Be more Pecha Kucha!

December 3, 2008 By Julius Solaris


Pecha Kucha Montreal 2007 Photo by JamesEverett via Flickr

Pecha Kucha nights were started in 2003 by Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein in Tokyo. The nights are aimed at young designers, the format teaches a lot to all of us engaged with boring presentations.

Pecha Kucha means chit-chat. Back in 2003 two architects started what is now a very popular movement, with nights all over the globe.

Why?

The format answers to a compelling question, how to give space to young designers without throwing the audience in 2 hours long, endless presentations.

How?

Mark and Astrid created the 20 presenters/20 slides/20 seconds format.

20 designer are given the chance to present a total of 20 slides, 20 seconds each, for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

As simple as that.

Results

An immediate result is that attention levels are kept very high and everyone involved gets value out of the experience.
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Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event planning 2.0, global event management, ideas, psychology of events, tips
 

Why I like CitySocialising.com

October 14, 2008 By Julius Solaris

CitySocialising is a great local service to help beating the personal barriers that prevent you from getting a better job, improving your social life, being active. Apart from that, it is an awesome threat to traditional event professionals.

Jo is organising Sunday lunch Hampstead and walk and has invited you to attend.

Graham is organising 18-20s west end drinks! and has invited you to attend.

Kelly is organising Cocktail tasting class and has invited you to attend.

I don’t know who Jo, Graham or Kelly are but hey, these events are cool! Usually these kind of mail makes it very quickly to my Spam folder but in this instance I just can’t do it. The events are very relevant, targeted on my area and to my needs. What if I’ll get a special invitation tomorrow to an unmissable event?

What is it?
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Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event planning 2.0, ideas, marketing, project management, software, tips, twitter
 

Free is the new black

October 10, 2008 By Julius Solaris


Photo by kalandrakas

The horrible economic trends as well as the impressive movement of user generated events is challenging the traditional scheme of paid events.

If you charge for your events you may soon be in real trouble. If you charge a lot for your events you are probably already facing tough challenges.

The Economy

Pretty straight forward. There are not enough money to be spent on events as before. Companies buying tickets for your conferences are now hesitating on such expenditure. There is simply not the disposable income there used to be. As simple as that.

The Technology

Online meetings are now preferred to conferences. Linkedin/Xing is now preferred to your 3000£/$/€ networking event.

User Generated Events

Meetups, BarCamps, unconferences and the like are now offering free alternatives to your paid events. Getting together a location and asking people to pay for their drinks is now accepted. Nobody wants to mix any more with sponsors, stalls, banners and so forth. Meetups are run by users and most of them are not sponsored. The conventional infrastructure around events is shaking.

Scarcity

You cannot rely any more on scarcity.

I don’t have to wait for big exhibitions to come along in order to network with top professionals. It’s all coming to my city and for free, possibly on a monthly basis.

Now, how do you deal with that? How do you compete with free, zero, nada, niet, niente?

Innovate

You will soon realize that if you manage events conventionally, the demand will drop sensibly.

Few tips.

If you use social media and social networks, if you know what twitter is, if you integrate sponsors gently and wisely, you will definitely find new ways to engage and make a profit.

If you think this is not going to happen and you feel safe where you are, start reading another blog!

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Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event planning 2.0, ideas, marketing, networking events, psychology of events, tips, twitter
 

5 ways to promote events you don’t know

October 9, 2008 By Julius Solaris


Photo by luc legay

Many people lately have been asking me to promote their events on social networks. My response to most of them is this post.

Social Media and social networks now offer great potential to cut costs on event promotions. Social media and social networks are just buzzwords to gain your attention.

Well now that I do have your attention I’ll tell you how to do it.
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Filed Under: Julius Solaris, event planning 2.0, ideas, linkedin, marketing, party planning, software, start event business, tips, twitter
 

How to avoid no shows at free events?

October 3, 2008 By Julius Solaris


Photo by: Jon Curnow

The results of a discussion on how to ensure that people who RSVP‘d yes at your free event do actually turn up.

The intrinsic value of free events

I love free events. What I love even more is free events with free drinks. It seems like I am not the only one. It is getting ridiculously awkward to actually pay to get in.

If you did your homework chances are that you can cover expenses and make a profit just relying on sponsors.

Last week I attended a Trade Show, a Meetup, a Twestival and a Barcamp.

In all of those I got free food and drinks, gadgets and I did the best networking ever.

The next time someone shows up and tells you you need to pay 1000£/$/€ to attend a conference or a networking event, bear in mind you are actually paying for the steering wheel of organizer’s SUV.

One problem

Now, from the organizer perspective, getting sponsors may be relatively easy if you have a good target audience. But making sure the audience actually attends the day of the event, that’s a whole different ballgame.

I noticed at one of the above events that 40+ attendees did not show up. That’s a pity because they excluded at least the same number of people, who eventually got together for a parallel event.

My problem

I’ll be soon organizing a free event. Don’t be curious. It will be on the barcamp concept, which we love so much, but I cannot disclose more than that.

The problem is we got space for 60 people and much bigger forecast demand. We want to make sure that those who RSVP Yes actually turn up.

On a first come basis

It doesn’t work, as simple as that. That’s what was used at the above event and the results were upsetting.

A twitter conversation

I decided to ask my supercool twitter pals about it and here’s the conversation
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Filed Under: Julius Solaris, barcamp, event planning 2.0, ideas, psychology of events, tips, twitter