I’ve been drowning in conference-land (BlogTalk, SXSW) for the last 10 days or so — before I have more interesting things to say, though (like a more precise outline of the programme, and announcing some sponsors), let me remind you that the deadline for early bird registration (register here) ends in a few days: March 16th.
If you haven’t yet blogged about Going Solo, told all your friends about it, added a badge to your site, now would be a good time to do it!
The internet industry is fast-moving and as such, generates a large number of freelancers. These soloists often choose this path by passion for what they do rather than because of their solid business skills.
Going Solo is an event for European (and other) freelancers and small business owners, which will address the business side of freelancing in the web world.
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.
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):
A few comments:
So, here we go. Next step is opening registration (in a few hours!)
Things always take longer than expected. In this case, it wasn’t actually finding the venue (which was done in 4 days from start to finish), but sitting down in front of this computer long enough to blog about. (Well, I’ve been sitting many long hours in front of this computer, dealing with things like budgets, designers, partners, and registration — just not blogging.)
So, the venue? We’ll be holding Going Solo in the conference halls of the hotel Albatros-Navigation, right by the lake in Ouchy. The main conference hall has a whole side made of windows overlooking the lake (very pretty sunsets from there, I can tell you, though it’s not really relevant to the conference). We’ll be able to fit 150 people in it, and add a small stage so that the speakers are slightly higher than the ground.
The secondary hall, just below the main one, is a little smaller: I’m planning to set it up as a break-out room with drinks and snacks for breaks, bean bags (if you have any to lend us, let me know), pedestals for our partners, and (fingers crossed) a screen/beamer to allow people to keep an eye on what’s going on in the main room.
We even have a third smaller room, a “carnotzet” — we’re still thinking about how to use it. If you have suggestions, you’re welcome to make them.
The LIFT conference is taking place in Geneva in a couple of weeks. Attendees are allowed to submit speech/workshop/discussion proposals. This is my proposal for an “Open Stage” — a 3-5 minute speech. It explains quite a bit of the spirit behind Going Solo, so I’m reproducing it here.
I thought becoming a freelancer would be rather easy: 18 months ago, when I quit my day job, the phone was almost ringing off the hook — and it seemed just magical that people were willing to pay me to do stuff that was so much fun.
That is, until I realised that I had to start thinking seriously about how much I was charging. Was it enough? Was it too much? How could I tell? Some people told me I was horrendously expensive, while others accepted my quotes so quickly I thought I should have asked double. I didn’t really know where to start.
Luckily, I had a few friends in the business. I mentioned my “how much do I charge?” problem — a bit timidly at first, but then with more assurance when I realised that they, too, were facing similar issues (or at least, had faced them at some point). “No, you’re not too expensive — you can charge at least this much!” “Look, here is how you figure out your daily rate…”
It didn’t make things easy as pie, but at least I wasn’t alone facing those issues (and the following ones) and I could benefit from others’ wisdom. That’s what communities are about, isn’t it? Soloists work alone, but actually need each other to collaborate on common projects projects or simply to share experiences and offer one another support.
There is a lot more to freelancing than doing the stuff we’re good at and passionate about. And there is a lot to say about this “business-y” stuff. It first really hit me when I was asked to go and give a talk about being a blogging consultant in Serbia a few months ago. People actually thought my story was interesting and inspiring!
So, when I started thinking about organizing events, I decided that the first one had to be for freelancers: Going Solo. The idea is to find the soloists with the best experience to share, and have them speak about it.
How do you fix rates? How do you close deals? Find new clients or help them find you? Deal with taxes? Find a balance between work and the rest of life? Adapt to the different kinds of clients you have? (I’ll share a tip or two I’ve learnt when I give my speech.)
I think these are questions all freelancers bump into at some point, and I want to offer people working solo or in very small companies the opportunity to firewall a day “off” to think about these issues and educate themselves about them in the company of those who have been “there” before.
If you’re coming to LIFT (and you should!) remember to keep an eye open for my Open Stage, and come and talk to me! I’m going to order Going Solo moo cards… very soon.
Here we go, with the promised post. I swear I’ve been wanting to write this “tomorrow” for a few weeks now, but something always gets in the way. It’s late and I have a mighty cold, but as I promised, here I am, typing away on my chubby MacBook rather late at night (my MacBook looks chubby now because the MacBook Air has just been announced… and it’d make any laptop look overweight).
When I decided to set foot in the event business, I pretty soon had a whole bunch of ideas for conference topics. As a first, I picked the one that seemed the most exciting to me: a conference about freelancing.
As a freelancer, I’ve learnt — sometimes the hard way — that it’s not sufficient to know how to “do stuff” well to be successful in business. I think many of us freelancers are in the business because we have a passion for which there is a demand (ie, people are ready to pay for this stuff!), and we often struggle with the “business” side of being self-employed.
Going Solo is a chance to learn how to do things like set your rates, make yourself known, close deals, find clients or let them find you, explain what you do to the world, find a life-work balance, or deal with administrivia in the networked world we web people work in.
I know that the best value people usually get out of conferences is the networking and the contacts, more than the actual content of the talks. I’ve had the impression, however, that this is starting to be used as an excuse for poor content, “false advertising” of talk topics, and lousy speakers. I want none of that. Of course, I want you to come to Going Solo and meet great people, chat with colleagues, enjoy the coffee with friends, and code in the bean-bags (I want bean-bags in the lounge — anybody got any?) But I also want the content to be rich, coherent, and well-presented. After all, that is primarily what you’re paying for.
Here is an initial outline of the topics I think are important. (This doesn’t mean that these are talk titles — this is stuff I want the various talks to cover.) I’d really like to hear you if you think I’m missing stuff out or including things that are irrelevant. This is for you, after all.
As you can see, there is plenty in there to keep us busy for a day!
I’m happy to announce that Suw Charman, Stowe Boyd, and Martin Roell (all three great speakers and good friends) have accepted my invitation to come and share their experience as soloists and help you benefit from what they have learned over the years. We’re still in the process of determining the exact topics they will cover in their talks, but I already wanted to let you know that they would be here in Lausanne on the 16th.
As we will have more than three speakers (four if you count me, as I’ll probably grab the microphone to say a few words ;-)), I’m open to suggestions. If you know good speakers who could cover part of the program I’m outlining above, do let me know. I’m particularly interested in bringing in people from outside my immediate network — and for that I need you.
I hope you find this first draft of the programme as exciting as I do, and I’m looking forward to reading your feedback.
Cross-posted on Climb to the Stars.
When you organise an event, not only do you need a location, you also need a date. You know, things happen at the intersection of time and space.
A rough glance at the calendar made me choose early May, as it’s far away enough to give us time to put things together (some people have gasped at how short it was, but I’m sure we can pull it off), and it’s also kind of empty on the conference front. I’ve asked around and gone through upcoming, and that time of the year seems pretty conflict-free.
Then, the trouble starts. We decided to go for a one-day event to start with. This means that we expect people to fly in for a day, which… well, might seem “not worth it” to some.
My initial idea (which, after much detours, I’ve come back to) was to hold the event on a Friday, so that people could stay an extra day or two during the week-end to make the trip worth it. I even thought about motivating the local barcamp community of the city we’d be holding the event in to place a barcamp on that week-end.
Then, the headache started. Maybe Friday wasn’t such a good day after all, because with a week of work behind them and stuff creeping up to be dealt with before the week-end, we would suffer lots of defections. So, how about Monday? Well, Monday is usually a heavy business day, and people are all sluggish from the week-end, so they might drop out too. So I sent out a quick poll on Twitter, asking people what seemed the best day to organise an event for freelancers.
Needless to say roughly each day of the week and week-end was suggested, along with very good reasons for or against each one.
In the end, I listened to the voice of reason, impersonated by Suw, telling me there was no perfect day and that the most important thing was to put on a great event, with valuable content that would make it worth the trip for people to come, and that this would be the deciding factor for people rather than the place and day of the week.
In addition to that, I got feedback from a couple of tech event organisers who said that Friday could be quite good for one-day events. So, Friday it will be.
Let’s get practical: I’m looking at Friday May 9th, but before I set it in stone and we book a venue for that date, I’d like to know if you see any conflicts (1000 pairs of eyes are better than one). Is there anything with that date I haven’t thought of?
This was originally posted on Climb to the Stars. View comments on the original post.
When you decide to organise an event, other than having a good idea for the content/audience (ie, “what’s it about? what kind of event?”), two things you need to figure out quite quickly are when and where it’ll happen. This post is about the “where?” question.
My initial reaction when I took the decision to go ahead with this wacky “organising events” idea was somewhere along the line of “great! I’ll do it in Lausanne!”. A bit of a selfish reaction, as it makes things easier for me, and I really love Lausanne.
Next, I started thinking. Who is this event going to be for? Where is the highest number of people likely to come for my event? Maybe Lausanne is my favourite personal choice, but it doesn’t necessarily make business sense. From the start, I’ve thought of my event as European, with the idea to attract people from all over the continent. So of course, I expect attendees to travel — but there is always a high local population at events, as the absence of travel lowers the barrier to entry (cost, travel time, stress).
Well, quite possibly, the answer to that question (where is the highest concentration of freelancers in the tech industry in Europe?) would be “London”. On the other hand, London is horrendously expensive (isn’t it?), so, why not something nearby, like… Brighton? Cheaper, but still rather easy to get to.
At that point, I decided we needed a choice of cities, and we should check them out for venue options and hotel pricing, to see if anything stood out. Obviously, we’d need to pick cities which are easy to get to from other places in Europe. So, for starters… let’s look at London/Brighton, Paris, and Berlin. Paris is very close to London with the Eurostar, and Berlin (Germany) is cheaper than both London and Paris, but it’s still an Easyjet city. Because, if you’re in Europe, chances are you’re going to be flying Easyjet or some other low-cost airline. (I should think about asking them to sponsor the event, actually…)
So, armed with those three options (London, Paris, Berlin), I set off to Le Web 3 to start talking with possible sponsors, and also to bounce ideas off my friends and peers. To my surprise, quite a few people said “but why don’t you do it in Lausanne?” when I mentioned the location wasn’t set yet. So, I started thinking. Because even if Lausanne is a personal, almost emotional choice for me, it doesn’t mean it cannot also be a good business decision.
Let’s look at Lausanne as a possible city to host my event, with a cool business mind:
Check out:
So, here we go. Going Solo will take place in Lausanne, Switzerland — I’m looking forward to welcoming you all here in a few months.
Now tell me — did I do a good job of selling you Lausanne as a conference-city? 
This was originally posted on Climb to the Stars. View comments on the original post.
So, here we go. As I mentioned in my last post, things are shaping up enough for me to start talking about them, even though a lot is still “floating”.
I’m taking the plunge into the event business. The first one I’m organising is Going Solo, a one-day conference in the beautiful and easily accessible city of Lausanne in Switzerland, which also happens to be my home town. It will take place early May.
Going Solo will fill a gap in the current conference offerings: it’s an event for freelancers of the web industry (soloists, hence the name) and very small businesses — from all over Europe.
Being a freelancer myself, I’ve come to realise quite a while ago that there is more to freelancing than “knowing cool stuff” and having people around willing to pay for it. How do you fix your prices? Close deals? Find clients, or better, help them find you? Collaborate with others, whether soloists themselves, or employees in a huge company? Deal with taxes, contracts, accounting, and all the rest of the boring administrative stuff? Achieve that delicate “work/life balance”, when you’re one of the lucky ones who turned a passion into a job?
Going Solo will address all these issues (and others), providing those attending with valuable insights and tools which will help them become better at what they are doing in the business world. (Sounds almost like a press release, doesn’t it? I’m practising for the sponsor offerings… shhh.)
In simple words: this is the kind of event I would have wanted to attend two years ago when I was struggling with the idea of becoming freelance. It’s the kind of event I would have liked to attend a year ago when things took off and I started realising how complicated all this “business” stuff was. And it’s also the kind of event I want to attend today, having faced the ups and downs of freelancing in the fast-moving world of new media, in the early stages of starting a company, and wondering what “holidays” means now that my everyday life is split between “hang out online”, “travel to foreign cities”, and “talk about exciting stuff with people”.
Where-when-what-how-why?
I’ll follow up later with a little insight into what’s going on. Be warned, though: you’re going to be following some thought processes here, and might be faced with decisions-in-the-making and not-sure-what-I’ll-do-yets. I welcome all feedback.
This was originally posted on Climb to the Stars. View comments on the original post.
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