5 Things I’ve learned while organizing a TEDx event
It’s over. TEDxAlmendraMedieval was a dream. And now it’s over.
It all started a year and a half ago when a friend brought up the idea of organizing a TEDx event in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Sounded nice. I enrolled the help of another friend and applied for the license. It took the TED Foundation more than 3 months to reply. We then had to choose an appropriate name, following the — at that time — new TEDx rules for it, and started working on the vision we had in mind.
As a TEDx license owner, I had to strictly follow TEDx’s rules. There’s a rule (or a recommendation) for almost everything you can imagine. Anything you might think of, someone has thought of before you. There’re guidelines for sponsoring, for volunteering, for the speakers, for finding a venue… I’ve been organizing events (as an amateur) for years and these rules didn’t make my role easier. I understand, however, they are there to ensure all TEDx events are produced in the same way and have the same scent, whether they take place in Vitoria-Gasteiz, in Honolulu, or in Petah Tikva.
You’re given the license for a year’s time. As an organizer, this isn’t much time unless you already have the whole picture of what you want to do in mind. If you are, as I am, an individual with no other support than your network, let me tell you some things I’ve learned on the way.
Leadership
Taking on the leadership might cause you problems, but someone has to do it. It’s up to you to take it on or leave it to another team member.
You can delegate things to others, but at the end of the day, someone has to deal with the problems when they come up (and they will come up, trust me). Don’t expect others to listen to you if you have not made the decision to lead them. Besides, there’s always going to be someone who thinks he is doing all the dirty work, or who thinks he is working more than the others, or who thinks his job is more difficult.
Even though the decision-making process is supposed to be democratic, someone has to make the last determinations or has to have the final say. Just settle your own rules before you start doing things.
Funding
Fundraising is tough. It has been, by far, the most difficult of all the issues we’ve dealt with. Maybe it’s because of the financial situation in Spain, maybe it’s because there are the elections just around the corner…, I don’t know. It’s possible to organize a TEDx event with a low budget (I can tell you!) but there’s still a basic list of things you need to do and most of them require a minimum amount of money.
You’re given a comprehensive guide on how to approach any possible collaborators and sponsors but, just in case, make a couple of budgets (depending on the funds you finally raise) and adjust to them if you don’t want to end up out of pocket!
To-do lists
Regardless of the way you organize the TEDx (and regardless of the TEDx rules), it is imperative to set to-do lists and name a responsible person for each list. We established an administration, a communications and logistics and a tech team, but you can set as many teams (and lists) as you want.
Remember, though, there’s a last-minute list to which everybody should contribute. As soon as you think of something, that is, water for the speakers or who is going to help the audience during the coffee break, write it down. Even if you think it’s a dumb something, point it out! Maybe nobody else has thought of it before.
Anxiety
No matter how many times you’ve done this before, no matter how far in advance you have prepared things, the last weeks before the TEDx become a crescendo of craziness. You will receive hundreds of mails and calls, hundreds of IMs (on different platforms and at the same time!). You will have the feeling of not reaching what you were supposed to… many times a day. You will be stressed as hell and you need to know that this is the way it works. It’s alright. Just step aside and you’ll see things differently. If this doesn’t work, go cycling, take a nap, or turn the music up loud. Or remember the “keep calm and carry on” motto; sometimes, this helps too.
It’ll pass
As I said, the two weeks before the event are a complete madness and you think all the time that everything’s out of hand, while, somewhere inside, you know it isn’t (hopefully). All these butterflies in the stomach will vanish magically when you wake up the morning of the event. What’s done is done. As for what’s not done, there’s little you can do, so why worry about it.
Soon enough, the event will be over and you will remember only the good things, and you’ll start thinking about your next adventure.
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