Going Solo

Looking back, both the Going Solo conference in Lausanne and SoloCamp in Leeds were extraordinary experiences.

The energy of the Lausanne conference led me to open a coworking space, eclau, which is thriving. In the course of my consulting work, I regularly advise freelancers and other micro-entrepreneurs on how to manage their online presence and solo professional life. Freelancing is very much a topic dear to my heart, and Going Solo was clearly the starting-point of a long-term involvement which still goes on today. You’ll also see me blogging on subjects related to freelancing on the eclau blog (in French) and in my category “Being the Boss” on Climb to the Stars.

Today is the kick-off of another “freelance-related” project: a Going Solo facebook group, for us to share our stories and discuss our preoccupations. There is another group, started by Claude Vedovini (who was the first person to sign up for the Going Solo conference, by the way!), for location-independent professionals.

Happy freelancing, and see you around!

So, here we are: Going Solo on tour. Take the same concept, the same great speaker team, the same programme, but another city.

(When I say “same”, I mean “almost the same: little changes here and there, improvements based on lessons learned, but basically, the same idea.)

Going Solo Leeds will take place on September 12th, 2008. I’m letting you know straight away (I had confirmation this morning for the venue, the Old Broadcasting House (BBC) where met:space is located) so that you can book dates and start making travel arrangements if you want.

I’ll be publishing information about Leeds and making promotional material available as soon as possible. Registration will also open… as soon as I’ve set it up :-).

Now that Going Solo is going on tour, the website is going to have to evolve. Instead of having a 1D website (one event and that’s it), the Going Solo site is going to have to become multi-dimensional: add time and space, and you have a 3D site. Different cities, different moments in the year. Even if it is not “planned” that Going Solo will take place in Lausanne again next year (it’s not that kind of event), who knows — it’s perfectly possible that it’ll come back some day.

So, how do I archive the “Lausanne” event? This isn’t as simple as 2008, 2009, 2010 subdomains. Or subdomains with city names. “lausanne.2008.going-solo.net”? Blogs are easy, for that: just keep on writing.

Also, what about visual branding? Keep exactly the same logos and colours (and update city/date information on them), or make a subtle change (which one? add “Leeds” somewhere?) so that people realise it’s not the same event?

Also, tags: goingsolo, goingsololausanne, goingsolo2008lausanne, gs2008lausanne, gs2008leeds, goingsololeeds — heck.

I suspect I might have to move away from wordpress.com to find an acceptable solution. While I’m perfectly capable of hosting a blog (I do that for CTTS), it’s quite nice not having to worry about maintenance and downtime.

Ideas and suggestions welcome — for Going Solo Leeds as well as for the website.

We’re lucky to be holding Going Solo at a venue (Hotel Albatros-Navigation) where the staff and owners are not only friendly and helpful, but also flexible enough to allow us to leave registration open this week. Yay!

That’s pretty cool, because we know that in the world of mobile phones and endless choices, many people make last-minute decisions about their plans. And it’s not just whether or not to attend a tech/business conference: I know a couple of people who organize completely different kinds of events, and who tell me that last-minute sign-ups is a general (and recent) trend.

This poses a certain number of problems for event organizers, of course (when the number of attendees doubles in the week precending your event, or when you have 30 people instead of the 600 expected three weeks before) — but that’s another issue. (Hmm… maybe another event idea cooking…)

I’m happy that we’re able to keep this option open for you. Don’t use it as an excuse to put things off until the very last day, though: you won’t get a pretty printed badge if you sign up too late, and there is an extra fee if you pay cash at the door.

So, now’s the time. Tell your friends too.

With Going Solo, I’m learning tons about how to advertise/promote something through social media. It might seem ironic, as a large part of my work has to do with explaining social media to people, but this is the first time I’m really actively trying to get the word out about something. Of course, I have established my reputation as an individual through social media, but I never really tried to achieve that. It’s something that happened to me, took time, and sometimes almost feels like an accident. I didn’t have an agenda.

In the case of Going Solo, however, things are different. From the start, time was of the essence, as there was a set date where everything had to come together (and that date is now less than two weeks away). I had an agenda: get the word out to as many relevant people as possible, encourage people to blog about it, to register, or to sponsor. Gather feedback, leads, and even get help. Encourage a community to form around Going Solo.

A new experience for me. I made mistakes of course, and learnt from them (I won’t detail everything in this post, or you’ll still be here reading it tomorrow morning — if you haven’t fled by then).

One of the things I still haven’t quite figured out is whether it’s better to “spread the word” all over the place, or concentrate on one or two spots. It’s the same kind of headache I faced recently with videos: upload everywhere, or chose one service and stick to it? My tendancy is to be present in as many spaces and communities as possible, though I’m not sure I quite trust my judgement there. Urs of ComMetrics thinks it’s better to concentrate on a few tools rather than spread oneself too thin (see the end of his post):

As well, to sustain your competitive edge it is necessary to limit the social media tools you use – using a blog and Twitter well is better than doing Facebook, MySpace, blogging, and Twitter – it just fritters away your time.

Urs Gattiker, unified communications – what it means with Twitter, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us

The discussion is open.

In the meantime, as I’ve spread Going Solo all over the place, I’d like to give you a round-up of where you can find us.

Facebook

• Going Solo event
• Going Solo group (this seems to be working really well!)
• Going Solo fan page
• Going Far fan page
• we’ll be adding public events for the pre-conference drinks and the party shortly
• video of LIFT08 Open Stage speech

Upcoming

• Going Solo upcoming event

E-mail

• Going Solo newsletter on Google Groups

Twitter

• Going Solo Twitter account

Crowdvine

• Dedicated Going Solo social network (for attendees only)

There, I hope I didn’t forget anything! I’ll write another post on keeping track of coverage, but in the meantime you can check the link collection on del.icio.us (includes blogs posts and interviews, mainly).

It’s funny how the importance of certain things is not obvious right at the start, and suddenly it hits you and you wonder why you didn’t realize it earlier.

It was clear to me from the start, when I started imagining Going Solo, that the programme would be built in such a way as to cover a range of topics I thought were relevant. What I didn’t realize is that this is quite different from having a conference/event “theme” and hunting for speakers who have something to say around that theme.

I’ve many times tried to express that although Going Solo is not a workshop or a training session, it is training-like, but I never quite seemed to find a way to explain this clearly. I wanted to say “yes, it’s a conference, but the aim is for people to learn stuff they can use when they walk out.” I think I’ve nailed it now, though: Going Solo is educational more than inspirational.

Most conferences I go to fall in the “inspirational” category. Of course, I learn things there, but mainly, I am inspired, or lifted (if the conference is LIFT). When I planned my Open Stage speech to present Going Solo to the audience at LIFT (watch the video), I wanted it to be inspirational. It’s not a video that teaches you anything, but that inspires you to attend Going Solo (and it did indeed inspire people!)

Even if the conference theme is more technical, and the sessions actually teach you stuff, most often it is a series of related sessions grouped together around a given theme. Reboot is a perfect example of how a theme is used to collect all sorts of contributions.

Not so for Going Solo. Putting together the programme for Going Solo feels much more like being in charge of defining the teaching programme for an academic year (only it’s a day, thank goodness, not a year). At the end of the day, I want the programme to have covered this, that and that. I try to organize the content into sessions, and then I talk with my speakers to see who can cover what.

I’m realizing now that this is the difficult bit — and as a speaker myself, I should have thought of this before. “Speaker topics” do not necessarily match “Steph-defined sessions” — which means I need to go back and reshuffle my sessions (perfectly doable, but it’s more work) to avoid overlaps and important topics slipping through the cracks.

Has anybody had similar experiences? And for any people reading who speak at conferences, if you agree on a topic with the chair and you’re asked to make sure your talk covers aspects x, y and z of the topic, does it make you feel micro-managed? Or is it something that happens regularly?

Understanding all this is helping me a lot in the process of finalizing the programme. I hope we’ll soon have the final session descriptions (I should probably call them “lectures”, because that’s closer to what they are) and speaker bios on the site, as well as the agenda. I know it’s important for people who are still not certain if they want to come or not, because the programme/agenda gives you a clear idea of what you’re paying for.

Yes, quite a few people have been asking if it was still possible to register. It is — there are still seats left (the exact number is of course national security top secret information and will not be communicated even under torture).

You should not wait too long though, because organizing travel and accommodation is more fun if you do it in advance (unless you enjoy stress and sleeping under bridges… we have a bunch of those in Lausanne) — and also because we’ll have to close online registration a week or two before the event so that we can give final numbers to the hotel for food.

This is some copy I wrote a while back, and which I wasn’t quite happy about. I’m publishing it here, however, because it contains a little theory of mine about why there are so many soloists in the internet industry. Reactions welcome.

The internet industry generates an important number of freelancing professionals. There are two reasons to this, both related to how fast the world of technology is evolving.

First, formal education inevitably tends to lag behind cutting-edge developments. Though this is true for any industry, it is of particular consequence for a very fast-moving one like the web. The most skillful people in such an industry are often passionate amateurs, who at some point decide to turn their passion into a full-time job.

Second, large companies suffer from the same kind of inertia as education. Many highly competent professionals feel frustrated by the fact that the institution for which they work is not yet ready to take full advantage of what they could offer, and as a result, can be tempted by the more stimulating prospect of going solo and freelancing—or setting up their own business.

The fact that education and corporations move more slowly than pioneers is something which is inherent to their nature. To some extent, it is a problem we must try to act upon, but mainly, it is simply the way things are.

Many freelancers find themselves in this business because of a passion for what they get paid to do. Unfortunately, having great skills in an area there is some demand for is not sufficient to sustain a successful freelancing career. One also needs to be good at dealing with the business side of things: setting rates, finding the right clients, defining what has to offer in the current state of the market, dealing with accounting, taxes, and various laws, as well as managing to find a sense of balance in a life which is very different from a 9-5 with a clear distinction between work and non-work, holidays, and a regular paycheck at the end of the month.

Most freelancers go solo because they are good at doing something that people are willing to pay for, and attracted by the freedom of being one’s own boss and the perspective of possible lucrative earnings. Business skills are not usually paid much attention to until they are suddenly needed, although they are what will determine how successful one can be in the long run. At that point, it’s common for the soloist to feel lost and isolated.

Going Solo is a one-day event that was designed to address this issue. We will gather 150 soloists and small business owners around a core group of speakers who are experienced freelancers and will share their knowledge on a variety of business topics. We also want to give freelancers an occasion to come in direct contact with others like them and build a European community where they can support each other.

Cross-posted to Climb to the Stars.

I posted some thoughts about attending conferences over on Climb to the Stars, now that the madness of SXSW is over. Writing this post has brought me back to the reasons for which I gave Going Solo the format it has. Of course, a “small” conference is easier to organize (this is my first event), but that’s not all there is to it.

Going Solo is a 1-day, 1-track, limited-audience conference. A few words about each:

• 1 day: most conferences are multi-day conferences. If people are going to fly in for your event, more days makes it easier to justify the travel.

  However, I’ve noticed that sitting in a whole day of sessions and doing the same thing the next day means that my brain fries. So, what do we do, when we go to a 2- or 3-day conference? We don’t attend all the sessions. Which is cool, because it gives us more networking time, and we all know that the most we get out of conferences is on the networking/contacts/hallway conversation side.

  But on the other hand, if I put a great programme together, wouldn’t I want the attendees to my event to get the most out of it?

  There is a choice to make here: either you make a conference longer, and expect attendees to be present in a diluted way throughout it (from a “content” point of view), or you keep it short, and expect attendees to pay full attention to the official programme.

  Going Solo being an almost training-like conference — meaning that I expect attendees to get a lot out of the programmed content — I think it really makes sense to have it concentrated and short.

• 1 track: most conferences are also multi-track conferences. I had a brief conversation about this with Laurent Haug, who organizes LIFT — when I told him how happy I was that LIFT08 was going to be “one track, everybody in one room”. He told me it took them three years to take the plunge and do it. For a conference organizer, providing a single track means you take full responsibility for the programme. There’s no wriggling out by offering alternatives. If people aren’t happy, they can blame you for your choices. But honestly, I think it’s part of the job.

  One of the things that made me give up on attending panels at SXSW was the fact that there were so many competing sessions to choose from for each time slot that I just didn’t have the energy (and stress reserves) to make the decision. Conferences are already in the realm of too many choices, and going for a single track means that as the organizer, you’re taking some of the burden of choice off your attendees.

• limited audience: more people present does not necessarily mean that you get more value out of the networking or the event. With about 150 people present, Going Solo really wants to be human-sized. I was at BlogTalk 10 days ago, and really liked the feel of a conference where it is easy to interact with a large proportion of attendees present. There is less frantic networking, there are less “tourists”, the people present are more involved and the speakers are more accessible. This is the kind of atmosphere I want for Going Far events.

When I chose Friday as the day to do Going Solo, it was with a sneaky ulterior motive: make it possible to hold a BarCamp in Lausanne right behind it. Now, for some reason, BarCamps in this part of the world tend to be one-day events (I still haven’t really figured out why — what’s wrong with the whole “camp” aspect of running off somewhere for the week-end?) — so that would bring us to Saturday, May 17th.

I’ve mentioned this idea to a few people already, and the response has been pretty good. Particularly if you’re coming from abroad, you get to maximize your geek-feed for the trip. (Not that Going Solo is particularly geeky, but you see what I mean.)

Now, here’s the issue. Much as I would like to be the driving force behind this BarCamp (it’s “my” idea, after all), I’m already spreading myself really thin simply organising Going Solo. There’s no way I can be the person who “makes sure” the BarCamp happens.

So, the questions:

• what do you think of having a BarCamp-day right after Going Solo?
• do you think you would participate in this BarCamp (speak, or simply attend)?
• would you be ready to help organise it?

(Please leave a comment, it will help evaluate how much interest there is for this — and make it visible! Whatever you say in the comments is non-binding, so fear not…)

Obviously, we need some local people amongst the organisers, if only to deal with issues like the venue. I don’t know how available EPFL would be (with Balelec the night before), but I have another idea or two up my sleeve if that doesn’t work out.

So: is there interest for this? how shall we make it happen?

For those of you who do not know what a BarCamp is, it’s an unconference. That means that it’s a rather informal gathering of people in one place with wifi and conference/session rooms. At the beginning of the day, the people who want to present something, hold a session, make a demo take a spot for it in the programme grid (first come, first served). So there is no predetermined programme — it’s very much a peer-to-peer atmosphere.

The organisation happens in a similar way: obviously, a venue needs to be found, the date has to be set (done), and somebody has to keep an eye on the wiki page that people use to sign up and announce sessions. All the rest is optional: a Barcamp can be very bare-bones, or it can include a party, sponsors, T-shirts, whatever.

Welcome to my major pre-LIFT headache: setting the final price for Going Solo.

Let me start by saying this: whatever price you choose for an event (or a product, or a service), it will always seem way too expensive to some, just right to others, and too cheap to a lucky bunch. So, there is no way to please everybody.

As I mentioned in my last post, Peter Hogenkamp was of great help here, by pointing out that there are different types of events. Different events also cater to different audiences, and that’s also to be taken into account.

• Free or almost free: this is why we like BarCamp and other unconferences. There is little or no barrier to entry (if there is a fee, it’s there to cover small costs such as lunch, etc.), no commercial interest, and lots of interesting people. Price tag is 0 to a few tens of €.
• Affordable: these events can be commercial or not, but what they have in common is that they aim to be “affordable”. Think LIFT or reboot. Not necessarily cheap, and in some cases, expensive — but “affordable”. As in “I can afford to go”. Now of course, not everybody will be able to afford such events. Price tag is in the few hundreds of €.
• Expensive: these events are commercial, and usually target a more corporate audience. In many cases, one expects that employers are going to be paying for these, rather than individuals. Price tags are around 1000€ or more (TED is $5000 6000, I’m told).

So, Going Solo does not aim to be cheap. However, it would like to be affordable. People might go “ew, that’s expensive!” — but then look at the programme, think a bit, and decide that it’s worth the investment.

And trust me, if you’re a freelancer, it’ll be worth it. The stuff you’re going to hear about at Going Solo is going to help you run your business better, and be more successful doing the work you love. More cash or more free time, it’s your choice — how much is that worth for you?

I know there are varieties of “training” offered to professionals — learn how to network, learn how to pitch, learn how to sell yourself: how much would those be worth to you?

I’m aware freelancers are not usually rolling in money (being one), and that many of you will have to add to the price of the conference the flight or train ride to Geneva/Lausanne, and maybe a hotel. That unfortunately didn’t help my headache go away.

The way I set the price for Going Solo is by looking at my budget (yes! I actually have one!): if I count conference expenses, not including salaries for those working on the event, an attendee costs a little less than 300 CHF. Even those, like staff members, speakers, or partners, who will not be paying anything. They still cost that much.

Salaries? As I mentioned when I announced I was getting into the event business, the whole idea is that organising events like Going Solo will be worth my time, financially. I’m putting four months (and that’s rather short notice compared to other events) of hard work into this, and so are other people. So, salaries. “Profitable” comes after that — when the expenses and salaries are paid, is there anything left to reinvest into the next event?

So, enough talking, let’s get to the meat. Here’s the pricing (currency converter if you need it):

• Regular ticket: 600 CHF (approx. 375€, £275, US$545)
• Early bird: 400 CHF (approx. 250€, £190, US$365) — until Mar. 16th
• Earlier bird: 300 CHF (approx. 190€, £140, US$270) — until Feb. 17th

A few comments:

• Find the regular ticket a tad expensive for your budget? Be sure to not miss the Earlier and Early Bird prices. (You only have this first week after registration opens for the Earlier Bird price.)
• Register this week and you actually get your ticket half-price!
• We’re charging in CHF, as most of the spendings for the event will be in CHF. It also saves me sleepless nights worrying about market fluctuations.
• I initially wanted to give a discount to members of the LIFT community during the first week, but decided not to discriminate like that and to give it to everybody. Hence the “Earlier Bird” pricing of 300 CHF for everybody this week.
• Organising an event like Going Solo requires cash. That cash comes (initially) mainly from registrations. This is why you get a very interesting discount if you sign up early — the pricing is designed to encourage early registrations. So… in case this wasn’t clear: register early!
• PayPal takes a significant cut of the registration fee, so if you choose to pay by credit card through PayPal an “online surcharge” of 20CHF will be added. You can pay by banking transfer for no extra fee, but that will depend on how much your bank charges you for these transactions (mine doesn’t charge me anything). I’m not very happy to do things like this, but it’s preferable to raising the price of all the tickets to cover the handling costs.

So, here we go. Next step is opening registration (in a few hours!)

Going Solo doesn’t have any branding yet. This is a standard WordPress.com design, which is preventing this site from being all naked until the branding is ready (normally, I’m told, this should be the case in roughly two weeks).

Now, in the meantime, I would like to be able to provide the nice people helping promote Going Solo with a pretty banner or badge to use on their blogs as fast as possible. So, here’s the dilemma: do I get something “quick and dirty” done (there is also some printed material I want to order… yesterday — LIFT will be here soon, you see), and have the “visual identity” of Going Solo change at some point, or wait?

What do you think?

PS: any standard dimensions out there for sidebar banners/badges?