Why do I do This?
When I started writing my first post documenting the organizing of this conference, I mentioned in my post titled "Conference Adventures Part Un - 18 Days 'til"
Planning and organizing a conference is not an easy feat by any means, and I often ask myself why I keep doing it...
Which is now bringing me back to asking myself once again why do I keep doing it? I honestly can't find a one sentence answer that rationalizes the time, effort, stress, financial strain, or the pressure it all puts on me.
I'm sure you're probably reading frustration in my post here, and probably in my previous posts, but know this - the last few days I have been coming up with ideas, excited that registrations are already coming in, and I almost have a full speaker list for EmMeCon Seattle that isn't happening until June. I have even started the groundwork of organizing a 2 day Search and Social Series, and/or an SEOGoddess 4 hour SEO Workshop in April so that I don't have to wait too long to do another event).
So why this odd addiction to holding events? I got to talking with a few of the attendees and speakers at this last EmMeCon and the one word that kept popping out of my mouth (and repeated back to me) was integrity. My events, though small, and not highly profitable, still have integrity. I haven't sold out with mindless topics, uninspiring speakers, and selling tickets at an insanely low cost just to appease sponsors with more attendees. Even after all these years of organizing conferences, I still constantly remind myself through the entire process what it is that I wanted to do when I started these events. With EmMeCon, I want people to gain inspiration from the amazing people I have been lucky enough to have access to. People like David Evans Ph.D. who has taught at the University of Washington educating Masters students on Psychographic Segmentation and the importance of understanding the minds of the users they are marketing to. Or Gillian Muessig who has guided not one, but 3 children into thriving adults and in the process molded 2 of them into very successful and inspiring SEO's. The list of inspirational individuals that I feel privileged at the ability to pick their brains, gain inspiration from, or have been helped by in some way is a mile long, and ever growing.
Because of this desire to share, I take careful consideration into the details of every event I organize. It may run me rampant and I get flustered and exhausted from it, but reading the tweets, hearing the feedback, and knowing that at least one person (if not many) has gained inspiration from the event is what I deem as success.
On Thursday night we wrapped up the event with a packed house for the Meetup Group organized by Chase McMichael (CEO of Infinigraph) the tweets were still coming through strong, and the room was full of questions and discussions. After the Meetup wrapped I began packing things up, and while exhausted I was bouncing around with excitement as the folks that lagged behind thanked me for putting on such a great event, and asked me all sorts of questions on how I got into this, how I came up with the idea for the event, and even asked more about the event in Seattle.
It's that feedback that I get that keeps me going.
I promise that I won't "sell out" and start making this about the money, I won't ever forget what this event (or any of my events) are there to accomplish, and I promise never to lose the integrity that I still hold onto.
If I do - someone please take me out back and put me out of my misery...?
No comments:
Post a Comment