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360Conferences

Lessons learned in Online Events

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So 360|AnDev 2020 Online was last week. It went well. Really well.

The biggest compliment was that several people said that while it wasn’t the same as in-person, it still felt very friendly and community-focused. That means a lot to me!

Let’s dive in!

Technology

We used Hopin.to. They’ve more or less become the de-facto platform for online events. Which is a shame, because they’re clearly not event people. The platform is mostly fine, for sure an 80% solution, but where it falters, it falters big.

To get around a few of hopin’s shortcomings, we used Streamyard, which I like a lot. It’s not perfect, but it wasn’t meant for online events, it’s a live streaming platform.

Hopin

The biggest problem we found was the sessions, which are barcamp style in nature. The organizer can create them, put them in the schedule, but they can also be created on the fly by attendees. I like that an attendee can stand up a session, that’s kind of like, “Let’s go to the lobby and talk about your idea.”

Except, sessions don’t show up as viewable, until the minute they’re set to start. If you click into the “sessions” section of the site, and it’s a minute before a session starts, no sessions are visible… WEAK. This is fine for the ones attendees created, but kinda weak if you’re trying to use sessions as your second track.

Overall the sponsor support is pretty weak, but better than most others I found. Thankfully (I guess?) Many sponsors have pulled out of events this year.

Hopin found themselves the big dog and I think weren’t prepared. Their support is lacking, their sales channel is give us all your money or walk away, we don’t want to talk to you.

  • Want to embed their ticketing on your site, can’t.
  • Want to have a second stage (for two tracks)? $12,000/year for Pro.
  • Want to use your own ticketing system and import attendees? Cough up that twelve grand.
  • Want an answer to your support email? Maybe the twelve grand will do it? Without it, you can expect a week or more for a reply, if you get one at all.
  • The Pro thing includes a few other features, none that are worth that price.

[Edited to add]

Hopin provides mostly useless data. I had assumed I’d get views by hour (to sync against the schedule), who went into the ‘sessions’ area. Who visited sponsor booths. NOPE.

Useless Hopin report.
Who cares, right?
Certainly not important…

Honestly, overall Hopin does the barebones job I need it to do, but that’s it. My sponsors certainly aren’t thrilled since I couldn’t even tell them who came to their booth.

Streamyard

Streamyard is a great backstage/TV Studio experience. You can upload overlays, banners, tickers, logos, etc. and add them into your stream at will. This was great for doing sponsor lower/side thirds.

My Co-host and I were both logged in so each of us could mange these aspects, turn speaker streams on, etc. It was very nice.

I found only two things that I didn’t like about Streamyard. The first is just inconvenient; You can upload animated overlays, but the file size limits were, for me impossible to meet. No movie file I created was even close to the max Streamyard can handle. So all my overlays are images that just “pop” in and out of existence, which is not awesome, but not bad. I’d have prefered for them to slide in and out nicely.

The other issue was bigger. They don’t have a way to support pre-recorded conference talks. This is annoying but understandable. Streamyard is a live streaming platform. I’m sure online conferences are a new thing for them (Thanks COVID-19!). Several 360|AnDev speakers recorded their talks so they could answer questions in Slack, or because they were in India and their talk time was 3am.

So… I collected the talks, then opened them locally to stream through streamyard. That worked for 1 or 2 talks, then fell on its face because my home internet was not remotely close to up for the job of streaming video out. Scrambling ensued. My first thought was, “Ok, I can re-encode these recordings to be stream friendlty. Wait no. I’m not technically streaming these. They play in a chrome tab that is screen shared. Damn”

(Insert Golden Girls theme song) I uploaded the remaining files to my friend who has gigabit internet. That saved the day, big time. The day one stream was plagued with trouble. I set up an extra computer in my office to watch the live stream on mute as QA. Day 1 required several refreshes of the browser when the stream would degrade enough that the player stopped. Day 2 did not have those issues. The stream ran nonstop on that machine all day, almost 8 hours.

I suppose it’s an upside, I’ve upgraded my home internet :)

Internet

Picture a venn diagram of three circles. The circles are; your internet, the speaker’s internet and the attendee’s internet. Any one can be a problem, any two can be a disaster.

Pre-recorded talks, remove one circle, but put a heavier load on another.

A lot of the chatter was :

“I lost audio. Refresh fixed it”

“Stream stopped. Refresh fixed it.”

etc.

It’s difficult to troubleshoot to say the least.

Non-Tech, AKA People (Golden Girls Theme plays again)

Have help! Chiu-Ki was my co-host both days and it was a huge help. We split up the schedule so I didn’t have to be ‘on’ all day long. I could grab a bite, check my garden, etc. She had it. That was invaluable! When she went to lunch I was there.

I can’t say enough how important having someone to backstop and take some of the load, is.

I found that it’s both more and less stressful than an in-person event. Less, because the expenses are nil, and you’re at home. More because you have no idea if the speaker is awake, you don’t know if your internet will crap out, or theirs will. Once we got started though, the stress drained away (mostly), and we could have fun.

As I mentioned I offloaded the pre-recorded talks to a friend. Tom signed in to Streamyard as “Videos” There was a little coordination on Slack for “Hit play when I say X” but otherwise he was right there in the studio to see what was going on, etc.

So, next steps?

Well, I’ve upgraded my internet (yay all the other things I do that will benefit). That should be a big win for 360|iDev and Chicago Roboto.

I’ll work with speakers on pre-recording their talks. 360|iDev is two-track, so for better or worse, we have to rely on Hopin’s janky way of doing sessions. So I’ll have to make sure attendees know what to expect there.

I don’t own a laptop anymore

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For the first time in twenty-odd years, I don’t own a laptop. This past weekend, I fedex’ed my MacBook Air (With the shitty keyboard. Thanks, Tim Cook) back to apple for trade-in credit on a Mac Mini.

Macbook Air packed up and ready for shipment.

The Mac Mini is great, it’s way more powerful than the MacBook Air, which is a plus, but wasn’t super necessary outside of making video editing and possibly running my upcoming online conferences easier.

I really liked the Air, except for it’s keyboard. I bought it knowing it wasn’t outrageously powerful, which for conference organizing and writing was just fine. Except the keyboard made writing agonizing. keys would repeat, keys would not activate, all randomly and never the same behavior in a row, so my manuscripts would be riddled with repeated words, wrong words that spell check was ok with and outright typos. It was annoying.

Mac migration tool screen.

Writing with the Mac Mini

I had already started moving to my iPad Pro for travel writing; it went to Egypt and Tanzania and was my only device and was just fine. The addition of the Magic Keyboard was the final nail. For a few weeks I’ve been leaving my laptop in my office, docked at the end of the day and just using my iPad around the house (Living room, kitchen island, etc). During the day writing on the Mini vs. the MacBook Air isn’t any different as the Air was docked behind monitors. The Mini is under them.

It’s definitely a little weird, and there are some things that require me getting up and going to the office (Designing book covers, for one) but I think as I get more used to using the Affinity tools on my iPad that might change. Otherwise walking away from my office at the end of the day, leaving the computer there, is kind of nice.

Conferences without a Laptop

This will be the first full week so we’ll see how I feel (not that there’s takebacks, the laptop is enroute to Apple). Right now I’m pretty happy. I think when I get closer to conference time it’ll be a great help running Zoom, and other tools for live streaming.

As I’ve been exploring online conference options I realized that since my MacBook Air would struggle with being a zoom participant (fans roaring, etc) that being host, plus running other tools like Ecamm Live, etc would tax the power little laptop.

Once the world gets back to allowing in-person events, I’ll face the final test of my set up. During the conferences, I do a lot of work at the registration table, or anywhere else, plus at least two times during the event, I am presenting on screen. Thankfully some of my speakers have already blazed the trail on presenting from an iPad.

Selling when things are shit

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I won’t lie, two weeks ago, we wrapped up Ignite Denver a few days before social distancing was the order the day (we were about two days before the venue decided to close up). I thought, “You know this sucks, but things will continue like normal, more or less. It’ll just be inconvenient for a while.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’re now in week two of social isolation and self-quarantine. Everything is closed except grocery stores, pharmacies and (here in CO) dispensaries. 180,000 people in CO filed for unemployment last week. Things are shit.

People (rightfully so, I mean tomorrow is scary, four months might as well be four years from now) aren’t thinking about conferences. They’re not buying tickets, not signing up to speak. Sponsors are waiting to see what events are happening before they write checks. All perfectly understandable because things are shit, but not helpful.

And I can’t file for unemployment. Well, I could if I fired myself, which would be closing down 360|Conferences. So I’d prefer to not do that!

I sent an email to one community earlier this week, another went out today. Essentially begging folks to buy tickets. I hate sending emails like that. I hate asking my communities for charity. I’d rather support them than ask them to support me. I’d rather be the one to bring them together. Help them grow, meet new people, do awesome things. Not beg for their time. I did it because things are shit.

No ticket sales, no sponsorships means no payroll for me.

Mr. Brightside

Writing is a bright point right now. I’m hard at work on Space Rogues 7. Space Rogues 6 comes out next month. Pre-orders have surpassed book 5 numbers, so that’s awesome. I’ll have book 7 ready for pre-order when 6 launches, so that will be awesome.

The downside is that…

  1. Sales are slow. Makes sense, a lot of folks suddenly have far less disposable income. I certainly do, I’m not buying much of anything. I get it, things are shit.
  2. Next month, when book 6 launches and those pre-order process, I’ll get paid in June for that. Such is publishing.
  3. Amazon is giving away 2 months free Kindle Unlimited, which has blown the bottom out of the market. Why buy a book, when you can read thousands for “free”? Even if only for the next two months.

 

What can you do?

Well, if you’re so inclined, you can directly support me. Buy books (or merch) directly from my shop page. I get paid immediately for those purchases. If you’ve read all five books, tell people you know that might like them. Gift them copies, send them the URL with “Buy this book” all of it helps, because right now, writing income, will be supplementing conference income.

A Year and Decade in Review

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Welp, we’ve passed the Winter Solstice, and in just a few hours we’ll be saying goodbye not just to 2019, but to the 2010’s. I’ve never been a resolution maker but I do like to look back on what I’ve done, what I wanted to do etc.

So where are we (the royal we)?

The 2010’s saw the birth of my professional writing career. Technically I’ve been paid for my writing for years, as a copy and tech writer, a resume writer, etc. But fiction, that’s new. Plus I stopped selling my non-fiction writing services years ago. If you’d asked me ten years ago if I thought I’d be a writer that makes money I’d have laughed. If you’d asked if I thought I could ever make a living as a writer, I’d have laughed harder. But here we are.

On top of my writing the 2010’s were a pivotal and volatile decade for 360|Conferences.

On a personal level, Nicole and I moved from our downtown townhouse in the “Hottest ‘hood in Denver” (Blech) to just outside downtown to a neighborhood that doesn’t suffer year ’round construction, unannounced music festivals, and other nonsense. I haven’t had to step around vomit once, and it’s frankly glorious. Suck it RiNo.

We love our home and the neighborhood, we actually get out more to the nearby arts district than we did in RiNo where drinks came with a loan application and snobbery.

Nicole and I also visited some amazing places.

The Netherlands. We got to visit our dearest friends Mike and Judy in their awesome adopted home of Amsterdam. We’re overdue for another visit as they’re now homeowners!

Germany. We did Oktoberfest! The real one! It was amazing. We had a big group which was tons of fun, drank and ate lots, saw a ton of things. Did NOT snort menthol (which we thought was cocaine and that Australians gave zero fucks). We’re planning to go back in 2023.

Egypt. To close out the decade (sorta) in 2018 we spent 10 days in Egypt, visiting all the things, drifting down the Nile river. I wrote a large portion of Space Rogues 4 on the deck of a Dahabiya watching the Nile drift by. It was an amazing trip!

We Renovated our house. Thankfully we were in Egypt for some of it. But the house we moved into had a few less than perfect things about it. Namely, a kitchen that was too small, a dining room we didn’t need, and a master bathroom that was anything but masterful. So we gutted. We have an amazing open kitchen now that we love. We have a master bathroom that’s stunning and we couldn’t be happier. The house is much more ‘us’. It was neat to see the house torn back to studs and in the case of the first floor, the original brick. I’m so bummed we had to re cover it but someone in the past through you could nail plaster and lathe to brick… Same for the original hardwood floors (no I’m not Karen from the 80s, we put down new wood #carpetsucks).

And we will likely never do a renovation project again. That shit is stressful. But I did find a wizard staff hidden in the wall, so there’s that.

A few 2010s Numbers.

Number of Space Rogues books released: 5. 7 if you count the two short stories.

Number of non-Space Rogues books released: 0

Number of non-Space Rogues books written: 1

Number of eBooks sold: 23,197

Number of Paperbacks sold: Not many, Hard to break out past about 90 days, but about 200.

Number of eBooks given away: 46,552

Number of Books put to Audio: 1

Number of conferences created: 3

Number of conferences put out to pasture: 2

Number of moves for Nicole and I: 1

Rogue Publishing LogoWriting.

I’m pretty excited that writing is going so well. People seem to really like the Space Rogue series. The 5th book was just released with the highest number of pre-orders yet. Book one has been hanging around the top 500 or so free Kindle books for the last two months (It’s going back to full price 1/1 if you haven’t grabbed it yet!). In 2019 I made about 5x more than I did in 2018. I don’t want to jinx things but can see “Full-time writer” as my occupation in a few years if things keep going well.

Mid-2019 I wrote what I hope is the first book in a new series. It’ll be released sometime around the first of the year, in addition to Space Rogues 6. I’m excited to try something new, to branch out, and I HOPE, add a new revenue stream to my business.

I decided in 2019 to start putting myself out there more in person, so I have been applying for author alley’s or paying for booths at conventions. I’ve written about that already so won’t rehash it here, but I’ve signed a couple of dozen books now for people, which is pretty fucking cool, even if I still haven’t found “my thing” when signing. I’ll be doing more in 2020.

The last bit of writing news is that I spun up a merch store. I’m still working on it, fine-tuning, but I’ve had enough readers ask about shirts and stickers and such that the couple hours it took to get it going, should be worth it. I mean I’ve already sold 2 shirts and a coffee mug so, ¯\_(?)_/¯ . I won’t lie, I’m looking forward to the day I see someone on the street in a Space Rogues shirt.

Lots of Eggs, Many baskets.

I’ve talked about being wide before so I will skip the details but here’s an update.

Amazon now accounts for ‘just’ 74% of my income. My hope is to move that closer to 50% or less. There are a few companies I trust with silos, Amazon isn’t one of them. My books are available on every device and in every store that sells ebooks.

While I dislike exclusivity, I am a bit locked in with Audible. Because I’ve set up a royalty share with my awesome narrator, I’m locked into Audible for 7 years. That’s unlikely to change, unfortunately.

Conferences

360conferences banner

360|Conferences had it’s oh shit moment during the 2010s. Specifically, 2017, where attendance at 360|iDev dropped by 50% without any warning. The hard part there is when you plan, and commit to 400 ppl, and only 200 show up, hotels and vendors aren’t overly sympathetic. It was made worse by having already taken a significant loss in spinning up a new conference. Thankfully the Grand Hyatt (Where 360|iDev has been for 3 years now) are actually really awesome partners. 2018-19 were years of regrouping and figuring my shit out for the conferences. I’m happy to report I might have finally kind figured this out. Still pretty upside down, but not in a way that it feels hopeless.

One big thing for me was that I realized that while being the ‘biggest’ was neat, it wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t really what I wanted. Being the ‘best’ is what I want, and think we’re doing pretty good there. 2018 was a record profit year for all three conferences, and 2019 was pretty good (a few stumbles). I’ve made some changes for 2020 that I think will be awesome. Of course after 2017, all this “record profit” and “best year yet” stuff is just digging out a pretty deep hole. I’m thankful I was given a chance to dig out vs. walking away from debt and hosing a partner.

I’m thankful that 360|Conferences is celebrating a decade of existing, not many conference companies get to say that. The communities that I’ve had the privilege of supporting are amazing, and I’ve formed a ton of friendships by doing these conferences.

A Few Highlights.

360|Flex was put to bed. This happened pretty early in the decade. I tried to rebrand, failed. Tried to bring 360|Flex back as more niche, didn’t enjoy it. So I pulled the plug 100%. A shady travel company managed to grab the domain, then lost it, the new owner then stole the twitter account, fun.

360|intersect was born and died. I’m still convinced intersect was just ahead of it’s time, but regardless, as much as I loved it and the content, not enough people were coming. While all my conferences are near and dear, 360|intersect brought together some really awesome people to tell their stories.

360|AnDev was born. Dave and Chiu-Ki approached me about doing an Android event here in Denver. I was hesitant since I’d said Android wasn’t really for me, but with their help on the community side, we’ve created a world-class event.

Chicago Roboto was born. Ryan and Jerrell reached out after 360|AnDev about doing another Android event, this time in Chicago. I still wasn’t sure, but again, they managed the community aspect, and I executed. Chicago Roboto has quickly caught up to its sister 360|AnDev in terms of size and speaker quality. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve done.

360|iDev has continued to lead the iOS developer event pack. A few more events have closed up shop (This ain’t an easy business!). I made the conscious decision that 360|iDev was a 200 person event. no more creeping up to 300, then 350, then 400. At 200 it’s sold out. The end.

AltConf is still THE community event at WWDC. I love working with Rob and Anna and the rest of the AltConf team. We execute a truly massive (Thousand of attendees, dozens of sponsors) event, that is free to attend whether you’re a WWDC ticket holder or not.

And of course (not 360|Conferences) Ignite Denver is still something I’m super proud of. The first Ignite event in CO, and the longest-running.

 

So…

That’s the 2010s for me. I’m exceptionally excited or 2020 and the decade it brings. I’m excited to see where the iOS and Android communities go. I’m excited to bring more stories to the world, who knows, maybe one day you’ll see Wil Calder on the screen (big or small).

 

Happy Holidays, Merry New Year, Successful Festivus.

 

I Dug up a Skull Yesterday

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We had a really nice day yesterday in Denver. Fifty degrees, sunny, a wonderful break from the very wintery weather we’ve had all, well, winter.

I worked on my car a bit, did some Chicago Roboto work, worked on some edits to Space Rogues 4: the Horror Story Job, then went to my garden and dug up a skull.

A skull???

Don’t worry, it’s no one you know, or anyone I know.

You see, we just had major renovations done to our house, and because our house is almost 100 years old, we found weird things in the walls, a cool walking stick, old newspapers, a door used as flooring.

I wanted to contribute

The original plan was to find a lifelike skeleton to stick parts of between the 2x4s, spread out around the house. Skeletons, even plastic ones, are SUPER EXPENSIVE. I mean realistically, this gag would have no pay off in my lifetime. We’ll either move, and a future owner would find the bones, or we die here, and well, my Force Ghost will probably be busy with other stuff and not come to point and laugh at the unsuspecting victim.

The cheaper skeletons looked cheap, no way someone would see them and be fooled.

Skulls though…

Skulls are a bit cheaper, pretty realistic too. So I ordered one. It arrived and it was freezing out. I wanted to dirty the skull up a bit ahead of putting it in the walls. We weren’t staying at the house at this time and between visits the crew closed up the walls. The skull was in the garden getting seasoned and the house was buttoned up.

Sad Trombone

So now I have a plastic, pretty realistic skull and no idea what to do with it. Back to the weather yesterday, it was warm enough that the garden soil was not a block of ice. So I dug up the skull.

Now I have a dirty skull.

How’s your Friday going?

2018 Conferences, Wrapped. Onward!

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Warning: This has little to do with writing.

Last week, I wrapped up the last of 2018’s 360|Conferences events.

360|iDev, like her sisters; 360|AnDev and Chicago Roboto did really well this year. I’m three for three, turning a profit. That is probably a head scratcher, “Just now turning a profit?”

Chicago Roboto launched in 2017. 360|AnDev in 2016. Not unexpectedly, new events struggle to get their footing. 360|iDev has had profitable years but had a super horrible one in 2017.

One Horrific Year

In fact, 2017 was seriously the worst year of my life. It was horrible. My closing keynote for 360|iDev 2018 touches on it some, I might release it. Last year I got teary on stage thinking “This might be the last time I see these people.” This year on stage I got a bit teary too but in a good way. Not only was I certain I’d see everyone again in 2019, but I was specifically calling out four people who I considered to be MVPs. I started doing this MVP thing several years ago during 360|Flex.

Every few years, I call on a few people to thank specifically. I give them a limited run MVP jacket and a copy of the Cluetrain Manifesto and Anything You Want. I might have to start stocking up, as Cluetrain is getting harder and harder to source as a paperback!

2018 was a major turning point. I spent much of the end of 2017 and early 2018 revamping how I deliver my events. Managing costs, and much more. I’m really happy to say that the efforts seemed to have paid off.

As I wrap up conference work (at least my own) for 2018 I’m feeling really optimistic, more so than ever before, about the coming year. 

Worlds Collide, or at least meet.

My First Signing, at a conference no less
My First Book Signing!

It was also kind of cool to introduce one half of my world to another. I had a set of Space Rogues books (1 and 2) at home so I added them to my conference raffle pile. I suppose it also counts as my first signing since the winner asked for both books to be signed. That was kinda cool, though I had to think of a good “Tagline” for signing.

Anyhow, I’m really happy with life right now. Money wise the business isn’t out of the hole that was 2018, but we not only didn’t dig a deeper hole but at a little closer to the exit of the hole.

Onward!

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