Internal Comms & Meetings

How to run an async standup as Event Agency Founders

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Event Agency Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your agency runs on a patchwork of WhatsApp chains, a shared Google Drive folder, and a Friday Zoom that half the team joins late because they're still on-site finishing a corporate dinner. You don't have a clear picture of what every coordinator handled that week until you ask — and by then someone's already doubled up on a vendor call or missed a follow-up with a florist. Async standup doesn't exist as a formal thing in most small event agencies; it's a 6 PM Slack message that three people answer and two ignore. You lose 30–45 minutes every week just reconstructing who did what before you can plan who does what next.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Internal Comms & MeetingsFor Event Agency Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A daily async standup digest delivered to your team — covering what each person handled yesterday, what's blocked, and what's happening today across every active event

An automated action-item log that pulls blockers and open tasks from standup responses and drops them into your project tracker without anyone copying and pasting

A searchable standup archive so when a client asks 'when did we last talk to the florist?' you can find the exact day and what your coordinator reported

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Project Management Meeting Notes Task Manager

Data sources & config

Connect Google Calendar (Starch syncs your Google Calendar data on a schedule, 12 months back and 3 months ahead) so the standup prompt auto-populates each coordinator's event assignments for the day. Connect Gmail (Starch syncs your Gmail data on a schedule) so vendor email threads can be cross-referenced against what coordinators report in standup. Starch's Project Management app (available today in the App Store) handles task creation from blockers; Task Manager handles personal to-do capture for each coordinator.

Prompts to copy

Build me a daily async standup app for my event agency team. Every morning at 8 AM, send each team member a prompt asking: what did you work on yesterday, what are you working on today, and what's blocking you. Collect their responses and compile a single digest I can read in under 3 minutes.

When a standup response mentions a blocker, automatically create a task in my project board tagged with the event name, assigned to me as owner, with today's date. Label it BLOCKED.

Archive every standup digest by week and make it searchable so I can pull up what my team reported during the week of any specific event — for example 'what did the team log during the week of the Harbor View Gala setup?'

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Open Starch and start from the Project Management starter app. Describe your agency's structure: 'I run a 4-person corporate event agency. We have 6–12 active events at any time. Each coordinator owns 2–3 events. Build me a standup tracker around that.'

2 Tell Starch to add an async standup layer: 'Every weekday at 8 AM, prompt each coordinator with three questions — yesterday, today, blockers — and collect their text responses by 9:30 AM.'

3 Connect Google Calendar so Starch knows which events are live and which coordinators are assigned. Starch syncs your Google Calendar on a schedule, so the standup form pre-fills each person's event context for that day.

4 Connect Gmail so standup responses can reference outstanding vendor threads. Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule; the agent can surface open threads (no reply in 48 hours) flagged during standup.

5 Set up the digest: 'At 9:31 AM, compile all standup responses into a single summary. Group by event name. Put blockers at the top in bold. Send it to my Gmail and post it in our team Slack channel.' Connect Slack from Starch's integration catalog; the agent posts the digest live when the automation runs.

6 Wire the blocker-to-task rule: 'Any response that includes the word 'blocked' or 'waiting on' should automatically create a task in the project board, tagged with the event name mentioned, assigned to me, due today.'

7 Use the Meeting Notes app for your weekly in-person or video sync. After the call, Meeting Notes transcribes, summarizes key decisions, and extracts action items — so your live meeting produces the same structured output as your async standups.

8 Tell Starch to cross-reference standup logs with the project board weekly: 'Every Friday at 4 PM, show me a summary of which events had the most blockers reported this week and which tasks are still open from Monday's standup.'

9 Give each coordinator a personal task view: 'Build each team member a filtered view of the project board showing only their events and their open tasks, sorted by due date.' They capture quick tasks via chat — 'remind me to call the AV vendor for Harbor View by noon tomorrow' — and it goes straight into Task Manager.

10 Archive standups automatically: 'After each digest is sent, append it to a log organized by week and event name. Make it searchable.' When a client calls asking about a vendor conversation, you search the archive — not your memory.

11 Run the setup for two weeks, then ask Starch to analyze the archive: 'Which events generated the most blockers in their final two weeks? Which coordinator reported the most outstanding vendor follow-ups?' Use that output to adjust how you staff future events.

12 Publish your standup configuration to the Starch marketplace so other boutique event agencies can install your exact setup as their starting point.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Lakeside Corporate Dinner — Week-of Standup Digest, March 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

Coordinator responses collected by 9:30 AM	4
Active events in standup that week	7
Blockers surfaced automatically	3
Tasks auto-created from blocker flags	3
Minutes to read the compiled digest	2

It's the Wednesday before a 180-person corporate dinner at a lakeside venue. Your four coordinators each answer the morning prompt by 9:15 AM. Starch compiles the digest: Marcus is confirmed on linens and catering BEO but is blocked waiting on the AV company to confirm the room flip timing — Starch flags that and creates a task assigned to you, tagged 'Lakeside Dinner,' due today. Sofia reports she sent the final guest list to the venue but hasn't heard back in 36 hours — Starch cross-references her Gmail sync and surfaces the unanswered thread automatically. Two other events show no blockers. The whole digest lands in your inbox at 9:31 AM. You spend 8 minutes resolving both flags instead of running a 45-minute check-in call. By Thursday morning, both blockers are closed and logged in the archive — so when the client emails Friday asking 'was the AV sorted by Wednesday?' you pull the standup log and reply in 90 seconds.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Standup response rate: percentage of coordinators who submit by the 9:30 AM cutoff each day

Blocker resolution time: average hours between a blocker flagged in standup and the corresponding task marked complete

Events with open blockers in the final 72 hours before event day — you want this at zero

Vendor follow-up lag: open email threads with no reply in 48+ hours, surfaced weekly from Gmail sync

Weekly digest read time: if it takes more than 4 minutes, the standup format needs to be tightened

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Slack with a Geekbot or manual daily thread

Geekbot collects responses but doesn't connect to your event calendar, Gmail threads, or project board — you still manually figure out which blocker belongs to which event and create the follow-up tasks yourself.

HoneyBook or Dubsado internal notes

Great for client-facing timelines and proposals, but neither product has a team standup layer — you're running two systems side by side with no shared view of what each coordinator is working on.

A shared Google Sheet updated manually each morning

Free and flexible but requires discipline to maintain, doesn't auto-create tasks from blockers, and becomes a ghost town the week before a big event when everyone's too busy to update it.

Notion standup database

Notion can hold the structure, but you'd need to build and maintain the automation layer yourself, and it doesn't natively connect to Gmail or Google Calendar to surface unanswered vendor threads or event context.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — project management, meeting notes, task manager all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My coordinators work irregular hours around events — will the 8 AM standup prompt timing work?

You set the schedule when you describe the app to Starch. If your team is more available at 7 AM or needs a different cadence during event weeks, tell Starch: 'During the 5 days before an event, switch the standup prompt to 7 AM and extend the response window to 11 AM.' Starch builds the timing rule into the automation. You can also trigger a standup manually any time — it doesn't have to run on a fixed clock.

Can Starch read our Slack messages to auto-fill standup context, or do coordinators have to write fresh responses every day?

Starch connects to Slack from its integration catalog; the agent can query your Slack channels live when the automation runs. You could tell Starch: 'Before sending the standup prompt, pull each coordinator's Slack messages from yesterday and pre-populate the 'what did you work on' field — let them edit before submitting.' That way the coordinator is reviewing, not typing from scratch. Note that Starch doesn't store a historical Slack archive — it queries live at the time the automation runs.

Will this work if we use HoneyBook or Dubsado for client and lead management?

Both HoneyBook and Dubsado are web-based tools. Starch can automate them through your browser — no API needed — to pull in data like outstanding proposal counts or unsigned contracts and surface that context in the standup digest. You'd tell Starch: 'Each morning, log into HoneyBook and pull a count of outstanding proposals per coordinator, then include that number in their standup prompt.' It's not a formal integration, but it's a first-class Starch capability.

Is this SOC 2 certified? We handle client guest lists and vendor contracts.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified yet. If a client contract requires certified data handling for the tools your team uses internally, that's worth knowing upfront. For most small agency teams, the standup data itself — who did what, what's blocked — is low sensitivity. Vendor contracts and guest lists live in your existing tools; Starch surfaces references and counts rather than storing those documents itself.

What happens to standup history when a coordinator leaves the agency?

The standup archive is yours — it's organized by event name and week, not by employee login. When someone leaves, their historical standup responses stay in the searchable archive under the events they worked. You can tell Starch to reassign their open tasks to a new person: 'Move all tasks currently assigned to [name] that are tagged Lakeside Dinner to Sofia.' The archive doesn't disappear.

Can the standup digest be shared with clients, or is it just internal?

The default standup digest is internal — it's meant for your eyes as the principal, not for clients. But you could tell Starch: 'Generate a separate client-facing status note for the Harbor View Gala based on this week's standup responses — write it in the tone of a brief project update email, no internal blocker language.' That becomes a draft in Gmail for you to review and send. The internal digest and the client note are separate outputs from the same underlying data.