After months of talk, planning, conference calls, logo iterations, contract reviews, and on and on, Blogs with Balls went down this past weekend in New York. I haven’t read every review, but the sampling I’ve seen, coupled with the people I talked to during and after the event, I feel comfortable looking at it as a success. I’m almost always my harshest critic, but outside of some Microsoft-related snafus early in the day, I can say it really couldn’t have gone any better. (If you want to judge for yourself, there’s a rundown of event recaps and reviews here, here, here and here.)
That being said, while the event is fresh in my head, I do want to run down the lessons learned and things I would do differently, so we can make sure to address them as we look ahead to Vegas and Blogs with Balls 2.0 in October.
In no particular order:
- If you’re thinking about throwing an event — if it’s even a fragment floating in the ether of your imagination — just throw it out there to prospective panelists, attendees and/or sponsors, and see what they say. Ultimately it’s their enthusiasm that will make or break your event — so if you get a positive reading from them, chances are you’ve found a ripe one.
- If you’re planning an event with panels, be smart about managing your panel inventory. You will get a rush of people interested in speaking on your panels. Make sure you acknowledge their interest, but don’t rush to confirm everybody too quickly. Other people will come out of the woodwork as word of your event spreads — you want to give people a little time to learn about it. This isn’t to say I didn’t love every panelist at Blogs with Balls 1.0 — our problem was that we couldn’t bring ourselves to turn away many of the outstanding guests who expressed interest later in our planning, and as a result we had a pretty insanely packed lineup for a one-day event.
- Having panelists and event organizers get together before the event is a great way to get the conversation revved up. We had a terrific conversation over dinner and drinks with a handful of panelists on Friday night, and I definitely think that contributed to the quality of dialogue on Saturday.
- If you plan to do A/V stuff involving TVs and computers, then (a) probably best to use a Mac and (b) make sure you bring all the potentially necessary cables and dongles you can think of. I’m not 100% positive on the former (but most people I talked to Saturday seemed to think it was true) but I know without a doubt on the former. Bring the HD converter. Bring the SD out. Bring a French power converter. As long as they aren’t ridiculously long, cables don’t take up enough space to justify NOT being ready for anything.
- Having to change a monitor or projector’s source mid-show is a pain in the ass. Try to get every screen set-up in such a way that you can use the same source — be it a laptop or video input — all show long, or at the very least keep the switches to the breaks. Unless you’ve got a big crew of pros with equipment they know in and out, switches are your enemy.
- If your panelist shows up in a white suit with booze in-hand, you just got yourself a winning lottery ticket.
- Good food goes a long way towards keeping people there. I’m sure the promise of free booze at an after-party doesn’t hurt either…but I can’t help but think the mini-burgers and paninis played a hand in the almost perfect attendance we held down through the end of the event.
- People like it when you give them free booze. They like it 10x more when the free booze has their picture on it.
- The recipes for successful panels and good salad dressing both start with oil and water. Regardless of how focused your panel topic may be, do whatever you can to find a range of perspectives for every single group. And sometimes, the more questionable fits will wind up being your strongest contributors.
- Acoustics are key. Having a room near the stage that’s playing the event audio twice as loud as everywhere else is going to make people try to talk over the event itself. In most cases there probably isn’t a ton you can do about it — except to know that when people leave the main room, chances are they want to talk, not watch. So turn the volume DOWN in the areas outside the main venue/event space.
- After-parties are good. After-parties with silver-haired women giving away free tequila are better.
- As with any venture, having a core team that can wear a wide array of hats is a must. Blogs with Balls’ success was built on the hard work of so many — more than I can thank here — but even with so many generous people giving their time and energy, a lot of it still came down to Don (and his lovely wife), Chris and I tackling an array of challenges that weren’t necessarily our core competencies. Having a group comprised of members with different strengths (who were always willing to take on new challenges in addition to those aligned with their core skill sets) divide and conquer enabled us to have a lot more success than we would have with a team of more similarly-skilled members.
- Above all, remember this — there is no name too silly for your event.
That’s all I’ve got for now. More as I think of it.
