Going Solo

If you’ve been to more than one conference over the past year, chances are you’ve noticed guys in white suits hanging around. If you’re braver than me you might have spoken to them, and learnt that they had something to do with The Next Web. (I’ve always had an irrational fear of “dressed up” people — clowns, stag nights, etc… and even harmless white suits, it seems.)

Luckily, we have a bunch of common friends (see photo below for example), and a few introductions later I was happily plotting with Ernst-Jan by e-mail to establish a media partnership between Going Solo and The Next Web.

Boris, Stowe, and Ernst-Jan

Ernst-Jan wrote a really good post introducing Going Solo, and I’d like to quote part of it here:

I don’t know about your countries’ society, yet I think you might notice the same development: more people start their own business. Several factors stimulate tech and new media professionals to quit their jobs and start an entrepreneurial adventure, some examples:

• personal branding has never been easier, just start a blog and work on your social media magic.
• hobbies get out of hand. When Dutch marketing consultant Marco Derksen started his blog Marketingfacts, he probably didn’t realize it would turn into a business. I’m sure you can name an example from your own country.
• the start-up culture sparks up a fire. Pioneers like Kevin Rose inspire thousands of young ambitious guys.
• You don’t have to be ashamed. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t really prestigious. Yet now universities and schools stimulate their students to start a business after they’ve graduated.

From my personal experience I can tell that being a freelancer isn’t always easy, especially in the beginning. What should I charge? How do I plan my days? Where can I find like-minded people? (on blogs!)

Ernst-Jan will be joining us in Lausanne to live blog the conference for The Next Web blog. Keep an eye open for the man in white, and don’t be shy — say hi!

You know that one thing that’s important for us at Going Solo is to take advantage of all the modern tools that social media provide us. That’s why, for example, we’ll talk about how you can use blogs and other forms of social media (Twitter, for example) to help make yourself known to prospective clients.

And of course, we’re also eating our own dog food. Going Solo was blogged about even before the date and time were set, and of course we have a Twitter account, Facebook group, and of course a dedicated social network for the event attendees (reminder: looks like many of you still need to join there!)

Hell, a few days ago, I even created an e-mail newsletter for Going Solo! How about that?

As you can see, we have no fear trying out all sorts of exotic means of getting the word out about Going Solo. Registration will close soon, yes (I still need to blog the exact date, thanks for reminding me), but until it closes, it’s still open, and Hotel Aulac just next to the venue still has free rooms. So, it’s worth the trouble!

We’ve gone a bit over the top here and taken the trouble to create a poster you can actually print out on paper (completely portable). You can even send it out to your friends as a PDF e-mail attachment if you want!

Enough blah-blah. Here are the links to the files (A3 colour is best, but not everybody has an A3 colour printer, so there are A4 and black-and-white version too):

• Going Solo poster, A3, colour
• Going Solo poster, A4, colour
• Going Solo poster, A3, black-and-white
• Going Solo poster, A4, black-and-white

Now, obviously, the Going Solo crew cannot travel all over Europe this week-end to plaster posters all over the place. So, we need your help. Grab a friend, print out a bunch of posters, and go put them up in strategic (but legal!) places. For added online fun and sharing, take a photo of your poster (make sure the context is well visible), upload it to flickr with the tag “goingsoloposter” and put the link to the photo in the comments or e-mail it to me.

Thanks for helping out!

I recently announced that SmallBizPod would be doing interviews of our speakers so that you can get a taste of who you’ll be listening to at Going Solo.

Here it is: SmallBizPod #67 – Going Solo – freelance perspectives — a 30-minute episode featuring interviews of Suw Charman-Anderson, Laura Fitton, Dennis Howlett, Martin Roell, Stowe Boyd and myself, where we talk about our background and experience as freelancers.

It’s well worth a listen!

Thanks a lot to Alex from our media partner SmallBizPod for organizing this. (He also wrote a blog post about Going Solo: Going Solo – how to do it right.) Don’t forget to check out his other interviews, too!