My guest today is Andy Budd who is the founder of SofaConf, a premier stay at home design conference. In this episode, we discuss how Andy found his career calling by traveling the world, why most successful entrepreneurs come from privileged backgrounds, how to get noticed and invited to speak at conferences, applying concepts of service design to event management and how to launch a successful remote event. For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show Level Up Your Design Career (Free Email Course): https://levelup.designmba.show/
User Experience Designer and co-founder of Clearleft, Andy is a best selling tech author, curates the UX London and Leading Design conferences and helped set-up The Brighton Digital Festival. Andy is a regular speaker at international conferences like SXSW, Awwwards and The Next Web. He currently runs an online community of over 1,500 Heads, Directors and VPs of Design, and is a founding member of Adobe's Design Circle. Andy has appeared on both the Wired 100 and BIMA 100 lists, as well as winning agency of the year several times running. Never happier than when he's diving some remote tropical atoll, Andy is a qualified PADI dive instructor and retired shark wrangler.
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Jayneil Dalal: Today's amazing guest is Andy Budd. Andy is a user experience designer and co-founder of the design agency Clearleft. He's a best-selling tech author, curates at UX London and Leading Design conferences and helped set up the Brighton Digital Festival. Andy is a regular speaker at international conferences like South by Southwest Awards and The Next Web. He currently runs an online community of over 1500 heads, directors and VPs of designers, a founding member of Adobe's Design Circle. Andy has appeared on both The Wired 100 and the BIMA 100 lists as well as winning Agency of the Year Award several times running. Fun fact: Andy is a qualified dive instructor and a retired shark wrangler.
Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show. Super excited to be chatting with you.
Andy Budd: It's my pleasure, Jayneil. I love chatting with interesting people, sharing thoughts about the industry. So, thanks for the opportunity, for giving me the platform.
Jayneil: One thing I’m really curious about is I was blown away when I found that my favorite food is South Indian food dosa and you like that too. How did that come about?
Andy: I’m a huge fan of South Indian food. I’m a big traveler. And after university, I probably spent about six years traveling around the world. I traveled all through Southeast Asia. I spent a lot of time in Indonesia, a lot of time in Thailand, Malaysia. Obviously, a lot of South Indian food in Malaysia, which is brilliant, but I spent six months in India, traveling around India. While I like North Indian cuisine, I absolutely fell in love with South Indian food. Masala dosas were my favorite but I loved uttapam, I loved idli, I loved vada. I loved all these things. And I love having a nice masala dosa for breakfast or going and having a thali for lunch. A huge fan of South Indian cuisine.
Jayneil: That is amazing because when I’m looking, you have this vibrant jolly personality and you strike me as a person that likes to collect experiences, if you may, instead of collecting possession. So, how did your worldview change about that like “I need to maybe travel more”? And I know that you also do the thing where you're going to the top 100 restaurants on the Michelin list. So, how did you come up with these kinds of like to-do list or bucket list items?
Andy: You're absolutely right. A lot of people talk about millennials as individuals who prioritize experiences over possession. I’m too old to be a millennial. I’m a gen-xer but I’ve always had that attitude as well. I’ve never been somebody who was particularly obsessed with material possessions. I never was looking over to the neighbor's car or the neighbor's bigger barbecue grill or whatever crazy obsessions people have because at the end of the day, unfortunately, you can't take it with you. You're only here for one life. The world is amazing. The world is huge. I understand that people can't travel all the time. People have got responsibilities. So, I’m not going to sort of denigrate people that don't travel but if you have the opportunity, why not go out and explore the world. And so, I’ve definitely been someone that's always preferred experiences over material possession. A lot of it, I think, comes from my background. I come from a working-class background. In the UK, we sort of have a class system. And none of my parents ever got to travel overseas. None of my friends at school got to travel overseas. And so, when the ‘80s and the ‘90s hit, the ‘90s really, I’m not that old, when the ‘90s hit, air travel came down and it made traveling more accessible. And also, to be honest, when I was leaving university, I kind of went backpacking. And you could travel for six months living really cheaply for the price that maybe an expensive two-week holiday would be. And because I came from that sort of slightly gen-x environment where I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I wasn't kind of jumping on the career ladder and I maybe had the safety not to have to jump on the career ladder straight away because I didn't have big student debts back then and house prices were a little bit cheaper, there wasn't the kind of the drive to kind of jump straight into work, I had the freedom. And actually, it was through my travels I discovered what I do for a living. So, I was in a hostel in Singapore. I’d probably just gone out and eaten some amazing Indian food. There are lots of great Indian foods in Singapore. And I chat to this London guy drinking beer or whiskey. I was like “What do you do?” and he was like “Well, I’m a web designer.” This would have been maybe ’96. And I’ve not really heard the term web design before. I mean, I used the web. I mean, obviously, I wasn't very bright because I hadn't twigged that somebody had to make these things. And I was like “Oh wow! You make websites?” and he’s “Yeah, I do this thing called HTML. It's easy. Any idiot could do it. You get paid a ton of money. I work for six months and travel for six months.” And I thought “Bingo! I’m an idiot, I could probably learn to do that and I could travel.” So, that's kind of how I started getting into it. That and also, I happened to be in a internet cafe in Sulawesi in Indonesia, I think, it was and I sat next to this guy and everyone else in the cybercafé, westerners were on Hotmail and tripod and looking at hotel rooms, and this guy had a black screen with all these yellow white angle brackets and it just was really weird. And so, I went to the guy afterwards, I was like “Excuse me, mate. You're not on Hotmail. What are you doing?” He's like “Well, I’m making my own website.” And I was like “Wow! You can make those things?” And he was like “Yeah, rather than email all my friends, I have a website for my travels.” I mean, this was before Peter Merholz came up with the term ‘blog’ way before that but this guy had in 1996 one of the first travel blogs. And so, I thought if I could learn to do that, then when I travel, I can post up my pictures and communicate with my friends. And so, those were the two things that kind of got me into the career I’m into. So, the more you travel, the more you meet people, the more experiences you have, the broader your horizons are, the more opportunities that come to you. And I think if you're a 16 or 17 or 18-year-old trying to figure out what to do with your life, well, who have you spoken to apart from other 16 or 17 18-year-olds. So, go out there, speak to 20-year-olds, speak to 30, 40-year-olds, speak to people that have quit their work and they're traveling. It gives you more of an opportunity to understand different ways of making money, different ways of living. And so, I’m a huge advocate for travel.
Now, obviously, this is why I’m kind of jonesing at the moment because there's no travel. I love speaking at conferences, I love organizing conferences and a big part of my life is every couple of months going somewhere interesting, to a new city, to a new town. I mentioned to you on one of our calls before that I got to speak in Bangalore. I hadn't been to Bangalore for 20 years and it has changed so much but I got to speak in Bangalore last year and I was so impressed with the design scene out there, some amazing agencies that were probably as good as Clearleft, some people running huge design teams. I met people running teams of like 200, 300, 400 people.
Jayneil: It’s insane.
Andy: It really is insane. And so, I think a lot of people, for instance, have a very one-sided view of countries like India if they haven't been here. And so, going there and looking at the scale and looking at the opportunities, it really does sort of broaden your horizons. So, I definitely recommend it.
Jayneil: Absolutely. And I think that the other person I introduced you to, Anil, I interviewed him on the podcast. He has a specific goal that he wants to put India on the design map. He wants India to be known as a place where you can get great design and not just outsource for cheap dev work or IT work. So, it was really amazing. Speaking about your travels, one of the most profound and deep quotes you mentioned in one of your blogs that I was reading through, you said “Looking back, it's amazing how much your environment and the people around you fix your perception of what's possible.” In your case, you took up traveling early to change that horizon. So, my question to you is if somebody's grown up in a certain place anywhere in the world where it's a very narrow type of thinking, what can they do to expand this horizon that they have.
Andy: It's a tough one, really. I did come from a working-class background. I came from a family that hadn't ever been to university. So, just going to university, for me, was quite a big step. I fortunately went to university at a time in the UK when university tuition fees were paid by the government. They're not anymore. So, I was at a lucky time when I had that opportunity. And I think, for me and for my generation, going to university allowed me to mix with people from different backgrounds with different experiences. I lived in a house share with a working-class kid from Manchester and someone that went to Eaton School. Someone’s dad was a builder and someone's dad was an MP or something. University is a great mixer. I think I was always somebody that wanted to kind of move away from my own city as early as possible to stand on my own two feet. And so, while it's super comfortable living at home with your family and you get your meals cooked and your washing done, putting yourself into a situation where you have to go and live somewhere else where you have to learn how to look after yourself and you have to meet new people, I think, is really, really interesting. And I see a lot of people, particularly people sort of from South Asian backgrounds traveling the world, they maybe go to Silicon Valley for five or 10 years. Often, I’m now seeing a trend of coming back and bringing some of their learnings and their practices back to their own communities, which I think is brilliant. And so, I think global travel is really valuable. I think the sort of the reason or kind of the purpose of the blog post you mentioned was an observation I’ve had. I’m not saying it's true but from my experience, the people who I meet, they tend to be highly successful startup founders, tend to come from quite privileged backgrounds. Now, that's not to say they are using that privilege to secure funding or make connections whatever. I don't think that's necessarily the case but I think what happens is it frames your perspective. If you come from a background where your dad is earning a million dollars a year in the city and uncle Bob and aunt Mary are entrepreneurs and you come from a family where everybody has quite successful backgrounds, money doesn't scare you. You know that money is quite prevalent and you know that if you fail, you could probably go back and your brother or your uncle or your auntie will get you a job or you can go back home for a couple of years but you'd still be living in a nice house in the country. And so, the two things that happened are, first of all, the risk of failure is much less. If you come from a privileged background, if you fail, there is a support network there to look after you. And secondly, as we all know from Psychology, there's a framing effect, there's an anchoring effect. In Psychology and in particular Behavioral Psychology, if you want to sell a higher priced item, you put an even higher priced item there to create this anchoring effect. This is why you go to a bottle shop and they'll have the really expensive wines at the top. Generally, they're not expecting you to buy the really expensive ones. It just makes the middle-priced wines look [inaudible]. So, similarly, I think if you come from a family where having a million-pound bonus is not unusual, then when you're going and pitching money and you're asking for 5 million or 10 million, it doesn't seem like a crazy amount and it seems like an amount perfectly reasonable ask whereas if you come from a poor background, a working-class background, the two things are reversed like if you fail, that might be your one chance and if you fail, you might never get a second chance. Your dad's not going to help you get the job in the city because your dad might not have a job. You might not be able to go back to your home because you might not have room in the home and there might not be opportunities for you where your family lives. And also, if your parents have never earned more than 10,000 dollars or 20,000 thousand dollars a year, the idea of asking for even 100,000 dollars from an angel, let alone 5 million, 10 million, 50 million, it's crazy. So, your belief is anchored, if you come from a poor background, money is rare. If you come from a rich background, your anchored belief is that money is actually quite prevalent. And that changes your attitude to risk and your willingness to kind of step out. I know a lot of people that have got very successful businesses but they're not the kind of the growth businesses that would have a billion-dollar exit. They could be but they don't want to risk it. And I think there are cultural differences. So, I think there is a big cultural difference between England and the US and the best place to see that cultural difference is in the TV show Who Wants to be A Millionaire. In America, tons more people have become millionaires and it's because there's a different attitude. What happens in the UK, I’m going to get the details wrong, but there's like a point at which you say you can either stick and get 125K or you can risk it to get to the next level but if you risk, you risk everything.
Jayneil: You lose everything, yeah.
Andy: And so, British people typically come in and go “Well, look, I came with nothing. 150,000 pounds or whatever, it is a lot of money. I could probably pay my mortgage off. I could have a nice car and go on a holiday. I’m not going to risk it. I’m going to take the money because I’m going to be happy. I’m going to settle.” And so, because of that, British people on that game show put a lot fewer shots on goal. And if you do a lot fewer shots on goal, then a lot fewer millionaires are going to be created. In America, it's completely the opposite. In America, people go “Well, 150K is not that much. A million dollars. That's a lot. I came with nothing. I’m happy to leave with nothing but if I get a million dollars, that would fundamentally change my life.” So, a lot more people go for that million dollars, a lot more people fail but by volume, a lot more people win. And I see this exactly playing itself out in the tech business as well. Ton more companies fail in the US because there are more shots on goal, you get many more of these unicorns whereas in the UK, I see a lot more brilliant businesses, I see a lot more businesses that are doing 5 million, 10 million pounds of recurring revenue, maybe they've got a team of 60, 100, 200 people and they're happy. They don't want to risk that to push it to becoming a unicorn or a billion-dollar valuation because they might lose everything. And I think a lot of that comes down to risk and a lot of that is born in your environment.
Jayneil: Andy, I’m just blown away because this is a feeling that I’ve had for quite some time. My parents grew up poor and they worked really hard to give us the American dream to me and my brother. And the mindset, when my brother graduated and then I graduated, I think, was our dad worked really hard. So, there was this propensity to just go in the career ladder, like you said, just go and start working and make money. And I noticed that some of my friends who maybe did not have to worry about money, like you said, they could take four or five years and say “I want to build this design startup. I want to build this design tool and see where that goes. If it doesn't work, who cares. I’m just going to go get a job.” And now, I’m trying to do this podcast and grow the brand but my dad has been very supportive. He's like “Listen, I did not have the opportunity,” like you said, “to take shots on goal but I don't want you to feel that way because of me or what I’m going through. You take as many shots and go as you want. I’m there with you.” So, I think there's something to be said about that when designers and stuff, once who maybe, let's say, in the US, who work at Amazon, and I don't know exactly what they're getting paid, but if you're getting paid 200,000 dollars in Seattle per year, it's kind of very comfy to leave all that and be like “I’m just going to do this other thing.”
Andy: It comes from a place of privilege but also, again, if you're on a 200K salary in Amazon, you go and run a startup for three or four years, when you go back to Amazon, you're not being on 200K. You're going to be on 300K. So, the risk is really low. The irony is, and this is the thing that I haven't quite figured out, is actually logically you could argue that the table should be turned. In the UK, we've got a much better social security net. So, if you fail in the UK, you're not going to sort of find yourself in health poverty because our healthcare is free.
Jayneil: I didn’t know that.
Andy: We've got good healthcare. We don't have to pay a cent. If I went and broke my arm tomorrow, I’d call an ambulance, I’d get taken to the hospital, they’d fix my arm, I’d walk out like one of my friends had an accident last time he came to the UK and, as he was leaving the hospital, he felt like he was shoplifting because he was waiting for someone to come chasing after him and give him a 200K bill. I find it crazy that my friends in the US have to think about their finances before having a kid and not because they have to think about the finances for school and tuition. They have to think about paying money to go and have the baby at the hospital. I mean, it's crazy. We are a society where we pay taxes. And our taxes aren't super high. We pay taxes and those taxes go to create a support net for everybody. And if I have an accident, if I get ill or whatever, that's covered. So, nobody in the UK has to worry about losing their job because they're not going to lose their healthcare. In America, I know so many people that are in crappy jobs that they don't want to stay in because they have to stay there because maybe they got an ill wife or partner or kid or maybe they're worried about COVID-19 or all kinds of reasons. And then also, the other thing is if we crash and burn, the state will help pay for our accommodation, help pay to kind of look after us and all those kinds of things. The money isn't high but there's much less of a social stigma because we've paid in for this. This is insurance. I’m paying in and if I ever need to take out, I’ll withdraw. In America, there's much more of an association between that and failure and it's stigmatized. So, actually, you would argue that the risk of failure, particularly if you come from a poor family in America, is much harder because you could find yourself homeless, you could find yourself living in a car. I’m not trying to be political by the way at all. I’m just kind of trying to explain the differences between cultures. I mean, I love San Francisco, I love traveling to America but I’m shocked at the level of poverty in San Francisco. I’m shocked at the level of homelessness. I’m shocked at the number of people who are living in cars and trailers.
Jayneil: It's really shocking.
Andy: And it's because they've slipped through the net because society hasn't kind of looked after them. And so, I feel really lucky that I live in a country and in a part of the world where we do our best to look after the community around us. And so, in that environment. you would have imagined the risk of taking those shots on goal would be less. So, that's the thing that I find strange is that I would have actually thought because of the societal inequalities in America, there'd be less risk or people would be more risk averse but it seems to be not the case. So, there's something interesting there. I mean, I’m reading a little bit about Ayn Rand at the moment and a lot of American culture and Silicon Valley culture is sort of born out of this individualism, objectivism, kind of libertarian approach which, I think, gives people a lot of confidence. If you're a subscriber to those beliefs, you think you have a God-given right to succeed and all the people that fail, fail not because of chances or because of luck or because of circumstances but because they have a morally poor character. And so, that's why there's more of a tendency to have more shots at gold because you know you've got a God-given right to succeed and all the people that have failed, it’s their own fault and they're lazy and they're stupid and they're in that position because of themselves. In Europe, we tend not to have that. Most people haven't even heard of Ayn Rand in the UK and Europe. It's not taught at schools. It's seen as a real weird outlier of a belief system. And so, I think that's a big part of the difference between the US and the UK and Europe.
Jayneil: Wow! It's really amazing just to look at the differences between the two. And I agree with you on healthcare. One of my friends works at Amazon. So, he told me that whenever his baby boy has any emergency or anything like that, he directly takes him to the hospital in the afternoon and not wait until evening because after a certain point, you have to go and take an emergency visit which costs more money. Now, I do want to change gears a little bit and offer you congratulations. You just successfully ran Sofa Conf. And how would you describe Sofa Conf in your own words.
Andy: Well, Clearleft, we're huge conference nerds. We actually ran arguably the first digital design conference in the UK way back in 2005, a conference called Deconstruct. And we ran that because we'd gone to the US, we'd gone to South by Southwest, we had a ball, that was my first ever speaking gig at South by Southwest in 2005, came back to the UK and thought “I want to go to another.” And we looked around and there weren't any. And so, we're like “Well, we should run our own.” It's a bit like someone deciding they want to run their own party because they then get to choose the band, they get to choose the food and what have you. So, we did that. And so, we've been running conferences for years. We ran Deconstruct for 10 years. That's on a little bit of a hiatus at the moment. We then started a conference called UX London which became the main UX conference for the whole of Europe, I would argue, the longest running at least. And then off the back of that, maybe five years ago, we started a new conference called Leading Design. And Leading Design, as the name suggests, is all around design leadership, so people leading teams, kind of like Lyft and Amazon and Google and all kinds of companies really. Not just the big tech companies but small startups and banks and all these kinds of people come together to discuss the challenges of design leadership. And then what happened is COVID-19 hit and all the conferences in person stopped. And a lot of our friends pivoted their offline events into online events. We didn't want to do that for a couple of reasons. First of all, because this was going to be our first online event, there was a chance that it might not have been a success. We've not done one before. The technology might let us down. People might not enjoy it. And so, we didn't want to do a digital version of UX London straight out of the gate because if we'd have messed up, we could have potentially damaged the brand, we could have upset our loyal customers, etc. etc. And so, we thought “Well, why don't we create an MVP? Why don't we create a brand-new brand and a brand-new conference to sort of create a bit of a safe space, a sandpit to play it? And if the conference isn't a success, if we sell no tickets, if nobody comes, if the technology crashes, then people will just go “Oh, that conference wasn't very good but hey, UX London is still really cool and the design is really cool.” Thankfully, none of that happened. Thankfully, it was a huge success but that was the logic of creating a new brand.
The other reason was that, as you can imagine, the economies are different, online and offline. In an in-person conference, tickets tend to be quite expensive. They tend to be quite expensive because venues are really expensive. And this is the kind of thing. I think when a lot of people look at conference ticket pricing, they'll often go “Wow! That's crazy. You must be making a load of money.” And the answer is no. Actually, quite often, most of the people I know that run conferences, they're lucky to break even. They might lose money in the first year, they might break even in the second year, they might make a bit of money in the third year but the money they make is maybe holiday money. It's definitely not like buying a new house or a new car or a new TV even. Usually, it's kind of like “We worked crazy hours and we made 10,000 pounds.” And that's got to be split between three or four organizers. It doesn't go anywhere. All the money goes to the venues. And the venues have a monopoly. The venue, there's only one of them and they basically all get together to set pricing. And there's no scalability. For every extra ticket you sell, that's a physical seat. You can only sell so many tickets because you can only fit so many people in the room. And for every ticket you sell, at least half of that goes to the venue. The economies of scale online are different. So, we could sell tickets for cheaper and we could sell more tickets. And once the cost of the tech has been taken into account and once the cost of the speakers has been taken into account, adding extra people only has a marginal extra cost. And so, basically, once you hit breakeven, everything else is pretty much profit. So, it's a much nicer model. And so, basically, the thinking was “Let's have a lower price. Let's try and sell as many tickets as possible. Let's stress test the system. So, we want to sell a few thousand tickets rather than a few hundred tickets.” And also, what that allows us to do is it allows us to, ‘target’ is a wrong word, it's a marketing term, but not so much to target different people but give access to different people. So, if you're going to a conference on design and it costs 1000 US dollars, you're probably going to be sent by your company. You're probably not going to be able to afford to go if you're a freelancer or if you're between jobs or if you're a junior designer wanting to become a design leader. When you're not having to worry about half of the money going to a venue, etc. etc., it means you can bring the ticket prices right down. So, Sofa Conf, we were looking at 100 dollars a ticket rather than 1000. So, that meant more people could come. The junior designers could come. That would mean that an employee could come. That meant that whole teams could come. We were thinking like “We're in the middle of COVID-19. Lots of people have actually been losing their jobs. In that context, we couldn't see too many design teams saying “We want to send one person to a conference for 1000 pounds”” but we could see “Hey, look, there's this conference. It's super cheap. It's 100 dollars and we're going to send the whole team.” And so, rather than normally we'll have maybe two or three people come from a company, quite often we had 10, 20, 30 people from the same company come along because it was a way of boosting people's morale, everyone gets to go and do a thing, it's a sign that the company is still investing in their development. And at the same time, if you're a freelancer, frankly 100 bucks is like what … I mean, the average freelance rate in the UK is 800 dollars for a designer. So, you could basically design a button and pay to come to Sofa Conf. So, it was super cheap. And then at the same time, we also worked with our partners Google, Envision to provide free places for people that came from disadvantaged backgrounds. So, if 100 dollars was too much even for you, maybe you're just a student and you just graduated or you have just lost your job and things are tough, then basically, we gave away a ton of tickets to people that couldn't afford it. Again, you couldn't do that with an in-person conference because every seat has a cost, every seat costs 500 quid but if you're looking virtually, when every seat costs maybe 5 quid, then you can be a lot freer with your tickets.
And also, we gave a load of money to charity as well. We were really concerned about both the Black Lives Matter movement and also supporting frontline workers. So, we got people to offer donations and we matched donations when they bought tickets to provide support for these amazing charities. So, there was just a lot of good waves of positivity all around.
Jayneil: So, from stat perspective, how many attendees ended up attending Sofa Conf?
Andy: I don’t know the exact figures. It was somewhere between 1500 and 1800, which is a good number. I mean, it's not tens of thousands but it's also not hundreds. So, it was more than we would normally be able to fit into our in-person venues, which is great.
Jayneil: And I’m just blown away because when you told me about the economies of scale with the online conference, I feel that there is some more potential to even make some profit and not just worry about breaking even. So, given the fact that the barrier to entry was lower, meaning 100 US dollars, which a lot of people can attend, I’m assuming, for the speaker lineup, you would have had to cater to speakers from all different kinds, maybe that cater to junior designers and also to senior unlike some other senior events where the prices are 1000 dollars and you're expecting mostly veterans to come in.
Andy: Yeah. I think there was probably a broader range of attendees, absolutely. We always try and put on a really good show. So, in terms of the quality of the speakers, I’d say it was still incredibly high. And we have always had a policy of paying our speakers. You would be amazed how few conferences actually pay their speakers. And as an attendee, if you've paid 1000 pounds to go and see a conference, you kind of expect that the people who are on stage are getting some of that money. I would probably say that something along the lines of 90% of the conferences you go to, the speakers wouldn’t have been paid. The AV people would have been paid. The venue people would have been paid. The food people would have been paid. Everybody would have been paid apart from the people you are going to see, who are creating the content. I think that's terrible. I actually think that's criminal. I think, if we are design leaders trying to raise the value and profile of design, I’m trying to prove to the business world that design has value, that the 10, 20 years’ experience of our speakers has significance. And I think sometimes conferences don't pay speakers because they can get away with it. It's like “Oh, well, you know, if I ask them to speak, they'll be happy.”
Jayneil: They're getting the brand and everything.
Andy: That's just not cool. As a designer, I value other designer’s time. I value your experience greatly. And if people are coming to see you, I want you to benefit from that. So, we have always had a policy of paying our speakers. Now, it's not always a ton of money because we've got to be realistic. I think our first conference we ever ran, it was 500 pounds which is not a lot of money. It's not so much the money that counts. It's me saying “I value your time. This is as much as we can pay you. I wish it was more.”
Jayneil: The gesture.
Andy: And it makes people feel valued rather than what often happens which is “Oh, well, you should be glad of speaking at my event. I’m giving you exposure.” Exposure to what, man? I’ve written a book. I work at this cool company. I also really care about the quality of my presentations, the presentations that we give. If I’m paying you for your services, I expect you as a speaker to give me services. I expect you to send me your decks on time. I expect you to put together a really great talk. And I don't expect it to be a veiled marketing ploy. If I’m not paying you, you have to get value some other way. So, you'll talk to your PR team and you'll go “Who are we hiring? What roles do we need? What software do we have to push? What do we get out of it?” And then all of a sudden, what you're doing is basically you're being an advert. You're putting a whole bunch of people on the stage who need to get their money back. And if you're not going to pay them, they are going to advertise. And so, what then happens is you have people paying 1000 pounds to go to an event that is basically advert, advert, advert, advert, advert – “I’m a freelance designer. Hire me.” “I’m a design leader. Come and work for my team.” I work for Uber. Have you thought about going and using an Uber today?” And you get big tech companies basically doing product pitches and it's sickening. I don't want to go to an event and be pitched at for an hour that I’ve paid for to see your sales pitch for a new design tool. That's insulting. And so, I believe that design leaders and conference organizers, if they care about their industry, if they want to raise people up, they need to pay for them.
The other thing which is really important is I also think that paying people is a diversity issue. A lot of people complain “It's the same old speakers. It's the same old white middle-class speakers speaking again and again and again.” And the reason why is because either they are being paid by their company to speak, so they don't have to kind of get money and that's their job or maybe they're pitching a thing for their company. If you're a younger designer, you're not a company advocate. Your boss might not give you time out of the day to write your talk. So, you're probably writing the talk in your evenings and weekends. They might not be giving you time to take off. So, you're taking a week's holiday to fly to London to speak at the event. You might have childcare issues. So, you might need to pay for childcare. You might need to bring your partner with you for childcare. You might just not have a ton of money and be looking into it saying “Well, I really want to go and speak at this event but I’m in America. I do get two weeks’ holiday. And taking a week's holiday just to go and speak at an event, I can't justify it.” And so, what I see is it creates an ecosystem, if you don't pay speakers, you get lots of first-time speakers, they speak once, they put it on their CV and they say “Well, that was nice. I’m never going to do it again because there's no value. I didn't get anything out of it. I didn't get the next job. I didn't get a deal. I didn't get paid. And frankly, when I got home, I had a whole bunch of stuff to deal with because I was away from home for a week or two.” So, paying speakers, particularly younger speakers because, again, there's a psychology often, “Oh, I’ve got to pay the well-known speakers and not pay younger speakers.” To be honest, I’d prefer to flip that around. I’d prefer to say “You've never spoken at an event before. Here's 1000 pounds. You've spoken at 15 this year. Your job is to speak. You're being paid by your company.” So, I think, again, we have a duty to support younger voices. And one of the ways we can do that is by paying speakers.
Jayneil: Wow! I just want to stay quite as much as possible, Andy, because you're just giving me nuggets of wisdom one after the other.
Andy: Thank you.
Jayneil: So, when you're thinking of speakers for Sofa Conf and given that they're going to get paid and the attendees are paying, so you want to ensure that the quality is good, so two things I’m thinking about are how did you prototype or navigate the issue of making sure that “Okay, if there's an issue during the talk and if something crashes, how do we prepare for that?” because in the real event, you would have somebody go into the speaker's room and have the audio-video guy fix it for them. And the second thing is what if the speaker doesn't have a good setup like a good computer or doesn't have a good camera. I mean, if I’m just using a laptop camera, let's be honest, it's going to be blurry or the internet connection. How do you go about ensuring that “Listen, if you're coming and speaking at this event, please make sure that you have this amount of camera or this HD quality and this good internet”?
Andy: I have to admit that at Sofa Conf, most of the speakers who we had, had spoken before. And actually, because we were maybe four or five months into COVID-19 by then, everyone had been working from home and a lot of people had got decent cameras and they've got little LED lights and they've got a decent microphone but what we did do is we did put a little tech list together that says “Hey, if you don't have this stuff, here are some good microphones to consider, here are some good cameras to consider, yada, yada, yada.” We thought about whether we should actually buy kits and send them to speakers but we realized most of our speakers had all this stuff already. So, there wasn't any need to get equipment and share it. Most people had good setups by then.
The other thing was that we decided that we were going to pre-record the talk and then do live Q&A to get around the problem that you were stating. We had no control over the bandwidth. We could control the bandwidth at our end but if someone was speaking from the US and there was congestion because everyone was watching their favorite Netflix show at the time or whatever, you just can't control those things. The last thing we wanted to happen is to have 1800 people in the middle of a great talk and suddenly the connection goes. And so, we decided that the safest thing to do would be to pre-record all the talks. And that actually meant that people could kind of really craft a talk. And if maybe they messed up, they could kind of redo it and it was all fine but then we would have those people watch the talk along and be in the chat room etc. etc. And then, once people would finish, we'd do a live 30-minute Q&A, that person would come on board, would ask the questions that were raised in the chat room and the people would respond because in that situation, if there was a technical challenge, because it's just a Q&A, people would have been more forgiving. They've seen the talk and if 20 minutes into Q&A, the connection goes for 5 minutes, people are not going to be that bothered because they're not following a narrative thread whereas obviously, if you're following a narrative thread and the speaker's just at the point where they're going to tell you the most amazing mind-blowing thing and then you get a spinning beach ball for 20 minutes, you're going to be like “Ah!” That's one of the ways that we help mitigate that.
Jayneil: So, going into the tech stack, because I’m really curious now, if I was a speaker and I had to pre-record my talk, then I could have also video edited my talk before sending it to you, before sending you the video file? So, it’s how I want it to come across. So, you don't have to do any video editing from your end.
Andy: We did, yes. So, what we typically asked our speakers to do was to record a headshot from a decent camera and then also record maybe from a second camera a headshot and the slides just so the slides in the headshot were synced. And then, basically, we would get their slides, we would get the high-quality headshot and then we would edit them together. And so, that's what we mostly did because then we could top and tail it and we could kind of tweak and what have you. And then, obviously, we didn't just want to have like a full-screen video of the speaker. So, we had it appear in a kind of like a branded box with the logos and we could have the person's head over here and then the deck over there. And then if another person popped into this feed, then we could have them come in. So, it was a little bit more choreographed. And, obviously, if you're someone that's really into live streaming, you've probably got like OBS which is a live streaming tool that does that for you. You’ve probably got like an Elgato Cam Deck and what have you and you could do the scene changing for you but I think a lot of our speakers aren't quite there yet. So, we had an AV person managing all that behind the scenes and making sure all of the intro and the outro videos and sort of the window dressing was all there.
Jayneil: And then when you have the conference day on Monday where you're having talks on product, so from 1 to 2 p.m. is, let's say, your talk that's already pre-recorded. So, I’m assuming, from 1 to 2, half an hour people just get sent a Vimeo link to watch the pre-recorded talk and then maybe the Q&As on Zoom?
Andy: Well, there are people that are kind of like stringing together Zoom and Vimeo or YouTube or what have you. There were a lot of dedicated conference sort of tools popping up all over the place. We decided to use a tool called Vito and it's run by a company called Tito that has always done our event ticketing. And they've been working on it a few months before lockdown. So, they had a relatively mature product. I mean, all of these tools are very, very similar. I’m actually a friend and an advisor on another tool called Konf. It’s a similar tool. And, basically, all these tools, they'll have like a video screen that you can watch full screen or a third size or half size. They'll have some kind of chat interactivity function where you could kind of chat along with the attendees. There'll be a schedule. There'll be content information regarding the event. It's all in a simple sort of event kind of platform. All of the talks we would stream to that platform so people would watch them live. And then, afterwards if they wanted to access them, then we might put them somewhere for long-term storage like Vimeo but we didn't want people to be clicking on Zoom links and getting invites to password-protected rooms. We wanted to use a dedicated platform like Vito or Konf. And there are lots of other ones as well. There's about a dozen sort of tools of varying levels of sophistication out there that do this.
Jayneil: Now, all these talks are pre-recorded and you stream them live on there. And I see that on the Sofa Conf website, the ticket sales have ended. So, my question is why not still keep the ticket sales open so that if somebody still wants to buy then, they can just watch at a discounted rate all the other videos that have been recorded because I’m assuming pretty much all the talks were recorded. So, why did you stop the ticket sales?
Andy: We absolutely could do. And I’m sure in the future we might look at exploring other revenue streams. I think, for this first event, we wanted to keep it relatively simple. And to be honest, again, this might sound like a not very American or not very entrepreneurial thing, but we weren't doing it to maximize our profit because also, I think, sometimes when you're desperately trying to maximize your profit, you don't realize the brand reputational harm you might be doing.
Jayneil: Can you give an example?
Andy: I think that it's quite common these days to go to an event that costs 1000 pounds, you watch the conference and then two weeks later, they make their videos free. And making the videos free is often really there partly to kind of give the content to people that couldn't afford to come, partly it's marketing for next year and also, it's a realization that a conference is more than just watching a series of videos. A lot of attendees have got used to accessing this content for free. So, first of all, I think it becomes quite difficult to charge a thing that people are used to getting for free. And so, there is a difficult conversation around how do we do this, when do we do it, when do we release the free videos, etc. etc. and how do we price it, do we price it the same, do we price it differently but, to be honest, I am not convinced. We sold 1800 tickets. We might have sold another 50 or 100 tickets after the event. These things are destinations and there's something about the live nature that brings people together. You're packaging this thing. And so, yeah, sure, we could have sold another couple of tickets down the line and we might still do that but then we would have had to have had a whole different platform for selling those tickets and managing those.
Jayneil: Oh yeah, you're so right.
Andy: And so, we didn't think it was worth a hassle. Now, it might be that we choose to do that in the future. I’ve seen conferences where basically they'll let you watch the first five minutes of the video for free and then there'll be a little box saying “Hey, if you want to watch the rest of it, pay.” And this is what I mean by reputational damage. I hate that as well. And actually, I often feel when everyone else is giving their content away for free, when someone does that, even if they're just trying to do it to get my email address, I just think “Screw you.” And that's dumb because I know that the people have paid to create this content, etc. etc. and I should be happy to pay for it but I generally don't. And so, the model that we have isn't necessarily about selling the individual content. It's about selling the package and the experience and the week that happens. I’m not writing it out. I’m not saying we'd never do that but it was just an added level of complexity that felt like it wasn't going to be worth at the time, the expected revenue. Again, for me, I’m just sometimes fed up with brands. They're always trying to make that extra little bit of money like you go to the fish and chip shop or the burger shop and you buy your burger and they try to charge you 5 cents for the ketchup. I’m just like “Come on.”
Jayneil: Oh my God.
Andy: So, giving the ketchup away for free is what I think.
Jayneil: Absolutely. Dominos does that a lot in the US. You try to get their pizza and then you got to pay for the red pepper and stuff.
Andy: And it just doesn't make you feel good. It makes you feel like you've been nickeled and dimed, I believe, is the US phrase. If we do something, we want to make sure that it's valuable and people are not going to feel they've somehow been unfairly treated.
Jayneil: Wow! I’m thinking along the lines of the overhead cost that you would have had. So, what I’m doing is in my head I’m literally thinking about your team had to almost do a service design because this is pretty much the best-case study for a service design example where you have a real-life event that you're already doing but now you've got to tailor it for the online medium. So, I’m just thinking about the one-on-one, how did you go about doing that, replicating that and one of the things is you just use the conference platform. So, you don't have to worry about people can network just like Slack in there. I haven't used that platform yet. So, I might not be 100% sure how that works but in terms of overhead costs, I’m assuming the overhead cost would have been just the AV, video production, and the platform cost and the speaker cost, right?
Andy: Yeah. Like you said, there's the platform cost. When you sell tickets, there's transaction cost. You have to pay the ticketing company and the merchant fees and obviously, Visa will charge you a couple of percent, what have you. So, there's all those kinds of annoying hidden fees. You're right, we pay our speakers, we have to pay the AV company to do some AV work and production and support throughout the day. We've obviously got a team that put the event on. So, we've got salaries to pay, etc. etc. It does all mount up. And, again, you're not just paying for the team to be there for the week of the conference. You're doing marketing. You're doing sales. So, you've got to factor in that. It might take three or four months for the team to put everything together and they've got to spin up a website and you've got to produce marketing content and social media content and all this kind of stuff. Actually, the biggest cost comes from people. It's the same being an agent. I run an agency predominantly. Fair enough, we do events but we're an agency business. And yeah, sure, we have to pay for an office space, we've got to pay for insurance, we’ve to pay for computers but at the end of the month, that is dwarfed by our salary bill. 80% of our outgoings are people, are humans. And that would be the same, I would say, with an event as well.
Jayneil: And in your experience, having run the physical event and with the Sofa Conf, would you say that the margins were better with online one after everything was said and done?
Andy: Well, again, the margin thing is a question around pricing and volume, to be honest. We aimed to roughly make a similar margin. And I would say, conferences tend to make somewhere between 0% and 30% margin. The ones that make 0% margins don't stick around too long. The margins aren't great. And so, we priced the event significantly cheaper in order to increase the access of people that could attend but the margin is probably around 20% to 30%, something like that.
Jayneil: Nice. And I’m thinking about treating this as a prototype, the first time you were doing Sofa Conf. For all the conference organizers that might be listening to this, what would your advice be in terms of some of the failures you encounter like “Okay, this thing we prototyped or tried out didn't work.” What would you tell them?
Andy: Well, I mean, we were rather lucky that we didn't have any failures. I mean, there are always kind of small things to tweak but I think the things that you end up tweaking are very, very specific to your setup or your team or what have you. So, I don't really have any big suggestions there in terms of what we failed and what we learned because I think we were quite cautious. I think we priced it sensibly, we had low expectations, we created a sandbox that would protect our other brands. I suspect what will happen now is that now that we're comfortable running a smaller event online, we will probably take some of our bigger brands in terms of UX London and Leading Design and at some stage, probably run digital versions of those. I think, for me, the key thing is, again, as you say, it's service design. It's not just taking a format that works offline and moving online.
Andy: Are you familiar with the term skeuomorphism?
Jayneil: Yes.
Andy: So, skeuomorphism is sort of like a design trend where people will hark back to a previous generation's design aesthetic to make it more comfortable in a new setting. So, the classic example is when Steve Jobs created the Address Book app in Apple. He made it look like leather with leather stitching because it made you see this as an address book. And when radio moved into TV, the first sort of tv dramas were really recorded radio plays. They hadn't worked out the abilities of TV, the ability to cut between scenes, the ability to reset. Basically, they were just filming radio plays. So, that was sort of almost a form of skeuomorphism as well. The early TV shows were not TV as you know them today. I would say, for a lot of people that are organizing conferences, what they're doing is they're just lifting the offline event and dumping it online and they're not thinking about the unique aspects of the media. And so, if you're going to be doing a two-day offline conference, you're going to be doing it two days online. If you're going to have an hour lunch break and 15-minute breaks between sessions, you're going to do the same here but it doesn't work. Well, first of all, people are fed up of going to Zoom calls. So, having a two-day conference where basically it's effectively Zoom call, Zoom call, Zoom call, Zoom call, Zoom call, you get tired, your attention drifts, you're multitasking, you're on your phone, you're doing Slack, yada, yada, yada. You're not paying attention. People can't pay attention for long periods of time. So, the first thing we did is normally we might have 45-minute talks, this time we had 25-minute talks. You need to narrow down the attention span. Secondly, we started the talks UK time 3 or 4 in the afternoon and they ran to about 7 o'clock at night. So, we were doing half days, we were doing shorter days. Again, attention span. We ran it over a week. So, we could have had all that content in two days. That allowed people in the UK to do two-thirds of a day's worth of work, get that out of the way, come watch a talk, then maybe check Slack, then come back half an hour later, we had nice big breaks, watch another talk and then go away for an hour, come back, watch another talk to maintain their energy and their enthusiasm rather than burning them out. And so, we were very careful about how we scheduled it in order to manage energy, not just to try and recreate what the physical experience is. And a lot of companies are trying to play around with “Well, how could we manufacture serendipity? What would be the online equivalent of a drinks mixer?” and all these kinds of things. And I get that and I’m not saying you shouldn't do it but I think trying to do it in the same way, you're asking for trouble because online and offline are different. A physical theater and a video platform are different. Your energy is different. Your attention is different. Your distractions are different. And so, as a designer, you have to design for the medium and that's what we tried to do.
Jayneil: Oh my God! Andy, I kid you not, my mind is blown away. The attention to details, the skeuomorphism.
Andy: One of my friends, John Allsopp, runs a great conference series called Directions in Australia. And he's exploring the concept of a month-long conference. His hypothesis is rather than having talks every day or having two days’ worth of talks, wouldn't it be better if you just did one afternoon a week. And so, every Friday, from 4 to 7, you go, you listen to talks and then next Friday, 4 to 7, you listen to talks and next Friday, 4 to 7, listen to talks. And so, rather than trying to cram it all in one, you create this cadence. He hasn't done it yet. I think his first event is in maybe October-November but I’m fascinated to see whether it is better to run an online conference spread over a month rather than a day or a week. And so, I’m really impressed with people trying to explore this new medium. And I think there's going to be lots of opportunity for invention, reinvention, entrepreneurism in formats moving forwards.
Jayneil: And did you and the team prototype this out and virtual whiteboards and think about all these experiences in advance? How did that process work like “Oh, let me think about how their energy doesn't get burned out. This is how we need to time it. Let's think about if you do this, what's going to happen”?
Andy: Yeah, a lot of sticky notes, a lot of understanding different time zones as well because we wanted to make it work so that people in the UK and the US could join in. We wanted to make sure that people from Asia could join in. It was a little bit harder for Australia and New Zealand because we can't cover all time zones but in our physical events, we have folks coming from South America, we have folks coming from India, we have folks coming from Singapore. And so, we wanted to make sure that the timings worked. So, we did a lot of work around the timings. And, yeah, we thought about the emotional energy flow but we do that in our events anyway. I’m amazed how poorly most events think about their audience experience and the audience energy. I go to conferences where the first talk of the day is a talk about design systems and the second talk of the day is something completely different, let's say, it's about a beautiful portfolio review and then the third talk is about design systems again. There's a story up there. First of all, why have two design systems talk if they're almost going to be identical. And if you're going to have two design systems talk, why not put them together so that they create a nice story and why not get the speakers to talk about which part of design systems they're going to talk about – “And this is going to be like a case study and this is going to be like high-level overview” – and then the overview starts and then it goes into the case study. And so, often it just feels like people have got all of the speakers. Just throw them on a table. Wherever they've landed, they're going to go “Oh, I’m going to have that person, that person.” The thing that we do a lot is we make sure that the energy throughout the day works. So, obviously, if you're in a physical space, you want people to get there on time. So, you want to start with a big-name speaker because that's going to make people get up early and get there on time. And then before the breaks, you want people to go out and chat to each other. So, you might want more of a controversial speaker because they can go away and go “Did you hear what that person said?” And as it gets towards lunch, you want to end on a big bang because you want people to go out the doors and go “Wow! That was amazing.” When people come back from lunch, they're feeling tired, a tummy full of food, they've got a tummy full of dosa. Actually, at our UX London conference, side track for second, we have street food, we have truck food because most conference food is terrible. We have all the best food from around London because food is such an important part of the in-person experience. And going and eating crappy food from the conference's official supplier, nobody wants that. When people come back from lunch, they're feeling tired. So, you kind of want a lightweight but energetic talk. You want someone that's chatty and friendly that can kind of get people excited. And then towards the end of the day, what we tend to have is we tend to have a solid closer. So, somebody that we know people will love will round the day off. The speaker before that, we usually have an unknown speaker but a speaker that we think is going to be really amazing. And what that does is it means that if that person knocks it out of the park, you end on a high, peak end rule. You have an amazing talk, people are still buzzing and then you still are left with this really, really solid talk at the end and people come away going “God! That was amazing.” And actually, even if some of the other talks were rubbish, if you end with two talks that are brilliant, that's great. If the newer speaker doesn't do so good, then it doesn't matter because you've got an amazing closer anyway. And that amazing closer will pull back all the energy so you go out on a bang. And so, it's like casting a movie. You've got to think about not just big-name speakers or big-name actors but do these two actors work together. If you're casting this person as a husband and this person a wife, are they believable, is that energy there? If you've got two talks next to each other, do they make sense, do they lead from one to the other? One of the things that people always say about our events is they come away and they can see a theme, they can see a story arc that's come across the whole day. And it's deliberate. We've thought really hard how to tell a story. We've not just thrown a bunch of big-name speakers from big-name companies down on a table and hoped that somehow something good would happen.
Jayneil: Andy, I know you're an agency founder but I think somewhere in there I can definitely see the moniker ‘the Expert Conference Consultant’. I’ve talked with a few conference organizers and I have to be honest, you're the only one I’ve seen that has gone into this much depth. Just like how designers obsess over pixels, you literally are obsessing over every single experience. And what advice would you give me as a designer, if I were to speak at some point in the future at one of your events, what are some of your pet peeves that gets you blacklisted on Andy's list of things not to do for designers if they're going to speak?
Andy: I am a designer and I run a design company. And so, we approach everything with a design thinking mindset. Whether it's a user journey or a service blueprint for a piece of client work or whether it's an in-person experience for our events, there are design material which you can choose to manipulate and manage and create an experience and experiences happen just without your involvement and I’d much prefer to be involved in making that experience. So, it's just design. It's all design. I’m not someone that believes that everyone is a designer but I do believe that everything is designed at a fundamental level. And using these skills, I think, is really important.
In terms of advice for new speakers, I’ve got so much advice here. You asked about pet peeves and I do have a bunch of pet peeves. And this is not a judgy thing so much. I mean, each year, I will watch hundreds and hundreds of conference videos and attend dozens of events and you start to see patterns. One of the things when I first saw, it was quite funny but now really annoys me, is the speaker making a joke about “I’m the only thing that’s standing between you and X,” “I’m the only thing standing between you and lunch,” “I’m the only thing standing between you and cocktails.” Now, if you haven't seen many conferences, it's funny. If you've gone to a bit of conferences, it's a bit tiring. If you're a speaker and you haven't been to that conference all day because you've been back in your room doing your last-minute prep and you come on last and you say “I’m the only thing between you and cocktails” and you don't realize that the speaker before you said “I’m the only thing between you and lunch” and the speaker before them said “I’m the only thing between you and break” or “coffee” or whatever, it just sounds really, really you're not paying attention. I’d be happy to ban the whole joke around “I’m the only thing blocking between you and X.” The thing is do we always have to make it about alcohol. I mean, I like a drink, I like cocktails, I like a beer with people after the event but by focusing the whole event around “Oh, you are so needy of alcohol that actually you would want me to finish quicker so you can go and drink,” that is not a positive message. Actually, the positive message is “Hey, look, there's free alcohol out here but you're so interested in what I’ve got to say, I could go over 20 minutes and you'll still be here because this is interesting.” People don't come to conferences for cheap Bud Light. They come to conferences because you are a speaker. Have some pride. Have some belief in your value. And don't denigrate yourself because you think that a free Bud Light is better than you. This is all really unfair but other things that really annoy me are …And these annoy me because I’ve done them all as well. This is not me picking on people. I have done every single one of these things like pointless exercises through a talk – “Hey, everyone, now get up and then stand on your feet and then …” I want to sit and shrink in my chair. I don't want anyone to kind of like get me to do any audience participation. And the last thing I want to do is to have some conversation with the person next to me about the meaning of life or to have a campfire or to do a guided meditation like “God, no, leave me out of this.” And also, if you are going to do it, do it with conviction because when it works, it can work really well but the thing that really annoys me about that is people go “Okay. Now, I want you all to kind of talk to your neighbor and tell them the one thing you're hoping to learn from the conference.” And then just as the conversation starts getting good, you've had your turn and the other person's going to share and you will come back, come back, come back and you're like “You told me to have a great conversation. I was having a great conversation and now you've cut me off.” If you're going to do that participatory thing, respect the audience's time and energy and let them finish. Also, to be honest, a lot of the time, if people do that, some people will get involved in chat, some people just use the opportunity to do emails or whatever and you'll lose a quarter of the audience. So, I tend to try and avoid doing pointless interactive stuff. Those are just dumb things. To be honest, they're crutches. I get it. You're not going to be a bad speaker. No one's going to hate you if you do those things but it just sometimes feels a little bit unoriginal or unconsidered.
In terms of how you can break onto the speaker circuit, this is one of my main bugbears at the moment. I love speakers who have a genuine thing to say and are using the mediums that they currently have available to say those things. I love speakers that are active on Twitter or on Instagram or active on Medium, people who have been writing articles because they've got something burning inside them that they want to share because that tells me that the reason you're doing this is because you are committed to helping people learn about a thing but nowadays, so many people see speaking as a status, it's a thing to put on their CV – “In order to get my new job, I need to say that I’ve spoken at these three events. And once I’ve spoken at those three events, I’m not going to do any more speaking. It's purely just because I want to tick those boxes.” And, again, it doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person but it means your motivations are not as altruistic. So, I want speakers that want to teach people, not speakers that just want to tick off a box. If you are somebody that does want to just tick off a box as an experience, it's not about you. It's about the audience and it's about the organizer. I definitely advise people to reach out to conference organizers and say “Hey, I love your conference. I’d love to speak at a conference.” The first thing that me as an organizer wants to know is “Oh, that's great. Have you been to my event?” and often they'll be like “Oh no.” – “Well, look, come to my event. Get an understanding of the vibe. If you like it, contact me next year” because otherwise, if you're saying “I’d love to speak at your event” and you've not been, probably don't really care as much as you want me to think you care whereas if you come and say “Look, I’ve been for the last three or four years. I know that you care about the event.” Definitely don't get your PA to email me. I get so many people saying “My boss would really love to come to your event and speak” and it’s like “Well, your boss can bloody well email me then. If your boss really cared, it would be them dropping me a line, not you. I actually get the sense that your boss doesn't care. I reckon your boss has asked you to produce a list of 50 conferences and you're blanket emailing everybody and that person really isn't invested in me. So, if you're not going to be invested in me, why should I be invested in you?”
And then the next thing is if I think “Oh, that person's interesting. What do you want to speak about?” And what I want is I want an impassioned person that says “Okay, I’m the world's best expert in X. I have a unique set of experience in Y. I have a special take in Z that you've never heard of. I’ve just finished a project over here.” I want there to be a reason why you're the best person to speak about your subject. I get so many people emailing me and say “Can I speak at your event?” and I say “Yeah, sure. What do you want to speak about?” and they'll be like “Whatever you want me to speak about.”
Jayneil: Oh my God.
Andy: And I’m like “I don't know you. I’ve never heard of you before. I’ve never seen you speak. I’ve got no idea what you're good at. Why do you think that you are such an attractive person that I should seek you out to be on my stage when you don't even know or care about your subject matter?” I want someone to say “Hey, look, Andy, I’ve been dedicating my last five years to kind of really nailing X and I’ve got these really great insights and I want to share them with your team.” If you're just saying “Tell me what you want me to speak about and I can speak about anything,” you're not speaking because you want to speak and share your knowledge. You're wanting to speak because you're wanting the prestige of speaking at an event. So, don't be that person. Have a real genuine reason why you want to speak.
The other thing I would say, which again is really annoying, is people come and say “I want to speak at your event.” – “Great. What other events have you spoken about?” and they're like “Well, none.” So, it’s like “My event, it has the best speakers from around the world, people that have spent 20, 30 years in their careers and they're experts. Why is my event the one that you think you're going to cut your teeth on?” It's a bit like a band going to Glastonbury and saying “Hey, we've never played before in front of a live audience. We reckon we’re pretty good. We've practiced a little bit but we haven't got an album or anything, we haven't got any audience, we haven't got any followers.” It’s like “No, if you're a band leader, you start gigging in your local pub and your local venue and then you build an audience because people like what you've got to say or like your music and then you go to a national event and you get more and more prestige and then you go to an international event and you go and do the big arenas, you work your way up. And if you do that, then we can also evidence what you can do. If you're going to come to an event that is full of people like the VP of design at Facebook, the VP of design at Google, if you haven't got a story to tell, if you can't say “Well, actually, last year, I spoke at this event which is a bit smaller. Here's a video of that. And three years ago, I was speaking at a local meetup. So, here’s videos of that,” if I can't see you speaking, if I can't see any evidence that you're going to be able to perform, how do I know you're going to be good if I put you on the stage and how do I know that you're going to have interesting stuff to say. So, build your portfolio, find opportunities to speak, go on podcasts, go on panel discussions, start running a little meetup in your local area and talk at that, get that video, send that to a smaller conference, speak at that smaller conference, speak at TEDx, blah, blah, blah. And maybe in three or four years’ time, come back and talk to me and if you're then ready, I’ll put you on the stage in front of all the big major design leaders in the country but before that, how do I know if you're any good, how do I know if you can play your instruments, how do I know if your songs are going to be nice and people are going to enjoy them.
Jayneil: Andy, I promise that I will do my best not to do any of those pet peeves at any of your events. I promise you that.
Andy: Thank you.
Jayneil: How can people find you if they want to get in touch with you or follow you or learn more about you?
Andy: The best way probably is Twitter. I’m just Andy Budd on Twitter. I’m very sort of vocal and loud on Twitter. I’m also Andy Budd on LinkedIn. I tend not to sort of broadcast too much on LinkedIn and I tend to only connect with people who I know in person but you can definitely follow me on LinkedIn as well. I do have a very old blog that I almost never use, AndyBudd.com and usually if I do write something on there, I’ll cross-post to my Medium which is also Andy Budd. And I guess, lastly, my agency is Clearleft, Clearleft.com and I write content on Clearleft.com and you can find out all about what we're doing there as well but I think Twitter is the best because I’ll link off to things and I’ll retweet the events we're running and get into arguments about the nature of design and all the good stuff that happens on Twitter.
Jayneil: Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show. I had a blast and I got a premiere on what not to do at a conference if you're going to speak there for the first time, how not to piss out the conference organizer and also it scratched an itch that I had, how does one actually prototype a design conference for the online medium. Thank you.
Andy: It's been a pleasure. It's been lovely chatting to you and I look forward to do this again soon.
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