Hi <<First Name>> and welcome to the first issue of the Conference Basics Tribune!
In this edition we talk about how to disrupt the event industry, what interesting startups from TechCrunch Disrupt SF could be useful for organizing your next gig and how The Melt, a grilled cheese joint, offers the key to improving registration logistics. Also, discover new apps, books and meet Laurent Haug, founder of the Lift Conference.
Conferences NEED to be disrupted
The event industry is growing more than ever. The Digital Age has not killed in-person events as many predicted but reinforced our need to meet beyond the screen. Despite all these new forces in play, the industry has become quite mediocre, filled with what at times seems an unstoppable inertia for how we used to run events 5, 10 or even 50 years ago.
Luke Williams, author of
Disrupt, Professor of Innovation at NYU Stern School of Business and fellow at
frog, notes how the event sector is
“ripe for disruption” and proposes a
5-step process a conference organizer can apply to create a new disruptive experience for the participants and the event business itself.
[Read more]
8 Interesting Startups for Conference Organizers
TechCrunch Disrupt SF took place on September 12-14, 2011, and while the conference part of it was rather traditional (and boring due to the abuse of the
"fireside chat" format), quite a few newborn startups were presented and I selected 8 that could be useful for conference organizers (if they ever make it out of alpha or early beta).
[Read more]
Registration Lessons From The Melt Restaurant
The Melt is a new fast-food joint focusing on making the best ever grilled-cheese sandwich and was founded by Flip camera creator
Jonathan Kaplan. Kaplan created an interesting way to handle the order-queue-delivery workflow that could as well be applied to the always messy registration of a conference.
Speaker Highlight: Simon Sinek
Helping Others For Fulfillment [The 99% Conference]
Simon Sinek speaks about the benefits from changing the focus from a “taker” attitude (it’s all about me) to become a “giver”. Corporations usually behave as takers with their marketing & advertising campaigns talking about how good they are, how better than the other, etc and failing to acknowledge that 100% of their customers are people, as 100% of clients and 100% of employees are.
[Read more]
Humor
Aww how I hate speakers who's presentation is all about themselves and their greateness. [Vignette by the always inspiring
Gaping Void, btw I do recommend you subscribe to his
newsletter]
Featured Organizer
Laurent Haug - Lift Conference
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Name: Laurent Haug
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Role: Founder and curator, Lift
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Upcoming event: Lift12, Geneva (CH), 22-24 february 2012
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Url of the event: http://liftconference.com/
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For how long have you been in the event business: Since 2005, by total accident ;)
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Something new you'll be doing at your next event: Putting people that never gave a talk on stage.
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Your biggest upcoming challenge: capturing part of the value we create for people.
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The accomplishment you're most proud of: changing lives: Lift helped create several businesses, put a lot of amazing people on the media map, increased the impact of constructive ideas, and a few people even met their partners ;)
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An event you admire: Mastermundo, because it is completely free of the usual constraints of location, recurrence, etc.
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The best networking tool: wine
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A personal hobby: american football, the indiana jones pinball machine, and attending slow food events.
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Contact info: @laurenthaug, laurent@liftconference.com
