A Miscellany of things every event steward should know
Collected from the Autocrats Discussion List

Being a Steward

• Rule 1: Don’t Panic.
• Events may only be sponsored by full status groups of the SCA. That sponsorship is verified by the signature of the group’s Seneschal who must have a current warrant on file with their superior officer in order for the form to be accepted. As Autocrat, you must hold a current SCA membership as well and that membership MUST be current on the date(s) of the event.
• If you’ve never run an event, there are some things you should know ahead of time. Events must be planned (a minimum of two) months ahead. The farther ahead you plan, the more people will be able to attend your event, and the easier your job will be. Large events take additional planning, so the greater the estimated attendance, the sooner you should go to work.

Event Bids

• All branches are required to hold at least one event per year, so the calendar can get crowded pretty quickly.
• The event bid process can vary from branch to branch so it is a good idea to check with your branch officials for instructions on submitting an event proposal for sponsorship.
• Here’s where each branch does things differently. It’s usually pretty safe to assume that nothing will be decided that first meeting, and much discussion will ensue about the relative merits of each date choice. Don’t take it personally. Much discussion, even heated discussion, means people are excited about your idea! If they didn’t care about it, they wouldn’t care when it was.

Event Dates

• Your event will have less chance of success if a nearby branch was holding an event on the same date because you would be drawing from the same population base.
• If you want to host an event, the first thing to do is check the kingdom calendar in the Crier or on the An Tir web site (http://www.antir.sca.org/Upcoming/) for potential conflicts. It is recommended that you check not just this year but also last year’s event calendar. Ask yourself what events are traditional for the weekend you want. Just because they’re not on the calendar at the moment doesn’t mean they won’t appear in the nick of time.
• It is a good idea to consult with your Baron and Baroness (if you have them). Their schedule is often far more complicated than the Kingdom Calendar would look like when you include baronial events, plus any canton or colleges, and assorted mandatory Kingdom events like Crown Councils (often not on the calendar until the last minute), meetings, etc.
• Ask your Baron/Baroness, and/or Seneschal if they can think of any reason any of your date choices choices should be cut right off. Then go to council and propose your dates.
• Event dates (except Crown and Kingdom events) are on a first come, first served basis. The Kingdom Calendar Deputy is responsible for keeping the schedule of kingdom events and maintaining conflict zones within a given area. Your event would have less chance of success if a nearby branch was holding an event on the same date because you would be drawing from the same population base. Conflict zones are set up to prevent this from happening, unless you specify that it’s okay for another branch to conflict.
• Once a date is settled upon you may wish to have the branch Seneschal submit a Date Reservation Form. The Date Reservation Form is a courtesy form that can be submitted to reserve a date in advance of actually obtaining a site. If you pre-book your date, be aware that this will affect the planning efforts of your neighbors so be sure to update it as quickly as possible so everyone can plan accordingly.

If you have any further comments or pieces of wisdom to add to this miscellany, add it to the comments section below.