Where Did The Organiser Go? When The Conference Doesn't Run As Planned

Thank you. Yeah. So, um it's unstable thing. Um yeah. Um I've been wondering like what would be a fun talk for me to give at a conference and one thing that I the thing that I ended up with was just the concept of a conference itself. The genesis of this particular talk is this whole stack of uh tweets which was essentially a big explanation as to why conferences stop boiling down to all sorts of reasons as to things going wrong at conferences. Not expecting you to read it all like but the the concept was summarized as umbrellas. Your conference organizer is essentially the umbrella, the person trying to prevent you from realizing that something has

gone completely wrong. So you can just enjoy the conference and they are just standing there holding up the house of cards. So who am I? Um Cooper as it says uh been doing this video stuff for various conferences since 2015. So in a few weeks it will be exactly 10 years. Hence you doing this. Now the conference video stuff I don't do professionally uh as in for pay uh this is my hobby and I'm uh in daily life I'm a programmer for a business that makes software for mental health for hospitals. Um, but since it's so much fun, I've been doing it quite a lot. And as you can see from the stats, 300 plus

conferences. And if you were to watch all the talks back to back, you'd probably need well almost a decade now by I reckon. Um, things that can go wrong in various various ways summarized as such that we're going to go over. Um, obviously the easiest one is money where a conference is being told by a sponsor is being told by a sponsor, sure, they'll pay you x amount of money and then the conference happens and it's like, well, actually, um, can we get a discount? Can it go down a little bit? And, um, if you're unlucky, the sponsor, um, is convinced of their error and get goes back to the normal amount. Um if you are unlucky uh the sponsor just

holds firm and if depending on the organization it could actually mean that the event organizers themselves have to pony up the money. So kind of a risk if you organize this poorly or um happen to have sponsors. Um, another thing with money is, um, DHL has this thing where if you get your, uh, your swag or whatever, you get stuff delivered to you. Don't know if it's still the case, but it was um, where they would show up and they would say, right, you need to pay a clearance fee for getting this stuff imported. problem is that DHL guy shows up with a couple of boxes like you have to pay this now and if you don't

pay it right now we'll take the we'll take the boxes back and you can sort it out at the depo. Usually you don't have the time so you just shove the money that way. Um if you're unlucky you even don't get a receipt. Uh it's borderline extortion. Um have seen a couple of conferences get quite mad about that one. Um, a more interesting one, uh, this was besides Bordeaux where the, uh, organizer wanted to get a branded t-shirt and, um, had, uh, got got some quotes and the, uh, the conclusion was that the price was just way higher than they were anticipating. They're like, I can these were American people and they were like, we can get this from back home for much

cheaper. So they bought the ticket, they bought the shirts back home, got the printing all done, got it shipped over, and then waited and waited and waited and then on the day finally they got told, "Yes, it is a constance, but you have to pay a clearance fee," which um completely negated any savings and also meant that the t-shirts didn't show up until like lunch. Oops. Um Steve Lord can fault him for a logic maybe but certainly not the quote of the booklet is always wrong. Um nowadays you see a lot more that the that instead of a booklet there's just a website that has a schedule on it and it works that way. But particularly for paid

conferences, there was um the expectation that you have a booklet and the booklet is perfect. Except of course um reality kicks in and um you spend the evening before with printed out alternate names, alternate titles and everybody diligently trying to fix the however many booklets there are so that you have your pristine copy. It's, I guess, some way a way to get things done. Um, the venue tends to make things very interesting. Um, what you see here is one of those really modern skylight windows and they have a feature where if it rains, um, if it notices that like the the the the it has a camera that essentially looks up, sees clouds and goes, "Those clouds

look dark. It's probably going to rain." Closes the window. And if it's sunny, it's going to get warm, so it opens them up. However, um people in the UK definitely should be familiar with this. Um you can have both at the same time. And so suddenly everybody has to scatter around trying to make sure that like all the ad material that the sponsors brought doesn't get wet, that people don't slip on the floor. Um this was in Goa. Um they have they have a knock on over there which is really big conference and the venue space is limited. So they put this big tent outside the um out on the field near the venue. And it being India and

being super warm, if you put a tent out like that, people just boil. So they put really big air conditioning units on the inside and so long as that keeps going, everything's fine. Unfortunately, um you don't run that overnight and so at that point you get implementation which people kind of overlooked. So then the next morning people come in and first people present 80 people and what um realize that it quite digitally rained inside overnight which is fine for the tables but um I'm sure you can ask the gentleman in the back about his mixing desk and how much he would appreciate that getting a pile of pot onto it. Um I can certainly say

that the same held true for my rig which got quite wet. Um here's one that happened at Steelcomb where um the problem you have is it's a school, they have normal hours and everything is attuned to those hours. Then you put a conference in and the hours are completely off the off the table and suddenly you do things that run into the late evening. Well, not that late evening but certainly beyond like the 4 5:00 that school ends. So they had a rule inside the uh school auto the the building automation that says from about 4:00 you can uh seal all the doors and that was mid uh closing keynote. No the the talk before the closing keynote. So the

talk before the closing keynote is happening suddenly all the doors locked and nobody notices. Then the talk is over and people trying to get out to quickly do a bio break before the next thing happens. They couldn't get out. people that want to get in can't because the door is locked and like ah so that's a very quick run to security and trying to get convince them that you know this is something that needs dealing with now um by the same token the air conditioning it too is on a timer and will at some point say right um we're done and then just gets very warm and smelly and interesting. We also had the opposite ones where because it was late

that they tried to vent the vent the space and so suddenly everybody indoors is trying to reach for their coat because they were quite literally freezing to your seat. Um utilities make things interesting. Again, back to Steelcom where um I'm at main track looking for looking at the uh opening keynote and suddenly a volunteer walks up to me and goes, "Oh yeah, by the way, the power went out in the left wing of the building where factory was at." So, um it's not coming back anymore. So, we've taken pictures of your of the bits of your recording equipment. We've taken we we've turned everything off, packed it all in, moved it to a completely different room, and

put it back together again. And and and now it doesn't work. To their credit, they had three cables wrong. So, I came there, walked it over, click, click, click, off we go. But yeah, it is a bit of a Oh. Um I also had that one. This isn't from this isn't my picture but um the concept of where um this was a hack where somebody had in the vendor area had plugged in their laptop and something ate but that then killed the entire group. So we're in the in the room enjoying a talk and suddenly out note projector was off audio was off and it's like now what? Thankfully, my recording bits were in a different

group, but um yeah, I actually had it once also at beside Belfast where there was like actual flames coming out of the wall on the socket. Yeah. Um you guys sometimes make it hard for us. Speakers, there's a few in the room. Um speakers sometimes occasionally um screw up time zones. In this case particularly it was the um the secretary of speaker who'd arranged they were they were the opening keynote for a big conference and they showed up were there for the uh speaker dinner beforehand and had their talk at 9:00 but unfortunately were on the plane in 7:00 in the morning because they were already on to their next thing because somebody is sure of surgery. Um

awkward. So now what do you do? Like it's literally the day of the conference. By the way, my keynote speaker is now going away. Try and find someone. Um, similarly, um, sometimes speakers just mess up on their own and hey, you had a time slot. Nobody's there. Now what? Um, a slightly more awkward one was, um, who here knows Dan Lewis? He works at one password these days. Sorry, I was saying that it's not Dan Lewis, it's Dave Lewis. got a guy um goes everywhere, does a lot of talks, really cool guy. Um the image you're seeing here is Ljubljana. He was supposed to give talk at these Ljubljana supposed to be there 10:00 a.m. Um about quarter 2. He made

it to there. At that point, he couldn't figure out where he needed to be anymore. So he grabbed the nearest police officer and went, "Hey, where do I go? police officer doesn't speak any English, but hey Dave, you look like a tourist. That's the tourist square. Go there. And unfortunately for Dave, where he needed to be was there. Um got a bit more interesting with that one as well. He had an uh the the stage for that one wasn't like a nice stage. It was like it was held at the equivalent of a hacker space. The stage was literally two pallets piled on top of one another, very open. and he had to do this talk with a handheld mic. And as

he was walking along on this makeshift stage, the uh cable to his microphone got stuck. So he's cool. So his credit still brilliant talk. Um sometimes we get great requests. Um so I fly out to Singapore. So what I have, what I got with me is what I have. And um suddenly the speaker goes, "Hey, um I'm doing a closing keynote here and um I kind of want to do it as a song. Can you get us a piano?" And I don't know how he did it, but the organizer got a piano in the room. Um does of course mean that in terms of format, my recording equipment likes a certain type of format. and well having

somebody play on the piano don't really fit the format. So um we had a very quick turnaround trying to disassemble the second track. So that gave us a second camera to play with and I actually bought a third one on site just to make sure that we could have three angles at least on it. Um but yeah speaker decides hey I want to give a talk and it's it's this one. If you go online you can find it. Um volunteers make it interesting. This isn't just um picture that I picked just because I literally had a volunteer. This was at uh this was at Oh, I think Yeah, absolutely. You at the CCD in Dublin

where one of the volunteers shows up. He's like, "Sure, I'll help you out with doing the camera thing." and um they're on stage or they they had their own little stage so that they were like elevated because they were all the way at the back of the room and standing behind my camera trying to do the thing and I don't know if the heat popped them or the strain of it all but they fainted. So, they're doing their thing and suddenly you see that the camera goes left and right and then the camera stops moving and then the camera does that. Um, and then there was a big image on screen that says due to technical

difficulties. Yeah, person by the way perfectly fine. Got them got them some water, some air. Dude was fine afterwards. But yeah, oops. Um the lady you see on screen here, an absolute boss, her name is Sher. Uh she is these days, those days she was the uh volunteer lead for Hack in the Box. These days she's the co-organizer of a really cool conference in the Netherlands called Orange Con. Um but notice the setting. So, what happened is we flew into uh UAE for um for an an additional hack in the box and one of the crew was complaining of um uh uh was complaining of an ache in their ear and figured it it'll pass

whatever. Um usually if you have an ache, you shouldn't fly kind of is the idea. Um but went in anyway. Um first day that we're there, we're there for a week. First day that we're there, he goes to the doctor and goes like, "Hey, my ear really hurts. Get some antibiotics pills, whatever." Um things is going fine. Swallows a lot of aspirin. Um but the the pain doesn't really subside. Um by the time conference is over and after party happens, he's going like, "I really cannot hope." And so our volunteer lead has to take him to a clinic um where they discover that in fact before he set off he had dental work done that got

infected and went towards his ear and that's why his ear hurt. So he is behind this wall getting pumped full of antibiotics and all sorts and yeah it's the sort of you get to deal with. Um sometimes you also get something like that. So, I'm at a conference again. This was Hack in the Beat. We're in Hack in the Box. We're in We're in Singapore. And out of the blue, I get some text messages from another volunteer going like, "Hey, bro, did you get travel insurance?" And, um, do you know if Bray got travel insurance? Bray was the guy I was rooming with. Um, so, um, yes and yes, of course. If you're going abroad,

you should most definitely get some travel insurance. Um, by the way, where are you? And, um, both of you Yeah, he literally I like he was he was kind enough to wait until the conference was over but then was like wow it's LIKE and basically had to take it to hospital. They had to pump him full of muscle relaxants and some very strong Singapore guy um wacked up to him and just bent it back. Um, unfortunately for Prey, he um, this was going to be like he was there for two weeks, the first week doing the conference in Singapore and then a full week of enjoying uh, Korea with a big bandaid over. He's at least he's got a picture well

X-ray. Um, you guys make it interesting for me at times. Um, again, this picture is not haphazardly chosen. Um, you know the whole joke about um I would um I would disconnect your life support system to charge my phone type thing. Um someone actually did that to me. Then there was a time where my cameras were directly powered from the wall. There aren't anymore, but um somebody during lunch went, "Hey, my phone's low on charge and um can't find a socket. I'll just yank this one." What's the worst that could happen? Well, the worst technical difficulties. So, yeah, for the first 10 minutes I had no image because somebody was charging their phone and um I was so pissed off

that I actually managed to walk in front of the camera very pissed. That is me very upset. Um yeah. Um obviously there is the joy of COVID. I don't really have a nice long story about that because co sucks. Um there was the whole thing where um we we were at a conference that was as it turns out just a week before they decided to close the airspace. who were in India and um around that time there was a lot of talk about the I think it was like an area of Italy where things were like really dire and one of the sponsors even though he worked and lived in UAE um had an Italian passport so he

had flown in I'd seen him run around and um the organizer got a call from the government to say I'm sorry um you've got an Italian on your site and um we're kicking him out. Um we're sending an ambulance. Um so you organizer was like, "Yeah, we're not having one of that." Some nothing of that. He's a sponsor. He's a valued contributor. So we're getting him a limo to send him to the airport. But yeah, there is no two ways about it. He is leaving. How do you deal? Um we had once I wasn't personally there for that one, but um well because it didn't happen. Uh besides Liverpool was supposed to happen and then the um the

venue went on strike. Wasn't actually the venue itself. It was the ven the venue was above a museum and the museum went on strike but it's too close too close for comfort. So um yeah strike we're not doing a conference anymore and now you got to call your sponsors. You've got to tell your attendees I'm sorry we don't have an event. Sorry. Um that was here not here. here the previous location we were at the INAC and um the day for the build we have buildup day and um it was already noted that on buildup day one of the AV people's laptop got picked so we were like forewarned like there's some people here who don't know what their own

belongings are so um keep an eye on stuff we finish up setup lock everything up tell hotel guys that we know you've got some Dutchy people running around here, so keep an eye out. Yeah, yeah, we'll we lock it. We've got a we've got a security guy who we've got around. It's it's fine. Apparently, at 2 a.m. the alarm got triggered. And then at 4:00 a.m., a security guy showed up and went, "Nobody here. It's fine." And then at 6:00 a.m. we show up and of the three rooms that were there, um, in all of them the projector got disconnected. In one of them, the projector got nicked. and two of my cameras connect and suddenly I get

to find out which places in London still sell cameras which as it turns out isn't a lot. Shout out to Argos. Thank you. Thank you also for your generous return policy. Um yeah, I mean in the end it all in in the end it'll all work out fine. I got uh besides Cumbri so um donated the the tripod that they had to me and uh the cameras originally uh my insurance was like you're not some rando you you're doing a business here so you needed a different insurance I'm like okay well lesson learned can I please know what the proper insurance should have been that silent and suddenly it was like you know what we'll let it slide here's some me for

the cameras. Thank you. So, at least I got my hole. Um, but yeah, there is random that just happens and what do you do? And if we play our cards well, then we make you look that way as we are trying to put out the fire over you. And with a bit of luck, when the spondo and the when the organizer shows up and you ask him, "How was your conference?" Probably all right. So, I feel like I rushed through this. I hope I didn't, but I might have. Um, that's me. That's my website. Um, if you don't know of it yet, you should. Um, there's 10 years of talks on there. Everything, it all links to YouTube. Um,

yeah, that's all I got. Thank you very much.

number two. >> Uh, any questions for Cooper? >> You're all done. >> Then I'm going to say just one thing. Um, I have one more that was at besides uh Dublin at was it was um I went there with a bunch of kit where I made my cables kind of poorly um and I wasn't aware. Now, my equipment includes a converter box that takes power from uh 12 volts down to 5 volts, but if you put volts the wrong way around, it explodes. >> And so, I wasn't aware that the cable was the problem. So, I tied everything up, put the power box on, it explodes as it should. Um, and then I'm now going,

where's the problem? Try a different box, it explodes. tried a different box further down the cable. It explodes further down the cable. It works. Okay. So, except the cable. Um but now I but by now I have run out of time. So, I need to do other things. So, I leave the room. And when I come back, there is a very angry um venue owner coming like, "Hey, Cooper, do you smell that?" And it's like burnt plastic all over. Like, yeah. Do you know what that is? Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's my my boxes. They exploded. It's fine. It's safe. Um yeah. Um it's good thing we now discovered this because we were this far from

actually evacuating the building because if we smell something or notice something weird and we don't know what the cause is, we go into um security mode. Everybody out. Imagine trying to explain to all your attendees. Sorry guys, exits over there. See you in an hour. So yeah, fun times. Let's do it another 10 years, guys. Thanks for your attention.