Going Solo

I’m totally excited about this. If you’ve ever met me, you know I never go anywhere without my MOO cards. Here’s photographic evidence.

I even decided upon MOO cards as the main offline way to promote Going Solo, literally shoving as many as I could into people’s hands (OK — some took them willingly, I’ll admit).

So, no wonder I’m thrilled to announce that MOO is sponsoring Going Solo, and will be providing attendees with a stack of goodies, not least of them the sexy MOO MiniCard Holders, yes!

In addition to providing a sizeable part of the new-media-sphere with original business cards, MOO also have a range of cool products like postcards, StickerBooks, NoteCards, and a great blog written mainly by the lovely Denise.

If you weren’t familiar with MOO products by now, I can guarantee that you’ll be ordering MiniCards or StickerBooks as soon as Going Solo is over!

Hello everyone coming to Going Solo,

Here is some information about the Going Solo Off Programme: what will take place before and after the Going Solo Conference proper in Lausanne, May 16th, 2008.

We suppose many of you will already be there on the night before the conference, so we decided to organize a party so that everyone could share a few pre-conference drinks. And since we thought that people coming to Going Solo might be of the social type, the event will be public. That way even people who cannot come to the conference on Friday can feel welcome to join and meet the new web-enabled generation of freelancers and small business owners.

The Warm Up Party will take place on Thursday May 15th, from 7 pm to approx. 10 pm (don’t forget to go to bed so you’re in good shape the next day!), at the Darling Pub, Galerie Saint-François, Lausanne. Everyone is welcome. It’s a BUYOB thing, which means you buy your own beer, juice or pizza. A whole corner of the Darling is booked for us. We hope it will be the perfect place to gather informally before the big day. You may register now on the Warm Up Party for Going Solo Facebook event page.

One party is never enough, right? As announced, there will be a closing party for Going Solo on Friday night. The Open Party will take place on Friday May 16th, from 9:30 pm onwards, at L’Atlantic, Rue Saint-Pierre 3, Lausanne. It’s also a BUYOD party (buy your own drinks), and everyone is welcome, too, for obviously the same reasons. You may also register now on the Facebook Open Party for Going Solo event page.

As both parties are open to the general public – even to people who have not registered for Going Solo – please feel free to invite your friends!

Friday Night Dinner

As of today, several whole tables have been booked for Friday at 7:30 pm in 4 restaurants in Lausanne Centre Ville. (Chez Rony, Lausanne Moudon, Brasserie du Château et le jardin de l’Eveché, if sunny weather). In a similar fashion to other great conferences like Reboot, numbered lists will be hung on the wall during the conference at Hotel Albatros-Navigation. Participants will choose where they want to go and register manually there. The dinner is on you, and you’re free to go elsewhere if you wish – but we like the idea of providing some structure to make it easy for you to hang out with the friends you’ll have made during the day.

Looking forward to seeing you in Lausanne next Thursday and Friday.

Anne Dominique

You certainly noticed that the list of sponsor logos down the right sidebar is getting longer by the day (and there are more coming, faster than I can upload them and blog about them).

Anyway, we’re happy to announce that as part of our partnership with FreshBooks, there will be a draw for three free one-year Shuttle Bus packages offered by FreshBooks.

Now… what is that?

If you have never heard about FreshBooks, now’s the time to check them out. In addition to having a blog full of resources for freelancers, where the “three skills of the soloist thesis” was first published by Stowe Boyd at the time, they offer a painless online time tracking and invoicing service which is built specially for freelancers and small businesses.

The Shuttle Bus package lets you have upto 25 active clients at the same time — which in my modest opinion should be more than enough for most soloists!

Still hesitating? The agenda is now online and the speaker bio page is complete. Check them out.

If you’ve got your calendars straight, you know that Going Solo is in less than two weeks. More like 10 days!

Though we’ll like to keep registration open as long as possible:

• by tomorrow evening, it will not be possible to pay by bank transfer anymore (you’ll have to use PayPal)
• we’re planning on closing registration a little less than a week before the event, at the end of this week-end.

Register now, don’t put it off!

If you check out the Programme page, you’ll see that the agenda has been published. We may still be seeing a few minor changes (session length or place in the day), but that’s what you’ll get on the 16th! Speaker bios and session descriptions are currently being beautified.

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!

First, my apologies for the silence these last days — I was bitten by a cat (it’s not as benign as it sounds).

Second, I’m happy to let you know that Going Solo finally has a newsletter. Feel free to sign up. We won’t sell your e-mail address or share it (even if we’re begged to!) and we’ll keep the traffic low. You can sign up by visiting the newsletter page on Google Groups or by sending a mail to going-solo-news-subscribe@googlegroups.com.

Even if you don’t have a Gmail address, you can easily create a Google Groups account with your regular e-mail address, and then join the Going Solo News group to subscribe to the newsletter.

I’m currently rediscovering the power of e-mail — a long post to write about that once my typing comfort is back.

Join the Going Solo network | Add a Going Solo trip

As you probably noticed, I’ve started introducing our partners and sponsors here so that you can get to know them if you don’t already.

Now, who hasn’t heard of Dopplr? Dopplr allows you to keep track of who is going to be where amongst your contacts — essential, you’ll agree, in today’s increasingly nomadic world (a theme will touch upon throughout the sessions — or should I call them lectures? — at Going Solo).

I’ve long been a fan of Dopplr. It allows me to see who I might be bumping into during my travels (even if they don’t live where I’m going — they could be travelling too!), and who of my long-distance friends might be travelling to my area.

And when I go to a conference, of course… Dopplr tells me immediately which of my “fellow travelers” are going to be in the same town.

So, Dopplr and Going Solo are happy to offer you two fun features to help you connect and stay in touch with the great people you’ll meet in less than a month at the conference:

• First, if you don’t have a Dopplr account yet, follow this special sign-up link. It will allow you to sign up to Dopplr (free, zero risks, many benefits) and automatically make you join the Going Solo network. Joining the network will make it easier for you to find follow travellers who are also part of the Going Solo network. If you already have an account, follow the link too — it will simply add you to the network. The people you may know page is now updated to include people from the network. (Also, don’t let anyone know we told you, but this hidden page shows you people in your networks.)
• Second, to add a trip related to Going Solo to Dopplr, use this smart add Going Solo trip link. It makes things a tad easier to you, and displays a tiny Going Solo icon next to your trip. Shiny!

We hope Dopplr will help you stay connected with your professional and personal network when everybody is travelling!

A year ago I was in London, and dropped by at the Blogging 4 Business conference. I was hanging out in the lobby when some guy stopped by me as he was rushing out, introduced himself, and told me I wouldn’t know him but he was a fan of Fresh Lime Soda, before running off. Quite an experience!

A couple of weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to Alex Bellinger, who does SmallBizPod, the UK’s first small business podcast. I’d been advised to check out SmallBizPod as a possible media partner for Going Solo. Alex got back to me straight away, and he reminded me that we’d already met: turns out he was “the guy” in the Blogging 4 Business story!

Anecdotes aside, I’m really happy to introduce SmallBizPod as a Going Solo media partner. Alex will be doing a series of interviews of the speakers early this week for the next episode of his podcast. Looking forward to hearing it!

Alex’s podcast features interviews of entrepreneurs and other topics of interest for small business owners and soloists. Here’s what he has to say about SmallBizPod:

Back in March 2005, I became one of only a handful of people in the UK to start podcasting. Looking around for a subject I realised there were no British-based podcasts on business. Since I’d just set up my own business and had spent many years focusing on the small business sector, a podcast on entrepreneurship seemed like a good way to go. SmallBizPod was born. It’s now listened to by thousands of people from all over the world.