Planning

For a while, I gave up pre-planning almost entirely and relied on serendipity or conversations with other attendees to guide my way to sessions. While this works to some extent, I found myself missing too many interesting sessions. So now, I’ve started pre-planning sessions that I want to attend, and for large conferences, like SXSW, I identify two or three at every time slot, which allows me to pick the one I’m in the mood to see, and also gives me a backup in case my first choice was a dud or too crowded.

I also try to pick a variety of types of sessions so that I can get a broad range of knowledge with some more technical talks and others leaning toward community or business topics. I also try to pick speakers who have done amazing things to get more insight into the stories behind their success.

Finally, I’m always prepared to deviate from my plan to see sessions based on recommendations from other attendees or to take advantage of other interesting opportunities at the event. If I’m in a session that turns out to be a snooze, I’ll do a quick check on Twitter to see if friends are raving about another session that I might want to catch instead.

Conversations

Don’t underestimate the value of the “hallway track” where you can have interesting conversations with amazing people outside of the traditional conference format. This is an especially important side-effect of conferences for those of us who regularly work remotely or who work in a job with few peers within our own company. I’m not saying that you should spend all your time chatting with friends, but it is important to balance sessions with time spent talking to other people in your field. This is an opportunity to build lasting personal and professional relationships with smart people working in similar roles.

Make sure you attend the parties or meet up with other people for meals. While this might feels like goofing off, it’s really one of the easiest ways to get to know other people in your field. Resist the urge to go back to your hotel early and be careful not to hang out with the same few people during the entire conference. Take advantage of all of these opportunities to talk to new and interesting people, and make an active effort to renew relationships with people you’ve met before while making sure that you also spend time meeting new people.

Ditch Work

I know, you are incredibly important, and you can’t possibly ignore your work for more than a few minutes at a time. However, if you spend all of your time at the conference on email and calling into meetings, you might as well have saved some money and stayed at home to work. If you really want to get the most value out of the conference, you’ll put off what you can and delegate the rest to someone else for a few days.

Follow Up

Most of us leave a conference with a big pile of notes that we never look at again. You really need to do something with all of that information. I usually try to get a few blog posts out of each conference, or at least one post with something interesting that I learned. If you work with a team of people, a short trip report to share what you learned with your team might also be a good idea.

I also try to come up with at least five things that require some additional work on my part, and I add them to my task list. These might include an idea for a new project I want to start, something I want to implement in my current job, an interesting technology that I want to learn or someone that I want to follow up with on a specific topic. By getting these out of the huge pile of notes and onto my task list, I’ve drastically increased the chances that I will actually do something rather than forget all about it when I return home.

What are your favorite tips for getting the most value from attending a conference?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Kenneth Yeung

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Here are some of the latest and greatest apps I’ve found to help me connect with others, find places to go and document and share my experience.

1. SXSW Go. This is the official SXSW app, which helps to track the multitude of sessions and events you can attend.
2. Plancast. Announce your plans, such as the conferences or events you are planning to attend. Then search for plans, people or categories of events through this app and see where your friends are going. Check out the Unofficial SXSW Events Guide.
3. GroupMe. Create a private text chat room by grouping people in your contact list. Handy for making plans amongst friends and acquaintances to meet up at a conference. Other similar text grouping apps include Beluga and TextPlus.
4. Yobongo. This app runs on the premise that you may want to chat with others based on proximity and may need help breaking the ice to get a conversation started in real time.
5. Hashable. Track the people you are meeting with and introducing to one another using this app to help build your network and augment your address book with key information about your relationships with others.
6. Hurricane Party. With this app, you can specify your location and the time and tap into your contacts to bring people together. Personally, I may use this app to let folks know where I’m having lunch within walking distance of the convention center to invite them over to join me.
7. Liquidspace. This app identifies possible work locations nearby and can issue you with a “visa” for your Liquidspace “passport” to book and access those work spaces. Spaces can free or fee-based and can include empty work cubicles or board rooms at nearby offices; meeting rooms at hotels; backrooms at restaurants, or any underutilized work-ready space. The company behind the app provides the owners of these spaces with tools to manage space inventory including bookings. If you’re at SXSW, look for the workspace in a bus renovated by Steelcase/Turnstone.
8. Paperlinks. I’m embracing the QR Code trend with new business cards courtesy of Paperlinks. I’m also investing $250/year for the custom mobile destination site where my cards lead. See my earlier post on Paperlinks for more details.
9. Retrollect. Remember View-Masters? This app lets you upload, save and view photos in a similar way. I’ll also use my favorite storytelling photo app Whrrl, Instagram, and I’ll check in now and then on Foursquare.
10. Geoloqi. If all this location sharing has you freaked out, this app allows for private, real-time sharing of location data. You can leave “Geonotes” at locations where you’ve been, be notified if your friends are close by or share GPS maps of your locations only with people you know.

For more on useful mobile apps for conferences, check out my post from last year and my toolkit at OneForty.

What apps are on your smartphone for SXSW and upcoming conferences?

Photo courtesy stock.xchng user bvdwiel.

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Maybe you can’t hire a famous cartoonist or Lady Gaga, but you could work with your employer or clients to incorporate something fun into an event. Cartoonists, artists, musicians and other talented people can help make an event fun. If you don’t have money to hire people to perform, you could hold a contest where people can perform and win prizes. This could be anything from a battle of the bands with real instruments to Rock Band competitions, talent contests, arm wrestling, juggling or any other fun and crazy scheme you can come up with to add a little excitement. Toys can also help make an event more fun: a few hula hoops, video games, puzzles, puppets or other toys or cool tech gadgets can help introduce some fun.

Most of us have some conferences that we are obligated to attend or that we feel that we should attend because they will have some benefit in the future, but many of them just aren’t fun. Spend some time thinking about which conferences you enjoy attending and try to find excuses to attend more conferences like those. We all have different interests and get enjoyment from different types of conferences. When I was consulting full-time and doing online community strategy, I attended a few community and social media conferences, but most were too marketing-oriented for me, and I didn’t really enjoy them. I prefer to attend conferences filled with geeky developer types and smart people building really interesting things out of cutting edge technologies, so I like to attend open source / Linux developer conferences, SXSW and various unconferences. Budget is always an issue with going to conferences, but you can often attend them for free by speaking or volunteering to work at a conference if money is tight.

You can even make your own event. We often forget to celebrate our work achievements, but having something to celebrate, even a small accomplishment, can make a great excuse for a little party. For the big things, it can be really fun to have a huge party with a nice budget. However, we can also throw little mini parties to celebrate the smaller accomplishments without breaking the bank. On the low end, you can do a team lunch, happy hour at a local pub or a celebration in the office with a few snacks. If you have a little budget, find something fun for the team to do together and throw a bigger party. Either way, you can make work into a fun event.

What is your favorite way to make work events fun?

Photo by Flickr user Dana Tuszke used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

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But how can you focus on note taking when you have other things on your mind such as networking, the other sessions you have to attend, and possibly some additional work you have to do? Here are three things you should keep in mind:

• Remember that being present and attentive is your priority. This means actively listening, looking at visual aids, and paying attention to the lecture itself. While you can record audio, video, or view live tweets, these must be for reference only and not a substitute for the real thing. It makes no sense to sit in an auditorium for an hour only to repeat that hour via a recording because you were too busy taking notes or getting to know the person beside you to digest the finer details.
• Know why you’re taking down notes. Is it for faster recall or to record your own insight? Will you be using your notes to write a blog post or make a presentation at work? The reasons behind your note-taking will help you determine the best approach and tools to use.
• Get as much information as you can about the tech specs of the event beforehand. Will there be free internet access available? How reliable is it and will be be available throughout the entire venue? Will you be able to plug or charge your devices easily? This information can help you choose your tools accordingly.

With that out of the way, it’s only a matter of getting your notes down as efficiently as possible.

Using Tools to Improve Note-taking

According to a research paper on note taking, in an academic setting the average note-taking speed for students is 0.3 to 0.4 words per second, while lecturers speak at around 2 to 3 words per second. With this speed discrepancy it’s no wonder that most people find it hard to jot down concise yet complete notes. Still, there are ways to work around this:

• Don’t rely solely on text-based notes. While many of us are used to pen-and-paper note-taking methods, the difference in speech and writing speed means that we can’t rely on them alone. This is why we should look beyond written notes. We could include mindmaps, photos (of important slides, for example), or audio recording. Some apps that allow you to record in a variety of formats include Evernote, Springpad, FolderBoy (which Charles reviewed here), and Notepub.
• Use fast tools. Don’t just look for fast loading time or responsiveness, but note your own speed when using the tool. This means that some options aren’t ideal for many people, such as alphanumeric keypads and apps for handwriting or speech recognition. You can even use SMS abbreviations, shorthand, macros, and word completion apps to increase speed further.
• Process your notes. Directly after the lecture is the best time to enter the second phase of note-taking: information processing. This is where you’ll start to consult external sources for additional information and make connections among the things you’ve learned. You could do this by organizing all the material you’ve gathered and by making annotations. Some handy annotation tools include Apollo and A.nnotate.

Taking a cue from student life, don’t be afraid to borrow the notes of other attendees. You can borrow notes directly from people you have a strong rapport with, or wait for bloggers to post their own notes or articles summarizing the talk. They might include some points you’ve missed or make connections that you didn’t think of. Just be sure to offer to share your own notes and express that you’re looking for something supplementary. You don’t want to leave the impression that you’re asking them to do all your work for you.

It may take a lot of practice to become very effective at note-taking, but the important thing is to get better each time.

Share your note-taking tips below.

Photo by stock.xchng user christgr

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A great conference leaves you feeling empowered, inspired and ready to take on whatever comes your way. And then you arrive home feeling overwhelmed as you unpack, do laundry, open snail mail and handle all the mundane stuff that needs doing. Not only that, but also you have so much information that you hardly know where to begin to put it to use.

Profit from a Conference in Five Easy Steps

Recovered? Rested? Don’t proceed until you are. For a day or two, focus on recovering and getting through the mundane stuff. You have notes, business cards, programs and handouts to help you remember what you need to know. Then start making your conference pay off with these five steps.

1. Review your content. This includes notes, business cards, handouts, people to follow up with and anything else that came back with you. Don’t use this time to read it all. Instead, sort the content into three piles:
   • Now: The information most important to you, and items with deadlines.
   • Next: The things to look after you finish working through the “Now” pile.
   • Never: Useless stuff you received and items with the least value. Be ruthless: Toss them in the trash. Let them go, otherwise you risk doing nothing with any of the things you brought home. Tip: Next time you go to a conference, do a review to toss the bad stuff before you leave, as it will leave less to pack and less to contend with when you get home.
2. Act on the quick “Now” items. Read the notes, enter business cards into your address book, drop a quick note to contacts, link up with contacts in social networks and make a list of action items that will take more time.
3. Schedule “Now” items that take more time. If you want to, say, write an article based in information received or study notes in depth, put them on your tasks list with due dates to ensure they get done.
4. Check for information posted online. You may skip this if you have all you need. Sometimes you find a gap in the information you have or wish you had notes from a session you couldn’t attend. Find out if the sessions were recorded or the speaker’s slides have been posted online, and see if the conference had a Twitter hashtag or web site where everyone shared notes.
5. Complete your tasks. Make sure to follow up on the items scheduled in step 3.

Go Deeper With Your Conference Knowledge

Everyone absorbs and uses information differently. Here are things you can do to make the most of your conference content. Just watch out that you don’t get overwhelmed;  it’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to contact too many people, select too much to study or write too many articles.

• Follow up with people. Did you make any promises to contacts you made at the event? Do those first before pursuing the rest of your “Now” items. Only move onto the “Next” group after you have comfortably followed up and stayed in touch with the higher-priority contacts.
• Study the materials. Since you sorted out the more important content, study it. How you study depends on your learning style. Looking over it one time isn’t enough for most people to remember and apply the concept. As you learn the material, you’ll find opportunities to put it to work. After you feel you got what you needed from the material,  move on to the “Next” pile.
• Write blog posts or articles. For some, one of the best ways to learn the material and let it sink in is by writing an article or blog. Make a list of article ideas and then prioritize them. Write articles on the most important topics. Put away remaining ideas for safekeeping.

Next time you prepare for another conference or trade show, check out Judi’s “A Conference Survival Guide for the Web Worker.”

How do you make the most of a conference after returning home?

Photo by stock.xchng user Vicky 5.

In his new book, “The Backchannel: How Audiences Are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever,” Cliff Atkinson provides an example of the effect that a Twitter-enabled backchannel (an online conversation between audience members) can have on a presentation. At last year’s South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Tex., Pam Slim led a panel discussion titled, “From Blog to Book Deal.” The panel consisted of Hugh MacLeod, Guy Kawasaki, Stephanie Klein and Kate Lee. Kawasaki turned to the topic of getting book deals without having to write a proposal. Lee started to respond that not everyone has that opportunity when Kawasaki interrupted. Moderator Pam Slim studied the tone and body language of the panelists and determined that Kawasaki didn’t overstep his bounds.

But audience member Whitney Hess saw it differently. “She felt that Guy was being chummy with the other male panelist, and now he was aggressively taking over a female panelist who was not challenging him on it,” writes Atkinson. Hess tweeted that Kawasaki started taking over the panel when he told Lee to let him finish talking. Demonstrating the power of the backchannel, Kawasaki was monitoring Twitter from his laptop and saw Hess’ comment. “I want to know who Whitney Hess is, because she just said I’m being a total dick. What is this?” he asked.

Atkinson defines the backchannel as follows:

A backchannel is a line of communication created by people in an audience to connect with others inside or outside of the room, with or without the knowledge of the speaker at the front of the room. Usually facilitated by Internet technologies, it is spontaneous, self-directed, and limited in time to the duration of a live event.

The backchannel can either be a good or bad thing, depending on how the presenter and the audience use it. Presenters can use the backchannel to extend a presentation and engage the audience inside and outside of the room. The backchannel can also destroy a presentation when the audience posts negative feedback online for the world to see, or changes the mood in the room entirely.

Atkinson’s book covers in details the risks and rewards of the backchannel, explaining the different types of backchannel that can affect a presentation. These help the presenter understand what they are getting into when they join or discover a backchannel. He demonstrates how to prepare for a backchannel, and how to integrate Twitter-friendly ideas into a presentation, such as creating a hybrid of presentation and conversation, taking “Twitter breaks” and involving the audience through Twitter and the Internet.

He also shares a variety of real-world examples and how the speakers handled them. Atkinson tells Chris Brogan‘s story of having to deal with an unruly backchannel from the presentation prior to his. Brogan changed his introduction to post the backchannel on the screen. He opened with a few lines of rap and managed to loosen up the audience with laughter.

“The Backchannel” targets presenters more than audience members, although audience members can also benefit from the book’s insights. The next time you make a presentation or join a panel, you can either be prepared for the backchannel or let it take over. If you want to be prepared, “The Backchannel” gives you the guidance you need.

What is your experience with the backchannel?

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One of the things I do is translation and, like all of the translators I know, I have a profile on ProZ.com. This year is the site’s 10th anniversary and, to celebrate, it held its first virtual conference on International Translation Day. It was free, and I signed up, even though I knew I wouldn’t get any free pens out of it.

The exhibitors were major translation agencies and computer assisted translation (CAT) tool companies, so it was worth my time to check them all out. There were several ways to get to the “booths.” Each had an interactive information area with links to text and video you could view on the spot, or you could save documents to your “briefcase” to take with you. There were reps available in every booth for live chat, and you could also chat with other visitors to the booth.

An exhibitor booth

There was a “conference hall” with live webcasts that could also be viewed later, on useful topics like how to negotiate rates. There were scheduled networking events, essentially a chat room, for specific groups (translators of certain languages, for example). It was possible to exchange “business cards” with other attendees (the app used the data you registered with).

The platform Proz used, provided by Unisfair, was pretty user friendly, and my overall experience was a positive one, although the interface was kind of cheesy. This particular platform may be too pricey for individuals, but there are probably ways to duplicate the overall effect using other apps if you want to get creative and hold a gathering of your own.

It seems like the virtual event concept is still pretty new and that there’s room for improvement. I’d like to see an app that does all the same things but in a much less literal way: Simplified, lean and mean, with less Flash.

Proz has decided to leave the conference up until next September if you’re interested in checking it out.

If you’ve attended a virtual conference, I’d like to hear your take on it.

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The final session of the week-long conference opened with Daniel Pink, a former speechwriter for Al Gore, now a “career analyst” investigating and examining the changing patterns of work around the world.

Pink has been the subject of much attention lately, with his assertions that “right-brainers will rule this century,” as well as high-profile appearances at TED and a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey. These assertions offer some intriguing insights into “the future of work in a post-broadband world” — notably the patterns of work, business relationships, structures and skills that we’ll perhaps require in the future.

Pink’s latest book speaks of a “conceptual age” of work where “left-brained” reasoning will need to be augmented by what he describes as six critical “right-brain” qualities:

1. Design — The ability to conceive more than purely functional services or products, and develop emotionally engaging, joyful and attractive solutions.
2. Story — In a society abundant with data, the ability to weave a compelling narrative will become increasingly crucial.
3. Symphony — Being able to synthesize disparate, often disconnected, developments into something new, often straddling many industries, will be the basis of innovation.
4. Empathy — Looking beyond analytics to understand underlying motivations can provide unique and distinct insights.
   
5. Play — Wiring levity and play into cultures, experiences and solutions where appropriate.
6. Meaning — Moving past material abundance to “work on stuff that matters.”

Pink’s TED session focused less on these attributes and more on empirical analysis of how workers are usually incentivized, concluding that contemporary incentive systems actually destroy creativity and that autonomy, mastery and purpose are better notions of management than traditional compliance, citing Atlassian as a prime example of a company that incentivizes right-brain activities.

The six aptitudes discussed above may invite controversy and are there to be challenged, but I’m certain many of our readers are already exhibiting many of these qualities, though perhaps without an explicit awareness of doing so. The real value of Pink’s work is in providing labels and language that become the starting point for discussion and debate. For example, how do you get good at “symphony?”

In an interesting counterpoint to Pink’s assertions, Wired UK recently ran a piece, “Stand by for Google’s next market-changing move,” that explores the trends towards the left-brained in the advertising industry; where “data is valued more highly than relationships…and creative genius.”

Read more at TED, Daniel Pink’s site, Oprah and Cooltown Studios.

Are you practicing any of Daniel Pink’s right-brained qualities?

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If you made the most of your time at the conference, you made a lot of new contacts and expanded on old ones. When you get home, it is time to start carrying those relationships into the future. And when an event is fresh in your mind is also when you need to evaluate your experience to decide what worked and what didn’t about it.

There are four main follow-up tasks to complete after a conference to ensure that the benefits of the conference continue long after the event is done.

Keep your promises. The first thing to do when you get home from an event is to keep any promises that you made while you were there. Did you promise to email someone, send someone something, or put information up on your web site? Get that done as soon as possible. Thanks to your phone or a laptop and on-the-go wireless, you may even be able to get some of these tasks done before you get home. Keeping your promises, and in a timely manner, will mark you as reliable and trustworthy, and the contact will bring you to forefront of people’s minds again.

The biggest challenge in keeping promises may be in remembering what promises you made during the chaos of an event. A good tactic is to have a dedicated place to record promises as soon as you make them. It can be a page in your Moleskine, or a notes file on your phone, but the important thing is that you should automatically make a note whenever you make a promise.

Follow up with contacts. This activity can take many forms depending on the interaction you had and your work. It can mean sending emails to say how much you enjoyed a conversation, or calling someone to discuss potential business. You might want to follow people on places like Twitter and Facebook to keep in contact with them regularly. The key is to make contact and extend the relationship past the event itself.

Enter contacts in your manager. It’s all too easy to put off the tedious task of entering business cards in your contact manager, especially if you don’t have a card scanner. But it’s best to do it before you forget who the people in that stack are. Use the notes field to help you remember key points from your contact that might be useful in doing business (or just reminding you who the person is) later. Use the date field to record when the information you entered was current. It only takes a moment to enter that date but the rare times you need it, you will be glad you did.

Review the event. Lastly, you need to report to yourself about the event. While it is fresh in your mind, consider what worked well and what didn’t. Think about what you’d do differently if you attended again. Should you attend more seminars? Did you need more time to visit vendors than you anticipated? Would you like to pre-plan more evening events? Make a few notes for yourself that you can refer to when planning to attend again.

What do you do (besides unpack) when you get home from a conference?

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Jeff Pulver, the conference organizer, credits Twitter with everything that made the event happen, from the positive feedback that led him to set a date for the event, to obtaining the majority of commitments from speakers and panelists, to publicizing it almost entirely via tweets and retweets.

In my post “How Twitter is a Communications Game Changer,” I talked about the random but significant changes Twitter was causing in terms of the way we communicate and the tools we use. The 140conf — as it was called on Twitter — was the embodiment of a Twitterstream; it was Twitter in the flesh. Here are some of my observations from the conference:

1. We were all forced to speak in “tweets”

The format of the conference was 20 minutes for panels and between 10 and 20 minutes for presentations. There are now many conferences that enforce an abbreviated presentation time such as TED and Ignite, but this format still proves a tremendous challenge for many people. Pulver recommended that nobody rely on presentation slides, for example, and without fail, every speaker who decided to stick with slides dragged the pace of the day down, particularly when the technology inevitably did not work. Concise soundbites ruled the event. Pontification was revealed as the snooze-inducer that it is.

2. Half of the event took place on Twitter

Whether intentional or not, with the advent of Live Tweeting came the inevitable sea of open laptops and glowing digital mobile devices as everyone listened and simultaneously tweeted the interesting nuggets they were hearing. The “#140conf” hashtag appeared and disappeared on Twitter’s trending topics list, clearly demonstrating which sessions were more tweetable than others. While there were some complaints about the event taking place in an “underground bunker,” most people were connected at most times as evidenced by the continuous stream of in-the-moment tweets.

3. The topics were diverse like a public Twitterstream

While others complained about the seeming randomness — and in a few cases repetitiveness — of the content offerings at the conference, and others pointed out that it was in bad need of “curating,” a lot of us felt that it was more like a Tweetstream and possibly even the enactment of @JeffPulver‘s personal stream. He curated with a light touch, which added to the charm and spontaneity of the event.

4. Learning moments came in bursts

I commented to @beckymccray, who had flown in from Oklahoma for the event, that I felt like this conference offered a different kind of learning. Thankfully it wasn’t a “Twitter 101,”  but it also wasn’t a constant echo chamber where everyone did nothing but sing Twitter’s praises. What I got out of the conference was learning about the different ways people are using Twitter around the world and the real-life impact of Twitter and tweeting tools. More importantly, I was exposed to very different views and opinions of Twitter that forced me to stretch my thinking about how I use Twitter and how I could be using it differently or even better for my work.

5. Twitter will not save the world, but…

We all agreed that it wasn’t Twitter that was as important as it was the new and “now” way of communicating. The immediacy, the intimacy, the pervasiveness, the mobility — these are all aspects that Twitter embodies and features that it provides, but it is not all about Twitter. Twitter is our current touchstone, but it is a signal of massive and significant change in our world and in our lives. It is not a fad; it is a revolution of connectivity. And the 140 Character Conference was just a small glimpse of this Brave Now World.

Were you at 140conf, and if so, what did you get out of it? If not, what are you getting out of Twitter?

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It’s been said that the apps that break out at Austin’s South by Southwest festival are those that help festival-goers navigate and orient themselves within the sprawl of parties, panel sessions and gigs.

The 2007 edition of SXSW was Twitter’s big moment, the tipping point for the now iconic service. The following year, many thought that SCHED*, a web-based event calendar and agenda builder, would be the breakout service of 2008 — the “new Twitter.”

Though such expectations were inflated by the media, SCHED* provided useful personalized schedules that have endured through two editions of the festival. The latest edition of the app now includes mobile support, iPhone compatibility, and the ability to integrate with iCal and Google Calendar.

As the organizer of a “proto-SXSW” here in the U.K. — LSx 2009, the second Leeds Web Festival — I figured this was a great opportunity to put SCHED* through its paces with the somewhat smaller schedule of events for LSx. Also, it’d be a useful trial run for a fuller deployment in 2010, when LSx will likely merge with the Live At Leeds music festival.

Here’s how things work:

1. Upon making an inquiry via the SCHED* web site, I was put in touch with the company’s business development people to collate our requirements and also to discuss which plans and pricing would be most appropriate for LSx. At this stage, SCHED* simply needs to understand the demographics, audience size and dates. The company offers Basic, Premium and Premium Plus plans, ranging from $399 to $850, depending on features rather than usage. The company was generous enough to let us experiment with the app using a nonprofit discounted plan.
2. Once the invoice is settled, you need to provide a logo, official conference/festival name, URL of the official site, your chosen SCHED* subdomain (http://lsx.sched.org), event location and the beginning and end dates.
3. Once your new site is live, it’s administered and updated in batches using a SCHED*-supplied offline Excel spreadsheet or online Google Spreadsheet. It initially seems an odd choice to utilize a spreadsheet interface to administer your SCHED* site, but the complexity of venues, events and categories would likely not work well at all in a web-based HTML form.

It’s unfair to compare SCHED* to Twitter as a SxSW breakout service — Twitter is a consumer app, whereas SCHED is really intended for festival and conference organizers. However, I found SCHED* to be competitively priced — compared with Crowdvine and Expectnation — and  it certainly adds value to the audience of a conference or festival. What’s perhaps even more valuable for organizers is the level of direct support and account handling that the company provides, something that’s lacking in most of the self-service web services around today. Well done for great service, SCHED*.

If you are involved in organizing meetups, BarCamps, work events and other gatherings, SCHED*’s a powerful tool for organizers and attendees alike.

What tool do you use for scheduling your events?

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The Next Web is now in its fourth year and will open with a day of unconference events as a lead-in to two days of scheduled keynotes, startup demos, awards and an expo hall. Speakers include Google’s Bradley Horowitz, CSS expert Eric Meyer and Andrew Keen, author of “Cult of the Amateur”.

We’ve got a special 20 percent discount for WebWorkerDaily readers wishing to attend The Next Web. Simply register here to claim your discount.

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Photo by Selena Marie

In previous posts, I’ve talked about attending local events and meetups or scheduling new ones if you can’t find any that meet your needs. In this post, I wanted to talk about something bigger than the typical meetup: community-organized events. BarCamps, unconferences, and similar events have been popping up all over the world in increasing frequency. I’m an organizer for the local BarCamp in Portland, and I have attended many of these types of events. I’m planning to attend BarCampAustin this weekend, which is running in parallel with SXSW.

The organization of these events is very different from typical commercial events. While commercial events tend to be organized by professional organizers who are being paid to produce the conference, community organized events are often organized by unpaid volunteers from the community who are passionate about the topic. Both types of events have their strengths and weaknesses and their place in the industry, but both are also very different in both organization and attendance.

Attendance

I have noticed that many organizers and a high percentage of attendees of BarCamps tend to be web workers. Maybe web workers tend to enjoy the self-organizing format and are passionate enough about their work to attend these events, many of which are held on weekends. Since many of us are self-employed, the free or very low cost nature of unconferences may appeal to those of us who don’t have a big company’s training budget to pay for the more expensive events.

Organization

Community organized events come with a special set of challenges for organizers, including:

• Putting together a really solid team of people who can meet deliverables and commit the time to organize the event without getting paid.
• Dealing with sponsorships and other monetary contributions by partnering with or forming a legal entity to handle the money.
• Finding sponsors or other contributions to fund event expenses.
• Budgeting for the event and dealing with unexpected costs.
• Estimating attendance and finding an affordable venue with a space that works well for your needs (unconferences have different needs than traditional conferences).
• Promoting the event to make sure that the right people know about it.

I frequently attend both “traditional” commercial conferences and community events, and my preference is starting to drift toward community events. I feel like I get a broader perspective, and I seem to learn more at community events. I would love to hear more about your experiences with community events, including advantages and disadvantages, and challenges and opportunities.

What is your experience with attending or organizing community organized events?

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Yesterday, a couple of new tools were announced that made me stop and reconsider how much of that potential is actually being capitalized upon, how soon the virtual world’s appeal might broaden, and what that might mean for working on the web. The services in question are a Virtual Conference Centre and Real Time Research, joint venture projects by Second Life development vets Rivers Run Red and consulting group Futuresource.

Virtual conferencing and meetings are gaining popularity as companies look for ways to cut costs, and travel budgets are a prime target for cutting excess. I’m fine with conference calls, and they’re a necessary part of internet commuting, but I’ve yet to try a virtual world-based meeting. For me, the 3D character avatar still belongs to the province of video games, so I’m resistant to the idea of bringing business into the equation.

Perhaps that’s the point, though, when we’re talking about a virtual convention centre. Part of the appeal of attending conventions is the appeal of the socializing that goes on outside of business. And as an independent contractor, I don’t often find my travel expenses comped, so I could definitely see myself agreeing to be a guest speaker or a panel member at a Second Life convention that I would not attend in the real world. It would allow you to build your personal brand in places and to audiences you wouldn’t otherwise reach, which is always a good thing.

Real Time Research, the second service to be launched, presents a more interesting and innovative use of the Second Life world. It is intended to provide a way for companies to test and receive feedback on new products and design in real time. Second Life is a great environment for this sort of thing because it allows a wide (or selective) audience quick, easy, and reliable access to 3D product models.

This sort of real-time feedback environment could allow small firms and even independent designers to get the benefit of focus groups without the cost, which is generally prohibitive for those of us working on this end of the spectrum. The problem might be attracting users from useful demographics to give you feedback, or to take the activity seriously at all. In-world incentives could help to remedy that problem, as could services that allow Second Life users to sign up to become part of an active testing pool.

The tools may not in and of themselves necessarily represent firsts for virtual world applications, but the fact that they’re being sold to enterprise users through a third-party vendor is. It means that at least some companies are beginning to market Second Life collaboration SaaS solutions the same way many others did when Web 2.0 started really taking off.

It’s definitely an option I’ll float to clients looking for these types of tools, especially if they’re open to innovative or non-traditional approaches. My only worry is that users unfamiliar with Second Life might require a separate orientation for both the virtual world, and the tool itself, and might find the environment distracting to the task.

Would you recommend/use this kind of service for your or your client’s business? Do you currently use Second Life for web work, or can you see yourself doing so in the future? From a developer’s standpoint, what do you think about the viability of Second Life as market to sell these kinds of applications? Is there enough interest to justify the effort?

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LeWeb ’08, the largest Web conference in Europe (and second largest in the world), will take place in Paris on Tuesday the 9th and Wednesday the 10th of December. This is just a quick note to let WWD readers know that I will be attending, so if you’ll be there and would like to meet, please let me know how to reach you.

I’d be particularly interested in chatting with you if you have an application, project, or story you think would appeal to WWD readers. Hope to see you there!

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Conference organizer Stephanie Booth has recently announced that she’ll be touring the conference globally, with the next event landing in the UK on 12th September in the city of Leeds.

Like the Lausanne event, Going Solo Leeds will focus on practical and theoretical sessions for freelancing professionals, independent workers, the self-employed, remote workers and those who are considering ‘going solo’.

Though there’s a bias towards internet and media professionals, most of the sessions are appropriate for traditional independent workers too. Here’s a taster of the planned programme…

• Laura Fitton: You Only Get What You Give (Marketing and taking care of one’s social capital)

• Dennis Howlett: The Joys of Tax and Finance

• Panel moderated by Suw Charman: Setting Rates and Negotiating with Clients (Martin Roell, Stowe Boyd, Dennis Howlett)

• Suw Charman: When Passion Becomes Profession (Balancing Work and Life)

• Martin Roell: Self-Organisation for Effectiveness: Tools and Methods to Get Things Done

• Panel moderated by Stephanie Booth: Solo in a Networked World (Laura Fitton, Linda Broughton)

• Stowe Boyd: From The Far Side To The Dark Side: A Crash Course In Business Realities For Soloists

The Lausanne sessions are available online at DailyMotion and registrations for Going Solo Leeds are currently about halfway through the ‘early bird’ discount phase of £150 ($300/€190) with only a few such passes now available…so hurry!

Going Solo will be taking place at Leeds’ Old Broadcasting House on Friday 12th September, so it’s a great excuse to spend the weekend exploring one of the UK’s most exciting cities as well as skilling up on best practices in freelancing.

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