so that skipping the goal never means abandoning the wizard.

Moving between steps

The step names across the top are buttons. You can go back to any step you have visited and forward to the next one, and “← Back” does what it says. Moving between steps never clears anything: what you typed on a step is still there when you come back to it.

Pressing Enter in a field on step 1 or 2 moves you to the next step rather than creating the event early. Only the buttons on step 3 create anything.

Which is the one thing worth knowing before you start: nothing is saved until step 3’s button. There is no draft. Close the tab halfway through and there is no half-made event to find, just a fresh wizard next time.

What gets created

One press makes the event in Planning status, with an empty run of show version 1 waiting for blocks, your immovable times recorded with their HARD or FLEX marks, and the guest-agenda branding pre-filled from your workspace’s defaults if an admin has set any under Settings → Organization brand. You land on the event’s Overview.

From there the event grows the things the wizard does not ask for: speakers on the Overview tab, crew on the Crew tab, and a venue from the Venue card. Each of those has its own article.

Speakers and crew details

After the event is created, add speakers from its Overview tab. Each speaker carries the details your crew actually needs on show day: a walk-up song, crew notes (staging, mic preferences, anything the booth should know), and a private energy rating from 1 to 5.

Energy ratings are private to admins and editors; speakers never see them, and neither do viewer accounts. They exist so schedules can place the right speaker at the right moment in the room’s day.

The more of this the event carries before you draft, the closer the draft lands. A beta user running a real multi-day event told us, in her own words, that adding more speakers improved the timing she got back. See “Speakers and crew detail.”