I just arrived back from San Francisco and am done sorting the photos I took at SmashingConf. Usually I am a bit faster, but at the weekend I took time off with my family and then I had to get directly to work for the upcoming beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf as it is less than 4 weeks to go.
Q&A with Dan Mall
The first event in San Francisco was a great success for Smashing Magazine. A good set of speakers, a great venue, Tim Kadlec was – in my opinion – ace as MC of the event and even the weather was playing nice and the sun was out all of the event days, which is not often the case in San Francisco during this time of the year. I guess the Smashing circus will be back to this city next year again.
Wow! Is it already three months into the new year and the events I have written about, I gonna attend are already over? Tell me that time is not ticking fast! While I’m writing the delayed, first update to the beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf attendees, I decided to quickly update my own blog with the events, I plan to attend during April, May and June (ordered by date):
SmashingConf San Francisco
At the end of this week I take my flight to San Francisco to be part of the first Smashing Conference in SF. From April 5th to 6th with workshops on 4th and 7th, the first SF SmashingConf is opening the doors. Many old and new faces on the speaking circuit are going to give the attendees a great time. Expect photos from e after the event.
IndieWebCamp and beyond tellerrand // DÜSSELDORF
Apart from this, I am not able to attend more events in April as my own event is coming up quickly and a lot of stuff is to be done still. May 7th and 8th, we run the IndieWebCamp Düsseldorf for the second time as part of #btconf. It’s a free event for everybody interested in this topic and I, together with Aaron Parecki and Jeremy Keith, would be happy to welcome you. beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf is sold out and about 70 people are on the waiting list. So I better get my act together and get it rolling.
Typo Berlin
I attended Typo Berlin last year and have a ticket to do so again. Sadly it is so close to my event, that I never really know until very short before the event. This year Typo Berlin takes place from May 12 to 14 and tickets are still available. It might happen that I am not able to come, but I try to make it over at least for one day. A lot of good speakers and friends are going to speak.
OFFF Barcelona
After a few years of not being able to attend, I hope to be back this year. But same here: too many other events and this is so close to mine always. Just crossing my fingers, that I am able to make it to OFFF this time from May 26 to 28.
Smashing Conference New York
From June 14 to 15 the event I started with Vitaly Friedman is back in New York for the third time. Tickets for SmashingConf New York are still available. Of course I am back with photos here as well.
awwwards New York
Right after Smashing Conf, the awwwards Conference opens the doors from on 16th and 17th of June. The list of speakers looks great (as with most of the speaker lists from the above) and I am looking forward to a busy week in New York, meeting and chatting to a lot of people.
And that is it in short for the next three months. I anything adds to this, I’ll update this post. If you are at any of these events, let me know and we can have a chat and hang out!
Update: Obviously I totally forgot to list ConfConf amongst the events I’ll be at. Not attending but speaking, but that is not changing the fact, that I am there … and you?
Last week I was part of the third SmashingConf in Oxford. In my opinion the best edition in Oxford so far. Not from the topics and speakers, but from the overall atmosphere and feeling. Over two days we have again seen a great mix of topics in a wonderful atmosphere of the beautiful Town Hall in Oxford.
I had a great time speaking to new and old friends and being part of the steady growing and great team behind SmashingConf. Check my photos and meet me soon at SmashingConf in San Francisco.
Last year at the end of January, I attended the first ConfConf. When I first heard about the event, I asked myself, if it really is needed to have an event telling other people how to plan, organise and run an event. But obviously this event is about more than just about this. The first edition covered a wide range of useful talks spiced with a lot of insights on how other people succeeded or also failed with their events. So even, if I can call myself lucky enough to – right now and until now – have an event, which sells out twice a year, I took a lot of things with me from this small and intimate event.
Cat and Ben kicking off ConfConf in 2015
The two faces behind ConfConf – Cat and Ben – are known to put their hearts into what they do. Ben runs events like Breaking Borders and speaks at various events. Cat is part of the Smashing Conference team, an event that Vitaly Friedman started together with me in 2012. Cat has a long time experience with running events for the web industry and community and was the heart of shows for Carsonified and Future Insights, before she joined the Smashing team.
When Cat and Ben started this event, they wanted to gather people who run an event, want to run and event, or are simply interested in the topic of planning, organising and/or running events. Surely someone could ask Don’t we already have enough conferences?, but apart from that I think we don’t, the idea to improve what we have is important. They say
We want people to leave feeling enabled to improve their events with a range of new tools, tips and techniques, inspired by a clearer view of their motivations and contributions to the tech industry and above all, feeling that they are part of a supportive community, working towards a common goal.
I see that you still ask yourself, why I think we don’t have enough events. So here’s why: I think that we need as many events as possible. They are what everybody needs to get away from the laptop, from daily work and routines. Some of us are lucky enough to have a family life or are able to switch off after work is done (whenever this might be). But for those who are not and lack of meeting people in real life, to exchange and chat, events are wonderful. Events are the place to meet like minded people. To recharge your batteries for creativity, motivation, or ideas. They are more than a blog post with a different view on things, where you easily can turn around and say That is bullshit, because then you have someone asking you WHY? And this might lead to a wonderful conversation and discussion maybe giving you more than just one opinion and view on things.
If you agree, then ConfConf might even be an event, that you should consider to attend. Even if you are not into running a conference or meetup yourself. ;)
I myself am going to talk about The Human Side of Event Organisation. I haven’t written the outline yet, but the title itself might give you a glimpse on what it is al about. It will be a roller coaster ride on which I take you to see what partners, speakers and – of course – attendees mean to me and how I treat (or at least hope to) them.
Alongside with me, John Davey, responsible for events like Flash on the Beach and now Reasons in London and Brighton, who is covering the difficult topic of selling tickets in a creative way. Not only event organisers are lined up: Rachel Andrew is talking about the experience as a speaker and how this could possible be optimised to have a great time at an event. Last but not least Cat also gives a talk with very helpful insights, tips and tricks and a backpack with a Plan B for anythings that could possibly go wrong at your show. All this is spiced up with discussions in which everybody onsite exchanges and discusses. Sounds like a good, active and useful day.
It’s a tough time to start new events right now. Many people have held their final event last year, announcing the end of it or at least a longer break to think of a different setup or orientation. Just have a look at the “Future Of” - series or Clearleft’s dConstruct, just to mention a few. Who would have thought, that a traditional, long running event like dConstruct would close their doors? They always had a really diverse and well curated line-up, well chosen range of speakers and a great atmosphere overall, when you attended. Yet more an more events, without having a real idea why, suffer from less and less attendees. A lot of other events suffer from low attendance rates or the critique of possible attendees, that speaker line-ups at Web conference look all more or less similar.
How brave of Joschi and Brian to kick off a new event called Material during exactly this time. Even more, if you take in consideration that they don’t run it in London, Berlin, Amsterdam or any of the cities already having many events – you know, if you want to open an Italian restaurant, you open it where all the other Italian restaurants are, right? No, they decided to go for Reykjavik in Iceland for their location. I mean, yes, everybody who always wanted to go to Iceland has one more reason now, but that possibly means that you add a few more days in addition to the event. And planning and scheduling your event journeys needs time and many decisions have to be made, as you have seen in the results of this survey.
One more aspect, why they have a tough job is, that – if you know Joschi and Brian – they won’t come up with just another conference. Of course they have the aim of creating and delivering something meaningful, something relevant. They state, that this event is
Material 2016 – a conference exploring the concept of the Web as a material
Now you might ask yourself what this means and I don't want to simply repeat what they already have written, so please do me a favour and check what they have written about the meaning of this sentence and their event. Or check the video below this post, recorded by Brian and Joschi to explain, what they are planning to start and run.
The show is planned to take off at July 22nd this year. So it is not too far away anymore, which is another very brave move, as a lot of things have to be planned, organised and brought to live. Joschi and Brian decided to go for a Kickstarter campaign to sell their tickets. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of selling event tickets or Kickstarter in general, but many events in the past have shown that this a) is possible and b) a good option to see the interest of people. The only downside – I think – is, that it sometimes lets people wait and see how it takes of. If tickets are selling quick and backers come in quickly, then they act fast. If not, they take their time. And this is, what no organiser needs, running events the way they or I do it as we work with the money we get for an event directly towards the event.
Therefore I'd say: support this very nice idea and reason to run an event. Also because Brian and Joschi are wonderful people doing a lot of good for the community. Tickets are $150 and only about 150 seats are available. I'm pretty sure that you won't regret being part of this event. Content wise, from the location on it's own and also from the people you'll meet there.
Usually I do not have a call for proposals for beyond tellerrand, but I do get a lot of emails from people who want to speak. There are plenty of groups emailing me. Sometimes it is obvious that someone just wants to pitch and advertise a product or service to the audience of my event. They get a friendly reply with my Partnership PDF. Then there is a few that sound interesting and who get a reply asking for more information. Usually as soon as I get this missing information I sort them into a pool of speakers and topics I have, which I look through every now and then to check whats in there and what might be relevant for an upcoming event, depending whom I have already invited.
Sometimes I also get these kind of emails:
A certain kind of emails I get.
If I get something like this, I ask myself: if the person on which behalf I get this email has looked into my event and finds it interesting, why not getting in touch with me in person? I mean certainly you must have notice that a lot of my event is about personality and community, so the first thing someone should do is getting in touch with me directly instead through someone else. At least I think like this and actually reply with exactly this question plus the suggestion to let the person interested getting in touch with me directly.
In 2013 I tried to get Dieter Rams to my little beyond tellerrand event. Sadly he does not really enjoy traveling anymore, which I can understand, taking in consideration that he is 83 now. I – of course – would have loved to get him over to speak, but he is not speaking a lot these days anymore.
What I am especially bothered by today is that […] design is being used as a 'lifestyle asset.
What a great day I had in London. I am not the biggest fan of one day events, as I love the evening of the first day being a chance to connect with the rest of the attendees and then have a second day with new friends. But the format John is running here is nice, because – as I said earlier – it starts around noon and runs into the evening. With this you can work and have a great way to end the week. And it would even be possible to attend this event withot having to stay in London. Fly in, attend, fly out. Maybe you should check to attend next years Reasons:London or Reasons in Brighton beginning of September.
I don’t know about you, but did you ever experience that you have written an email, no bounce back arrives in your inbox and you can be quite sure that the email you’ve written arrives in the inbox of the recipient – if it did not end up in the spam folder having been filtered out by the spam filter.
Assuming it didn’t end up in the spam folder, what are you doing if someone does not reply to you after a while? I myself am trying a polite second email, asking if all is ok and if my email arrived as I’d otherwise be happy to send it again. I think nothing wrong with this, is it? Maybe I try a third time, but then I usually give up, just being sad again asking myself, why people don’t have a few seconds to let me know that they have no interest in speaking to me. Which is totally fine. And in the end it would only help as I’d know the email arrived, I don’t have to bug this person again and I know that this person has no interest to speak at my event for example. Not answering an email is just rude in my eyes. It is like if you meet someone, want to say hello and the one in front of you just turns around without reacting or saying anything. How would you react to this and think of this person? Exactly!
I think it is even worse if you had an ongoing conversation with back an forth emails and then all of a sudden, without you knowing why, the one you had been talking to stops replying to your emails. I mean, yes, you might have written something that upsets the person or maybe something that the recipient did not like. In terms of business, for example, an offer that the one who got it finds unacceptable. But how easy is it to simply write back, say no, or even to say fuck off? I could live with this. I’d know where I am at then and it would help more than simply not replying anymore. Makes me angry sad, that we think we can simply forget about politeness and manners, just because we are hiding behind computers and emails.
I myself reply to every email that is addressed to me personally. Sometimes only really short to say that I do not have interest in what was offered, but at least the one who has written, knows that I got it and read it. Even though he/she might not give a fuck about it. But I replied.
I think, how you treat someone shows your character as well and how you treat someone with your emails – not with what or how you write, but writing at all – is equally showing the character. I see this like you know this for many other things in life: treat everybody the way you want to be treated.
Today I got this email from a German magazine in my inbox:
[…] gerne möchten wir Ihnen heute unser Magazin whatevername zur
kostenlosen und unverbindlichen Auslage auf Ihrer Veranstaltung “beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf” von 09. - 11. Mai 2016 anbieten. Wir sind sicher, dass der Service bei Ihren Teilnehmern gut ankommt.
Which translates into something like:
[…] we’d like to offer you our magazine whatevername to display and give out for free at your event “beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf” from May 9 to 11. We are sure that the service is well received by your attendees.
Nothing bad at this, you know. I always try to get got deals and nice stuff for my attendees. But I also always try to have something that helps all groups involved. So this means, the publisher, the attendees and – of course – me, or better said my event. So I wasn’t expecting to get any money, but thought some kind of countertrade would be fair, when asking:
Thanks for your interest in my event. How could a possible countertrade look like? Is it possible that you do an article about the event before or after the conference for example?
You see, that I’m not expecting much, but somehow I think, when you offer someone or something a platform to get known to more people, even though the magazine in this case costs something and it is for free to my attendees, you should get something back. At least a little bit. And even if it would only be something to get the dates of your event spread or tweeted about or anything. The more disappointed and sad was I, when I got this reply:
[…] da wir unser Angebot eher als Anreicherung Ihrer Veranstaltung, denn als Werbung verstehen, muss ich Ihnen leider mitteilen, dass wir keine Gegengeschäfte eingehen.
… which is in English …
[…] as we see our offer as an enrichment of your event, more than advertising for us, I have do let you know, that we are not going to do a countertrade.
I mean, yes, it is maybe good value for the attendees of beyond tellerrand, but am I wrong, if I say that it definitely is advertising for them, when they have the chance to offer their mag to 500 attendees? And I also can’t get rid of the feeling that somehow this email sounds condescend to me, doesn’t it.
Anyways. I hope that you’ll evaluate anything, no mater how small you think your business (newsletter, blog, website, community, event … whatever) is, it has a certain value. To you, to the people who read or attend it and therefore it should be worth being treated like it has. Maybe sometimes it is worth thinking about if you do something like this more than once, before saying yes too quick. Don’t forget: as if you do agree to things like this once, you’ll be asked for things like this more often. It’s a little bit like working for free … (thanks to Joshua Davis and also to Yuko Shimizu, who both – amongst others – reminded me about this in their talks)
