Community profile: Marci Eversole from An Event Apart
Marci Eversole at An Event Apart in Minneapolis
When we founded Dynamic/MTL in 2014, one of our inspirations was the prolific An Event Apart / A Book Apart / Happy Cog group. Why couldn’t we do something similar in Montreal? Happily, An Event Apart thought so too, and has been one of Dynamic/MTL’s longest-standing sponsors.
As part our community profiles series, we spoke with Marci Eversole, Operations Manager at Event Apart (AEA) about her role, what makes AEA great, the tech conference scene, and what’s on the horizon for AEA in the coming years.
You’ve been working in event production and marketing for many years, what aspect of your job do you find most exciting today?
Every day is different in putting together An Event Apart, from financing, to sponsors, to parties, all the way down to the little details like checking name badges and strategizing about food. I love the pace and variety.
How did you initially become involved in working with An Event Apart?
8 or 9 years ago, I was organizing an event for Lynda Weinman of Lynda.com. Eric Meyer was participating and we crossed paths - I helped him with some travel arrangements. After the event, he came up to me and said that he and his partner Jeffrey Zeldman were putting on events, and they needed help finding venues. At the time, An Event Apart was more modest in size, with only 1 or 2 events per year. So I started working for them as an Event Planner. With time, I began to learn more about who Eric and Jeffrey were, in terms of the impact they were making, and how respected they were in the industry. Over the years, my role has evolved into Operations Manager at AEA. As one of the few people on the team with more of a business background, that has come in handy. And we’re continuing to learn every day.
What are some of your strategies to stand out in the busy field of tech conferences?
We succeed because we create events that we’d want to attend ourselves. We’re not only focused on big-name speakers but the complete attendee experience, from the AV to the room and visuals, to providing all kinds of food all throughout the day. We try and anticipate our attendees’ needs. If an issue comes up, our approach is always to respond, not react - solving problems with as little drama as possible, doing what we know is right.
An Event Apart has recently celebrated a milestone of 10 years, what advice would you give to our rookie Dynamic/MTL team, in terms of event production lessons that you have learned over the years?
The most important thing about running an event is paying attention to the entire experience for every person who is coming. From how they learn about it, to customer service, to the venue when they get there - every detail is important. There are people who have this instinct, and those who don’t. I like to think of how I would want to be treated as a guest. It’s more than just a transaction, our attendees are purchasing an entire experience. Some of our participants will notice if a name tag is on straight or not, some might not. Both types of people will come, so it’s up to us make sure everyone’s expectations are met, or ideally exceeded.
How do you choose your speakers and program An Event Apart?
We have an entire programming team dedicated to this, but I can say that generally we find speakers by hearing them speak. Our bar is pretty high. We always ask ourselves, beyond a potential speaker’s resume or reputation, are they informing me? Are they able to communicate in a way that is thought-provoking? We have a very informed audience with high expectations, so we always keep that in mind when choosing our speakers.
Another thing that we do a bit differently from other conferences is that there is only one track - everyone is together in the same room. So rather than trying to branch out into various niches, we’re more about fostering a sense of community of people who want to understand the broader context. All of our speakers always stay for the other talks. We want our attendees to walk away with their minds blown, to actually be able to change things at work when they go home.
Over the past ten years, has there been a shift if the type of people attending your events?
Not really, maybe someone was more junior a few years ago, now they’re a manager and sending their staff instead. There’s a real loyalty to the AEA brand amongst our audience.
What’s on the horizon at An Event Apart?
We have a lot planned in 2016 for our “Decade Apart”. Along with a few surprises, I can tell you that we’ll be going back to Disney in Orlando this year. We had such a great time there in 2014, there is so much love for the whole Disney experience. This year it will be a bit bigger, we’ll have 18 speakers over 3 days, looking back at some of our best speakers from the past ten years and bringing them back to the stage. We’re also exploring new cities in 2016, such as Nashville for the first time. As for the next ten years... we’ll see where the content takes us!
00:01:26 Inevitably you will at some point have trouble getting paid by a client for work that you did for them. Common arguments include, but are not limited to:
We ended up not using the work
It’s really not what we wanted after all
We got somebody internal to do it instead
We cancelled the project
We actually didn’t get the funding we thought we would
We think we’ve already paid you enough
00:03:00 You likely went into business because you want the liberty of being able to pick and choose the projects and clients you want to work on and with.
But working for a company and running a company require two different skillsets. You must also have business experience - prospection, sales, accounting, customer services, etc. This stuff is a part of the job, and if you launch a business without these necessary skillsets, you’ll end up leaving a lot of money on the table.
00:04:49 All, or at least almost all, clients start the business relationship with you with the best of intentions. They worked their butts off to get a large enough budget to hire a company do to their work for them, and of all the choices that they could have gone with to meet their needs, they chose you. ...but things do go wrong; things that you weren’t expecting - the market changes, the person who hired you leaves, somebody has a bad mood day, etc.
But things change, and when those things change you need to make sure that the relationship between you and the client is set in place in something like a contract.
00:05:34 When a client isn’t paying you, writing a ‘heart-wrenching letter’ or appealing to the client’s emotions is the worst and most unprofessional thing you can do because you will lose all credibility that you have with that client because the minute that you write a “heart-wrenching” letter you have given up any bit of leverage that you had in that relationship; you’ve shown them that you don’t believe that you have a leg to stand on other than playing upon guilt.
Entrepreneurs who must resort to heart-wrenching letters to get paid surely did not have a contract that irons out what to do in case of non-payment in place.
00:08:41 The fundamentals of a client-services contract are clear definitions and clear expectations which are all explicitly stated and agreed to by both parties. Everybody must understand what they’ve agreed to.
Absent a contract, a lawyer can write a mean letter or a persuasive phone call. If you want to avoid a lawsuit early in the process or if you have to file a lawsuit, you’ll need a written contract to back up your claim.
If a contract is not in place, you’ll have to spend a ton of time, energy and money trying to get paid for your work and probably will get paid a significant portion less. If it costs you $20,000 in attorney’s fees to collect $50,000, you’ll have lost a significant amount of money.
00:12:19 Build as many allies within the client company as you can, so in the event somebody refuses to pay, you have people working from within advocating for you.
00:12:54 It is possible that the client’s goals and objectives change as the project progresses. In this case you’ll want a contract that outlines that any deviation from the agreed terms is either an added charge or the contract ends, client pays for the work done so far, and a new contract is negotiated.
In the end, the client hired you for your presentation pitch and the scope of work that they outlined for you, so if you want to change it, you need to negotiate a new contract or amend the scope of work.
00:13:40 Walk away from any potential who prefers to say “You can trust us” for a business deal rather than having it formally written down. You cannot start a relationship with “You can trust us;” especially if it is concerning something crucial like payment terms because from that point on you’ll have to agree to additional just as onerous things during the project.
00:15:22 Treat the client bringing in another designer or consultant to work with you as a fireable offense. Why? Because again, you were hired to solve a problem and the client hired you for your presentation pitch and the scope of work that they outlined for you. The clients brining in a 3rd party now puts you in competition for the client’s time and you new have to compete with that person; that is not what the client originally hired you to do, and that is not what you originally agreed to.
You can fire a client as much as they can fire you. Just make sure your grounds for firing the client are outlined in the client-services contract. The reason you’re firing your client needs to be solid and in writing, and the client needs to be very aware that your firing them was coming - i.e. several emails explaining how the client is not fulfilling their part of the contract.
Firing your client should be the last thing you resort to, but when you must, do it quickly, clearly, and as kindly and respectably as possible. Recall that this is a client who worked their butts off to get the budget, and chose to hire you out of all their other options. Also, your reputation as a professional will spread to other businesses.
00:16:24 You’re at a point where you need a lawyer when you decide to go from being an amature to a professional. Good lawyers actually make you money. Good lawyers get your contracts to such a point that you no longer have to worry about the business and can focus on the creative aspect of your job - the reason you became an entrepreneur in the first place. What you pay the lawyer is but a pittance of the amount of money you would have lost had you have done the work without a formal contract.
00:17:51 Discussing money is usually uncomfortable both for you and for your client, a lawyer’s job is to take that responsible while making the both parties feel comfortable talking about it so that it doesn’t become a point of contention between the parties.
Most decent lawyers will tell you up front how much you may expect to pay to handle a particular situation. Most attorneys will even meet with you to answer your questions without charging you.
As a professional, you are trying to convince someone that you are the right person to give their money to in exchange for your services. If they ask a question about money, and the first thing out of your mouth is “Umm...,” you just lost $10,000 as well as your respectability. If you know how much something costs, stand up confidently and tell them. If you don’t know how much something costs, tell them you don’t know but that you will get back to them ASAP with the amount. The important thing is to sound like you know what you’re talking about, even when you don’t, because you can always find out later.
A common payment plan may be to divide the project into phases, with the agreed amount of money for each phase to be paid at upon completion of the phase before and before the next phase begins.
30-,60-, 90-day late fee ‘penalties’ should be outlined in advance, and at a certain amount of days late the contract could be considered terminated and a kill fee is paid by the client. Then, if you have to sue the client for the money, you include your attorney’s fees.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: In his book Win Without Pitching, Blair Enns advises that you “Address issues of money early. Those who don’t talk about money, don’t make it.”
On a side note, for a really good book on how to talk about things you aren’t familiar with, read How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard]
00:18:52 Clients may hand you contracts which haven’t been updated in +20 years or copy/pasted from template contracts found on the internet, and so don’t fit in today’s business environment. Clients may also hand you lawyer-prepared contracts that meet every single client need.
The process of negotiation is what makes agreements fair, therefore contracts protect both parties. Anything situation that arises during the process should be stipulated in the contract. Letting the client get their way, or signing contracts blindly will mean you are meeting all of the needs of the client without addressing your needs as a professional businessman/businesswoman.
Anticipate negotiation, but don’t back down on important stuff. Important terms you may refuse to back down on:
Intellectual Property (IP) transfers on full payment: This is the most leverage you can have on a project - the work that you have done is yours until the client has paid you in full for it. If they use that work before you have been paid, you can sue them. IP contractual writing can be difficult to understand, and clients will want all work you do for them to become the client’s immediately upon your signing the contract. Perhaps the easiest way to manage this in your contract is to include the sentence “Upon full payment for the services...” at the beginning of the IP section of your contract.
Termination (kill fee): the amount that your client is going to have to pay you over and above the work you have already received in order to terminate your contract without a good fireable reason - which should also be outlined in the contract. This protects you because you’ll have invested a lot of time working on their project, and you’ll have had to turn away other clients you could have worked with.
Liability: if something goes wrong with the project, who’s to blame and consequences? Your contract will include representations of warranty and quality that you make about the services you will provide and that you are not infringing upon anybody else’s copyright. For example, if you create a sales website for a company with online sales of $10,000 a month, and then two months later their website crashes for 2 weeks, will you be liable for the lost sales?
00:19:36 Don’t start work without a contract. You’ll have lost any leverage that you had beforehand.
00:24:30 People hire lawyers to protect them, therefore lawyers talk to lawyers. If your client informs you that they have legal on the phone, wrap up your conversation and don’t call them back until you have a lawyer as well, otherwise you may become nervously intimidated into agreeing to and saying things which could cost you the contract.
00:37:47 Be careful of what you put online and comments you make about clients and/or other people, because it may come back to hurt you, both in your reputation as a professional and if a client’s lawyer finds your comments on social media.
As a rule, your relationship with your client is sacred and you should never put on social media anything that would violate that sacred relationship.
To summarize, your contract should:
Was looked over by your lawyer
Protects both you and your client
Is negotiated to ensure fair terms
Has clear definitions and clear expectations of the scope of work outlined for the project which are all explicitly stated and agreed to by both parties. Any deviations - amendments to the scope of work from the agreed terms is either an added charge or the contract ends, client pays for the work done so far, and a new contract is negotiated.
Respects your non-negotiable terms and conditions which you refuse to give up.
Has clear explanations for the grounds on which both parties can end the contract before the project is finished.
Includes attorney’s fees should you have to take the client to court.
Has been agreed to and signed before you start working for the client
Is accompanies with allies within your client’s business to advocate for you in the event problems arise
Screen sizes, touch screens and the rise of contextual advertising is pushing design forward. The comments are already flaring up with claims that “responsive design is dead”. This is a great read (and look) at some high-level issues in web design right now:
“As a digital designer, our world is now going from watch space to 80-inch screens, so what do you do with that? Do you seriously try to…
I have two young kids at home, ages 3 and 9 months. I’m 44. I had about 20 years of yucking it up—pretty much doing what I wanted, when I wanted. I would get at least eight glorious hours of sleep a night. All of a sudden, these amazing little creatures came into my life and diverted my attention from me, and certainly my work. The eight hours of sleep went out the window. The inevitable frustrations that accompany having little humans around mounted quickly, not to mention the added stress my wife accumulated being with them full time. Home, my sanctuary, became a different place, but that’s part of the deal. And no matter how many times other parents tell you what’s coming, it still punches you in the teeth, and significantly affects your patience and demeanor. But no one at my place of work expects to suffer from my choice to be a father, and any focus I might have lost in the process is not really an excuse. Get through it, dude. And I am.
Greg Hoy, My employees reviewed me, and I kind of suck.
After six+ awesome years of working there, I am leaving Happy Cog to enter the front-end consulting and freelance world, and to focus on personal projects.
Working at Happy Cog has been one of the greatest experiences of my life. I've had the chance to work on amazing projects with some of the smartest people I've ever known. When Jeffrey created Happy Cog, he provided a place where development standards were never second tier and beautiful designs were in constant creation, in turn, creating my dream job. When Greg opened the Philadelphia office, he provided an opportunity to be a part of a place and a team where I believed in what we were doing and I loved every moment of it.
It hasn't been just going to a job every day for me, it's working with some of my best friends. I've been a part of Happy Cog as we grew from 8 people to 28. I've been through multiple office moves, multiple weddings, multiple baseball games, and multiple dance parties with my coworkers friends. When I walk into the office, I say hello, sometimes I tell a story or two, I pop open my laptop at my seat and I get to work and everything about it feels so, incredibly natural. After six years, this is second nature to me, the office is as familiar to me as my home (minus a cat or two). With this in mind, I've recently decided it's time for a change. I received this piece of great (paraphrased) advice the other day:
"Every three years I like to shake things up."
I'm a little off on the math, but it's time for me to shake things up.
In February, I launched a project that I had been working on for three years, Ladies in Tech. Years ago, I registered the domain and knew I wanted to do something to help support and encourage women in the tech field. I had a hard time finding the time to do so though. With the help of others, the site was finally launched and has had wonderful feedback and contributions. One author even sent out a slew of emails to her friends to encourage them to write for the site. Between that and others spreading the word, the response to the site has been pretty big! That rules and I love how supportive all of you have been, but I ran into that pesky time problem again, between work, writing, speaking and you know, that whole life thing. When I launched the site, I only carved out a certain amount of hours each week to update the articles that were scheduled; so any unplanned correspondence was super difficult for me to respond to. Not being able to respond felt terrible. This is a project that is super personal and important to me and for people to care about it is totally rad.
Knowing that, I'm taking July and August to work on Ladies in Tech. I am very excited to focus my immediate energy into this and can't wait to launch new features. I will continue to write at The Nerdary and Eff yeah Hovers as well as speak and teach during this time. After giving this project the attention it deserves and setting up the new ground work for it, I will be available for consulting, workshops, and front-end development work.
You often hear: "just go for it", "you have to take a chance", "just dive off the ledge"! And that's what I'm doing. I will miss working at Happy Cog, for sure. The support that Greg and everyone else has given me through this transition to my next endeavor has been super awesome. I have a few more weeks at HC. After that I will be off on my next adventure, shaking thing up... but I'm still stopping by now and again for Fro-yo trips.
Any questions about Ladies in Tech? Want to work on something together? Be sure to get in touch on my shiny new contact form: jennlukas.com
If I had not taken the extra time to ensure our vision stayed true, I would have been kicking myself for as long as that site was live. No one wants to stare at missed opportunities. No one wants to live with regret.
So I stumbled upon www.housingworks.org today & was really impressed with their site design. The Housing Works organization is based in NYC & is committed to bringing an end to homelessness & the AIDS epidemic. They aim to restore hope, dignity, pride, and a sense of direction to those whom are homeless and are suffering from AIGS/ HIV. Furthermore, if that isn't ambitious enough, they utilize sustainable building methods in many of their projects.
Happy Cog Studios is responsible for the redesign, which actually happened in late 2008. The design of the site is really simplistic & puts an emphasis on the people they are supporting. I think this is an excellent example of a non-profit organization that realized the benefits of a well designed site. While I am not familiar with what it previously looked like, their annual report described it as "an ominous color scheme". The well defined structure and branding of this site is a success in my eyes! Hats off Happy Cog Studio & HousingWorks.org!
