Going Solo

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.

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.

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!

Here’s a little status update — because although a lot is happening and things are making good progress, it’s mainly progress. So it looks like nothing is happening (from my point of view), but in fact, we’re getting close to some really exciting stuff.

• Registration: I’m working on setting up the registration site right now (it’s a tad more complicated than I expected), but it shouldn’t be very long. If you want me to inform you directly when registration is open, just leave a comment.
• Design: we have pretty badges and a logo now, and the design of this site will shortly be adapted to the new visual identity. Dealing with the whole design issue was em way more complicated and painful than I anticipated (there’s stuff to blog about there, later maybe).
• LIFT08: as I mentioned my open stage speech at LIFT08 was received very positively. Many people came to ask me if it was still possible to register (yes it is, once registration opens!) and I’ve had promising discussions with a bunch of interesting (possible) partners. A little overwhelming but very exciting.
• Pricing: pricing was a headache, like many other things. I want to write a more detailed blog post about this, but basically, you can say events fall into 3-4 categories, as far as pricing is concerned. (1) free (most barcamps and unconferences) or (1b) a small cover fee ($20-$50), then (2) “affordable”, meaning “not cheap, but which can be afforded”, and (3) high price events with fees around/above 1000€ or more (TED is $5000). Going Solo is in category (2), meaning some may find the price expensive, but I’ve done what I could to ensure it was an amount that can be paid by freelancers.
• Audience: there’s been some confusion about who this event is for, and I want to blog about it in more detail. In the meantime: it’s open to everybody (we’re not refusing anyone) but the content is geared towards freelancers or very small businesses somewhere in the internet/tech industry. I personally think that any freelancer or small business will find it invaluable.
• Programme: in addition to Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, and Martin Roell, we now have a fourth confirmed speaker. Laura Fitton will be in Lausanne on May 16th to speak about how taking care of your online presence will help people find you. (I’ll find a better way to phrase that later.) I have roughly half my speakers, so now is time to go back to the programme drawing board, sort out who is going to talk about what, and look for people to talk about the specific topics that are still uncovered.
• Partners: I don’t yet have the fancy PDF to hand out to prospective partners, but it’s near the top of my priority list (up there with all the rest, hehe). As I said, things look good on the partner/sponsor front, particularly after LIFT08. Possible media sponsor found, looking for others. “Packages” (I don’t like that name) for Gold, Silver (etc.) partners have been defined, so don’t hesitate to contact me about it. As soon as the presentation PDF is ready I’ll create a special “Partners” page.
• Video: from what I understood, there was some miscommunication between LIFT08 and Nouvo, who filmed the talks, and the open stage talks have not yet been edited and put online. It will happen (the tapes are safe) but I don’t know when. In the meantime, you should read my speech notes and watch the interview I gave Robert Scoble.

Now, I’ll go back to fiddling with CSS and setting up the registration site 😉