Going Solo

Things are moving pretty fast here at Going Solo. With 6 weeks left until the big day, everything is starting to feel very real! We’ve put up a page with presentation of the conference for interested sponsors (Lily is currently talking with a bunch of interested companies, which is fun!), and I’m currently working hard on the programme, so that I can publish more information about the agenda, speakers, and precise sessions by the end of the week-end.

Keep your eyes open!

I should have written this post long ago (I thought about it so much that I was actually certain I’d already written it). Although in my mind the audience for this conference is quite clear, I realise each time I talk about Going Solo to a new person that it’s actually far from obvious.

The people I have in mind can be described as “freelancers and small business owners working in somewhere in the internet industry”. I’m defining an audience through the intersection of a way of working (loosely called “freelancing”) and an area of work (the “internet industry”).

More details, on the “freelancing” part. Who do I include?

• freelancers, obviously
• small business owners/partners (people who are mostly their own boss)
• people who are thinking of going solo/freelance, or might be tempted one day (students, employees, or unemployed)
• any person who is “their own boss”

Now, for the “internet industry” part. I’m casting a wide net here:

• anybody who either “builds” the internet or uses it as a “media channel”
• designers, developers, photographers, social media people, consultants or all shapes and sizes, event organizers, PR and marketing people, independent journalists, bloggers, podcasters, startup-ers, writers, artists, thinkers, tinkerers… and I’m forgetting loads

In addition to that, I believe that anybody who works with freelancers will find this event interesting. And any freelancer, even outside this loosely defined “internet industry” will get something out of this day.

Geographically, now, who is this event intended for? People who are comfortable in English, of course (although Going Solo will be held in French-speaking Lausanne, it will be entirely in English), from all across Europe. It’s open to people from further away, of course — but I’m aware that flying over the Atlantic for a one-day event might be a bit of a stretch for some people ;-). So, let’s say Going Solo is European-centric.

As you can see, I’m describing the attendees from an “insider” point of view. I’m part of this group. But seen from the outside, what would we have? Without expecting every single person to fit the description, I think we can say that the people coming to Going Solo are an audience which is:

• internet-literate
• cutting-edge in what they do (something which pushes many towards freelancing)
• highly connected and networked
• influent
• willing to learn, find solutions, evolve
• enterprising

I hope this post helps make things clearer. Leave a comment with a question if there are murky areas left!

Here’s something I’ve been waiting to be able to announce for a few weeks now: I’m excited to let you know that Going Solo is now open to discussing sponsorship opportunities.

If your company is interested in taking advantage of the unique marketing opportunity offered by the Going Solo conference, contact Lily Yacobi at lily@going-solo.net. Lily is managing sponsor relations for Going Solo, and will present you the variety of sponsorship opportunities we are providing. We’re waiting to hear from you!

Last Thursday, I went over to the Seesmic offices for lunch and ended up being the CEO Loïc Le Meur and his partner Vinvin’s guest in their daily show, Seesmic du Jour. I got a chance to briefly present Going Solo before rambling on about GTD. Here’s the video:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=5MwGxSFLeLU]

Going Solo also got a mention on Loïc’s blog (in French too). I’d like to insist on the fact that if I was typing on Loïc’s keyboard, it was because he started out by asking me to dictate — typing directly seemed less painful 😉

When I came up with the pricing scheme for Going Solo, my expectation was that most people coming to the conference would take advantage of the Earlier or Early Bird prices.

My initial estimation was that 1 month of Early Bird price was more than enough to get the word out — only I left out of my calculations that I would spend three of those four weeks travelling and conferencing. As a result, I’ve hardly done any Going Solo promotion during that time, and as promotion rests largely on my shoulders, well, Going Solo hasn’t been promoted much.

So, good news for everybody: I’m extending the Early Bird deadline until the end of the month of March, which means that I get relieved of trying to cram a month’s worth of promoting the conference in the space of two days, and more people will have a chance to hear about it and register for the cheaper fee. Yay!

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.

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!

I’m quite a fan of Seesmic, though I use it irregularly. Yesterday, I gave a little news about Going Solo in video format, so I thought I’d share it with you here too.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.480716&w=450&h=380&]

Many of you have taken advantage of the special Earlier Bird price of 300 CHF (a quarter of the available tickets sold in under a week!) — but if you missed it, don’t fear. You still have approximately 3 weeks to take advantage of the Early Bird price of 400 CHF (instead of 600).

You’ve understood: this is a devious ploy to entice you to register before the “last minute”. It’s important for the organisation of the conference to have as many people register as soon as possible, because it means we know how much revenue to expect from the ticket sales (it also allows to sort out things like catering comfortably in advance, too).

So, don’t wait (because once it’s gone, it’s gone): register before March 16th to get 200CHF off your regular 600CHF price!

Finally! My open stage video from LIFT08 is online, which isn’t too bad given the slight hiccups surrounding the open stage videos, isn’t too bad.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8270350768335569204]

Here is a copy of my preparation notes, including a short bit I missed out. (The video is on Facebook too.)

If you haven’t done it yet, you should also check out the two interviews I gave about Going Solo during the conference.