What’s in a Name? The Art of Naming Conferences

I’m currently directly involved with promoting two events (Admission and Teach Úll). In an effort to spread the word about both, I thought I would write a short series of posts about how I think about conference design. This is the second of the series, after “The Importance of Concept in Event Design”.

Earlier today my friend Anthony tweeted:

Have we reached peak startup summit yet? Seems like everyone is holding a summit. Maybe I should hold a summit? In the South of France… hmmm

Naming a conference is one of those things that really sets the scene for what the event is about. It also places a fence around the expectations that folks have before they arrive.

Tito cut its teeth on conferences for programming languages: JSConf, JSConf EU, RubyConf, CSSConf, ng-conf, etc. etc. If I were running a straight up programming language conf, I can’t say I would veer too much from this model. Names like this bring an official, authoritative air to the event.

This appeal to authority is also important for sponsor-led events, which leads to the kind of Summit-itis that Anthony references above.

Imagine if The Beatles were called “The Rock’n’Roll meets Innovation Group” or the Rolling Stones were “The Irreverent English Rocker Troupe”. That’s the kind of thing I think of when I see generic names like Tech Forum or Leaders Summit.

I want the names of my events to spark as much delight as the experiences themselves. A delightful name has several components. It should stand alone by itself as an interesting word. It should reflect the content of the event. And then, if possible, it should have multiple layers.

Please allow me to pander to a customer, but “Signal by Twilio” is one of my favourite conference names. Twilio as a company produce telephony apps. What is the heart of telephony? Signal of course! Signal is a clean, simple, attractive word. Signal is signal as opposed to noise, which is exactly what you want at a conference. Signal is a verb that implies momentum, or following a lead. As an adjective it implies way-finding, but also excellence. At its very essence, it evokes communication. How easy would it have been to settle for “TwilioCon” or “Internet Telephony Summit”. Instead they have a name that soars.

Inspired by names like along the lines Signal, Build, Frontiers, I’ve always tried to put a bit of thought into the events that I’ve been a part of naming.

The first event I named was Funconf. Honestly, this was a bit lazy. A friend suggested that we organise a “Fun Conference” and the rest is history. Funconf did what it said on the tin, but it also contained “unconf”, which implied that we were doing something different, and indeed “func” which was a nod to the tech-y bias of the audience.

In the middle of Funconf, The Çingleton Symposium caught my eye and I was intrigued by its ability to be irreverent-yet-relevant. Úll was born out of my admiration of that “Ç” right up there at an event that was so popular that it sold out in seconds each year. Úll, “a conference about Apple in Ireland”, means “Apple” in Irish. You see it on alphabet charts in books about learning the language. Its pronunciation trips non-Irish folks up, but that’s all part of the fun.

This year, I’ve added “Teach” to “Úll” to get “Teach Úll”. “Teach Úll” means “Apple house” or “House of Apple”, and serves as a teaser for the concept. Úll (pronounced “ool”) is ever so pun-able, and we’ve used that to good effect in the past (a soft-drink called úll-ade, a carpúll karaoke parody video.) Teach Úll is all this and more. Conveniently, the English word, teach, is all about learning. The pronunciation in Irish leads to all sorts of potential for wordplay that I can’t wait to punch out 🥊.

And that brings me to Admission. What can I say, but I firmly believe that we have a name here that rivals Signal in appropriateness. Admission is a conference for folks who design events. A dictionary search yields gold:

- the act of allowing to enter

- right or permission to enter:

- the price paid for entrance, as to a theater or ball park.

- an act or condition of being received or accepted in a position, profession, occupation, or office; appointment:

- confession of a charge, an error, or a crime; acknowledgment:

- an acknowledgment of the truth of something.

- a point or statement admitted; concession.

What better a word for an event featuring folks sharing their stories about event design, hosted by a company that provides ticket-selling services. Colour us proud.

The naming conversation is a tough one though. For every event, there must certainly be a perfect name, but it’s difficult to settle on one name when there are infinite possibilities. Hard problems in computer science are just as hard in event production.

The naming of Admission took almost a month of head-scratching, procrastination, desperation and trawling through lists. When our Vicky first included it in a list of suggestions, I initially dismissed it outright, not noticing it until it was pronounced out loud in a subsequent meeting.

But there it is: a name that reflects the event, that we think looks great in lights, and works on so many levels.

Naming is hard, but like all things that you create in private and then share with the world, once it’s out there, it belongs to everyone. To me, it’s worth it to those folks to put in the effort.

The next article in this series is about the joy of constraints.

Admission is in Chicago September 24+25 and Úll is November 13+14. I’d love to see you at either of them.