Five Things I Learned Running an Event for the First time
Or, A Letter to Myself Before My Event.
The tea was made, the bunting was up, the volunteers strategically placed across the site. The bell tents stood firm in the field, under the flap and snap of festival flags. The attendees were on their way.
For the 6th time anywhere, 150 entrepreneurs, founders, thought-leaders and changemakers were gathering together in the Sussex countryside for The Happy Startup Summercamp. For the 2nd time, I was there, and for the very first time I was in charge.
It went. Now we’re back. And I’m finally ready to talk about it.
Here’s the breakdown of what I’ve managed to fish out of the swirling mass of memory, for the enormous benefit of my past self. If you’re about to do an event, or if you’ve just done one, this goes out to you too.
1. Everything will go wrong
Let me rephrase that. Not wrong exactly, but most things will go differently and if you don’t have your wits about you in the moment, they might go wrong. I had a minute-by-minute schedule of every single thing that was going to happen clutched in my trembling hand for the whole weekend, which was, at times, only symbolic.
Embrace the chaos. Destroy the clipboard. Become the clipboard. Destroy the self.
2. Only you will notice
The stuff that you look after, the behind the scenes stuff, is meant to be invisible anyway. As long as it gets done somehow, and stays invisible, you’ve gotten away with it.
The thing about Summercamp specifically is that after being there for a bit, everybody stops checking their watches. They start to enjoy standing around waiting for something, because they can talk to each other for longer. It’s very sweet. And convenient.
3. You are not a glamorous hostess, and that’s fine.
You are all the way out of your comfort zone, and you’ve proven a lot to yourself by getting to this point. One thing you can’t do yet is smile and seem fine.
Smiling comes with practise, smiling comes afterwards, smiling comes when you’ve been doing this for years, and when all your plates are up and spinning faster and faster you know (because you’ve seen it before) it’s all going to be OK.
But if this is your first time, it’s gonna feel like it won’t. Every time.
The best thing you can do for the attendees’ experiences when this is happening is to stay out of sight/earshot. Otherwise they might hear this kind of thing:
“An extra five MINUTES? But it’s not IN THE SCHEDULE. You DO REALISE that time will have to be SHAVED OFF something ELSE.”
4. Recruit a team you can trust
So you’re there, you’re at your limit, your brain is goo, your body is broken from a few weeks of not-enough-sleep and your heart is a wasted sack dripping adrenaline like a damp swimming costume abandoned on a rock.
You’ve still got a lot of information in your head, and a couple of tricks up your sleeve, and, if you’re extremely lucky, you’ve got a handful of golden souls around you who AREN’T abandoned swimming costumes. People with ideas, people with bright bleary eyes who (even though you didn’t tell them to) make sure stuff gets done.
Because the minute-by-minute schedule could never, ever, actually cover everything that was gonna happen. Not only because this is your first go but also because this is life! This is living! This is event management! The best thing you did for yourself (maybe the only good thing) was gathering together these people, so that you could wave vaguely at the clipboard and the field and say something like ‘Can you…look after that bit?’ and they do. They look after it, and they look after you too.
Delegate. Trust other people to do it, because honestly they are gonna do it so much better than you will at this point. Then take a nap.
5. Schedule in healing time
On the first day afterwards you feel free, impossibly light, somehow too light, like you might leave the floor. Then, you sleep. For a few days you can’t fathom the idea of going outside. You make plans and cancel them. You stay indoors.
I can’t stress this enough, you won’t feel like doing anything ever, ever again, but if you’ve got a grain of energy anywhere for changing the scene, do it! The duvet cave could stretch for months if it needs to. I needed a week. Then I needed to go out and remind myself how small I am in the world.
Go to a new city, go somewhere full of inspiring stuff, whatever that means for you.
When I came back, I was myself again, and I was ready to talk about it. The clouds cleared and I could remember the parts I actually really loved! The things I treasured from that weekend, the people I met and the thing we made together.
People have been telling me I should be very proud, and for a while I couldn’t feel it. At Summercamp itself it felt a bit like I couldn’t afford to let my guard down, to stop holding the reigns for a second, and being thanked was a step towards that.
It’s finished now, so my guard is officially down. Anything that happens in that field is no longer any of my business. And now…I am grateful. I do feel proud.
Sophie works and writes for the Happy Startup School, an online community and a handful of life-changing annual gatherings for finding inspiration, connection and maybe even your true calling.
If you’d like to find out more about Summercamp, our online community or one of our Alptitude retreats, visit the website.
