Going Solo

Wow. I think I can say that. Your response to Going Solo exceeded all my expectations. I’m taking the week-end off but will be back on Monday with online news, cooking up a survey for participants, and collecting links to blog posts and photos.

In the meantime, check out:

• talk videos on DailyMotion (more being uploaded this week-end, thanks Sébastien!)
• official photos on Flickr (thanks Guillaume!)
• live notes by the legendary live-blogger Suw Charman
• live notes by Urs
• live notes by Jaap
• more links
• sign up for the newsletter or join the Facebook group to keep in touch with the Going Solo community if you haven’t yet

Thanks to everybody who came, everybody who helped out, and everybody who supported this project during the last months. I couldn’t have done this without you.

A special thanks to the speakers, who delivered a really really great programme.

See you in a few days!

I should be in bed sleeping, but I’m too excited by this video of Ouchy that Sébastien has just finished editing. Last Saturday he and I headed out to get some footage of the area around the venue hotel, and we ended up rollerblading around for a little guided tour. I took some photos and will upload them tomorrow. In the meantime:

[dailymotion id=x5exxp]

Ouchy is the “lakeside” area of Lausanne, and is where Going Solo will be taking place. If you’re into rollerblading and have enough space in your luggage, take them with you. You can go from one side of Lausanne to the other on your wheels, and it’s pretty nice!

I’m convinced that for any conference taking place nowadays, filming talks and putting them online is a must. This allows more people to learn about the event, gives extra visibility to the speakers, and also lets people who couldn’t make it to the conference benefit from it.

And no, I don’t believe that people are going to decide not to come to the conference because they can get all the talks online for free (have you ever spent a whole day in front of your computer watching recorded sessions?)

So, all of Going Solo will be filmed and put online almost in real time (we’re not certain we’ll manage streaming). For that, I would like to extend particular thanks to Sébastien Baudet of Taxi-pub.ch, who will be managing camera, editing and uploads.

For hosting and distribution of the videos, we’re partnering with DailyMotion, who have very kindly (and speedily!) set us up with an Official User account for Going Solo. This is where you’ll have to head to see the videos on the big day, if you’re not lucky enough to be on location. We’ve already added a few videos to the account, and chances are you’ll see one or two more before things start getting really hot on Friday.

So, a big thanks to Taxi-pub.ch and DailyMotion for their help in making these videos available to the public!

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.

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!

With a month to go until the conference (it’s the 16th today!), how about starting to get in touch with the follow soloists you’ll be meeting there in the flesh? Or learning a bit more about the speakers and the staff?

Most conferences nowadays provide a social network for their attendees — it makes perfect sense. We’ve chosen Crowdvine for the Going Solo social network, firstly because it’s really neat, and second because chances are you may already have an account and contacts on Crowdvine (if you’ve been to FOWA or Web2.0Expo Berlin, for example).

So, if you’re attending Going Solo, head over to Crowdvine to meet your fellow attendees.

And if you’re not attending Going Solo… what? Head over to registration right away, and don’t forget to bring a friend!

Looking forward to connecting with you on Crowdvine.

You might remember that quite a few weeks ago, I mentioned I wanted to set up a referral programme. Well, unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated to implement than I thought so at first.

Still, I wanted to find a way to give something back to those of you who sign up with a friend or two, specially now that the Early Bird deadline is past. So… introducing the “Bring a Friend” discount scheme:

• sign up at the same time as 1 friend: you both get 10% off
• sign up at the same time as 2 friends: you all get 15% off

Of course, if you are somebody with lots of freelance friends, or are feeling like a superconnector, you can bring more friends, and we’ll reward you all accordingly (5% additional off per extra person, for a maximum group size of 5 people: 25% off!)

Here’s how it works:

• decide to come to Going Solo
• convince a friend or two (or more!) to come with you
• e-mail steph at going-solo dot net with the names of the people who are coming
• I’ll e-mail you back with a discount code
• each person registers within 48 hours with the discount code
• you’re happy bunnies, because you’ll be attending Going Solo together, and got a discount!

Now, how do you find a friend to come with you? Because we like you — and also because it’s in our interest! — here are some tips you may find handy:

• tell the people you know about Going Solo, even if they aren’t freelancers: they might have friends who are!
• remind your freelance friends they will walk out of Going Solo with things in their heads which will help them be more successful and earn more money (that’s the point, isn’t it?)
• write a blog post inviting interested readers or passers-by to get in touch with you so you all benefit from the discount
• point people to the great sessions and extraordinary speakers who will be there on the 16th
• plan to stay in Lausanne for the week-end with your friends — how about a day off by the beautiful lake?
• use the Going Solo poster to print Moo cards and distribute them everywhere you go (that’s what I do!)
• if all else fails, you might want to consider blackmail or coercion — but we here at Going Solo will deny ever having suggested anything like that.

I’m looking forward to receiving the first e-mails from smart people who want to take advantage of this discount!