Advice for Lift@home organizers

Thank you for your interest in Lift@home. Before you make your proposition, please review our hard-earned conference tips and tricks, and then proceed to the submission form at the end of the page.

Mutual benefits

Long-term relationships are based on mutual benefits.

Here is what you do for our community, and what we do for you.

^{Lift @ Chalet, a workshop about kids' usage of the internet}

^{Lift Workshop @ Brussels with Council and Tinker.it}

^{Lift10 workshop, a discussion to prepare our next conference's format.}

The rules

Here are the rules for Lift@home:
• To organize an event you must have attended a Lift conference at least once. We want to make sure you know our values and processes before you gather the community.
• No promotion/pitching is allowed in the event's program.
• Participants must be respectful of the work that the organizer has put into running the event, and provide constructive feedback to make future events even better.
• All events should be not for profit (you can of course charge an entry fee to cover your expenses)
• Lift@home events should be shorter than one day. Beyond that, events are considered co-productions (see Lift@Austria for example) and we ask you to contact us.
• After the event the Lift@home organizer posts a short recap of the event on the Lift blog to share his experience with the Lift community.

Interested?

Here is what you need to submit your event:
• A brief description
• A location and date
• Speaker(s) and a theme
• Or you can also gather Lifters with no predefined program (and see what happens)

DESIGN

Keep it simple

Really. Running events is a complicated job, playing with multiple constraints (budget, time, logistics, egos...) to create a result you can never really fully control. Don't be too hard on yourself. Ask participants to bring their own food or drinks (check the appropriate box in the online form), organize the event with someone else, don't spend money you do not have (people register at the last minute and it can be stressful), and start small. An event for twenty people is a good start. 100 participants is already a big conference, and one that can only take place at certain venues. Multiple day events come with their own set of challenges, as this means organizing dinners and hotels. Start simple, you will enjoy your own creation even more if you're dealing with less stress.

Be yourself

Lift@home is a general concept... we want you to feel free to try anything. We can't wait to see what you will invent, and what crazy format you will come up with. Feel free to suggest new things, and just check with us if you want to try something really weird and wonderful. We will probably say yes ;)

Ask us anything

We are here to help. One of the benefits of Lift@home is that we get to share our knowledge with our community, so don't be afraid to ask. Our emails are usually firstname[@]liftconference.com, and you can always use the feedback form.

PREPARE

People attract people

Register yourself, the people you know will come. Lift@home events are (usually) intended for limited audiences of 15-20 people, and when deciding whether to register for your event Lifters will feel much better if they already see 7-8 confirmed participants.
If you know someone will attend your event but they haven't signed up, or someone who shows up without being registered on the website, contact us and we will add the person to the participants list manually. It is important to have all participants signed up properly because it allows the organizer to communicate easily with all participants before and after the events using the signup broadcast tool available on your event's page.

Coach your speakers

Tell them who will be listening to them so they can calibrate their explanations, you do not address a tech audience the same way you talk to economists or artists for example.
Ask for their slides in advance, discuss anything you think will not work. Adapt the time to the content, and don't hesitate to make the presentation shorter if it makes the presentation more impactful.
There are millions of websites giving advice on the web, check them out. A good resource (simple, short and solid) is Presentation Zen's Presentation tips.

Promote

Write a post on the conference blog and on our Facebook page, let other Lifters know what you want to do with your event, and why they should attend. Email the people you know should come, and check who lives in the area your event happens using the site's search engine (ex: Lifters in Zurich, Spanish Lifters).

Keep your participants in the loop

In one click you can contact all the people who have signed up for your event. Send them a reminder the day before the event to say you are counting on their presence, and that they should bring food or drinks if that's the case. Don't hesitate to get in touch with people, it makes them feel taken care of and therefore happier to attend and participate.

DURING YOUR EVENT

Follow the rules

Please follow the (few) rules we set. These are in everybody's best interest. If aggressively commercial content makes it to your event, the audience won't be expecting it, and will react negatively. The speaker will feel bad, the audience will feel bad, and you won't be happy either.

Introduce speakers properly

This is a small trick but it is very important. Do not introduce a speaker saying "Our next speaker is XXX, he is this and that" and walk away while the room is silent and the speaker feels no energy when starting his talk. See how professional moderators do it: "Our next speaker is a researcher and writer from Holland, she did this and that, please help me welcome XXX". People will applaud, the speaker will start on a positive note.
Check this state of the art introduction by Steven Ritchey to see what we mean:


Be strict on timing

Speakers need to know how much time they have. Agree with them before hand on a procedure: "10 minutes from the end I'll signal ten to you, then 5 minutes, then 2 minutes. Please finish on time as we have many speakers". If something really special happens, don't hesitate to give more time, but beware: if speakers find you are not enforcing the clock strictly, they tend to lose focus and go over their allotted time.

Deliver what you promised

You will have an unhappy audience if you promised a workshop and ended up doing a lecture. Remember you're facing smart people who expect a lot from you. Stick to the program you promised - as much as last minute cancellations allow ;) - and your audience will be happy.

FOLLOW UP

Document what happened

Don't forget to take pictures and make some videos, and to add a written review of the event to the corresponding page. Simply edit your Lift@home and look for the Coverage part of the form. Share the lessons learned with the community. Give us an idea of what happened to encourage further gathering, and make your life easier if you want to redo a similar event. Pictures of past events are a great tool to motivate participants to come to new gatherings.
See past events with coverage: Lift Dinner @ NYC, Lift Workshop @ Champoussin, Lift Workshop @ Lift Office.

Give us some feedback

Is there anything you needed and could not get? Can we make your life easier in some way for future events? Let us know, and we will improve Lift@home based on your feedback!

Ready?

Please submit your event on the Lift@Home submission form.