It’s a wrap! August 2018

The biggest question I’ve asked myself in August was how do you organize an event where every attendee – even the shyest one – goes home with the contact details of at least one potential future friend. How do you create an unforgettable experience for 200 students?

Over the years, I’ve attended a number of conferences and have seen what experiences turn a conference into a great one. I believe there are three key things. To me, a good conference is when I go home with at least one new contact I’ll actually care to follow up with. Yet, in order for me to follow up with someone, I need to know what they are about. Thus, as a conference organizer, it’s key to make people connect over a task or a question that creates intimacy. Another key is making people laugh. And last but not least, you want people to have the space to chat freely, but you need to give them a subject to talk about or a question to answer to start with.

In August, I’ve been obsessing with icebreakers and team building exercises. I’ll definitely write a summary once the event I’m working on happens, but I do want to share one favorite exercise we found that we’ll definitely try. It’s called “the toilet paper game” and it works like this:

“The very premise of this game will get the group laughing. The group facilitator passes a roll of toilet paper around the room and asks each member to tear off how much they normally use when going to the toilet. After everyone has their tiles paper, ask them to tell the group one interesting fact about themselves for each piece of toilet paper they have.”

Please check back for the September summary to hear more about how the event went.

This past month, I’ve also worked on the activation strategy for an intranet of a global brand. As companies grow, the HQ needs tools to keep everyone on the team equally engaged and provide them with information and a loyalty program. Yet whenever someone introduces a technology, it takes time and effort to make sure people actually use it. Technology often feels intimidating, which is also a job of a community strategist to solve that challenge.

I was also asked to write a funding proposal to help a social startup get funds from the government. When writing proposals, what matters is putting the ideas into the social and societal context, which is where I usually step in.

One last thing I’ve worked on this past month was finally recording my Skillshare class on how to run a Kickstarter project. It’s framed for freelancers who want to position their business. I’ve gone in so much detail that everyone who’s planning to run a Kickstarter will find a lot of takeaways. At the end of the day, I did run five projects and not all of them went well, yet all of them succeeded. If you are planning to run a project or someone you know is, share the link with them. I don’t think there is any other resource as detailed as that one, besides, of course, the post Tim Ferriss shared in The 4-Hour Workweek.

As for recommendations, I was lucky to be invited to a Norn dinner, which most certainly was my favorite experience of the whole month. Norn is a salon for structured conversations on topics one doesn’t usually talk about the way the Norm team invites you to do. It’s incredibly insightful and feels intimate. I had the immediate feeling of belonging. It was lovely.

Last but not least, my inner panic monster has finally arrived and I’ve began writing my TedX talk. I cannot even describe in words how intimidating this feels and how long I’ve been procrastinating on this. The event’s on the 13th of October in Graz in case you want to attend and see me live.

I’m heading to the TechFest in Copenhagen and will also be traveling to London and Wales this month. Please reach out if you’re around and let me know what you’re working on. Would love to hear more about inspiring projects.