How I Hosted a Mini-Conference: Step-by-Step Guide and Lessons Learned
I’ve hosted hundreds of happy hours and networking events.
But now I want to experiment with bigger and deeper gatherings.
So I decided to host a mini-conference.
Mini-conference: 32 people gathering for 4 hours during a work day.
This is how I did it and everything I learned.
Why I Did This
I’ve recently become obsessed with conferences and trade shows .
What I like about conferences is the space and time to gather, learn new things, and meet a LOT of interesting people.
I was hired by four conferences last month:
All of these conferences hired me to help with training their staff, organizing icebreakers, improving their attendee networking, and act as a Master of Ceremonies.
Some day I think I might want to have my own big conference. Helping out with these other conferences has been good practice.
But I wanted even more practice. So I decided to start small and host my own a mini-conference.
I also called it a symposium, a salon, and an intellectual gathering. I guess you could call it anything you want.
This would be the first time that I:
Overall, it seemed like a fun challenge. That’s why I did it.
Who I Invited
I invited a handful of entrepreneurs in Austin, Texas to attend.
I also mentioned this event on my Friends Newsletter . Several people replied. I invited a few of them if I thought they’d get value from what I was doing.
I charged $29 per person and I sold all 25 tickets in 8 hours.
My situation is unique in that I was able to quickly sell out my first event.
This is because I’ve hosted hundreds of events. People have seen me host events before. Perhaps they assumed that I would run a good event again.
The biggest mistake I see with new hosts who want to start big is that they don’t have a warm list yet.
You have to host a lot of happy hours and meetups in order to build your reputation as an event host.
How I Invited People
I keep a large spreadsheet of people who have come to my past events. I also have a list of who I want to come to my future events.
I scanned the spreadsheet and selected 60 people who I thought would benefit from my gathering.
Then I sent them each an email a few weeks prior that said:
The Google Doc that I linked had a sample agenda and a bit more about what I was planning. Plus a link to buy a ticket.
Over the next two weeks, I invited more people that I met at various events. We ended with a total of 33 attendees.
The Venue / House
My friend Cody McLain ?offered to use his home for my event.
His house is centrally located in Austin. It is large and very nice. It was a big win to have this for my venue.
In exchange for hosting it at Cody’s home, I agreed to pay for cleaning before the event, after the event, and for his household staff’s time to set up and organize.
I also told Cody that I would split any profits 50-50… but we ended up with only $90 of profits, all of which I gave to Cody.
Areas of the House
We determined that we could have 5 or 6 areas in Cody’s home for small breakout groups:
The night before the event, I realized that we needed one extra space. So we added the garage as another breakout area.
Setting the Agenda
Creating an agenda was relatively easy. I knew it would be something like:
Plus buffer time between each of those bullets.
That was easy.
But assigning people to small groups was the most difficult part.
领英推荐
Small Group Assignments
I have a theory that how much people like events is directly correlated to how much time they get to talk and interact.
Small groups are one way to solve for this.
In a well-moderated small group discussion, everyone should get to talk more.
To assign people to small groups, I first created a database in Airtable of everyone who bought a ticket.
I did this by exporting a CSV of all my ticket buyers from Mixily . Most event platforms like Partiful and Eventbrite will let you export CSV files of your attendees.
Then I imported the names, emails, and phone numbers into a new Airtable thing.
Next, I manually tagged all of the guests with some topics I thought they might be interested in.
I did the tagging based on conversations I had with them or what I could glean on their social profiles and LinkedIn pages.
Those topic included:
Once I tagged everyone, I sorted my list based on each of the topics to see if we could have four or five people to fill up the small groups.
Two groups I wanted to host, but didn’t have enough people for, were Real Estate and Podcasting.
The Final Agenda
Here’s the final agenda that was provided to all attendees:
You can see that only 40% of the 4 hour event was in small groups.
The rest of the time was taken up for introductions, icebreakers, and breaks.
A note about the breaks: People were having very vibrant conversations. Usually standing in the kitchen or outside on the patio. I let these breaks run long because I felt like everyone was involved in conversation. Next time, I might plan the breaks as 30 minutes to make more time for people to mix and mingle. But I’m not sure.
Supplies
My events do not require many supplies.
I don’t do decorations and I serve minimal food.
Instead I focus on the guest list and conversations.
I spent about $200 on supplies for this mini-conference:
I made extensive use of my laser printer for this event. I could not have hosted this without easy access to a printer. I printed out and stapled three double-sided pages of information for everyone. This included their customized agenda, a QR code for feedback (more on that later), and a detailed list of everyone attending with guest bios .
Lessons Learned
The event was great but I’m obsessed with making it better. I’ve highlighted my own areas for improvement below and specifically pulled out constructive criticism from the Feedback Forms.
Feedback Forms
I created a QR code linked to a Google Form that was printed on everyone’s agenda.
At the end of the event, before we did a group photo, I made everyone take out their phone, scan the QR code, and fill out the feedback form.
Doing this in real-time during my event is the best way that I have found to get the most amount of feedback.
Here are the questions that I asked on the Feedback Form:
There was also an optional form field to add their name.
Pro tip: Allow your survey to be anonymous. And collect feedback during the end of the event to boost your participation rates.
Guest Feedback
The feedback was pretty good!
Here are some of the constructive criticisms, notes, and comments that people sent.
Conclusion
When I was driving to the event, I had a sense of calm and relaxation. I had done so much work and preparation the days prior that all of the hard work was already done.
This was a fantastic event and people seemed to enjoy it.
My next event test will be on Nov 30th, 2023. It will be a full day event.
I’ll probably do a smaller group and attempt to curate it with some of my closer friends or creators. I’m still thinking about what to do.
I plan to continue hosting curated happy hours. I’ll try integrating small group discussions into those events. It’ll use many of my rules from The 2-Hour Cocktail Party .
I believe that people want and desire in-person interactions. It is fun to experiment and bring people together.
I’ll keep prototyping and report back what I learn!
To be notified of my next events, sign up for my Friends Newsletter.
Feeling lonely in a new season of life? Stuck in your personal or professional growth? Want to break old habits and create new changes? Read this profile to improve your quality of life.
12 个月I love this! You’re a master of building community and it’s so cool to see the breakdown ??
Lead Generation Expert | Reduce CPLs by 30-50% on autopilot | GTM @ TxtCart
12 个月Always awesome Nick! Ari you better be taking notes for 2024 ??