Admission 2018: Some Key Quotes from Our Speakers and a Thank You
In September, we hosted our inaugural conference, Admission, in Chicago.
We wanted to bring together event organisers in the hope of sparking conversations through shared experiences. Having worked with organisers for some time now, we saw an opportunity to provide them with a platform to meet in person. With the packed schedules organisers often have, it can be challenging to make time to connect with industry peers.
For those of you who couldn’t join us, Admission was an intimate event featuring seven speakers who shared their triumphs and challenges from several collected decades in events.
In the near future, we’ll be sharing their presentations and some additional reflections and thank yous from an event that we were very proud of.
But, in the mean time, to share a smidgen of what we got from the experience, here are choice quotes from our esteemed line-up:
1) Jessie Char
Image Description: Portrait of Jessie Char
“Delightful means the active enjoyment of pleasurable circumstances. I’m not talking about swag or after parties.
Delight has to be embedded throughout the event.”
– Jessie Char (Layers Conf) on delightful events.
2) Bryony Gomez-Palacio
Image Description: Portrait of Bryony Gomez-Palacio
“In the end, adding all the risk, doubt, OCD, sweat, spark, and reflection, it gives you a perfect formula where you are confident and self-doubting at the same time; fearless, yet terrified.”
– Bryony Gomez-Palacio (Under Consideration) on the secret to keeping up your conference production stamina
3) Hugh Forrest
Image Description: Portrait of Hugh Forrest
“What we do provides community. Events help attendees connect with their tribes, it helps them find new tribes, new jobs, new friendships, and new opportunities.”
– Hugh Forrest (SXSW) on the value of events, no matter what challenges lie in the future
4) Jane Kwett
Image Description: Portrait of Jane Kwett
“Intentionality is something we talk about a lot in the event community – while intention is nice, unless you make strategic moves, and tactics come into place, it’s just an idea.
Build it into your overall goals and ROI so you can follow through on your intentions.”
– Jane Kwett (Patreon) on making ideas reality.
5) Caitlin Teed
Image Description: Portrait of Caitlin Teed
“We’re all in the business of events, and the biggest thing you can take away here is that events don’t scale well, and you have to do things that will cost you — build programming and opportunities that enable trust, friendly leverage and feedback.
It’s never going to be easy, but it’ll always be worth it.”
– Caitlin Teed (Shopify) on the push and pull of committing to events.
6) Sandra Persing
Image Description: Portrait of Sandra Persing
“Data’s awesome, but make sure you check it twice.
Have a vision, figure out why you’re doing it. Have a strategy that’s backed up with data, but triage that data. Execute with multiple tactics.”
– Sandra Persing (Mozilla) on being flexible.
7) Kim Crayton
Image Description: Portrait of Kim Crayton
“I’m sick of trying to prove myself to white people. Last year I spoke at 19 conferences and keynoted five.
The conversation kept shifting to inclusion, and it was pissing me off. To them, it was a marketing thing; a PR thing. Nobody wants to pay for it.”
– Kim Crayton (#causeascene) on (one of) the problem(s) with inclusion at tech conferences.
There’ll be weeks ahead where we share so many more of the enriching lessons we learned from all who shared their time with us, but for today, on behalf of our whole team, thank you.