Week 5 Review

Venues, Voids, and Very Little Movement

This week felt like it was characterized by delays. Or maybe I am just impatient. I am really glad I decided to plan the conference 12 months out because I highly doubt I could do this in less time without life threatening stress levels. I think a year is a good amount of time to plan a conference. Of course it can be done in less, but a year feels right.

Social Media Launch

I posted about the conference publicly (on LinkedIn, the only ‘social media’ I have) for the first time ever. It was reshared by a friend and ‘liked’ by a couple others. A few of them signed up for the email newsletter (hi, hello, thank you). If not big and splashy it was at least a good way of easing into this public promotion/social media thing that I am not very good at. And a big thank you to all the friends who engaged with the post and showed support. I appreciate it.

I also posted similar announcements on the BlueSky and X accounts that I created specifically for the conference. These accounts obviously have no followers and posting feels a bit like shouting into the void but I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

Not having any social media presence since 2019 is definitely going to hurt my marketing efforts for this conference. Especially early on. But I am hopeful that giving myself a year is going to allow me to get some momentum going in time to sell tickets and make this a success.

Venue

There was very little progress with getting a venue this week. After getting no return phone calls from one venue I dug a bit deeper on their website and found a contact form to fill out for event inquiries. This got a relatively quick response email by someone asking for more information so they could connect me with the correct sales person. That was Wednesday. Radio silence the rest of the week. After similarly not getting any return calls from another venue I also was able to find a contact form on their website which I filled out Friday. I am hopeful they will get back to me next week because I have a friend who has worked with them before and had a good experience.

I am also a little afraid the reason I am not getting return calls is because my phone is old and garbage and has trouble staying connected to the network for some reason so I decided I am going to get a new phone next week.

LLC

I thought I opened an LLC last week but then I got an automated email saying my submission to the state had been rejected because I had improperly named my LLC. I thoroughly read their instructions and could find nothing wrong with my company name (Blastoff Rails LLC) and so I simply re-submitted the form. This again was met with an automated rejection and accompanying email. I sent an email to their department and haven’t heard back. So that is frustrating. LLCs are supposed to be so easy to do. Just 15 minutes of paperwork and voila, you are a business owner.

Organizer Interviews

I was unable to get an organizer interview in this week. I had a couple people respond that I had reached out to but nobody was up for it this week. Oh well. People are busy. Also I am probably bad at scheduling. I have pondered getting something like calendly for this. I do have one lined up for next week which I am very excited for and I am optimistic I can get a couple of the people I am currently talking with scheduled after that.

I am going to post the interviews that I have done so far on social this week. Hopefully that will get a few people from out of my network to take notice of the conference and maybe get a few more social media followers or email list subscribers.

Next Week

• Hopefully get a real conversation with a venue
• Post existing interviews to socials
• Get more interviews scheduled
• Work on sponsorship plan
• Work on conference site