Ruud Janssen and I discuss the most common uses of the Event Canvas in this video excerpt from an upcoming podcast. It might not be so intuitive as you may think. Ruud is the co-author of a new book, Event Design Handbook: Systematically Design Innovative Events Using the EventCanvas,
An overview of the book: 
Event design is a new approach to systematically decompose and recompose the success of events. By using the #EventCanvas template, one can identify where and for whom the event can be innovated. It is a handbook to document, discuss, and design events worth attending, and illustrates good event design.
You can download the first 100-pages and the Event Canvas at http://www.eventcanvas.org/. Thought the canvas has a strong resemblance to other canvases you might be associated with, I think you will find this one of great use. It should be in everyone’s toolkit.
Related Blog post: Opening Appreciative Space