Lesson 4: Posting Your Event

Posting your event on events.vex.com is the point where your planning becomes public. Once your event is approved and released, teams can see it, register for it, arrange transportation around it, and plan their season against it.

Event posting happens after you complete this course. Your Program Support Team assigns Event Partner permissions once you earn your Event Partner Certification, and that is required to be able to create an event on events.vex.com. That makes this lesson preparation rather than a task list: you are learning what posting will ask of you so you are prepared for when you need to do it yourself.

This lesson is a supplement to Library resources, not a detailed walkthrough. When you are ready to sit down and post, you will use Library resources to guide you through each step.

• Creating a New Event gives step-by-step guidance through the event posting form.
• Understanding the Event Dashboard explains what every section of your event page covers.

What this course offers is the context around those steps: what your listing communicates, what you are committing to, and how you work with the Program Support team from posting through approval.

Before You Post

While you cannot create your own posting just yet, you can look at other event listings to see how other Event Partners are describing their events, the agendas they’re using, and other details they include to get ideas for how you want to capture your event details.

Do not post a first event without talking to your Program Support Team. You work through your date, venue, and budget, as well as other decisions in your planning process. The event posting is a continuation of those conversations. Now you are deciding how to explain the choices you made to the coaches and teams who will register. Your Program Support Team knows where listings tend to leave gaps and can help you build a posting that will best represent your event.

What Your Listing Tells Teams

Your event page is built from content blocks, and for most coaches it is the only thing they will ever read about your event. They make real decisions from what you write: whether they can afford the registration fee, where the event fits in their season, whether it suits the experience level of their teams, and what attending will ask of their families.

The main content blocks required include:

• General Info — Everything a coach needs to know about to plan the day, including pricing, parking, entrances, food policies, bag policies, check-in procedures, and what spectators should expect.
• Agenda — The day you modeled in the previous lesson gets shared with prospective teams here. This lets coaches know how long to plan for, and whether the event is feasible to travel to.
• Volunteer — Your volunteer needs are made public. Include the roles you need, the time commitment, and a name or link so people who want to volunteer can get in touch.
• Emergency/Bad Weather Policy — What happens if the day cannot run as planned.
• Refund and Payment Policies — Answer three things plainly: what happens to fees if you cancel the event, what happens if a team withdraws or does not attend, and the payment deadline along with the consequence for missing it.
• Judging Format — Let teams know if your event includes judging, and if so what the judging format will be.

You will also fill in additional information about your certified volunteers, Event Partner and event support contact information, awards available, and more. Your event posting should describe your event fully enough that participants are not surprised when they arrive that morning. Giving specific details in a concise way helps a coach plan better than a generalized, short description.

Dates and Deadlines

Your posting has several important dates and deadlines as part of the process:

• Release date — When your event becomes visible to teams on events.vex.com.
  • Your event should be posted and visible at least one week before registration opens, so teams can see it coming and plan for it rather than discovering it the day it opens.
• Registration opens — When teams can begin signing up.
  • Registration should open at least eight weeks before your event date. Coaches need that time to arrange transportation, funding, and permission.
• Registration closes — Your team list is final at this point.
  • There is no required date, so choose one that leaves you enough time to build your match schedule and print what you need.
• Payment deadline — Needs a stated consequence attached to it, which you will have written into your Refund and Payment Policies block.
• Certified Volunteers — The names of your certified Head Referee and Judge Advisor (if your event includes judging).
  • They must be named on the event at least three weeks before it runs. An incomplete Judge Advisor or Head Referee section will not block approval, but you will have to add them before the deadline.
• Posting deadline — Official Qualifying Events also need to be submitted, reviewed, and published by the posting deadline for the current season. Read Event Qualifying Criteria for this season's deadline and the full set of milestones.

You do not have to complete your listing in one sitting. Saving the event form takes you to the Event Dashboard, where every section shows whether it is complete, so you can work through them as your decisions settle. Nothing is visible to teams until your event is approved and its release date arrives. Starting early gives you room to meet the deadlines above, so you are not scrambling to post at the last minute.

What You Agree to When You Post

Submitting your event means accepting the Commitment to Event Excellence, and compliance with it is a condition of event approval. Read it in full before you post. The Commitment runs in both directions. Global Robotics and your Program Support Team commit to supporting you and your event throughout the planning process and the actual event day.

A few commitments affect decisions you make for you posting:

• You are responsible for issuing refunds according to the policy you publish. This is the only financial obligation in the posting process, and it is why your Refund and Payment Policies block matters.
• Your event is an Open Tournament unless it is approved as something else. Registration is open to all eligible organization types in your program, and teams must receive a fair opportunity to register without favoritism or unfair advantage. Limiting participation by capacity, grade level division, and registration deadlines is expected and fine. Limiting which teams may enter is a different event type — an Invitational or a School-Based Event — and both require Program Support Team approval and eligibility criteria published before registration opens. Review Types of VEX Robotics Competition Events to learn more.
• Admission costs, parking fees, and any other required charges or attendance restrictions must be disclosed in your event listing, and your Program Support Team approves those conditions before registration opens. A team should never discover a cost or a condition on arrival.

Submission and Approval

When every required section is complete, a Ready for Approval button will appear. If you cannot find it, something on the dashboard still needs attention.

Your Program Support Team then reviews the event and sends comments back through the dashboard. Expect to see comments to address before the posting is approved. A first event that comes back with several notes is completely normal, and it means the review process is working the way it is designed to. Respond to the feedback, fix what was flagged, and resubmit.

Once approved, your event becomes visible on its release date, and teams can register when registration opens. Most details can still be edited after that, though some changes will prompt another review. Anything significant — the date, location, capacity, registration, format, awards, or schedule — should be brought up directly to your Program Support Team, and they can guide you in how to adjust your posting.