Going Solo

I’m convinced that for any conference taking place nowadays, filming talks and putting them online is a must. This allows more people to learn about the event, gives extra visibility to the speakers, and also lets people who couldn’t make it to the conference benefit from it.

And no, I don’t believe that people are going to decide not to come to the conference because they can get all the talks online for free (have you ever spent a whole day in front of your computer watching recorded sessions?)

So, all of Going Solo will be filmed and put online almost in real time (we’re not certain we’ll manage streaming). For that, I would like to extend particular thanks to Sébastien Baudet of Taxi-pub.ch, who will be managing camera, editing and uploads.

For hosting and distribution of the videos, we’re partnering with DailyMotion, who have very kindly (and speedily!) set us up with an Official User account for Going Solo. This is where you’ll have to head to see the videos on the big day, if you’re not lucky enough to be on location. We’ve already added a few videos to the account, and chances are you’ll see one or two more before things start getting really hot on Friday.

So, a big thanks to Taxi-pub.ch and DailyMotion for their help in making these videos available to the public!

I’m totally excited about this. If you’ve ever met me, you know I never go anywhere without my MOO cards. Here’s photographic evidence.

I even decided upon MOO cards as the main offline way to promote Going Solo, literally shoving as many as I could into people’s hands (OK — some took them willingly, I’ll admit).

So, no wonder I’m thrilled to announce that MOO is sponsoring Going Solo, and will be providing attendees with a stack of goodies, not least of them the sexy MOO MiniCard Holders, yes!

In addition to providing a sizeable part of the new-media-sphere with original business cards, MOO also have a range of cool products like postcards, StickerBooks, NoteCards, and a great blog written mainly by the lovely Denise.

If you weren’t familiar with MOO products by now, I can guarantee that you’ll be ordering MiniCards or StickerBooks as soon as Going Solo is over!

Hello everyone coming to Going Solo,

Here is some information about the Going Solo Off Programme: what will take place before and after the Going Solo Conference proper in Lausanne, May 16th, 2008.

We suppose many of you will already be there on the night before the conference, so we decided to organize a party so that everyone could share a few pre-conference drinks. And since we thought that people coming to Going Solo might be of the social type, the event will be public. That way even people who cannot come to the conference on Friday can feel welcome to join and meet the new web-enabled generation of freelancers and small business owners.

The Warm Up Party will take place on Thursday May 15th, from 7 pm to approx. 10 pm (don’t forget to go to bed so you’re in good shape the next day!), at the Darling Pub, Galerie Saint-François, Lausanne. Everyone is welcome. It’s a BUYOB thing, which means you buy your own beer, juice or pizza. A whole corner of the Darling is booked for us. We hope it will be the perfect place to gather informally before the big day. You may register now on the Warm Up Party for Going Solo Facebook event page.

One party is never enough, right? As announced, there will be a closing party for Going Solo on Friday night. The Open Party will take place on Friday May 16th, from 9:30 pm onwards, at L’Atlantic, Rue Saint-Pierre 3, Lausanne. It’s also a BUYOD party (buy your own drinks), and everyone is welcome, too, for obviously the same reasons. You may also register now on the Facebook Open Party for Going Solo event page.

As both parties are open to the general public - even to people who have not registered for Going Solo - please feel free to invite your friends!

Friday Night Dinner

As of today, several whole tables have been booked for Friday at 7:30 pm in 4 restaurants in Lausanne Centre Ville. (Chez Rony, Lausanne Moudon, Brasserie du Château et le jardin de l’Eveché, if sunny weather). In a similar fashion to other great conferences like Reboot, numbered lists will be hung on the wall during the conference at Hotel Albatros-Navigation. Participants will choose where they want to go and register manually there. The dinner is on you, and you’re free to go elsewhere if you wish - but we like the idea of providing some structure to make it easy for you to hang out with the friends you’ll have made during the day.

Looking forward to seeing you in Lausanne next Thursday and Friday.

Anne Dominique

You certainly noticed that the list of sponsor logos down the right sidebar is getting longer by the day (and there are more coming, faster than I can upload them and blog about them).

Anyway, we’re happy to announce that as part of our partnership with FreshBooks, there will be a draw for three free one-year Shuttle Bus packages offered by FreshBooks.

Now… what is that?

If you have never heard about FreshBooks, now’s the time to check them out. In addition to having a blog full of resources for freelancers, where the “three skills of the soloist thesis” was first published by Stowe Boyd at the time, they offer a painless online time tracking and invoicing service which is built specially for freelancers and small businesses.

The Shuttle Bus package lets you have upto 25 active clients at the same time — which in my modest opinion should be more than enough for most soloists!

Still hesitating? The agenda is now online and the speaker bio page is complete. Check them out.

If you’ve got your calendars straight, you know that Going Solo is in less than two weeks. More like 10 days!

Though we’ll like to keep registration open as long as possible:

• by tomorrow evening, it will not be possible to pay by bank transfer anymore (you’ll have to use PayPal)
• we’re planning on closing registration a little less than a week before the event, at the end of this week-end.

Register now, don’t put it off!

If you check out the Programme page, you’ll see that the agenda has been published. We may still be seeing a few minor changes (session length or place in the day), but that’s what you’ll get on the 16th! Speaker bios and session descriptions are currently being beautified.

Imran (thanks again!) pointed me to 16 Ways to Keep A Razor- Sharp Focus at Work, a post by Glen Stansberry on how to remain focused while working on your computer all day.

Though I personally don’t agree with everything in the article (it has a tad too much bias towards neatness and control for my taste), it’s well worth a read, and here are some of the tips I found most useful for myself:

• 2. Take more breaks. More breaks = More productivity. It may sound wrong, but it’s true. Breaks allow us to re-group our thoughts and focus for the task at hand. They also keep us fresh so that we don’t end up burning out after only a few hours work.
• 5. Keep a daily “purpose” card. It’s pretty easy to get lost staring at the computer all day long. We’ll find rabbit holes to wonder down (ie. Youtube, Myspace, etc.) if we’re not careful. Having your daily purpose card gives you clarity and a reminder as to what you’re doing today.
• 8. Notice your lazy routines. Everyone has recurring lazy spots throughout the day. Plan to have your breaks for those times. You’re going to be lazy then anyway, right?
• 12. Keep a journal of what you did throughout the day. I like to use a moleskine notebook for my lists just so I can go back and review it every now and again, to see what I’ve done. Knowing how far you’ve come can keep you sharp and motivated to finish.
• 13. Use programs to track where you spend your time. This is a real eye-opener. Knowing just how much time you spend every day/week/month on a certain site or with a certain program can quickly show you where your priorities lie. I recommend Rescue Time, but there are many others.
• 15. Start the day right. Starting the day with a good breakfast, some quiet time and/or exercise is a great way to set your day up for success. Sounds like a cliche, but it really works.
• 16. Clean yourself up. It’s why my track coach in high school made us dress up for big races: you perform the way you feel. And if you feel polished, groomed and ready, you’ll be more likely to be productive. For me this is just taking a shower, brushing my teeth and putting on casual clothing. I used to work all day without taking a shower in my PJ’s, but I never got much stuff done. Let’s be honest here… if you’re dressed really casually, odds are you’ll be working really casually. Just taking the time to clean up a bit before you buckle down for the day is never a bad idea.

I often use FTDB to remember what I want to accomplish in the day. I’ve downloaded Rescue Time and love it already. I still need to take more breaks, and I understood many years ago that keeping track of the things you’ve done during the day helps prevent this feeling that you “spent a whole day doing nothing”. As for getting a good start in the morning, here’s what I was writing a few months ago:

Let me tell you, there is something to be said for taking a shower first thing in the morning to wake up. And using that woozy wake-up time in the bathroom rather than in front of the computer.

Having been freed of the “wake up, shower, get dressed, breakfast, brush teeth” morning ritual since I became self-employed over 18 months ago, I think I’m on the verge of reclaiming that ritual for myself. I’d already noticed a few months back that it made a real difference, and then I slipped out of it again.

What are the tips you find most helpful to stay focused and productive when you’re working home at the computer, day after day?

And if you come upon an article that would be worth mentioning in the Going Solo blog, feel free to send me a tweet or an e-mail about it.

With Going Solo, I’m learning tons about how to advertise/promote something through social media. It might seem ironic, as a large part of my work has to do with explaining social media to people, but this is the first time I’m really actively trying to get the word out about something. Of course, I have established my reputation as an individual through social media, but I never really tried to achieve that. It’s something that happened to me, took time, and sometimes almost feels like an accident. I didn’t have an agenda.

In the case of Going Solo, however, things are different. From the start, time was of the essence, as there was a set date where everything had to come together (and that date is now less than two weeks away). I had an agenda: get the word out to as many relevant people as possible, encourage people to blog about it, to register, or to sponsor. Gather feedback, leads, and even get help. Encourage a community to form around Going Solo.

A new experience for me. I made mistakes of course, and learnt from them (I won’t detail everything in this post, or you’ll still be here reading it tomorrow morning — if you haven’t fled by then).

One of the things I still haven’t quite figured out is whether it’s better to “spread the word” all over the place, or concentrate on one or two spots. It’s the same kind of headache I faced recently with videos: upload everywhere, or chose one service and stick to it? My tendancy is to be present in as many spaces and communities as possible, though I’m not sure I quite trust my judgement there. Urs of ComMetrics thinks it’s better to concentrate on a few tools rather than spread oneself too thin (see the end of his post):

As well, to sustain your competitive edge it is necessary to limit the social media tools you use - using a blog and Twitter well is better than doing Facebook, MySpace, blogging, and Twitter - it just fritters away your time.

Urs Gattiker, unified communications - what it means with Twitter, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us

The discussion is open.

In the meantime, as I’ve spread Going Solo all over the place, I’d like to give you a round-up of where you can find us.

Facebook

• Going Solo event
• Going Solo group (this seems to be working really well!)
• Going Solo fan page
• Going Far fan page
• we’ll be adding public events for the pre-conference drinks and the party shortly
• video of LIFT08 Open Stage speech

Upcoming

• Going Solo upcoming event

E-mail

• Going Solo newsletter on Google Groups

Twitter

• Going Solo Twitter account

Crowdvine

• Dedicated Going Solo social network (for attendees only)

There, I hope I didn’t forget anything! I’ll write another post on keeping track of coverage, but in the meantime you can check the link collection on del.icio.us (includes blogs posts and interviews, mainly).

If you’ve been to more than one conference over the past year, chances are you’ve noticed guys in white suits hanging around. If you’re braver than me you might have spoken to them, and learnt that they had something to do with The Next Web. (I’ve always had an irrational fear of “dressed up” people — clowns, stag nights, etc… and even harmless white suits, it seems.)

Luckily, we have a bunch of common friends (see photo below for example), and a few introductions later I was happily plotting with Ernst-Jan by e-mail to establish a media partnership between Going Solo and The Next Web.

Boris, Stowe, and Ernst-Jan

Ernst-Jan wrote a really good post introducing Going Solo, and I’d like to quote part of it here:

I don’t know about your countries’ society, yet I think you might notice the same development: more people start their own business. Several factors stimulate tech and new media professionals to quit their jobs and start an entrepreneurial adventure, some examples:

• personal branding has never been easier, just start a blog and work on your social media magic.
• hobbies get out of hand. When Dutch marketing consultant Marco Derksen started his blog Marketingfacts, he probably didn’t realize it would turn into a business. I’m sure you can name an example from your own country.
• the start-up culture sparks up a fire. Pioneers like Kevin Rose inspire thousands of young ambitious guys.
• You don’t have to be ashamed. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t really prestigious. Yet now universities and schools stimulate their students to start a business after they’ve graduated.

From my personal experience I can tell that being a freelancer isn’t always easy, especially in the beginning. What should I charge? How do I plan my days? Where can I find like-minded people? (on blogs!)

Ernst-Jan will be joining us in Lausanne to live blog the conference for The Next Web blog. Keep an eye open for the man in white, and don’t be shy — say hi!

You know that one thing that’s important for us at Going Solo is to take advantage of all the modern tools that social media provide us. That’s why, for example, we’ll talk about how you can use blogs and other forms of social media (Twitter, for example) to help make yourself known to prospective clients.

And of course, we’re also eating our own dog food. Going Solo was blogged about even before the date and time were set, and of course we have a Twitter account, Facebook group, and of course a dedicated social network for the event attendees (reminder: looks like many of you still need to join there!)

Hell, a few days ago, I even created an e-mail newsletter for Going Solo! How about that?

As you can see, we have no fear trying out all sorts of exotic means of getting the word out about Going Solo. Registration will close soon, yes (I still need to blog the exact date, thanks for reminding me), but until it closes, it’s still open, and Hotel Aulac just next to the venue still has free rooms. So, it’s worth the trouble!

We’ve gone a bit over the top here and taken the trouble to create a poster you can actually print out on paper (completely portable). You can even send it out to your friends as a PDF e-mail attachment if you want!

Enough blah-blah. Here are the links to the files (A3 colour is best, but not everybody has an A3 colour printer, so there are A4 and black-and-white version too):

• Going Solo poster, A3, colour
• Going Solo poster, A4, colour
• Going Solo poster, A3, black-and-white
• Going Solo poster, A4, black-and-white

Now, obviously, the Going Solo crew cannot travel all over Europe this week-end to plaster posters all over the place. So, we need your help. Grab a friend, print out a bunch of posters, and go put them up in strategic (but legal!) places. For added online fun and sharing, take a photo of your poster (make sure the context is well visible), upload it to flickr with the tag “goingsoloposter” and put the link to the photo in the comments or e-mail it to me.

Thanks for helping out!

I recently announced that SmallBizPod would be doing interviews of our speakers so that you can get a taste of who you’ll be listening to at Going Solo.

Here it is: SmallBizPod #67 - Going Solo - freelance perspectives — a 30-minute episode featuring interviews of Suw Charman-Anderson, Laura Fitton, Dennis Howlett, Martin Roell, Stowe Boyd and myself, where we talk about our background and experience as freelancers.

It’s well worth a listen!

Thanks a lot to Alex from our media partner SmallBizPod for organizing this. (He also wrote a blog post about Going Solo: Going Solo - how to do it right.) Don’t forget to check out his other interviews, too!