What I learned from organising an international conference
I, along with a brilliant team of women, dedicated the first half of 2019 to planning Talk UX, an international UX conference led by, and highlighting the brilliant work of women.
In many ways, it was amazing. We had a stellar lineup of women I respect and admire. And seeing it all come together was just utterly wonderful. But it was not all plain sailing. So if you’re thinking of getting involved in something like this in future, here are my tips and failings.
It’s not easy
That might sound like a no-brainer — hear me out. We ran the conference on an entirely voluntary basis. It was hours and hours of work, across 9 months (on top of full time jobs), with the only reward being seeing the end result and hearing the brilliant feedback. I don’t regret or mind that (and I’d been a volunteer at Ladies that UX Manchester for some years, so I had some concept of what I was getting myself into). I didn’t expect it to be easy. But I didn’t expect it to be quite so hard or intense either!
And it’s terrifying — bringing in sponsorship (going from asking for a few hundred pounds for LTUX local meetups, to thousands for the conference), selling tickets and making the numbers work. Creating a compelling lineup and proposition — I had a constant fear of failure.
But, as we’ll learn, I tend to get excited and jump into things feet first. Oh Llara.
Clarity and expectations
This was one of my big learning curves. I made the assumption that, as we assembled our team, we’d all have the same level of commitment to the project. And, having agreed on communication methods and tools up-front, I expected that folk would crack on as agreed and that we’d contribute fairly. It didn’t always work out that way. Here are my key learnings for creating clarity in the team:
Define volunteer roles and expectations as early as possible. These can evolve, and new roles will be created as you move forward, but have them in writing and agreed to. This leaves no room for ambiguity or for things to slip through the net.
Have volunteer contracts. We didn’t do this to begin with (we brought them in part way through), as we’d mostly worked on Ladies that UX together previously, so we just ploughed ahead. But, in retrospect, we should have had contracts agreed so that people were clear about what was being asked of them and we were all in agreement. We were fortunate that we started out with good relationships, but, when things weren’t delivered or done, it really tested the team. Similarly, some pieces of work were more challenging than anticipated (I’m looking at you creaky old wordpress site), meaning more demand on team members. I’d suggest including:
- What time commitment do you require? Do you require flexibility in that?
- How are people expected to contribute (in relation to their role)?
- Within what time frame?
- What about deadlines?
Note that the point isn’t about enforcing anything, rather ensuring crystal clear understanding from everyone. It’s hard to lead a team, but it’s even harder to lead a team of volunteers when you know there’s zero recompense for the hard work people are putting in.
Define tools and communication methods and ensure they’re covered in contracts and that everyone understands them. Because, as sure as you can bet you’ll be getting frustrated when something hasn’t been delivered on time, you can probably wager that the person who hasn’t delivered doesn’t have Trello notifications on or forgot that the deadline was fixed and there were dependencies. One thing we found was that if we had an in-person brainstorm, we usually got great contributions. Asking for people to add ideas etc to Trello often resulted, in a deafening silence.
The other area where clarity was super important for us and, where I think I failed, was in fully understanding the support we’d get from the parent organisation. I often felt out of my depth and unsupported — had I insisted on having, in writing, what we could expect, it would have helped. If you’re planning or organising an event that already has some infrastructure in place, be really clear about how they will or won’t help. Ask for anything previous teams have stumbled on or been challenged by. And ask exactly what role they’ve played in the past, to give you an idea of how they can and will help. Things we found tough included:
- Sponsorship support — what contacts do they have and where, and what’s expected of you? What time will they put into sponsorship, and what’s your responsibility?
- Money — we made the mistake of assuming that there’d be bank accounts, invoices etc in place, as this was the 5th time Talk UX ran. But there was nothing set up. We had to open accounts, register a non-profit business, set up invoicing from scratch. It was time consuming and frustrating and, while it needed to be done, if we’d been clearer, we could have better planned for it.
Tickets are not the be all and end all(!)
Yes, you need to sell tickets! But do the sums and figure out how many that needs to be and where your flex comes in. After a point, it becomes about bums on seats. Bear in mind, this was not-for-profit, so we perhaps had a degree of luxury that a conference run by a business doesn’t have.
Control (and letting go of it)
You can’t control it all. You have to let some of it go. I suspect I’m a bit of a nightmare because, as I mentioned at the start, I get excited and jump into things and I want to be involved in everything and make sure it’s all great. But you can’t control everything.
Make sure you have people around you that can be trusted with key elements. We did have that. Shouts to Fianna the Banka, Yun, our Design Queen, Tamara, Goddess of Tech, and Jenni High Priestess of organisation and making shit happen.
Having these women around (plus Lizzie and Fern — Speaker Liaison Extraordinaire — and all of our on-the-day team) meant that, when I HAD to let go entirely to go drop a sprog (he arrived just shy of 5 weeks before the conference date), I did it with confidence and, I’ll be honest, more than a little relief!
Diversity
I found it really hard to create a diverse speaker line up. Our only stipulation was that speakers be women, or identifying as (in line with Ladies that UX founding principles). I had some women in mind that I really wanted to invite to be involved and we were super lucky that they agreed. And we had some potential speakers refer us to others. When it came to compiling the rest of the lineup, I trawled LinkedIn, read blogs and websites and got in touch with anyone whose experience looked of interest — I was keen that we didn’t have the same faces that are all over the conference circuit and that we offered up opportunities to new speakers, as well as the experienced.
We had some racial diversity (arguably not enough), and no diversity in terms of disability. It’s something I feel somewhat ashamed to write, because I wonder if it’s reflective of my network. I suspect there’s also an element of it being reflective of Tech and UX in general (diversity and visibility is part of why Ladies that UX exists at all). But I feel embarrassed to say “I tried and didn’t have much luck”. This is something I’m working on trying to unpick for myself. Meantime, if you have any advice for anyone in a similar situation, I’m all ears and am happy to share.
Know your weak points
Oh, will you ever get to know them. I’m impatient and get frustrated when deadlines aren’t met. And, as I mentioned, I get excited by things to begin with and then that fades…
I did DISC profiling with work last year. As a general rule, I take these things with a pinch of salt, suspecting a large degree of confirmation bias to be at play. But, let’s roll with it. One of my dominant traits was… Dominant. Of Dominants (yes, I know how it sounds), they say “They are self-starters and because of their multiple interests, they prefer an ever-changing environment. May lose interest in a project once the challenge is gone and prefer others to complete the job to an obvious conclusion.”
Guilty.
As.
Charged.
I just finished the hems on a vintage jumpsuit I bought about three years ago. I changed the buttons on it about 6 months ago. I have a load of perspex from when I decided I was going to start making perspex jewellery. Ooh, I really should get back to that! You get the picture.
Know your weak points. And figure out what you’re going to do about them.
I was definitely worried about what that might mean for delivering the event. And Lizzie and Fianna didn’t have time around their other responsibilities to help deliver. Which is where Jenni came in. I had the initial excitement, I had the control and then we had a right-hand-woman whose left hand held a clipboard with relish. We also involved an events specialist with on the day delivery.
Know your weak points. And figure out what you’re going to do about them.
- You WILL feel like a nag — with the team, with suppliers (do you even look at your email? Do you even want business?)
- You WILL feel like a party pooper (no, we don’t have the budget/people power to do that)
- You WILL wonder why you ever got involved in the first place
But it’s so fucking satisfying seeing it come together. Rolling up with my 4 week old baby and seeing what we’d achieved was mind blowing. Seeing the venue look incredible, hearing the fantastic speakers and listening to feedback, was just wonderful. My goodness I was glad it was over though.
If you’re considering doing something similar, I hope you’re able to take something from this. Be realistic. What can you commit? Are you prepared for it to take over? Do you have, or can you recruit a solid team? I spent evenings, weekends and lunch breaks on it. I was writing and scheduling social content on my commute.
Am I glad I did it? Yes.
Would I do it again? No.
But I say that about half marathons and am at three of those. I just get excited and want to get stuck in…
