Movie on 9-6-12 at 1.05 PM

Hi, I’m Mike. I’m standing here with Amy Kinney from 2ndConf. So, hi Amy. Can you tell me a little bit about what 2ndConf is? It’s a conference here in Chicago but beyond that I don’t know too much. Sure, I’d love to tell you more about it. 2ndConf is really a conference about technologists who are passionate about creating interesting and exciting things. So it sort of grew out of the ashes of C4 for people who are familiar with that conference but it’s also its own conference in and of itself. This is our third year. We’ve expanded every year. We’ve got about 100 attendees. It’s a deliberately small conference so you can meet everyone. You can talk to all the presenters. It’s just one of those great things where there’s a wonderful community of people who love to come to this every year. We have people coming from all over the US as well as internationally. And my husband David Kinney and I run the conference and he likes to describe it as the kind of conference that he would like to attend if he was attending a conference. So it’s about interesting things, new things happening with technology. Whether it be iPhone and iPad apps or things happening with Android or Arduino, I mean it can kind of span the gamut. So there’s more software focused? Yes, I mean you will see code examples up there but you’re also going to hear about people who are doing really creative things. Our first year, Chris Rojas was there and he showed a video with a, let me get this right, it was a trampoline controlled flamethrower that utilized Arduino. That’s pretty interesting. It was, it was. Did he demo it on stage? He did not. Did you guys get a fire code? No, no, no, no, he just had the video. So no, no, no flamethrowers actually at the conference. Our insurance would be very unhappy with us if we tried to do that. Was it a white snake I think it was that? No, sorry, none of that either. Yeah, no, okay, so you said you’ve been doing this a couple years now. How many years? Yes, this is our third year. Third year. Yes. And so looking at running a conference versus like attending, what are some of the things you’ve learned? Running a conference? What was some, is there anything that kind of surprised you? Oh boy, there’s a lot of things. No matter how much planning you do, things will never quite go the way that you intend for them to go, but that’s okay. That’s part of the nature of the conference. As much planning as you do, you’re still going to end up running around like a chicken with your head cut off because things just get crazy. The more you do something, the better you get at it. So you learn what things to do in advance, how to set things up. But each year presents new challenges. We’re at a new venue this year. We had been with Tech Nexus before, but we outgrew the space literally. And so that’s exciting to be in a larger conference space. We could have a few more people without getting too big. Let’s see. Always have backup plans. Backup plans for your backup plans, whether it be speakers where people get sick at the last minute or just making sure that if you run out of bottled water, you know where the nearest convenience store is to grab things. And part of it, one is having a good time. One of the things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is having a great committee of people who work with you. We have a conference committee who is really dedicated to helping us and – Delegation. Yes. Working together and making sure that other people are thinking about things that you may forget about. Right. I think that’s important. And then to have a great group of attendees and people who just love to come to the conference, enjoy the time together. And people come to a conference for a number of different things to see the speakers, obviously. So having high-quality speakers is important. But a lot of it is about enjoying the time with other people, getting to meet new people, doing new things, having a great time, enjoying great food is one of the things we pride ourselves in having great food, too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s always one of the trickiest things with conferences is what’s the food going to be like in – Yes. – hot versus cold. And in fact, that’s really important to us. I have special dietary needs myself. And so one of the things we ask everyone is, “What are your special dietary needs?” We check in with everyone, make sure that everyone who comes there knows they will be well-fed, well taken care of, and their food is going to be safe for them, as well. Good. So allergies, everything. We have everything from, you know, low-carb diets to, you know, allergic to five different things, to vegan, to gluten-free, dairy-free, and everything else. Now, when you said that you intentionally keep the attendance to a certain size – Yes. – has that ever become, like, a problem over the last couple of years, where you might say, “Oh, we’ve capped it at 100,” but we didn’t have enough people that actually showed up because there’s always a nutrition rate, you know? There always is a nutrition rate. We do have some people who realized last minute they forgot that they bought their tickets, which seems odd to me. Most of the time, people can find someone who is willing to buy their ticket. They can transfer it over. We sold out in less than two hours this year, and last year it was about six hours. So kind of the running joke is that we tend to sell out faster than DubDub does. What’s that? In three years, you’re going to be like, “Oh, we didn’t even launch it. We’re already shut off.” I know. We do tell people when we’re selling tickets and when we are going to happen, so it’s not like it’s a surprise secret you wake up one morning and we’re sold out. We don’t do that. But we haven’t had that happen. We haven’t. We haven’t had that happen. We haven’t. But we haven’t had a problem selling out quickly, and everybody loves attending our events. So it is always a struggle trying to balance having a small group with making sure that enough people can attend. But so far, most of the people who do want to attend or put themselves on the waiting list because of attrition and everything, people do tend to get in. So if you’re still looking for a ticket, put yourself on the waiting list or watch on Twitter because there are always a couple of last minute people who are still trying to sell or transfer their tickets. Okay. for taking the time to talk to me and good luck with the conference. Thank you.