This post has been a couple of months in the making. Usually, I’m on the road a good chunk of the fall, finally getting settled back into things a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. This year, the World of Corona forced every event online in one way or another. This means that instead of walking for miles each day for a week around Denver or experiencing the cool, fresh air of autumn in New England, I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time with my rear end planted in my desk chair, passively consuming talks on all things startups and cider.
It’s better than everything being canceled, right?
Yes and no. There’s still something to be said for large, in-person gatherings in distant locations that just can’t be recreated online, no matter how hard event organizers try. Something that I’ve noticed running 1 Million Cups Iowa City online for eight months is that the energy level is significantly muted as compared to the in-person version. The questions our attendees pose to the presenters are still top notch, but there just isn’t the buzz in the air on Zoom that there is when 20 of us gather together at MERGE. I fear that this will be an even more severe stoppage of momentum than in 2017, at the height of the split between the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City entrepreneurial ecosystems. Unfortunately, I don’t see things opening up any time soon, to recapture any of the momentum we may have had.
The loss of community momentum is something with which every ecosystem is going to have to grapple. The more developed the ecosystem, the easier reestablishing momentum will be. I have no doubt the folks in Colorado will be able to relaunch Denver Startup Week in person again without much trouble. The biggest losses are going to be seen in the smallest ecosystems – Iowa City included among them. It’s going to take more than just my work to get things humming again, and nobody knows when the starting point will be. Relaunching the ecosystem’s events will require buy-in from every stakeholder: government, higher education, startups large and small, and corporations. I’ve had difficulty getting everyone on board in the past, so refining and perfecting the “why” during the interim is key. Just working around certain people or organizations isn’t going to fly this time.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve attended nearly a dozen different events across the country from the comfort of my office/bunker. Most of the talks have been relatively forgettable, but I really wasn’t there for much of that. Much the reason why I attend Denver Startup Week in person is to see how a larger community brings everyone together to push their entrepreneurial ecosystem forward, I wanted to see how an online version could do much the same. The answer is not a series of Zoom meetings or speeches broadcast online. Interactivity and novelty led to the best experiences.
I keep pointing to Denver Startup Week as an example of an amazing in-person experience. Unfortunately, the online iteration this year just didn’t hold up. The best part of that week each year is the opportunity to network and party with other entrepreneurs – those chance collisions that can lead to life-long partnerships and fantastic opportunities. There was almost no opportunity to connect with other attendees during the week socially, and really no one-on-one time that wasn’t right at the dinner hour. For those of you planning online happy hours: don’t schedule them when people are picking up their kids or making dinner. Most kids want to eat between 5 and 7 pm, when they get home from school or daycare. I understand that there are a lot of entrepreneurs who don’t have kids, or their spouse or partner takes care of the kids – happy hours at 5 pm are great for them. Just know that you’re cutting out a huge group of people with that timing, including a large number of women entrepreneurs who also have primary child caregiver duties.
One silver lining to using Zoom or broadcasting to the Web is during concurrent sessions, where you’re able to bail out of an uninteresting or not useful session much easier than you can when you have to change physical meeting rooms. We’ve all attended in-person conferences where something looked really interesting in the program book, but our expectations are not met. Maybe the speaker is reading the slides at you. Perhaps there’s someone in the audience who won’t stop asking questions. There are a number of reasons why a presentation can go sideways – online events give you an easier out when this happens.
It’s also critical that these concurrent talks are recorded and available after the event, especially when a speaker is amazing. This is an incredibly low-barrier, low-cost way to increase value for participants and increase your chances of another successful event the following year. At physical events, you would have to have a camera in each meeting room in order to do this – virtual events remove this cost. Recording online conferences also allows me to attend your event part of the day, and then watch the rest of the talks later, when I have free time in the coming days. When you’re home with the kids, things can come up where you have to leave the conference for an hour or so.
One of the events I attended this fall demanded I pay to upgrade my ticket to watch the speaker recordings after the fact – I just screen recorded the entire 3-day event instead. Upselling like that makes me not want to attend your event in the future. I had gone to this event in its first year in 2017, but in the following years, they more than doubled the price of a ticket from $200 to $500 along with changing the main focus of the programming, so I opted out of going again. This year, they turned back toward the type of programming they had in year one, so for the price of a free ticket, I thought I’d give them another shot. It was probably one of the better events I attended this year, mostly due to the online platform they were using which had some speed networking capabilities.
This leads me to something that I’ve heard discussed among entrepreneurs and freelancers: the price of online events. When you have a physical event, much of the ticket cost goes to the venue. While online platforms do have a cost, it’s nothing compared to a physical venue with catering and staff. Why, then, do some event organizers charge the same for an online event as they would for a physical event? Personally, I don’t want to pay money to listen to a Web cast full of speeches for two or three days – the return on investment of time is near zero. Ample social opportunities would be worth a few bucks, but none of the online events of this year provided anything beyond short bouts of speed networking. Think about your pricing structure when you make the switch to an online format and the return on investment your attendees will take away from your event.
The handful of sessions from all of the events I’ve attended online this year focused on the storytelling aspect of the presenter. I’ve said this multiple times before: while there does need to be a layer of basic business-building presentations at entrepreneurial events each year, there are many of us who have moved past the basics and want something more advanced on our schedule. We want to hear about the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. We want to hear how you managed to find product-market fit, or how you’re still searching for it after raising some money. We want to know how you’ve found a way to balance running a high-growth startup with family time. We certainly don’t want to sit and listen to you advertise your services. That’s soooooo 2015.
Coronaworld isn’t going anywhere in 2021. In-person events are already moving online. I received word about a month ago that CiderCon, which was scheduled for the same location in Chicago as 2019’s event, will now be online only – no tasting events, no camaraderie, digital trade show. I registered just in case they end up having some kind of online cider share or somehow keep the toasts at the beginning and end of the conference. It’s definitely not going to be the same as the past two years, and probably not as useful in continuing to build out Cider Finder with the input of cider makers and enthusiasts. I’m still optimistic that Cider Summit Chicago will happen that weekend in an online format – I’ve taken part in the online version of Seattle’s and Portland’s Cider Summit events so far this fall, and there’s another Seattle event for which I’ve ordered and received cider to taste while the cider makers talk about their journeys in making cider. I guess this has been a silver lining in the dark cloud of Coronaworld: I wouldn’t have experienced any of the awesome cider from the Pacific Northwest that I have this year without the Cider Summit events being forced online.
There’s a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that there will not be any in-person events in 2021, which means that my event calendar is going to be incredibly limited this coming year. Online events take away the one thing that really is worth the price of admission: the opportunity to connect with other attendees. There have been talks of lockdowns in certain locales after the holidays. Cases – not deaths, mind you – are spiking here in Johnson County currently, which means the kids are homeschooling again until at least Thanksgiving. I’m girding my loins for another homebound year, so that I’m not disappointed if it happens. If you’ve been following the blog since its inception, you know I thrive on entrepreneurial events. This year has been really difficult, even with most programming making its way online. It’s just not the same, and it’s not as fun.
I miss people. I know that I see people each week at 1MC, and I’ve seen people at these online events, but I miss being physically around other people who I’m not related to either through marriage or blood. I miss the small talk while pouring myself a cup of coffee that I didn’t brew. My wallet may not miss $12 lunches on the Ped Mall or in an airport, but I miss eating food that I didn’t cook. The kids may have an unending love for chicken nuggets and tater tots, but I don’t.
I don’t see this nonsense ending until at least Q3 – seven more months of this stuff. I’d be surprised if GLINTCAP happens in May, and I’m already planning to move Startup Weekend Iowa City to an online format this summer. Denver Startup Week 2021 is planned for the first week of October – the beginning of Q4. EntreFEST is planned for the beginning of June, but we’ll see if that moves online again this year. No news on any of the other Iowa entrepreneurial events. Maybe we’ll be back in-person in early 2022 for a trip to Virginia for CiderCon. If not, maybe I’ll just find an AirBnB, take a vacation there, and bring the computer along for the couple of days of seminars.
Anything to separate my rear end from my home office desk chair and end this at-home madness.