This Last This Next Thing

Last month, I co-hosted This Next Thing, the second iteration of an event that started last year.

I really love the concept of the event, and I'd like to share a few things that I think really worked.

Reciprocal speakers

Probably my favourite "innovation" is the idea of reciprocal speakers. The idea here was to take advantage of strong relationships we as organisers have built up over the years with people that have done really well financially and want to give back in some sense.

Quite simply, it's an individual sponsorship: the person funds their own tickets and trip, and also nominates and sponsors a person of their choosing.

It works really well because instead of choosing an underprivileged person instead of a more familiar face, it acknowledges the power that people successful under the status quo have, and puts them alongside new voices that they have a part in boosting.

Starter cities

Another great concept that worked even better this year is the idea of starter cities. This was my attempt to solve the "night before" problem that I've experienced at conferences so many times. So often I find myself flying to a city the night before an event and wanting to hang out, but having no "in" as it were. Sometimes there are drinks, but without any formal introductions, it's easy to get lost in a sea of people who already know each other.

This Next Thing, being in the Swiss Alps, didn't have an obvious airport to fly in to, so we gave people the choice of Zurich, Innsbruck, or Milan, all roughly equidistant from the venue.

Folks met up the day before travelling together up the mountains for facilitated small group activities, meals, and then coming together as a group for drinks at the end of the day. There are lots of ways to iterate this idea, but it meant that before you got to the main event, there are already numerous chances to pick up buddies.

Mixing up formats

Early on in organising, we identified three types of sessions to roughly categorise things:
- audience sessions (e.g. traditional talks)
- active participation sessions (e.g. roundtable discussions, coding workshops, escape room)
- passive participation sessions (e.g. food workshops, coffee workshops)

Additionally, I wanted to ensure that there was a balance on the schedule of times where there was only one thing scheduled, vs. times where there were several things scheduled. And for anything that had a limited participation, there ought to be multiple instances so that folks could pick and choose as they saw fit.

The idea is that everyone has different needs when attending an event. Some folks just want to sit back and watch stuff. Some folks want to really participate actively. And some folks just want to hang out. The ideal schedule will balance all these needs and provide enough to satisfy the various needs of different participants.

This year’s TNT was structured with two short talks on Monday evening after dinner. Tuesday started at 10am with 90 minutes of group keynotes followed by a long lunch. The afternoon was async sessions, with two "main stage" sessions spaced out in the afternoon: an AMA with the keynotes, and lightning talks. At the same time, we had an escape room, a coffee workshop, a food and drink tasting workshop, several roundtable discussions and even yoga and a tea ceremony built in.

For me, I love the idea that folks can move to different activities according to their own preferences, interests and energy levels.

And so...

Organising TNT has been a wonderful experience. I've learned so much and had a chance to iterate on some of these strong ideas in event design.

I'm looking forward to more iteration in the future!