Post Mortem for March 8, 2025 Event
This document is a post mortem for the March 8, 2025 Rally for International Woman's Day event.
A post mortem is an after action analysis designed to capture:

• What Went Right
  
• What Went Wrong
  
• Specific Feedback / Contacts Made
  
• Todo Items

Honest post mortem documents, written shortly after the event, are an essential tool for growing as an organization.
What Went Right

Please note that I'm going to list more things that went wrong than right in this document.
THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE A ROCK STAR EVENT. I literally can't say enough good things about it. I will focus on what didn't go right though as a way of making sure that they don't happen again. That's all. I am **beyond happy** with today's event.

• The event was a huge success. Attendance was higher than we ever expected
  
• The audio system was one which the musicians were able to plug into as Guitar Center predicted.
  
• Every button was taken
  
• Every fidget spinner was taken
  
• Every whistle was taken
  
• Every gift bag was taken
  
• Using the clicker to count people worked great. Hat tip to Taelar for doing this.
  
• Tori was a rock star in making our materials and now has the title of "Queen of Infinite Patience for Last Minute Changes".
  
• The new printer worked great. We were able to produce our own materials quickly and easily without issues.
  
• Take down took only 20 minutes which is amazing.
  
• The approach of "load it into the cart and then load the cart into the van" was fast and easy.
  
• Having music was excellent. I'd like to repeat that.
  
• Every one of my anti tesla signs went home with someone
  
• We had 15 speakers and didn't go over. That's amazing.
  
• Right now we have a scrappy, underdog feeling right down to using a step ladder as a speaking podium. There's value in that and we want to be careful about deviating from it moving forward.
  
• Clipboards really do give you power. We need more of them. NOTE from Janet: With more clipboards come less power to clipboard holders. :( (NOTE from Tori - I think they do also help people identify who the organizers are)
  
• I now have the best ball cap I've ever been given. Thanks Christian.
  
• Taelar did great with leading chants, and other bullhorn tasks.
  
• I (Janet) feel like we did a great job getting people connected into our socials - QR codes for people into that, explanations of groups and some demonstrations for those not into QR codes.
  
• Tori did an excellent job keeping track of speakers and keeping them rolling, and also checking in with the people with tables to make sure what they needed.
  
• Volunteers continually rotated in and out of the table, distributing flyers and whatever and helping who needed it.
  
• Tori made a great e-mail to send out to potential speakers/table people.
  
• Janet/Tori team was a great way to have backups for everything related to speakers. (cause we're rockstars) (yep.)
  
• “Working the crowd” was tremendously helpful in getting to know people, getting them connected into all the platforms, and especially getting them on board for participation in organizing future events instead of just attending. Also, I got stickers.
  
• Caroline did a great job marketing this event, and the smaller facebook chats I think really allowed us to have so many people but also for us to spread across the state into satellite protests as well. Lots of people were talking about carpooling, networking in those chats. The speaker/org blurbs went well but the ones with a call to action, and Tori’s announcements of the event with the call to action, seemed to work extra well.
  
• I think that the two Facebook groups works really well! I like that people could share the public group’s event outside the group and invite friends, which brought them both to the event, and to the group. I also like the niched down groups in the private group and the more secure feel.

What Went Wrong

We still don't have good enough audio. We are better but not yet perfect. The issue at hand is:

• We are outside for events without power
  
• This limits us to rechargeable systems or USB style power banks; whatever we do, we need to **time** music playing thru speakers as a proxy for a person speaking to ensure that the speakers last long enough.
  
• We had good luck using both sound systems together (and speaking into two mics at a time). I need to set up both sound systems in a large field and experiment with that using the speakers spread out. It may be that a few of the Pyle (our first speaker) speakers used in this fashion is a cost effective approach.
  
• It was recommended that we switch our location to directly in front of the steps so that the building bounces our sound back to us. Please someone remember this so we take advantage of it next time. (This may be considered blocking the path)
  
• It was also recommended we have more than one (audio) speaker to better distribute sound around the area.

Other things that went wrong:

• We need sandbags to prevent the audio falling and hurting someone. Ouch.
  
• We actually did not give away all the gift bags; I found two totes of them when I unloaded.
  
• We have leftover rally schedules, Let's get loud and postcards. We really should've stuck these in the gift bags.
  
• We need to publish a date for last minute changes to Tori doesn't straight up murderalyze one of us.
  
• We need suntan lotion; I'm burned. I know Tori was burned.
  
• We likely aren't doing enough to capture person level data for a mailing list or text message blast list. I had MailChimp setup on my phone but I failed to talk to anyone really about that. (I know a couple of music artists I follow use Community as a mass text system - we could look into that for text message distribution.)
  
• We did have some media coverage. Next time I'd like to see more. I think we need a specific media team to reach out and build those relationships. I also think we need to include any local podcasters we can find (I was interviewed by 1 but only 1). - Remind Janet to talk to the Youtube community about this as well
  
• I'd like to leave schedule slots open for ad hoc speakers to be a part of every event. This was very powerful at the 3/4 event. - THIS.
  
• We absolutely need a chant card for each of the leaders
  
• We need to identify the chants on the schedule; if we do this right we can help build the right energy / right messaging - Agreed
  
• We need a mic stand at least for the musician to use
  
• Chants continued to get off cadence - We had a plan for this, but lost our chant leader I believe.
  
• Need a small station to get the speakers & orgs checked in (per Tori - I would like to run this plz btw) THIS! (Per Janet too, but not running it. I’ll backup Tori tho)
  
• Implement marking on the schedule what time the speakers begin their speech so we can use it for better time management at future events - Agreed per Janet
  
• We should probably have more streamlined form letters for speakers about some certain things - like last minute “this is what time you are scheduled, this is where you should be, this is Janet & Tori’s number in case there are issues, etc”
  
• We need to have contact info for each speaker - I (Janet) didn’t, because I was tired and Kristen knew them… but that’s not a workable system in general.
  
• Did Caroline have a back-up Caroline in case of traffic/car trouble? Scott?
  
• We need to have google sheets on our phone or a printout of the spreadsheet, if we need it for our tasks.
  
• We had a couple of security folx I never did find - the Google form was excellent but needs a way for us to contact them, even if it’s just platform & screen name.
  
• Smaller handout for the schedule & events - maybe have a double sided with schedule on one side & future events on the other? (Most events probably won’t need a schedule, unless they are in celebration of something other than a general protest - but for the ones that do, that’s a great idea and eco-friendly. Captain Planet is proud.)

Specific Feedback / Contacts Made

• The son of the Hammer and the Hatchet is an audio engineer, Zudio, and offered to help us
  
• An individual who's wife "used to have a Zumba studio" has "all the gear we need and its just sitting around" with an implication he might donate gear to us (if it works); he has Scott's card
  
• Jonah Everhart (Scott's FB Messenger contact) offered to provide funding for audio gear
  
• Zion Piatt (only Zion on Facebook; lol) is an audio engineer who offered to help
  
• (I'll wager that other people made other contacts and they should get logged here so we all have access to them)
  
• The orgs who only had tables set up - I (Tori) gathered their business cards to add to the contact list for future events.
  
• We networked with an Interpreter, who Janet will follow up with.
  
• We talked to another “interpreter” who turned out to be a hard of hearing person helping people who could hear less than her - ouch. Her mom suggested calling ISD, Indiana School for the Deaf, for volunteer interpreters and easier time finding speakers.
  

Todo Items

1. I strongly feel that we need to look into the issues of 501(3)(c) formation if for no other reason than to be able to take funding. I have a legal contact that I will follow up with on this matter.
   
2. I think this next week needs to be organizational in nature. This isn't just the 501(3)(c); it is also what roles we want in an org structure moving forward. I'll be writing a document on this once I have the chance.
   
3. Audio needs to be addressed before the next event. I really don't want to hear the comment again "I couldn't hear" **Note from Janet: I don’t think this is avoidable, because the movement is growing faster than we plan, and also because people stand far away when they could be closer.
   
4. Live streaming needs to be a thing. We need this fixed. (And the problem was mine; I didn't experiment fully with it when I setup the YouTube channel). Honestly many if not most of the problems today were mine; I moved very fast and didn't communicate well enough. I (Janet) disagree with this assessment - new platforms take some time to use before live streaming is unlocked. We have a month to get all of these handled.before the next event, which is probably workable - some need a certain amount of followers, some need you to publish shorts/videos, etc… we can address each one and its requirements during planning week. We DO however need some way to stream from one device into as many platforms as possible. Does anyone know a guy? I can sort of do it but someone knows better. Also, I didn’t find your communication to be problematic in this.
   
5. My personal preference is that we have one person per social media platform covering us onto the name synced social media accounts we just created.
   
6. We need someone to edit videos, it’s a super niched thing but will feed into all the other platforms, so if someone does this very well, it will be great for LOTS of platforms.
   
7. We need cross-training on everything, everyone needs a backup so things go smoothly no matter who is there, and there is a clear fill-in for anyone who is out.
   
8. We need a system to get all the leaders/organizers notified in real time to changes in schedule. That was a struggle for me (Janet)