Smart city consultants: booking stakeholder workshop places

Run stakeholder and co-design workshops with places people book online: create a service for each workshop, open sessions with a number of places that suits the format, and send the booking link to the groups you want in the room, such as residents, businesses, officers or associations. Say in the description what the workshop is for, what participants will do and what happens to their input. You know who is coming before the day, sessions fill evenly, and you can rebalance groups if one audience is missing.

A mobility workshop for residents and a data-sharing session for officers need different invitations, rooms and facilitation. On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page, and each slot belongs to one service, sits within one day and has its own capacity.

Durations and places are examples: set your own. Leave the price empty: participants don't pay, and the client covers your fee.

Places depend on how you facilitate: tables of six for co-design, a larger group for a presentation with questions. Set each session's capacity to that number. When it's full, it leaves your page, so later participants choose another session. Your page doesn't show places left, so if you want to keep places for a group that hasn't booked yet, set the capacity lower and add them yourself.

Residents who work may only come in the evening or on Saturday; businesses may prefer early morning; officers come during working hours. Open the same workshop on two or three different slots so each group can attend. Each slot sits within one day, so a two-day event is two sets of slots.

Share the link through the client and local networks: the council's newsletter, residents' associations, business groups. Your public page lists every open service, so name each one clearly with the project and audience. If one audience is missing a few days before, reach out to them directly rather than filling places with people who are already well represented.

The booking form takes first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note that reaches you in the new booking email and appears in the participant's calendar file. Ask in the note for the participant's connection to the area, such as resident, business owner or association, and any access needs. Say in the description what the workshop covers, how long it lasts, whether refreshments are provided and how input will be used.

Choose step-free venues, say so in the description, and offer an online session for people who can't travel. Ask in the note whether participants need materials in large print or another language.

If you run two workshops at once with a colleague, give each facilitator’s workshop its own service, so the bookings list shows who has which group. Check the room size before setting places, and leave space for wall charts, maps and moving between tables.

With each participant's connection to the area written in the note, your bookings list shows who registered for each session. Use it before the day to spot missing audiences, and afterwards to report participation to the client.

Send participants a short summary of what was heard and what happens next, if they gave an email and agreed to hear back. If a follow-up session is planned, open it as its own service and share the link with the same people. Participants who entered an email received a confirmation with a calendar file; Book doesn't send reminders, so a short message a few days before can help turnout.

Participants can't move bookings online: they contact you, and you move them to another session from your bookings list and confirm it yourself, since Book doesn't email clients about changes. If a session is cancelled, contact each participant yourself. Your bookings sync with Google, iPhone or Mac calendars. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract.