TEDxWeekendMunich Learnings
- 1. HOSTINGATEDxWEEKEND Learnings from TEDxWeekendMunich 2022 AUTHOR: DORA DZVONYAR | TWITTER @DZDORIE | TEDX@DZVONYAR.COM
- 2. A TEDxWeekend is a weekend-long international gathering of TEDx organizers with city tours and adventures, workshops, and fun social hangouts. These weekends are designed to help organizers connect with each other, celebrate the TED spirit and mission, and fall in love with the place in which they are held. PURPOSEOFTHISDOCUMENT • Record our approach to organizing the weekend as well as the learnings from analyzing attendee and team feedback. • Help other organizers prepare for their own TEDxWeekend, reducing uncertainty through sharing recommendations. OVERVIEW
- 3. • 20-22 May 2022 in Munich, Germany. • Hosted & organized by the TEDxTUM team. We started organizing around 3 months before but would recommend starting earlier unless you can dedicate a lot of time to the project. • 80 attendees from 18 countries, involved in the organization of 44 TEDx events. • TEDxWeekendMunich was one of three TEDxWeekends that happened in 2022 as a way of bringing the community back together after over two years of pandemic. TEDxWEEKENDMUNICH SEE REGISTRATION PAGE BROWSE PHOTOS WATCH THE AFTERMOVIE WATCH THE TRAILER
- 4. Friday 16:00 Registration, COVID self-tests, conversation 18:30 Cozy dinner (self-paid) Saturday 9:00 Breakfast 10:00 Opening session & icebreaker 12:30 Lunch & goodie exchange 14:00 Treasure hunt in Munich 17:00 Free time 19:00 Dinner on the rooftop of a Munich brewery Sunday 9:00 Morning yoga & mindfulness session 10:00 Breakfast 11:00 Breakout sessions round 1 12:00 Breakout sessions round 2 13:00 Lunch & informal debrief of breakouts 14:30 Wrap-up session 15:00 End of program PROGRAM ABOUT OUR APPROACH In designing the program, we were mindful of… • Mixing workshops and goal-oriented discussion with social activities (approx. 40%-60%). • Mixing structured, semi-structured and unstructured time. • Leaving plenty of time for meals and breaks to allow free conversation. • Starting with inspirational content in the opening session and ending with structured discussion in the breakouts, assuming that people will have more and more questions as the weekend develops. • Showing attendees the local culture of Munich. • Allowing for bu ff er time to avoid rushing.
- 5. The goal of TEDxWeekendMunich was to share ideas, experiences, and solutions with each other and to encourage everyone to contribute. We believe that each TEDx event and each team member has their own "secret sauce". Sometimes the more veteran organizers and large events shine so brightly that the newer or smaller events feel like they have nothing to share. We made it our mission to fi nd everyone’s secret sauce and enable them to share it. The event design snuck in some local fl avors, with the occasional bottle of beer and sweet mustard as well as the colors of the German fl ag. The design was represented on a variety of giveaways. We encourage other TEDxWeekends to pick a theme and think about what they want to achieve during the process. THETHEME:"SECRETSAUCE"
- 6. GROUP PHOTO WALL STAGE BACKDROP POSTERS BADGES
- 7. At TEDxTUM, we like to create task forces for projects that are not our main event. This enables team members to contribute to activities beyond their regular sub-team as well as to invest more time than usual over a limited period to realize a project they care deeply about. The TEDxWeekendMunich organizing task force was mostly sta ff ed with former team leads that were still on the team. This had the following advantages: These senior team members were familiar with the TEDx community and its gatherings (most had attended one or more TEDxWeekend in the past) and the current team leads were able to continue focusing on the organization of our main event without the additional workload. Of course, this was only possible because of the size of our core team (approx. 40 members). We picked the following areas of responsibility: Session Content, Activities & Culture, Catering & Restaurants, Logistics, Documentation (photo & video), Attendee Communication, Goodies & Giveaways, Budget & Ticketing. Each responsibility was sta ff ed with 1-2 leading team members (with some overlap) that involved others as needed. Of course, many more team members contributed to all of these areas! Our recommendations: Distribute responsibility among multiple, preferably senior, members of your team. There should never be only one person responsible (see also: bus factor)! Remember to keep your current team leads and the rest of the team informed and excited about the progress and to involve your newer team members for whom this is a great opportunity to contribute and get a taste of the TEDx spirit. TEAMSETUP
- 8. TEDxWeekends are made with fi nancial support from TED, so if you are selected to organize such a gathering, you will design your budget and liaise with them about it. Budgeting was a big part of our process and it was also full of challenges! Just like with your events, you will need to account for all costs, collect invoices for everything and prepare a reimbursement package so that your costs can be reimbursed by TED. Don’t forget that you will have income from registration fees which should of course show up in your budget as revenue. In order to kick-start your process, you can have a look at our budget sheet below and get an impression of the kinds of costs we had and the level of detail at which we recorded them. We removed the amounts, since those will vary widely by region. Please note that we don’t pay for any on-campus venue that we use, so the budget only shows costs for any external venues. BUDGET LEARNINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS • We faced all kinds of challenges connected to the budget, the biggest of which was the variability of ticket income. We didn’t know the number of attendees and thus the ticket revenues until very late, which is quite di ff erent from our events that usually sell out fast. To address this, we made plans for 40%, 70% and 100% of our capacity and checked them with TED. These plans did not scale linearly because many of the costs were either fi xed or the full amount has to be spent before the registration deadline (e.g. goodie orders). • Since you will be paying for the items in your budget to be later reimbursed by TED, make sure you know how much you need at which point in time and what can be covered out of existing budget reserves. If your costs surpass your current reserve, check in with TED about your options. • When making fi nancial obligations, be aware of the cancellation conditions and make sure that these are reasonable (e.g. in case of cancellation because of COVID or uther unforeseen circumstances) - just like you do with your events! • When getting o ff ers from restaurants and event venues, make sure there is fl exibility in terms of group size and ask for the deadline to communicate the fi nal head count. In our case, most venues asked for a minimum turnover to make the reservation. • Our experience shows that the parts of the weekend that cost the least where those that attendees loved the most. We recommend that you keep it simple - for instance, depending on your venue you don’t need a full production team to run a plenary session, you might do well with a projector and simple loudspeaker since the focus is not on the presentations, but on the conversation. Also, instead of a fully sta ff ed bu ff et, you might opt for wraps, sandwiches, or bowls. Find the right balance that works for you! TEDXWEEKENDMUNICH BUDGET SHEET
- 9. When we announced TEDxWeekendMunich, we had all the necessary information - including open registration form - ready to go. This was quite di ffi cult to achieve because we had to make a lot of decisions early on, but it was convenient because attendees could register straight away! We showed all information on one page so we didn’t need to update multiple fi les and we added details whenever we received multiple questions about a certain topic. We used the ticketing system we already know from our events and set it up so we had to accept every registration, which enabled us to check whether bookings were only made by TEDx organizers and whether everything was fi lled out correctly. The page was sent out to licensees by TED and we also reached out through community channels such as the TEDxHub, international organizer Facebook group, or personal organizer contacts, and Instagram accounts of the major European TEDx events. We did a lot of outreach ourselves and it was quite time-consuming, but absolutely worth it to see the wonderful mix of organizers attend the event! ANNOUNCEMENTOFTHEEVENT SEE REGISTRATION PAGE SEE BOOKING FORM
- 10. The goal of the opening session was to create a feeling of togetherness as well as open people’s minds to the great things happening in the TEDx universe. Ideally, they would leave the session with more questions than they came with and lots of new ideas for their events, without feeling intimidated by larger, more veteran events. We structured the session as follows: 10 min arrival bu ff er 15 min introduction by TEDxTUM team 05 min short activity (Rock Paper Scissors) 15 min "state of the X" by TED team 40 min "show & tell" by 6 TEDx organizers 45 min icebreaker (Queen Bee Challenge) 10 min overview of the rest of the day 10 min bu ff er THEOPENINGSESSION LEARNINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS • Opening with a plenary session takes the pressure o ff of attendees to have to socialize in smaller groups and contribute solutions straight away. But: Don’t do one-to-many "lecturing" for too long! Mix the formats and keep the group energy high with small activities. • The "state of the X" presentation focused on the amazing accomplishments of the world-wide TEDx community and was perfect to set the scene for the weekend. • For the "show & tell" format we asked speci fi c organizers to bring ONE aspect of their TEDx event in the format "What was the problem?" - "How did you address it?" - "What would you recommend to others?" which forced them to focus on one speci fi c, tangible takeaway as opposed to general recommendations. We strongly recommend pre-curating lightning talks and making sure to have a mix of types of events, countries, level of experience etc. to represent the community. • An icebreaker with an easy, social task to solve in smaller groups makes sure that everyone gets to know a handful of other attendees, thus feeling more connected and ready for the weekend. Be mindful of more introverted attendees (e.g. no forced touching, performing, exaggerated competitiveness)!
- 11. SHOW & TELL BY ORGANIZERS QUEEN BEE CHALLENGE
- 12. The goal of the treasure hunt was for the attendees to enjoy Munich, its history and popular culture as well as to hang out, have fun and make new connections in an informal setting. We used the app ActionBound to design 8 di ff erent routes through the center of Munich. Each group had 7-9 members and was accompanied by a member of the TEDxTUM team. Every stop on the route had information about the location as well as a short activity, such as taking a team picture, sharing something about oneself or a simple "who laughs fi rst" challenge. We also had two strategic stops where all routes crossed paths and our team members were waiting with local brands of drinks or snacks, which people absolutely loved. Everyone received a small surprise gift at the end of the route. THETREASUREHUNT LEARNINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS • There is a wide range of activities you can do and you might opt for o ff ering di ff erent activities for each group. What we liked about the treasure hunt is that it showed aspects of the city in an interesting way and got people to interact. Moreover, it was not cost-intensive and felt very personal - attendees described the nice surprises along the way as highlights of the route and generally appreciated getting to know our favorite places in the city. However, this only worked because Munich is such a walkable, compact city! • Make sure to plan ahead and prepare a bad weather alternative! If the weather is not great, remind attendees to bring appropriate clothing ahead of the weekend. • Consider pre-assigning people to groups to obtain an ideal mix of TEDx teams. We printed a group name on the badge and had responsible team member call out for their group. • We strongly recommend having a team member accompany the groups - especially if you use technology such as an app where you might need to o ff er support! The signs we had for each group and at the manned stations proved to be very useful for navigation and group identi fi cation. • Don’t overdo the content and duration! The primary objective is for attendees to have fun and not feel rushed. The length of the treasure hunt (2.5-3 hours) was at the maximum of what attendees could take. • Activities make for great photo and video material! Account for appropritate documentation depending on your plans. In our case, the photographers and videographers followed two di ff erent groups and then stayed at one of the manned stations to wait for the others.
- 13. GROUP PHOTO CHALLENGE QUIZ ABOUT MUNICH CROSSING THE FINISH LINE WHO LAUGHS FIRST CHALLENGE
- 14. With a TEDxWeekend, Saturday night is the logical time for a signature event! We picked one of the oldest Munich breweries as a location and the weather permitted us to use the roof terrace. Bavarian food and beer were accompanied by some Bavarian music and lots of conversation. Our team dressed up in traditional Bavarian clothing to accompany the program. Our recommendations: • Pick a setting and menu that is most meaningful for your city and its culture. In our case, every detail that we thought was "too Bavarian" was appreciated most by attendees. • Be mindful of vegetarians, vegans and food allergies. This can be di ffi cult when going traditional! Moreover, alcohol should not be at the center of the experience. • As with everything, be mindful of introverts and generally make sure relaxed conversation is possible (e.g. don’t choose a loud club or concert as the location). After all, this is the main goal of your TEDxWeekend! THESIGNATUREDINNER
- 15. We o ff ered a morning Yoga and mindfulness session (hosted by a local Yoga teacher) for the early birds and those who wanted to get centered after all the input from the fi rst day. The weather permitted us to be outside and start the day in an iconic Munich location close to the venue. Our recommendations: • We recommend having a calm activity as part of your schedule for people to re fl ect (does not need to be Yoga). • If you go for exercise, make sure to make it easy enough for anyone to participate - attendees should not feel excluded or un fi t, but energized and empowered! • Remind attendees to bring appropriate clothing and items needed (e.g. towel) ahead of the weekend as well as the day before the activity. • Be fl exible in terms of group size because many people might decide to sleep in after all. • Make sure you have a team member that is not too exhausted (e.g. not in charge of dinner the night before) cover this activity. MORNINGYOGA
- 16. Breakout sessions are a great way to enable TEDx organizers to learn from each other and work on solving challenges in concrete topic areas. We decided to have two 60-minute sessions so everyone could participate in discussions around two di ff erent topics. Our goal was to have 8 topics in each round (16 overall) and we made an e ff ort to o ff er topics that our attendees found most relevant. Our approach was as follows: • We collected topics of interest in the registration form as well as on a board during the Saturday program. • We clustered the suggestions and merged them with other topics we thought were relevant (e.g. these suggested by TED), ending up with 16 possible topics. • Attendees were asked to pick two topics through a form on Saturday night as well as indicate whether they want to give advice or receive advice on each topic (or both). We used this information to determine interest and assign these topics to rooms of adequate size. Some topics didn’t get enough interest while others were so popular that we decided to dedicate two sessions to them. On the day, attendees were free to spontaneously pick their topic for each session using the schedule we provided. Each group was accompanied by one of our team to make sure the conversation is documented and moderated. Results were written on posters and hung up in the main room to discuss during lunch. BREAKOUTSESSIONS LEARNINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS • We recommend scheduling the breakout sessions on the last day, when questions have naturally emerged from people’s conversations and they are ready to discuss concrete topics. • The mechanism for pre-selecting topics proved very useful, although it required quite some input from attendees, requiring us to ask and remind them to do the next step. We recommend to simplify if possible, but not to go with a completely free format where everyone can o ff er a topic (e.g. a barcamp). • We found it useful to ask people whether they want to primarily give or receive advice, which gave us an impression of the level of experience of the attendees regarding each topic and also sensitized them to the value of joining a session to pass on their wisdom. • The attendee feedback revealed some people wishing for more structured discussions, while others would have preferred less structure. This likely depended on the groups they were in and whether the discussion went as they expected. • Having one of our team members in each group assured us that the discussion would be moderated and documented. Our team members were instructed to be as present as needed depending on what the group dynamic requires, but not dominate the discussion. Some had to actively push the conversation forward or make sure the group stayed on track, while others had to involve quieter attendees and some didn’t need to do much more than listen in. • There was no room in the schedule for discussing the results in a structured manner afterwards. This was an intentional decision (these discussions tend to be long and draining), but several people remarked that this would have been useful.
- 18. Any TEDxWeekend will evidently also be about local food! On both Saturday and Sunday we o ff ered a breakfast bu ff et put together by our team and a light lunch. As a local highlight, the lunch on Saturday was catered by our former TEDxTUM speaker Vincent Fricke with a holistic approach to sustainable cooking and the cakes at breakfast were baked by local grandmothers as part of a Munich-based social startup. The evening event featured all-Bavarian food. Most meals were vegetarian. Our recommendations: • You will likely want to o ff er breakfast, lunch and dinner during the program, as well as some snacks, co ff ee/tea and drinks. Not all of this needs to be local, of course. • We recommend to keep it simple and think about the e ff ort for your team. For example, the breakfast bu ff et was amazing but required our team to cut vegetables, arrange food on plates, use the dishwasher etc. which took a lot of time and e ff ort! Food that is already in bowls (e.g. salads, burritos) reduces logistical e ff ort. • Think about sustainability, e.g. by avoiding single-use cutlery, plates and cups (especially plastic) and reducing or eliminating meat and animal products. This is often di ffi cult if you want to have traditional food, but try to fi nd a balance (and of course o ff er vegetarian/vegan alternatives). • Keep meals light, especially the lunches! You don’t want attendees to fall asleep. Be mindful of allergies and food intolerances and make sure to ask for them upfront (e.g. during registration) and label the food accordingly. • Think of fun, thoughtful details and local stories you can tell about the food and drinks o ff ered. APPROACHTOFOOD BREAKFAST LIGHT LUNCH
- 19. There are several organizational reasons for communicating regularly with your attendees, e.g. last-minute changes in the program or reminders of where to meet or what to bring. Since we didn’t fi nd email to be the right channel for this, we created an "Announcements" WhatsApp group where only the organizing team was allowed to post and attendees could only react. We also created a "Conversation" WhatsApp group for people to discuss and connect to each other. Links to join both groups were shared via email with all attendees and shown as QR codes in the venue and we asked them to alert us if none of their group had access to WhatsApp which wasn’t the case. Our recommendations: • No matter the channel you pick, you will never make everyone happy. We recommend to use a service your attendees already use since it’s unlikely that they will install a new app for this purpose. • Find a way to make your announcements stand out among the chatter. In our case, having two groups made it possible for people to only join the announcements group or mute the conversation group. • Think about communication before and after the weekend. Sharing small details upfront such as impressions from setting up creates excitement. Our attendees asked each other to share their social media pro fi les in the conversation group after the event which had a nice e ff ect. ATTENDEECOMMUNICATION
- 20. The goals of your social media strategy will likely be to inform the world- wide community about what is going on, create some buzz around your TEDxWeekend and involve the people and events present in sharing impressions. In addition, you want to document your TEDxWeekend on photo and video! We created several animated stickers with the event design for Instagram and got to do a takeover of the @tedx_o ffi cial account (see here). Several photo opportunities at the venues (e.g. a group photo corner and props) motivated attendees to take and share their photos. Finally, we used the photo sharing software Dropevent to share our photographers’ shots with attendees and have them upload their own pictures for everyone to use. Our recommendations: • Account for group photo opportunities in your program and brief your photographers accordingly so they don’t miss these moments! • Props and dedicated backdrops enable your attendees to take their own pictures. • When it comes to social media, fi nd a way to playfully transmit information. Involve your attendees where appropriate and have fun with it! Best is to have 1-3 dedicated team members taking turns covering the program but keeping a uni fi ed voice and style. • The usage of the photo sharing solution meant that attendees had access to professional shots already during the program. This resulted in many of them sharing these pictures on social media on their way back home, which looked great and made us happy. Many also shared photos of moments our photographers missed. DOCUMENTATION&SOCIALMEDIA
- 22. Attendees received giveaways at various points throughout TEDxWeekendMunich. At registration, they were free to take a bag, an x-shaped bottle opener and a gingerbread heart which is typical to Bavarian culture. They received further small gifts during the treasure hunt and evening event (Bavarian souvenirs, temporary tattoos). In addition, attendees brought their own event giveaways for a goodie exchange during lunch on Saturday, which was incredibly popular. Our recommendations: • Select giveaways unique to your event! Use your event design where possible and select things that relate to the local culture. • Think about sustainability (e.g. eco-friendly fabrics and print, recycled or biodegradable materials). Rather go for one less giveaway instead of sacri fi cing on sustainability! • Go for things that people will likely use, which is more sustainable than giveaways that are thrown away. Instead of pre- fi lling bags, give attendees the opportunity to select the giveaways they truly want. • Think about what information you need from attendees (e.g. t-shirt size) to order your giveaways and make sure you get it on time. • If you want to do a goodie exchange, remind attendees to bring their goodies from home. GIVEAWAYS&GOODIEEXCHANGE
- 23. ECO-FRIENDLY BAGS WITH EVENT DESIGN BAVARIAN SOUVENIRS BAVARIAN GINGERBREAD HEARTS
- 24. We believe that TEDxWeekends are an amazing way to get the world-wide community together. However, the organization of a TEDxWeekend is an immense e ff ort that is comparable to putting on a main event, and it will considerably bind your team’s capacity. Make sure to have clear responsibilities and team members who are willing and capable to invest the time and energy needed. Moreover, we recommend to organize at least one regional workshop and attend another international gathering (e.g. TEDFest or another TEDxWeekend) before going for this format. In the case of TEDxWeekendMunich, we were lucky that many things that were out of our control (e.g. weather) went our way! We were thrilled by the energy of attendees, the vibes during the weekend and the incredibly good feedback that followed. The weekend was also very energizing for our newer team members that hadn’t been to any gatherings in the past years due to the pandemic. We put together a package of internal documents that we used to plan TEDxWeekendMunich - we directly and indirectly refer to them a lot in the previous sections. Feel free to check them out and use them for planning your TEDxWeekend. See you there! WHEREDOWEGOFROMHERE? TEDXWEEKENMUNICH PLANNING DOCUMENTS