The Basic Questions

What do you want the focus of your event to be?
Since you're considering running an event, hopefully you know what you want your event to be focused on: a canon, a pairing, a character, or a multi-fandom concept (ex: smutty works, fairy tales, genfic, rare fandoms, women-only, etc). As you write the rules for your particular event, however, you'll need to closely define where you want the boundaries to be drawn. If it's focused on a particular pairing, will you allow threesomes with another character? Do you want to allow fic only or art only? What kinds of art are eligible? Such questions don’t need to be answered right at the start; part of the planning process is to hash them out.

What sort of event do you want to run?
Most events in fandom fall into one of three basic types:

Fests

 * Participants create works specifically for [focus of your event], and post them during a set time-frame (example: a week, usually with specific themes for each day to act as prompts). The fest moderators promote the works to the fandom at large.
 * The aim to have more works created for [focus of your event].
 * Participants are usually not required to sign up in advance.

Bangs
Traditionally there are two types of bangs: Big Bangs and Reverse Bangs.
 * In Big Bangs, authors write fic specifically for the bang. Artists then sign up to create art based on a bang fic's summary, before the fic is posted. Both fic and art are completed by a certain deadline and posted together. In a Reverse Bang, the order is reversed: art is created first and writers sign up to create fic for a rough draft of an art piece. In both cases, there is a minimum word count for the fic (traditionally, no less than 5k).
 * There are two aims with a bang: to have longer fics and higher quality art for [focus of your event], and to have art created for fic or fic created for art.
 * Participants may or may not be required to sign up in advance of draft submissions/draft claims, depending on the rules of the individual bang.

Exchanges

 * Mods assign each participant to create a fanwork gift for another participant. All works are required to be finished by a set deadline, and are not publicly revealed until that time.
 * Participants must sign up in advance.
 * The aim is to have each person create a specific gift for somebody else, and receive something created specifically for them.

Other types of event

 * Remixes are usually a type of exchange, but may also take other forms. In a Remix, the goal is to have each participant 'remix' another's existing fanwork: show a scene from an alternate point of view, fill in a 'missing scene' from a larger story, re-tell a fanwork in a different mood or style (eg, noir instead of futuristic space AU), etc.

Who will moderate the event?
If you haven't run an event before, then we strongly recommend that you find an experienced co-moderator. Even if you have some experience, having at least one co-mod is generally a good thing. Running an event for more than a few participants is often simply a large amount of work. Plus, having another person there gives you an extra pair of eyes to catch things you might otherwise have missed, and having a second opinion on whether a participant is trying to be wanky or not is often useful.

Co-moderating does mean that all the mods need to agree on the basic things you all want out of the event, and be willing to compromise with each other about rules and rulings.

If you want a co-mod, you'll have to find a co-mod. A fandom friend may be a good choice. Nonnies have also had success asking on FFA.

Where are you running your event (aka, what is your platform)?
Most events in current (2017) AO3-dominated fandom are run on some combination of the AO3, tumblr, Livejournal (LJ), and Dreamwidth (DW), and you will likely receive your largest audience if you run your event in one or more of those places. No matter which platform you use as your main host, promoting your event in additional locations, especially tumblr, is necessary to get larger participation.

The best choice of platform is usually determined by the type of event you are running:

Fests: Most fests are run on tumblr. The main aim of the fest is to have works created and promoted, and tumblr has by far the best capability for promotion, both of the works and of the fest itself. In a fest, works can simply be submitted to the tumblr via ask, submissions, or a relevant tag; the greater organizational control allowed by AO3, LJ, and DW is not required. Fests often have an AO3 collection that works can be submitted to, but almost always there will be works created for a fest that will never be crossposted to AO3.

Bangs: In a bang, people pair up to work together, which requires a greater level of organizational control than in a fest. For this reason, LJ and DW continue to be the platforms from which most bangs are run. To date only a few have been run on tumblr.

Exchanges: Most exchanges are hosted on AO3, since it has an in-built system that vastly simplifies the exchange process of sign-ups, matching, assignment send-out, defaulting, and pinch-hits. However, as AO3 has no messaging system and no way of promoting works within the fandom, exchanges hosted there always have a secondary site on LJ, DW, or tumblr (or all of the above). Hosting an exchange without using AO3 is possible but becomes increasingly difficult as the size of the exchange grows.

When will you run your event?
The schedule of your event will vary considerably depending on what type of event you’re running and what you want to achieve from it; we’ll discuss schedules more in the sections below. However, the basics are the same for all: dates need to be set for important milestones, checked for any conflicts, and made clear to all potential participants before the start of the event. Be aware that not only do you need to allow participants time to do things (ex. hear about your event, read the rules, sign up, create works for your event) but you may also need to allow yourself time to do things (ex. review submissions, find pinch-hitters, etc). If you have a specific deadline that you want to hit, you need to make sure you build in time for all these considerations early on in the planning process.

Before you nail down dates, make sure that you and your co-mods don’t have personal conflicts that will render you unable to be around at important times. Consider whether a specific date would conflict with a major holiday, political or cultural event, or another large fandom or pan-fandom event, which might pull attention away from your event. If you are running an event that deals with potentially sensitive issues, including race, gender, LGBTQ, disabilities, etc, it is even more important that you be aware of any related dates with which you should not overlap out of respect.

Consider timezones: if you don’t specify a timezone, you will likely have some participants left wondering when exactly the clock strikes midnight, and if you do, you should consider whether the times you’ve specified are likely to be inconvenient to a portion of the fandom.