Live event like TEDxAmsterdam: anything can go wrong
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2025 3:19 am
Okay, so we have a schedule and we know that things can change last minute. How do you deal with that during the event? It helps if you manage expectations about this: so on the one hand you promise that in case of major changes, no, no good, no fast article can be produced. On the other hand, you prepare the content team for the biggest possible disaster and ask for extreme flexibility. It is very important for everyone involved to deliver quality work as quickly as possible and that is hard work even with so much preparation. One of the most appreciated speakers this year talked extensively about stem cell technology and that is not a subject that is easy to write about in an understandable way.
TEDxAmsterdam 2013 - Always exciting whether a speaker's drone will crash panama mobile phone number list into the audience (photo: Patrick Stastra)
It's always exciting to see whether a speaker's drone won't crash into the audience (photo: Patrick Stastra)
In the meantime, content planning has become an advanced jigsaw puzzle. Anyone who has ever organised an event with more than 4 speakers will recognise what I mean: changing times, people and topics until the last minute. Last year, for example, a major act was stuck in traffic – you can’t make this up – but then everything has to be changed.
As for bloggers: ideally I schedule people to 1 article per session. So you can't cover a TED Talk at the end of session 1 and the beginning of session 2. The personal preferences of bloggers are also important. Not only for soft reasons, but the articles are much better because of it. This year the team was bigger than ever with almost 30 enthusiasts and everyone had to write fewer articles on average, which I think has improved the quality. That meant that some bloggers had nothing to do for an entire session other than selecting for example the ' best photos of session 2 ' and had room to step in where needed. That turned out to be necessary only at the end of the day, when we worked with 6 team members until 21:30 to tie up loose ends.
The organization
The content team couldn't organize this without Google Sheets and Dropbox. This secret weapon was once invented by the production genius of Live Solutions, Xander Kranenburg , because he receives all the presentation materials and needs to store them in one place where multiple people can access them. Since the third edition in 2011, we share this folder with everyone who is busy creating content about the event.
TEDxAmsterdam 2013 - Always exciting whether a speaker's drone will crash panama mobile phone number list into the audience (photo: Patrick Stastra)
It's always exciting to see whether a speaker's drone won't crash into the audience (photo: Patrick Stastra)
In the meantime, content planning has become an advanced jigsaw puzzle. Anyone who has ever organised an event with more than 4 speakers will recognise what I mean: changing times, people and topics until the last minute. Last year, for example, a major act was stuck in traffic – you can’t make this up – but then everything has to be changed.
As for bloggers: ideally I schedule people to 1 article per session. So you can't cover a TED Talk at the end of session 1 and the beginning of session 2. The personal preferences of bloggers are also important. Not only for soft reasons, but the articles are much better because of it. This year the team was bigger than ever with almost 30 enthusiasts and everyone had to write fewer articles on average, which I think has improved the quality. That meant that some bloggers had nothing to do for an entire session other than selecting for example the ' best photos of session 2 ' and had room to step in where needed. That turned out to be necessary only at the end of the day, when we worked with 6 team members until 21:30 to tie up loose ends.
The organization
The content team couldn't organize this without Google Sheets and Dropbox. This secret weapon was once invented by the production genius of Live Solutions, Xander Kranenburg , because he receives all the presentation materials and needs to store them in one place where multiple people can access them. Since the third edition in 2011, we share this folder with everyone who is busy creating content about the event.