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)
On January 5th, I created a little survey dealing with questions around how you plan and organise your trips to events like web conferences for example. Nearly 500 (494 to be exact) people took part in the survey. Therefore many thanks to everybody who helped spreading the survey.
The results are quite interesting from an event organisers perspective. I said, I’ll publish the results and here we go. You’ll find the numbers as well as certain answers, if they were given as a reason to an answer.
What's the average lead time you need / prefer for planning your conference visits?
The answers to this question are not only interesting to see how long in advance you should announce your event, but they also give you an impression when to start selling tickets and get as much information for your event together to help possible attendees make their decision.
Interesting to see that most people don’t really need too much time upfront
As you can see, most attendees need a rather short time to plan their event journeys. If you take the first and second answer, 70% need only between 1 and 4 months. It means, that if you have your act together around 4 months before your event opens the doors, it’s good.
Interesting also to see a few of the comments made. Tobias, for example, writes:
I like to plan 2-6 weeks in advance. But due to early ticket sales and getting permission from the employer, I need 6-8 Month.
Two issues are shown here:
Events releasing early bird prices force possible attendees to act early to get the cheaper price. In this case even though Tobias is employed.
Employees often need longer to get an OK from their boss, which leads to the fact that they have to know of an event early enough to ask for permission. That means if you are too late with announcing your event, you might even fall off this person’s radar.
Łukasz says:
I start planning when I have tickets – it does not matter if that is 2 or 10 months (but above 3 months allows better stay and flight choice)
In this case Łukasz is self employed or freelancer and has the opportunity to act quickly. He might hear of an event, checks line-up and topics and maybe what other people say about it and books his ticket. After this he sorts out travel and hotel. But as you see he also mentions, that if flying is involved, being early is an advantage to get cheaper flights maybe.
In conclusion you can say, the earlier you announce your event, the better. Perfect time might be between 4–6 month before to announce dates and some facts about the topics and focus of the event. With this information the early birds might have a chance to already get an idea of your event and ask their boss. In addition to this, it won’t harm to also have at least a hand full of speakers announced about 4 month prior the event, to give a more detailed impression.
But let’s see what you have said …
What influences the time you need / take to plan your event trip?
To get a better idea why you have chosen the timeframe mentioned above, I asked a few questions about the reasons and influences.
Quite surprising that distance is a way bigger reason than price, isn’t it?
Nearly 300 people have said, that the price is less crucial than the distance. For me this was quite a surprise. I would have said, that price wins over distance. Also interesting is the fact, that nearly on third of you is making a decision based on the time of the year, which means that these people may be very organised and plan their whole year (or parts of the year) early in advance. In relation to this I checked how many of those given time of the year as a reason would be employed or not. I guessed that more would be employed as you have to arrange your time with colleagues, you boss and maybe also with your family in addition. But the results say that this doesn’t matter as exactly 50% are self employed and the other 50% employed.
Over 10% have chosen “other reasons”. So let’s have a closer look at this.
Interesting is that some of you combine private journeys, like holidays, with your work related journey. Like Jody (freelance / self employed), who says:
I typically integrate events into holidays with my wife. She gets a couple days in the city, while I attend. Then we both have a vacation together before/after the conference.
Or as someone else (employed) says:
Other meeting opportunities in the event city and/or possibilities to attach private components, if it is only for sightseeing
Another big mention has been “Kids” and “Family” and with this not only that people mentioning kids and/or family need to book early in advance, but also the other way around: they sometimes book their ticket and, with this, sort their journey out very spontaneously.
I think it is nice to see that events seem to integrate into private live quite well. If time and money allows people seem to spend some extra days to combine conferences with private journeys.
But let’s see how many of you spend some extra days around an event, whether it is for networking opportunities, work related combinations, such as to meet and stay in touch with business partners, or private reasons (meeting family and friends, adding extra time for holidays).
How much time do you usually plan around an event?
Nearly half of you have said they do what I do mostly and stay one day before and after the event.
No big surprises for me here as I guessed that most people don’t want to miss anything
As I said in the post to the survey already, I also like to use events to network with people I know and to meet new people. For me this is really important as otherwise I could also simply watch the videos online.
96 people, which is nearly 25%, have said they like to come earlier, to not miss the first talk in the morning, but leave right after the last talk. This is, when you as an event organiser fear that your event does not run late, so that people have to leave to catch train or flight within the last talk.
Answering this question also heavily depends on a few things. As I said in the question already, it depends on the city of the event. Is it a city that is nice to visit or that I always wanted to visit anyways. Or is a city I always wanted to go to nearby for example. Like Charis says:
Most of the time 1 day before. When the city is nice, eg. Brighton, I might take one or two extra days
… which exactly reflects what I said above.
Or to mention another criterion: time. Like Dan says in his statement, pointing to what i said in the question already:
Pretty much what you've said in the placeholder, depends hugely on where it is, travel / accommodation plans, family commitments
But overall the answers to this question give a good feeling about how people think and decide in general, I think. And for all answers the cut between self employed or employed have been nearly 50/50, so that this really does not matter.
Sum Up
I think with nearly 500 people from all around the world taking part in the survey, this gives a pretty good impression and in the end is useful for anybody who wants to run or is running an event. 58% who took part are employed and 42% are self employed or freelance, which also is a really good rate to get enough answers from both groups.
Again: Thanks a lot for taking part in this raffle and see you at one of the many events around the world!
Every year I attend a lot of events. Not so many for speaking – my last appearance to do a talk was in November 2013 – more to meet people, to stay in touch with people I know, to make new contacts, to see how other events are organised, and to see certain speakers presenting. Somehow you can says that, running my own events, this is part of my job. Isn’t this great? I think it’s a great fortune.
Apart from Lanyrd, there are many sites creating their own, well organised lists. A few to mention:
I’m sure there are many more lists and I’m happy to add more, if you let me know about them.
Of all the events – and there are many – I myself am going to be at the following events so far (ordered by date):
awwwards Conference Amsterdam
From January 27th to January 29th I will be in Amsterdam for my first awwards Conference. I love Amsterdam and I’m looking forward to meet a lot of friends who are speaking, as well as the Smashing team, which I will share an AirBNB with – I hope this is not going to be my end ;) It seems like a very web focused event in terms of the speakers and topics I see and I am excited to hear most of the talks. I think all tickets are sold out for this event, sadly.
Reasons:London
As I’ve written earlier, I’m going to be in London on February 19th to attend my third Reasons:London, organised by John Davey. Everybody who knows Reasons (or formerly Flash On The Beach) and the host John Davey, also knows, that John always has a good intuition when it comes to exceptional speakers and topics. Over and over I find speakers, that I simply have to ask to come and speak at beyond tellerrand as well. The six speakers he announce so far look very promising, like a really good mix and I heard that there might be another one announced soon. Tickets for this one-day event are only £89 and still available. And flights to London are cheap.
FITC Amsterdam
For nine years FITC, originally from Canada, is coming back to Amsterdam. Except for one or two, I think I visited all of them. Again: I love Amsterdam, it is very easy to get to from my place and it is always a very good chance to meet people I know. This year’s edition takes place from February 22nd to 23rd and tickets are still available for €299 (or €239 for freelancers). The mix of topics looks great and creative and the line-up looks really nice with people like Stefan Sagmeister, Anton & Irene, Mr. Bingo, and many more.
Smashing Conference Oxford
If you think I’m only at all these SmashingConf events, because I’m a supervisory board member of Smashing Magazine and therefore I have to be there, then you are wrong. I very much enjoy meeting the people in front of and behind the stage. Cat, Mariona, Markus, Vitaly, Jan, and all the other members of the team are doing a fantastic job and create a nice atmosphere. The third Oxford edition is taking place from March 14th to 17th with workshops on 14th and 17th and the main event on 15th and 16th. The Web focused line-up looks very tasty and if you don’t want to miss out (Oxford is a lovely city as well), you can still get tickets for $499 / £326.
So, these are the four events I’m currently planning to attend. Of course it could always happen that more events add up to the list. I’ll simply update this post until the first quarter of the year is done.
If you are at any of these events, please let me know. Happy to meet. If not: where will you be?
