This post is going to Go On A Bit. It covers attending events, speaking at them and organising them. You have been warned…
Escaping Forth
Attending things takes more planning, deviousness and commitment than might at first be obvious.
There is the ‘spotting what you want to go to in the first place’, usually followed by ritual devious thinking about how to actually get there – will employer pay (if so how link it in business-wise to justify), can you get a bursary of some sort (and if so do you want it enough to ask for it for ‘this’ thing and not something else later), do you pay it yourself, can you work out some deal (e.g. offer to be a venue in return for a free place). There’s the whole logistics of how you achieve leaving work and getting there and back for it – is it organisational time, is it your time, is it a mix, where you stay and how, have you remembered business cards that are up-to-date beforehand (usually not!).
An event a good time beforehand is a lovely prospect, immediately before it’s total stress, during it should be – and this is the important bit – a time for relaxed reflection, thinking things through, being sociable, talking to everyone and anyone regardless, having a gab, gaining knowledge, revitalising motivation and willpower and belief. A good event is a truly shiny wonderful thing that will live on in the memory.
Afterwards is a tricky bit from a practical viewpoint because you go back and you get subsumed in everything you pulled yourself away from in the first place to attend. If you don’t write it all up fast it’s going to vanish. And preferably do it somewhere it’s available for your own and for others direct benefit who didn’t get to go, and just reflect back on it. Applying things learned at events is also difficult in a way, you have to really decide to do it and make time to do so otherwise it may as well all have been a beautiful dream in its own mini-universe. If nothing changes as a result of anything you went to then that’s not good. You also need to make time to do something with all those business cards and scribbled email addresses you’ve assembled and follow them up before a) you can’t read them and b) you can’t remember who they were and why you took it.
There’s more investment in being a punter at something than might first appear. But oh it is glorious and lovely.
Spouting Forth in Real Time
I’ve done a fair bit of this down the years. There are things everyone can do very easily, like watch other people and events and get to know about speaking styles, room layouts, IT, what suits different contexts, audience sizes, subjects and timing’s. You’ll know instinctively what you like and what you shy away from, what suits your own style.
The most important thing is to have a coherent spine of what you’re going to cover in your brainstem and have a mind to the length (it needs to fit) and the audience make-up (it needs to be relevant and hold their interest). You might get your full time allocated, but look where you are on the schedule, figure out if you’re likely to be squeezed. Ideally have a spine of what you want to say in your head that you can improvise around to tighten things up or talk more on. It’s always nice if there’s a clock in view that’s accurate that you can see over the audience in a natural way, that way you can keep yourself on time. The better you know the topic and the more confident the more you can just spout forth in real time without hugely fixed dialogue. Just talking to people, keeping it low-key, being conversational works fine, long as you’re sure you’re projecting enough that everyone can hear you. Also making it clear there’s a web link to the full thing at the start you’ll give at the end helps, so folk aren’t scribbling madly unless they so choose, and there’s no mass of paper handouts.
Speaking at things is a lot of fun in a slightly not quite paying entire attention till your own bit is safely done and dusted type of way.
Running Around Like A Startled Chicken
Again, something I used to do a great deal, being involved in organising courses, events, conferences. Do it rather less now.
The most important thing about this is that the economics of it have to work whether it’s free at the point of delivery or charged for. You have to know what your realistic break even number is and what’s in place if you need to postpone or pull the event. So you need to start knowing what you’re broadly intending, what it will need, and finding an readily accessible venue (geographically and internally) that can supply as much of the incidental needs as well (IT support to food) and what numbers you’re likely to get and it can accommodate for a price you’re willing to pay for it. It also helps to go for gaps in the market subject-wise and things that you know will attract an audience, if it’s something you also know about then wonderful, because otherwise you’re going to have to learn – the basics anyway, enough to put together an event around it. Pulling folk in to speak from your own network is always a good option and often the best one, so the wider and more varied your network the better, it gives you more options, more favours you can pull in. Start with the structure, broad costs, and timing’s and then allocate broad sessions and potential speakers against it. Are the speakers experts, well known in the field locally or internationally, easy to deal with, what costs would they come with, are they good speakers, what are their travel logistics, IT needs etc. All things that need considering when deciding who to approach and try to persuade. Once you have a final idea of total costs you can calculate break-even number, figure in profit margin if you’re being that hopeful(!), and decide on pricing. Deciding who to try to persuade into some sponsorship to keep it all as low-cost as possible can also be fun. Advertising and promoting works formally to an extent, but word of mouth is always a lot better, so it’s about finding folk who know people that would be interested and will they promote it to their friends and colleagues for you. And you want to keep it simple. Inevitably it won’t be. Very large spreadsheets full of names, organisations, what sessions attending, food choices, who’s paying, whether paid…. Inevitable.
Early turning up on the day itself is always advisable, if you’re suddenly going to find half of it is now a building site, or the technician with all the access codes has vanished, or the laptop they’ve supplied is in german only, or the internet connection doesn’t want to work or a speaker’s trapped in a closed down airport… all these things you want to know and sort round before the early birds arrive. This is when parallel universes start, technically you’re all in the same place, organisers and delegates / speakers, actually there’s two simultaneous realities running. The front of house and the behind the scenes. Ideally delegates and speakers will know nothing of any behind the scenes traumas.
After the event there is usually a very great deal of sagging in a communal heap in the corner or running for the train or bus.
Organising is hugely time-consuming, can be fraught, is certainly exhausting. But it is addictive and you make friends for life. It also means if you want an event on x and it doesn’t exist you just create and run it.
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