Category: Being the boss

This is about work from the managing side. Freelancing, entrepreneuring, consulting: having to make the decisions as the person in charge. In charge of your work, in charge of your life — so work-life balance factors in, too.

Business Thoughts [en]

[fr] Je suis en train de me rendre compte de la valeur qu'il y a à investir dans ce que l'on fait et qui fonctionne déjà. Sans vouloir tirer des boulets rouges sur l'innovation (je serais mal placée), payer le loyer est important, et lorsque l'on lit les histoires de ceux à qui les risques ont souri, ne perdons pas de vue qu'on entend rarement parler des perdants.

I think a bunch of things I’ve been reading and thinking about over the last months are starting to come to something.

For example, one thing I’m realising is that it’s easier to pursue and grow existing business than do new things from scratch. I mean this in two ways:

  • existing customers
  • “stuff you do” that actually brings in money

If I look at the past two years, there are a handful of things that have consistently helped pay the rent. If I look back, I’ve spent a lot of energy over the past year trying to do “stuff I wanted to do” — experiential marketing, for example. Of course, it’s easy to say now with hindsight that I might have been better off concentrating on what had worked, but if experiential marketing had been a huge hit that had made me rich, well, it wouldn’t have been a mistake right now.

(I’m reading Fooled by Randomness these days, can you tell?)

Of course, taking risks and innovating is a chance to break through. I’m not saying one should always stick to what one knows. But remember we see the winners, not the losers.

But paying the rent is important.

I Need to Blog More [en]

It’s been nagging at the back of my mind. Since before Going Solo Lausanne, actually — when I got so absorbed with the conference preparation that CTTS hardly saw 6 posts over the space of 4 weeks.

I need to blog more.

It became clear this morning, as a chat with Suw led to a long blog post in French that I’d been putting off for… weeks, to be generous.

This isn’t the first time (by far) in my blogging career that I’ve been through a “dry” patch, and then one day realised that I had to get into the groove again. Life is cyclic. It’s not a stable line or curve that heads up and up or, God forbid, down and down. It’s ups and downs. Some days are better than others, some weeks are better than others. It’s the low moments in life that also make you enjoy the high ones (though I wouldn’t want you to think I’m advocating heading for “lows” just so you might have post-low “highs” — lows are just part of the colour of life, like the highs).

Some people have higher highs than others, and lower lows. Some people have more highs, some have more lows. We’re not equal — and in the matter of happiness in particular, I remember Alexander Kjerulf saying at Reboot last year that roughly 50% of our “happiness potential” is genetically determined.

So, pardon me the digression on the highs and lows, a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately due to my own ups and downs. Back to blogging.

With the supposed return of the tired “blogging is dead” meme, which we long-time bloggers have seen poking its silly head up every year or two, oh, “blogging is so yesterday”, I once again sit down and wonder at what’s kept me going for over eight years now.

I know part of the answer: I’ve never been in the arms race — or at least, never very long. Arms race to first post, arms race to breaking news, arms race to most comments, arms race to more visitors, more visitors, yes, ad revenue, monetize, recognize. Oh, I want my share of recognition and limelight — I won’t pretend I’m above all that — and there are times when I feel a bit bitter when I feel I’m not getting as much attention as others who have louder mouths but not necessarily better things to say. What can I say: I’m only human, and I think one constant you’ll find amongst bloggers is that each in our own way, we’re all after some form or other of recognition. Some more badly than others, yes.

So, I need to blog more.

One of the things blogging did for me, many years ago, was put me in touch with other people who shared similar interests to mine. That is one thing blogging does well, and that it always will do.

It also provided a space for me to express myself in writing — forgive me for stating the obvious. I’ve always written, always had things to write, and blogging for me was a chance to really dive into it (actually, before that — this website existed before I signed up for a Blogger.com account many years ago).

Writing helps me think. Even though it may sound a bit lame to say so, it’s something I do that feels meaningful to me. It’s not something that puts money in the bank account (one of my important and ongoing preoccupations these days, to be honest), but it’s something that connects me to myself and to others.

Organising a conference as a one-woman endeavour can feel extremely isolating, even with a large network of advisors and supporters. But more than that, I’ve been a freelancer for two whole years now: working from home most of the time, travelling a lot, getting more and more involved in personal and professional relationships outside my hometown, and often in completely different timezones.

I don’t really have any colleagues I see regularly anymore. My client relationships are usually short-lived, given the nature of my work (lots of speaking engagements). I haven’t really had any clients in the last year that I saw regularly enough to build some kind of meaningful relationship with.

It’s not without a reason that I’ve become increasingly interested in coworking, to the extent that I’m now working at setting up a space in the very building I’m living in (quite a coincidence actually, but a nice one for me, given I like typing away with my cat purring next to me).

What does this have to do with blogging more?

My feeling of isolation isn’t only offline. It’s online too. It feels that I’ve been spending so much time “working” (ie, preparing conferences or worrying about how to earn some money) that I’ve taken a back seat in my online presence. It’s time I started driving again.

I don’t mean that in the sense “agressively fight for a place in front of the scene”. I’ve never been an A-lister and probably never will be. I just want to go back to writing more about stuff I find interesting. Hopefully, not only long rambling soul-searching posts like this one 😉

Twitter, FriendFeed, Tumblr, Feedly, Facebook and Seesmic are changing my life online. I haven’t finished figuring out in what way. But what I know is that my online ecosystem, particularly around my blog, is not what it was three years ago. I am in no way rejecting these “newer” tools in my life, but I do feel at times like I’ve been neglecting my first love.

My blog is also where I give. Over the course of my blogging career, I’ve writen posts which are still helpful or inspiring to those who read them, years after. The more you give, the more you get. Well, maye one reason I feel things are drying up a bit around me is that I’ve stopped giving as much as I used to. Oh, I know it’s not magical. I don’t believe in “balance of the universe” or anything. I do believe in human relationships and psychology, though. If you care about other people, there are more chances that they’ll care about you. That’s what makes us social animals.

Part of it, over the last years, has been the challenge of transitioning from passionate hobbyist to professional. Suddenly my online world/activities are not just where I give freely, but also where I try to earn a living. Such a transition is not easy. And I haven’t found any handbooks lying around.

I’m going to stop here, because I think that this post has already reached the limits of what even a faithful reader of friend can be expected to be subjected to without complaining.

To sum it up: for a variety of reasons I’ve tried to explore in this post, I want to blog more than I have these past months. I think it’ll make me feel better. Blogging is something I enjoy, and if the way I’m doing things doesn’t leave me time for that, then something is wrong with the way I’m doing things. I became a freelancer in this industry because I was passionate about blogging and all the “online stuff” hovering around it — and wanted to do more of it. Not less.

Réflexions freelance [en]

[fr] Musings on my work as a freelancer. I'm thinking about concentrating my communication/promotion efforts on a limited number of things (my problem with being a "generalist internet expert" is that I do lots of different things, could do even more, but feel a bit stretched and unfocused at times). So, here goes:

  • coaching/training: from "learning to use this computer" and "getting the printer to work" (grandma or your uncle) to "learning all about social media/tools" and "publishing my stuff online". A one-on-one setting, and a general focus on "learning to understand and use the internet (and computers) better".
  • creating simple websites: I'm asked to do this a lot, and after years of struggling with clients to try to get them to "do things right" (easy to win them over, but it doesn't change the amount of budget available), I've switched over to a Trojan Horse technique. Give them what they want (a brochure-like website), but based on WordPress (my CMS of choice right now), which means they can learn to update the content, add a blog, etc. etc. Using WordPress as CMS is my Trojan Horse for getting clients further into social media.
  • speaking, in particular in schools: I gave a few talks at the ISL a month ago and they were very well received. A little promotional material would probably get me way more similar speaking engagements.

This doesn't mean I'm abandoning all the other things I do (and get paid for) or would like to do (and get paid for). It just means I'm going to concentrate my proactive efforts on those three things, which have proved to be realistic ways for me to earn money.

Going Solo Leeds is of course taking up quite a bit of my time, and I'm soon going to start actively looking for a business partner (a sales-oriented doer!) for Going Far. Stay tuned!

Ces temps, je pense pas mal à mon choix de travail/carrière. Parce qu’à part les nombreuses heures que je passe à préparer la conférence Going Solo (qui pour le moment ne rapporte pas tellement d’argent, on peut dire ça), je reste une indépendante dans le milieu parfois un peu brumeux des nouvelles technologies.

Moi qui suis quelqu’un qui frémit à chaque fois qu’on lui demande “et tu fais quoi, comme boulot?”, je me suis trouvée l’autre jour (lors du pique-nique mensuel des couchsurfeurs lausannois) avec aux lèvres une formule qui me plaît assez:

J’aide les gens à mieux comprendre et utiliser internet.

C’est vaste, oui, mais ça recouvre assez bien ce qui m’intéresse — et ce que je fais.

Mais bon. Ça fait un moment que je me sens dispersée. Je n’ai pas de message clair à donner pour faire comprendre au monde mes compétences et ce que je fais. En plus, il y a “ce que je fais déjà” et “ce que je pourrais faire”. Donc… je me dis que je devrais me concentrer (côté stratégie de communication en tous cas) sur un nombre limité de trucs. Surtout quand l’argent ne rentre pas à flots. Lesquels?

Qu’on me comprenne bien, je ne suis pas en train de songer à “arrêter” quoi que ce soit de mes activités. Je me demande simplement où concentrer mes forces. Si on fait appel à moi pour autre chose, pas de souci — je serai là.

Une chose que je me retrouve régulièrement à faire, et que j’aime beaucoup, c’est de la formation (ou du coaching) individuelle. Ça va de “apprendre à utiliser l’ordinateur et faire ses premiers pas sur internet” à “bloguer mieux” en passant par “démarrer un blog” et “maîtriser les outils sociaux”. Particuliers, indépendants, ou petites entreprises sont mes clients types pour ce genre de service.

Donc, j’aime faire ça et il y a de la demande. Il m’a fallu longtemps pour “publiciser” ce genre de service/formation, principalement parce que les tarifs que je me retrouvais à devoir fixer me semblaient vraiment chers pour des “cours d’informatique”. En attendant, il semble que je fais ça plutôt bien, j’ai un éventail très large de compétences à transmettre ou à mettre à disposition (je peux dépanner l’imprimante, installer l’anti-virus, donner des conseils stylistiques pour la rédaction d’un article, discuter d’une stratégie de publication, raconter les réseaux sociaux, les blogs, ou les CSS, bref, un produit tout-en-un), et je m’adapte à tous les niveaux (de la personne qui découvre tout juste l’informatique — et il y en a! — à l’utilisateur chevronné qui veut parfaire ses connaissances en matière de publication web, par exemple).

Pour les particuliers, disons que c’est un peu un service de luxe (je ne dis pas ça négativement), et pour les indépendants et petites entreprises, l’occasion d’acquérir des compétences avec un suivi très personnalisé (et compétent/à la pointe…).

Voilà — je me dis que je devrais probablement mettre en avant un peu plus ce type de service.

Dans le même ordre d’idées, on m’approche souvent pour “faire un site internet”. Durant longtemps, je crois que je m’y suis prise un peu maladroitement. “Non, je ne fais pas de site internet, mais je vous apprends à le faire et vous accompagne durant le processus.” Alors oui, bien sûr, je peux toujours faire ça. Mais il ne faut pas rêver — le client qui m’approche pour que je lui “fasse un site internet”, même si je le convainc de ce “faire ça bien” implique (pas un problème en général, dans ce sens-là je suis une assez bonne “vendeuse d’idées”), il n’est probablement quand même pas prêt, au fond, à faire le pas (que ce soit, bêtement, en termes de ressources et d’argent à investir).

J’ai fini par comprendre qu’il fallait s’y prendre autrement. Etre un peu pragmatique. Donner aux gens ce qu’ils veulent, même si on croit qu’il est dans leur meilleur intérêt de faire directement autrement. C’est la technique du Cheval de Troie (un bon cheval, dans ce cas): oui, donner ce qui est demandé initialement, mais sous une forme qui permet ensuite d’aller facilement dans la bonne direction.

Une petite digression/parenthèse à ce sujet. C’est une stratégie qui fait un peu usage de manipulation — mais assez légère, explicite, et dans l’intérêt du client. Elle est de cet ordre: c’est la différence entre demander “pouvez-vous SVP signer cette décharge qui nous autorise à mettre des photos de vous prises à cette fête sur internet” et dire “on va prendre des photos et les mettre sur internet, si cela vous pose un problème, merci de nous contacter au plus vite.” Vous voyez l’idée? C’est comme une de mes amies/collègues, qui répondait, quand on lui demandait comment convaincre un employeur de nous laisser bloguer, en tant qu’employé: “ne demandez pas; faites-le, faites-le intelligemment, et quand il commence à y avoir des retours positifs, votre employeur verra de lui-même que ce n’est pas dramatique, d’avoir un employé qui blogue.” (Ce n’est pas une tactique garantie à 100% sûre, mais elle a son mérite — on dit souvent “non” à la nouveauté un peu par principe ou par peur du changement, c’est une réaction normale.)

Donc, quelle est l’idée? Pour une somme relativement modeste (contrairement à d’autres solutions — avant de m’approcher, un de mes clients avait reçu une offre à 2500.- CHF pour un site statique de 5 pages, sans qu’il y ait d’exigeances particulières côté design!) je crée sous WordPress.com le site que désire le client, avec un design “standard” quelque peu personnalisé (logo, image d’en-tête), et le contenu que m’aura fourni le client.

Et c’est là que ça devient intéressant — et pour le client, et pour moi. Le client a son site, et bonus:

  • il peut le mettre à jour lui-même facilement (une fois qu’il a appris, ou bien s’il est débrouille)
  • le jour où il décide de se lancer dans l’aventure “blog”, c’est tout prêt pour
  • s’il veut ajouter des pages, c’est facile et il peut le faire lui-même
  • s’il désire par la suite se payer un design “sur mesure”, il n’y a pas besoin de toucher au contenu (Corinne fait de très beaux thèmes WordPress, par exemple)
  • s’il veut étendre les fonctionnalités du site, tout le contenu peut être migré sur une installation WordPress “serveur”, où l’on peut installer des plugins ou faire tout ce qu’on veut.

Donc, site mis en place à bon marché, et très évolutif.

En ce qui me concerne, si le client s’en tient là (je lui donne les codes d’accès, voilà) je m’y retrouve déjà: mettre en place un site avec du contenu qu’on me fournit est typiquement une prestation pour laquelle je suis payée plus pour mon expertise et mon expérience que pour le temps que j’y passe.

Si le client désire aller plus loin, par exemple être formé à l’utilisation de l’outil (s’il ne s’y retrouve pas par lui-même tout de suite), être coaché pour améliorer le contenu ou en rajouter, découvrir d’autres outils de communication en ligne… Eh bien, vous l’aurez deviné, je me retrouve dans la situation formation/coaching décrite plus haut.

Et si le client désire aller encore plus loin, j’envisage même d’offrir des formules “accès libre” (Martin nous expliquait lors de Going Solo qu’il faisait ça avec certains clients), où le client paie une certaine somme par mois (à négocier) en échange d’un accès “illimité” à mes services. J’ai mis des guillemets, parce que soyons réalistes, il faut tout de même mettre un cadre (je ne deviens pas l’esclave de mon client!) mais cela lui donne la possibilité de faire appel à moi pour séances, coaching, dépannage, e-mails, téléphone, mises à jour tant qu’il a besoin. La base de discussion pour le tarif d’un tel service sera la valeur qu’il a pour le client.

Donc, nous voilà avec deux axes: coaching/formation (très large, “mieux comprendre et utiliser internet, tant du point de vue technique que stratégique”) et fabrication de sites web “simples” (sans fonctionnalités nécessitant du développement particulier).

Il y en a un troisième: les conférences. Que ce soit dans les écoles ou bien ailleurs, c’est quelque chose que je fais depuis le début de ma carrière d’indépendante et pour lequel il y a une demande régulière. Je me dis que du côté des écoles en particulier, je peux être sans difficulté un peu plus proactive à vendre mes services. Un petit explicatif A4 bien présenté que je pourrais faire circuler m’amènerait sans doute plus de mandats de ce genre (jusqu’ici, je n’ai jamais fait aucune promotion pour ça, mis à part annoncer sur mon site que je le faisais).

J’ai donné il y a un mois environ une série de conférences à l’ISL — même si ça faisait depuis février que je n’avais pas parlé sur le sujet, tout est allé comme sur des roulettes et elles ont été extrêmement bien reçues. Je note que ce ne sont plus les blogs qui préoccupent les autorités scolaires (en tous cas en milieu international), mais bien Facebook — un changement de nom, mais la problématique reste largement la même. Je vais devoir me rebaptiser “experte Facebook” pour attirer leur attention 😉

Si vous m’avez lue jusqu’au bout, merci. C’était un article un peu “au fil de mes pensées”, mais ça fait un moment que je rumine ça et je crois que j’avais besoin de le mettre par écrit.

En parallèle, bien entendu, je continue ma vie d’entrepreneur avec Going Solo Leeds (12 Septembre) et les événements à suivre, organisés par Going Far (entreprise en cours de fabrication légale… enfin un de ces jours). Je vais bientôt me mettre à la recherche d’un (ou une!) partenaire business, dans le genre “qui fait les choses et est orienté vente” — toute une aventure dont je vous tiendrai au courant.

Going Solo is Hiring! [en]

[fr] Going Solo cherche un vendeur (sponsoring). Ça se passe en anglais, donc voyez directement les détails de l'annonce ci-dessous.

Wanted: sponsorship salesperson for Going Solo conference

Going Solo is looking for an enthusiastic salesperson to negotiate and finalise sponsorship deals. After a very successful first event in Lausanne, Switzerland, the conference is taking place again in Leeds, UK, on September 12th. There are plans to produce the event elsewhere in Europe and in the US.

Availability: as soon as possible
Remuneration: 20% commission on cash sponsorships
Profile: skilled in negotiating and closing sponsorship deals, knowledge of the tech/freelancing world a plus.

What we provide:

– leads (past sponsors and fresh contacts)
– sponsorship materials

What we expect:

– discuss and amend existing sponsorship offerings
– follow through to closure on provided leads
– other leads can also be explored freely.

If you’re interested or would like more information, get in touch with
Stephanie Booth ([email protected], @stephtara, or steph-booth on
skype).

Going Solo Leeds Registration Open [en]

[fr] Il est désormais possible de réserver sa place pour Going Solo Leeds, qui aura lieu le 12 septembre.

As announced a few days ago on the Going Solo blog, registration for the Leeds conference on September 12th is now open:

Hop along to our partner Expectnation‘s site to sign up right away.

Here’s the deal:

  • Early Bird (first 25 tickets — hurry up some have already been sold!): £150
  • Normal: £220
  • Late Bird (will kick in approx. 10 days before the conference date): £300
  • On-site (if you really want to play it ‘last minute’): £350

A comment or two:

  • for the Lausanne event, the first 25 tickets were sold in under a week
  • there will be advanced seminars (3h workshops) on the Saturday morning — more about them shortly, but know already that if you have already registered for the main conference when they are announced, you will get a special discount on them (they will be open only to conference participants)
  • Jet2.com is a low-cost company that flies to Leeds-Bradford International airport
  • Leeds is 2.5h from London by train (book early, and you could pay as little as £22.50 return)
  • the programme for the main conference is going to be very similar to the Lausanne one (don’t change a winning team) — videos are online for you to have a preview if you wish
  • the Going Solo team is pretty excited about all this!

Of course, let me remind you that Going Solo Lausanne was a nice success, and that you can now check out the videos of the talks online.

Who is Going Solo for?

Going Solo is a one-day event for freelancers and small business owners working in somewhere in the internet industry (designers, consultants, journalists, social media people, developers…) — or even outside of it (we actually think the topics we’ll cover are relevant for all freelancers).

Looking forward to seeing you in Leeds, and thanks for spreading the news around you!

Entry-Level Diagnostic Quizz on eCulture [en]

[fr] J'ai été approchée récemment par Théo Bondolfi de la fondation Ynternet.org, ce qui a débouché sur un premier mandat ou je sers "d'experte culture internet". Nous finalisons un Quizz eCulture de base (servant d'outil diagnostic avant de suivre un cours) mais voulons nous assurer qu'un tel travail n'a pas déjà été fait ailleurs. Jetez un oeil au document de travail pour le quizz (c'est un peu en chenit, vous êtes prévenus).

A week or so ago I was approached by Théo Bondolfi of the Ynternet.org foundation. It seems we are doing a lot of work in similar fields, though our worlds and networks are very alien to one another.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around how they work and what our differences in perspective are. Clearly, their involvement in international projects and high-level local politics is something I’m completely unfamiliar with, being more a product of the “startuppy-immersed” online culture myself. It’s also a very francophone world which is making me feel a little like a foreigner 😉

A first small project I am collaborating on with them is the finalisation of an entry-level diagostic quizz on what they call eCulture, for ycampus. It’s basically a collection of 15-20 questions for beginners on online behaviours and social protocols allowing an optimal use of online tools.

The reason for this blog post is the following: though what we’re doing seems pretty basic, we haven’t been capable of laying our hands on anything similar already in existence. One would assume that this work has already been done somewhere, right?

Particularly as the time available to complete this project is quite limited, we’d like to make sure we’re not reinventing the wheel, here.

The final quizz will be published under a Free license. I’ve made our working document available to the public for reading, so feel free to have a peek if you understand enough French (it’s messy, consider yourself warned).

If you know of anything similar in the works or already published, please let me know.

5 Lessons in Promoting Events Using Social Media (Back to Basics) [en]

[fr] Leçons apprises lors de la promotion de Going Solo:

  • communiquer directement avec les gens (messagerie instantanée, conversation offline, téléphone) est le mode de communication le plus efficace
  • ne pas négliger l'e-mail, les dossiers de presse, le matériel imprimable: tout le monde ne lira pas le blog ou Twiter
  • rien ne devient automatiquement "viral" parce que c'est sur internet: aider les gens à vous aider à passer l'info, par exemple avec un e-mail "forwardable"
  • aller où sont les gens, les retrouver dans leur communauté (Facebook, MySpace, Rezonance, LinkedIn... partout)
  • ça prend du temps... beaucoup de temps

J'ai été surprise à quel point tout ceci a été difficile pour moi, alors qu'une partie de mon métier consiste à expliquer aux gens comment utiliser les nouveaux médias pour communiquer plus efficacement. Une leçon d'humilité, et aussi un retour à certaines choses basiques mais qui fonctionnent, comme l'e-mail ou le chat. En récompense, par contre, un événement qui a été un succès incontesté, et tout cela sans le soutien des médias traditionnels (pour cause de communiqué de presse un poil tardif) -- mis à part nouvo, qui a répercuté l'annonce, mais qui trouvait que c'était cher!

One of the big lessons I learnt while organising Going Solo is that promoting and communicating about an event through social media requires a huge amount of time and energy. In this post, I’d like to share a few of the very practical things I (re-)discovered.

Even though part of what I do for a living is explain social media and its uses in marketing to my clients, I found it quite a challenge when I actually had to jump in and do it. (Yes, I’m aware this may sound pretty lame. By concentrating on the big picture and the inspiring success stories, one tends to forget some very basic things. Sending managers back to the floor every now and then is a good thing.)

The main lesson I learnt is the following:

  • 1. The absolute best channel to promote anything is one-on-one personal conversation with somebody you already have some sort of relationship with.

Any other solution is a shortcut. And all shortcuts have prices.

This means I ended up spending a lot of time:

  • talking to people on IM, IRC, and offline at conferences
  • sending out personal messages on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Anytime you do something to spare you this time (like sending out a collective e-mail, writing a blog post, or even tweeting — situations where you’re not adressing one specific individual directly) you dilute what you’re communicating. You open the door to:

  • imperfect understanding of what you’re trying to say
  • people not feeling like it’s really addressed to them (lack of interest, or lack of awareness that their actions are important to you)
  • people simply not seeing it.

I have many examples of this. I created a page with material people could use to promote Going Solo, in particular, blog sidebar badges. But not many people put them up spontanously, even amongst my friends. But when I started pinging people on IM and asking them if they would please put up a badge to support my event, they did it. They just hadn’t got around to doing it, hadn’t realised that them doing it was important for me, or it had simply slipped their mind. It’s perfectly understandable: it’s “my” event, not theirs.

Another example is when I started sending out my “forwardable e-mails” (lesson #3 is about them), most people stopped at “well, I’m not a freelancer” or “I can’t come”. It took some explaining to make sure they understood that the main reason I was sending them the e-mail was that they might know somebody who would like to come to the event, or who could blog about it, or help with promoting it. If I spared myself the personal conversation and just sent the e-mail, people were much less likely to really understand what I expected from them, even through it was spelled out in the e-mail itself.

And that was a big secondary lesson I learnt while preparing Going Solo: it’s not because people don’t get back to you, or don’t act, that they aren’t interested or don’t want to. The burden is on you to make it as easy as possible for them to help you.

Let’s continue on to the next lessons.

  • 2. Blogs and Twitter are essential, but don’t neglect less sexy forms of communication: newsletter, press release, printable material.

The first thing I did for Going Solo was to create a blog and a Twitter account. Getting a blog and Twitter account off the ground isn’t easy, and it took quite a lot of one-on-one communication (see lesson #1) (and blogging here on CTTS) to get enough people to link to them so that they started taking off.

But the lesson here is that not everybody is on Twitter, and not everbody reads blogs. We highly-connected types tend to forget that. It didn’t take me that long to get the feeling that I had “exhausted” my immediate, social-media-enabled network — meaning that all the people who knew me directly had heard what I was talking about, linked to stuff if they were going to, or registered for the event if they were interested.

So, here are some less “social media cutting-edge” forms of communication I used, most of them very late in the process (earlier next time):

Some comments.

Our press release came out so late that we got no coverage at all from traditional media, bar one exception, which focused on how expensive the event was. This means Going Solo Lausanne is a great case study of successful event promotion entirely through social media.

When I created the newsletter, I spent a lot of time following lesson #1 and inviting people personally to sign up, through IM most of the time. I sent out invitations through the Google Groups interface, of course (to the extent that I got flagged as a potential spammer). But I also went through the process of inviting people directly through IM.

A word of warning about newsletters: don’t add people to your newsletter unless you’ve checked beforehand that they were OK with it, or if you have a very good reason to do so (they are the speakers/attendees for your event) — but even then, it can be risky. I was recently added to a bunch of mailing-lists without having asked for it, rather than invited, and I find it really annoying. It’s way more impolite to unsubscribe from a newsletter than refuse an invitation to subscribe, so adding people can put them in an embarrassing situation (be impolite vs. be annoyed at getting newsletters one doesn’t want).

  • 3. Don’t expect “viral” or “organic” spreading of your promotion to happen, but prepare the field so it can: the forwardable e-mail.

There is so much talk about the fact that social media allows things to spread all by themselves (and indeed, there is an important potential for that, and when it happens, it’s very powerful) — that we tend to expect it to happen and be disappointed when it doesn’t. And let’s face it, it’s not something that we can control (sorry for stating the obvious again, I’m doing that a lot in this post) and it takes quite a bit of skill to create the right conditions so that it may happen.

So, now that we’ve set our expectations, what can be done to help things spread? I mentioned having exhausted my immediate network higher up, so I needed to come up with a solution which would help me reach beyond it. How could I get my friends to mention Going Solo to their friends?

Of course, our use of social media in general allows that. Blogs, Facebook Groups and Events, sidebar badges… all this is material which can spread. But again — what about the people who aren’t bathing in social media from morning to evening?

Back to basics: e-mail. E-mail, be it under the shape of a newsletter, a discussion list, or simple personal messages, has a huge advantage over other forms of online communication: you’re sure people know how to use it. It’s the basic, level 0 tool that anybody online has and understands.

So, I started sending out e-mail. A little bit of push is good, right? I composed a rather neutral e-mail explaining what Going Solo was about, who it was for, giving links to more information, and a call to action or two. I then sent this impersonal text to various people I knew, with a personal introduction asking them to see if they knew anybody who could be interested in information about this event, and inviting them to forward the message to these people. Nothing extraordinary in that, right?

I of course applied lesson #1 (you’re starting to know that one, right?) and tried as much as possible to check on IM, beforehand, if it was OK for me to send the “forwardable e-mail” to each person. So, basically, no mass-mailing, but an e-mail written in such a way that it was “forwardable” in a “here’s what my friend Steph is doing, could interest you” way, which I passed along as a follow-up to a direct chat with each person.

In a more “social media” spirit, of course, make sure that any videos you put online can easily be shared and linked to, etc. etc — but that will be pretty natural for anybody who’s familiar with blogging and “being online”.

  • 4. Go where people are. Be everywhere.

Unless your event is already very well known, you need to go to people, and not just wait for them to come to you. If you’ve set up a blog, Twitter account, newsletter, then you have a place where people can come to you. But that’s not enough. You need to go where people are:

  • Facebook
  • Upcoming
  • LinkedIn
  • Xing
  • MySpace
  • Pownce
  • Seesmic
  • Existing communities big and small… (blogs, forums, chatrooms)

Again, this is a very basic principle. But it’s not because it’s basic that it’s invalidated by the magic world of social media. Where you can create an event, create an event (Upcoming, Facebook, Pownce, Rezonance — a local networking thingy); where you can create a group, create a group — I waited a lot before creating a Facebook group for Going Solo, because I had a fan page for it already, but as you can see the group worked much better.

  • 5. It’s a full-time job.

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d spend weeks doing nothing else but send e-mails, update Facebook pages, blog, send e-mails, talk to people, IM, tweet, e-mail again… to promote Going Solo. It’s a huge amount of work. It’s so much work that one could imagine having somebody full time just to do it. So when you’re (mainly) a one-person shop, it’s important to plan that a significant amount of your time might be spent on promotion. It’s easy to underestimate that (I did, and in a major way).

Working this way doesn’t scale. At some point, one-on-one communication takes up too much time and energy to compensate for the benefits it brings over more impersonal forms of communication. But that only happens once your event is popular enough. Before you’ve held your first event (which was the situation I was in with Going Solo Lausanne), you don’t have a community of advocates for your work, you don’t have fans (you might have personal fans, but not fans of your event) or passionate attendees ;-), you don’t have other people doing your work for you.

At the beginning, every person who hears about your event is the result of sweat and hard work. Hopefully, at some point it’ll take off and you’ll start seeing more and more people blogging about the event you’re organising — but even then, it might take a while before you can just sit back and watch things happen. But in case this moment comes earlier than planned, you’re all set: you have a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook group and a newsletter. Until then, though, you’re going to be stuck on IM and sending out e-mails.

A few last words

I hope that by sharing these lessons with you, I’ll have contributed to making things a little easier for somebody else in the same situation I was. You’ll have understood that I haven’t tried to be exhaustive about how to use social media for promotion — indeed, I’ve skipped most of the “advanced” stuff that is more often spoken about.

But I think it’s easy to get so taken up with the “latest and greatest” tools out there that we forget some of the basic stuff. I, for one, was guilty of that initially.

Also, one thing I haven’t spoken about is how to talk to people. Of course, some of what you’re doing is going to be impersonal. Own up to it, if you’re mass e-mailing. Don’t pretend to be personal when you aren’t — it’s hypocritical, doesn’t come across well, and can be smelled a mile away.

I haven’t quite finished reconciling my practical experience with how I believe things “should” work. I’ve learnt a lot, but I certainly haven’t figured everything out yet. I would have wanted to do a lot more, but time simply wasn’t available, so I tried to prioritize. I made choices, and some of them were maybe mistakes. But overall, I’m happy with how things went and what I learnt.

If you have had similar experiences, I’d be really happy to hear from you. Likewise, if you disagree with some of the things I’ve written, or think I’m wrong on certain counts, do use the comments. I’m open to debate, even though I’m a bit hard-headed ;-).

Lots of Going Solo News [en]

[fr] Des nouvelles de Going Solo. Plein de nouveau! Mais pas le courage d'écrire en français. Au pire, filez sur la page presse où vous trouverez de la documentation en français au sujet de la conférence.

Gosh, I can’t remember when I posted the last Going Solo update on this blog. The conference is in less than a week! I can’t believe it.

You should really, really, really subscribe to the Going Solo blog to keep up with what’s going on on that front, or sign up for the newsletter if you’d rather get an e-mail every now and again.

Yes, Going Solo finally has a newsletter! And posters! And an agenda, speaker interviews, a bunch of great sponsors and partners (attendees will have a chance to win a FreshBooks Shuttle Bus package, get MOO goodies, and even see men in white. If you’re having trouble keeping track of where to find Going Solo online, this round-up post should help you.

Oh, and we have pre-conference and post-conference events organized, quite a bit of bandwidth at the venue (wifi of course), and we’re all set to film the sessions on the big day.

Phew. What am I missing? Oh yes, we’re going to be able to keep registration open this week (the kind people at the Albatros-Navigation are flexible enough to allow us to do that). I need to write a note about that on the Going Solo blog. And we have a press page where you can download shiny PDFs both in French and English.

Funnily, my stress levels are going down these days. I mean, we’re almost all set, aren’t we? I might bite my tongue for saying that these next days, though…

Educational Versus Inspirational Events [en]

[fr] Going Solo vise à être une conférence qui non seulement donne de l'inspiration, mais qui enseigne également. Du coup, préparer le programme ne consiste pas simplement à trouver des orateurs pouvant faire des présentations autour d'un thème donné, mais ressemble beaucoup plus à la préparation d'un plan d'études: il y a tant de matière à couvrir, et il faut trouver les bonnes personnes pour le faire.

It was clear to me from the start, when I started imagining Going Solo, that the programme would be built in such a way as to cover a range of topics I thought were relevant. What I didn’t realize is that this is quite different from having a conference/event “theme” and hunting for speakers who have something to say around that theme.

I’ve many times tried to express that although Going Solo is not a workshop or a training session, it is training-like, but I never quite seemed to find a way to explain this clearly. I wanted to say “yes, it’s a conference, but the aim is for people to learn stuff they can use when they walk out.” I think I’ve nailed it now, though: Going Solo is educational more than inspirational.

Most conferences I go to fall in the “inspirational” category. Of course, I learn things there, but mainly, I am inspired, or lifted (if the conference is LIFT). When I planned my Open Stage speech to present Going Solo to the audience at LIFT (watch the video), I wanted it to be inspirational. It’s not a video that teaches you anything, but that inspires you to attend Going Solo (and it did indeed inspire people!)

Even if the conference theme is more technical, and the sessions actually teach you stuff, most often it is a series of related sessions grouped together around a given theme. Reboot is a perfect example of how a theme is used to collect all sorts of contributions.

Not so for Going Solo. Putting together the programme for Going Solo feels much more like being in charge of defining the teaching programme for an academic year (only it’s a day, thank goodness, not a year). At the end of the day, I want the programme to have covered this, that and that. I try to organize the content into sessions, and then I talk with my speakers to see who can cover what.

I’m realizing now that this is the difficult bit — and as a speaker myself, I should have thought of this before. “Speaker topics” do not necessarily match “Steph-defined sessions” — which means I need to go back and reshuffle my sessions (perfectly doable, but it’s more work) to avoid overlaps and important topics slipping through the cracks.

Has anybody had similar experiences? And for any people reading who speak at conferences, if you agree on a topic with the chair and you’re asked to make sure your talk covers aspects x, y and z of the topic, does it make you feel micro-managed? Or is it something that happens regularly?

Partial cross-post from the Going Solo blog. Also on the Going Far blog.

Becoming a Professional Networker: Tags in Address Book OSX Needed! [en]

[fr] Besoin, de toute urgence: plugin Address Book.app permettant de taguer ses contacts.

For some time now, I’ve been aware that I’m becoming a professional networker. Almost all I do to promote Going Solo, for example, relies on my reputation and the connections I have to other people.

Now, I’ve never been somebody to collect contacts just for the sake of collecting contacts, but until LeWeb3 last year, I had just been content with butterflying around and stacking business cards somewhere near by desk. At LeWeb3, when I started telling people about Going Solo, I also started realising that the people I met and contacts I made were going to have more importance for my business than before.

And if I’ve learnt something during these last two months, it’s the importance of getting back to people. I’ve figured out how iGTD and GMail can play nice together to help me with that, but it’s not sufficient. I need to keep track of who I’ve asked what, of who can help me with what, who has this or that connection. And yes, I have too many people in my business network to keep everything in my head.

As I explain in the video above, the lovely Cathy Brooks put me on the right track: use Address Book.app. I don’t really need to keep all the contact details related to a person close at hand (ie, phone number, e-mail, etc.) because I have that in LinkedIn, Facebook, GMail address book, or on business cards. I’m not interested in keeping an exhaustive repository of all the contact details of all the people I’ve met. What I’m interested in, however, is keeping the names of these people somewhere I can attach meaningful information to them.

Where we met. What we talked about. Stuff that’ll help me remember who people are.

So, I started simply adding names (Firstname Lastname) into my OSX address book, along with a few words in the Notes field. The nice thing about the Notes field is that you don’t have to toggle edit mode on to add stuff in the Notes. So, of course, I started using the notes field to tag people. Not too bad (smart folders allow me to “pull out” people with a certain tag) but not great either, because tags get mixed up with notes, and it’s a bit clunky.

Somebody suggested I create a custom “Tags” field (a “Names” type field is fine). Unfortunately, though this looks like a good idea at first, it fails because you have to edit a contact each time you want to add tags. Also, you can’t create a smart folder based on the contents of that field — you need to search through the whole card. Clunky too.

I don’t know how to write Address Book plugins, but I know they exist, and I have an idea for a plugin that would save my life (and probably countless others) and which doesn’t seem very complex to build. If there’s anybody out there listening… here’s a chance to be a hero.

I want a “tag your contacts” plugin for Address Book.app. What would it do? Simple, add a “Tags” field that behaves similarly to the “Notes” field. That would allow me to separate notes and tags — they aren’t quite the same thing, don’t you agree?

In addition to that, the plugin could display a list of all contacts tagged “thisorthat” when you double-clicked the tag. That would be nice.

Does anybody else want this? Does it already exist? Would anybody be willing to build it? (If other people are interested, I’d be willing to suggest we pool some cash to donate to the kind person building this life-saving plugin.)