So you've just finished your event and everyone loved it. You get a ton of kudos because you used a lot of stuff that you learned here (I flatter myself). I bet you're feeling pretty good.

On the other hand, let's say you've just finished a horrible event. Players are generally quiet about the event, and when asked, they give a non-commital response of some sort.

The next thing you should do is the same in both scenarios. You need to go over lessons learned.

This one of the things I stole from the business world. Whenever you're on a project when it finishes, they suggest you go over lessons learned from the project. One thing that ties both the business and LARP world together is that no one takes this seriously. Your job is to be the person who does everything necessary to be the best.

You might be the best at running plot in your area, but you will not get better unless you pinpoint your weaknesses and strengths and use that information in the future. Here are some things that you should look for in your Lessons Learned.

What I Did Right
This is the pat-on-the-back section of lessons learned. I generally think about the event as a whole and look for successes. Did you perform well despite lack of crew? Did you scale modules to challenge the PCs without overpowering them? Was it interesting? You can dig a little further and find things that you liked in general, such as good utilization of the camp or park, strong pacing for the event, and what infrastructure helped you achieve your goals.

What I Did Wrong
This is the section everyone has trouble with. You need to identify things you did incorrectly, even if it was not visible to the players! If you've done plot for a long time, you may not have any glaring errors that stand out, so you will have to nit pick. The goal of this section is to find the areas you can most improve on, whether they're major issues or minor handling of the situation.