Going Solo

Yesterday mid-afternoon, I had to take the difficult decision to cancel Going Solo Leeds. The reason for this is that a bit over two weeks before the event, there are simply not enough registrations for it to take place under the conditions I envisioned for it.

After discussing the situation with my advisors, I reached the conclusion that the most responsible course of action right now was to cancel as soon as I could.

I’m aware that for some of the people who have arranged to travel to Leeds, it’s already too late to cancel travel plans. If you’re going to be in Leeds anyway, how about doing something together? Let’s gather on the 12th for a free SoloCamp where we will discuss soloist issues amongst ourselves in an informal way.

The Going Solo conference concept and the community around it live on. There will be a third edition of Going Solo — I’ve learnt a tremendous amount of things preparing both the Lausanne and the Leeds editions, and will be taking advantage of those lessons to do things slightly differently. How, when and where are still unknowns, but if you are subscribed to the newsletter you’ll be informed in good time.

I’d like to extend a huge thanks to all the people who took part in the Going Solo Leeds adventure: people who registered, sponsors and media partners, bloggers who promoted the event though blog posts or badges on their sites, advisors, speakers, and friends who helped out. To all of you who believed in this project: thanks so much for your help.

I’ve included below a mini-FAQ and will update it if other questions show up.

Why did you cancel?

Two weeks and a half before the event, just over 25 people are registered to be present at the event. Even though Going Solo aims to be an intimate event, I don’t consider it is fair towards the attendees, sponsors and speakers to run it with such a thin crowd.

There were 60 people in Lausanne, which made for a good audience. A conference with 25 people present is not the event I designed and advertised — and not what people paid for.

I considered giving it another week, doing the maximum to drive registrations, but in all honesty time was getting too short. Expecting another 25 registrations in 3-4 days was utopian. If the event has to be canceled, I would rather do it two weeks and a half before the date than 10 days or a week.

What about the people who had paid a registration fee?

People who paid the registration fee will be refunded. They will also be given a 50% discount if they sign up to a future Going Solo conference, when time comes.

Are you doing anything instead of Going Solo Leeds?

Yes. As we’re in town, we’ll meet up to talk about freelance issues, but in a very informal way: that’ll be SoloCamp. I’m not sure exactly what shape it will take, but it will be free and I’m hoping we can have a venue for it at OBH, where Going Solo Leeds was to take place.

It would be nice to have a sense of how many people will be present (5 or 30 makes a difference!) so let me know if you think you’ll be there, and if you want to get involved.

Will there ever be another Going Solo conference?

Yes. I still believe in the concept and format of the conference. The Lausanne event was a success, and the general enthusiasm for Going Solo has been huge (media partnerships, coverage, post-event feedback and general comments).

That it did not translate into actual registrations is more a question of circumstances. We learn as freelancers that how well you do does not necessarily reflect how good you are at your actual job, and I think the same is true everywhere. Having a good idea is not an immediate recipe for success — other ingredients are needed.

There will be future Going Solo conferences. I will approach the organisation differently, based on what I’ve learned over the last year. I’ll be writing more about what I’ve learned over the next weeks.

Why didn’t people register this time around?

That’s the big question, and I’ve spent the last month banging my head against the wall (not literally) trying to answer it. I think there are a bunch of reasons we can identify, and probably another bunch which are just “random” (having read Fooled by Randomness recently, I’ve come to understand that there are no absolute recipes for success or failure — chance plays a part in both). Here are some ideas.

I think the Leeds event was too close (in space and time) to the Lausanne event. People came from Lausanne from all over Europe. Those who wanted to attend Going Solo did so in Lausanne. The first event “exhausted” the pool of potential attendees, in a way.

The word “recession” has been showing up regularly on my radar over the last months. Though not everybody is hit, of course, I think freelancers are particularly vulnerable when the economy starts wavering: it’s easier to cancel the freelancer or not hire her than fire an employee.

The pound has gone down. I don’t know exactly how much impact that could have, but it does mean that the British economy on the whole is suffering a bit (just like we’re all feeling the rise of oil prices).

What about you? Do you have any ideas? If Going Solo seemed interesting to you and you are a freelancer, what kept from signing up?

Update: below is the original announcement. Some things may have changed. You should visit the sponsorships page for up-to-date information.

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked if Going Solo was offering any individual sponsorships. I was a bit taken aback at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea.

Going Solo is about people. It’s about individuals. Most of the time, it’s about people building a personal brand. So, it would make a lot of sense for Going Solo to allow individual people to be sponsors too.

As an Individual Sponsor, you of course get a chance to show your support for a great event and benefit from the warm fuzzy feeling that comes with it (and that’s important) — but it doesn’t stop there:

• your name (with link to personal website if desired) is listed as an Individual Sponsor on the sponsors page and in the sidebar
• you will be personally thanked along with the other people who have contributed to making Going Solo what it is in the ‘thank you’ slideshow displayed during the conference

Being an Individual Sponsor also allows you to ask for discount codes to give away, if you know people who might benefit from them. This is completely optional, of course.

So, this is what the package officially looks like:

Individual Sponsor – £100, £200, £500

• Name (+link to personal website) on Going Solo site
• Personal slide in the “Thank You” slideshow presented at the event

As an individual sponsor, you may request discount codes or a free pass (for the £500 option). Ask for details.

I’m going to set up a few shiny buttons to make it easy to sign up for this sponsorship, but until I do that, you can simply PayPal the amount of your sponsorship directly to steph@going-far.com and e-mail me at the same address if you have questions, would like discount codes, or (who knows) would like to discuss a different sponsorship amount.

You can now buy your sponsorships directly through Paypal, with the help of a few handy buttons on the “How to Sponsor” page.

I’m really excited about the fact that we’re giving individual people the opportunity to benefit from Going Solo’s visibility by associating themselves to the event. I’m looking forward to seeing who jumps on the occasion!

If you’re a company, you’ll want to check out our micro-sponsorship offering if your budget is a few £100s, or our standard sponsorship packages if you have a more generous budget or want extra exposure and presence at the event.

I discovered six groups a few days before Going Solo Lausanne, when Stowe created a channel for the conference. I’m happy to announce that they are sponsoring Going Solo Leeds and helping us get set up with their service, as it was pretty quickly obvious they were a really useful service for an event like ours.

If you already use Twitter (and you should!) you won’t have too much trouble understanding the utility of six groups. The Going Solo six groups livecommunity aggregates tweets from members of the community which are hashtagged #goingsolo. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can of course participate directly on the six groups site.

Six groups also provides code which allows us to display the latest message sent to the Going Solo Livestream, and gives easy access to the functionality:

So, in practice?

• register for a six groups account (you may use OpenID)
• join the Going Solo community
• edit your profile (add your Twitter ID in there so that @sixgroups can follow you!), add a photo, and look through community members to start adding friends
• adjust your Twitter settings so that your tweets are captured into the livestream
• for your tweet to appear in the livestream, use the #goingsolo (that’s a hashtag) somewhere in your tweet
• of course, the livestream is available through RSS.

And:

• you may also post a message directly from anywhere on the Going Solo websites, by using the six groups toolbar which appears at the top of each page
• if you enjoy being identified as something like “Gast88684”, you don’t even have to register! 😉

If you would like to add the Going Solo six groups bar to your site (and become a partnersite), all you need to do is copy the widget code into your template, just before </body>.

Looking forward to having you all take part in the livecommunity! Use the comments here for questions if you have any.

Promoting an event like Going Solo is a huge amount of work — often more than what you’d imagine (and more than what I imagined initially). That’s why everything the community does to help counts.

We don’t have a team of online marketers to get the word out there. It’s basically down to me, and of course to what all the kind people supporting Going Solo are willing to do.

I’m a blogger and a busy person, and so I know how easy it is to “want to do something” but not actually get around to doing it. Or how easy it is to think that what I can do won’t really make a difference.

So, I’ve tried to make it easy for you to “do something” to help get the word out about Going Solo Leeds (to your readers/network/community/friends) if you feel like it.

First, logos and blog badges which you can easily insert in a blog post or a sidebar by copy-pasting the code we provide, like these two for example:

<a href="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/" title="Going Solo Leeds Conference: 12th Sept."><img src="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/files/going-solo-leeds-logo-yellow-rectangle.gif" style="height: 75px; width: 150px;" alt="Going Solo Leeds logo." /></a>

<a href="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/" title="Going Solo Leeds Conference: 12th Sept."><img src="http://leeds08.going-solo.net/files/going-solo-leeds-badge-180x260.gif" style="height: 260px; width: 180px;" alt="Going Solo Leeds Badge." /></a>

(You can find others on the Promote Going Solo page.)

Second, the Going Solo Leeds home page provides you with the main information and links, as well as a brief description of the event if you’re looking for some stock text (we encourage you to speak in your own voice, of course, but sometimes it’s handy to know what the key points are).

Third, the videos and photos of the Lausanne conference are available (and embeddable — Flickr and DailyMotion) as illustration material. I guess this is particularly relevant if you were present in Lausanne and want to point out one of the highlights of your Going Solo experience to tempt others to follow in your steps.

Fourth, there are events on Upcoming and Facebook (as well as a Facebook group) to which you can invite your friends very easily (you certainly know how it works if you’re on one of those two services).

Fifth, if you’re into offline stuff, you can ask me (steph at going-solo dot net, or @stephtara on Twitter) to have a box of Going Solo MOO cards sent to you, or print out our posters and plaster them all over your neighbourhood:

And sixth, so that you don’t have to figure it all out for yourself, there are two links you can use to point people to registration:

• http://goingfar.expectnation.com/gsleeds08/public/register/order is the direct link
• http://leeds08.going-solo.net/registration provides some extra information.

While we’re at it:

• http://going-solo.net is the Going Solo blog
• http://leeds08.going-solo.net is the Going Solo Leeds website

Happy blogging, thanks in advance, and let us know if you don’t see your post appear in the coverage list soon!

Update 01.08.08: bloggers and community managers can now ask for their discount/referral code.

As you probably know, Going Solo Leeds has a group on Facebook. The conference is of course present through an event page there. It has now also been published on Upcoming, so if you are staying away from Facebook, add it to your events!

On Upcoming:

• Going Solo Leeds on Upcoming

On Facebook:

• Going Solo Leeds Facebook event
• Going Solo Facebook group

Newsletter:

• Going Solo Leeds newsletter, if you prefer e-mail!

 

Wanted: sponsorship salesperson for Going Solo conference

Going Solo is looking for an enthusiastic salesperson to negotiate and finalise sponsorship deals. After a very successful first event in Lausanne, Switzerland, the conference is taking place again in Leeds, UK, on September 12th. There are plans to produce the event elsewhere in Europe and in the US.

Availability: as soon as possible
Remuneration: 20% commission on cash sponsorships
Profile: skilled in negotiating and closing sponsorship deals, knowledge of the tech/freelancing world a plus.

What we provide:

– leads (past sponsors and fresh contacts)
– sponsorship materials

What we expect:

– discuss and amend existing sponsorship offerings
– follow through to closure on provided leads
– other leads can also be explored freely.

If you’re interested or would like more information, get in touch with
Stephanie Booth (steph@going-solo.net, @stephtara, or steph-booth on
skype).

Cross-posted from CTTS.

I’m always glad to learn that Going Solo inspired others to put something together to help local freelancers learn from each other. Flying Solo (in addition to being a book on going solo which the authors kindly sent to me to read) is a one-day unconference for solo entrepreneurs and freelancers which is taking place in South Africa.

• Cape Town: Saturday 26 July 2008, 9.30am – 5pm at the Wild Fig restaurant, Observatory
• Johannesburg: Saturday 2 August 2008, 9.30am – 5pm, venue TBA

If you’re in that part of the world, visit the Flying Solo SA wiki and take part! There is also an online community on Ning.

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.

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

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).