"Why Not?" to "Hell Yeah!": How We Planned A TED Event In 32 Hours

Regular readers of this blog know that a group of us volcano strandees in London planned and executed an event called TEDxVolcano last weekend. This is the story of how we did it, and five lessons about social capital mobilization that extend far beyond the ash plumes of Eyjafjallajokull.

TEDxVolcano started with a set of emails I sent to the TED staff around 10am last Saturday. I asked them: given that so many cool people were going to be stuck in London, might it make sense to get 'em together for a cool TEDx event? To their great credit, they not only agreed, but the TED staff who were in-country (notably June Cohen) threw themselves into the organizing process.

The next step was mobilizing local resources. We got in touch with two groups -- TEDxLondon and Sandbox Network -- who became our boots on the ground, helping us connect with The Hub King's Cross staff, who themselves set us up with a great venue and all the resources to run it.

At the same time, TED and others were mobilizing our incredible group of speakers. Friends, supporters, and new folks from the Twitter-verse were working like crazy to help us with everything from managing the door to livestreaming the event. By 4:30pm on Sunday, people were starting to queue up for the 6pm event.

TEDxVolcano ended up having 150 people attend with another 500+ watching via livestream. The speakers were world class. And all of this happened because of layers and layers of social capital mobilization. So what are the lessons?

#1. Cultivate Networks Way In Advance Of Using Them - I was in a good position to get this process moving because of existing relationships -- particularly with TED and with the Sandbox Network. I didn't begin building those relationships because I wanted to have them available should I ever get stuck in London due to a Volcano. It's almost impossible to know what we're going to be doing in the future, but what's sure is that we need help doing it. The more helpful we can be for others in the meantime, the better of we'll be when we need help ourselves.

#2. Identify Key Partners Early - Putting on an event like TEDxVolcano required a lot of great big stuff and a lot of important small stuff. My first step was figuring out the key partners, including TED for legitimacy, speaker organizing and content quality, and TEDxLondon and the Sandbox Network for local knowledge. These key partners had their own networks that they could leverage to make the whole thing work.

#3. Ask For A Lot - When it's time to ask, you can't be shy about asking. Of course it was nuts to ask people to create presentations for an event later the same day. It was totally unprofessional to ask a venue to get together the staff needed to run an event the next day. And it was crazy to ask people on Twitter to pick up snacks for us. But as it turns out, when you ask, people are often surprisingly willing to help.

#4. Talk Publicly (Because You Don't Know Everyone Who Can Help) - Related to the above, there were certain things that -- just because of timing -- the group we had at the core of the planning couldn't take on. For example, we needed to get snacks picked up, which would take a couple hours and a car -- things none of us had. Within 3 minutes of asking Twitter, we had a volunteer to coordinate the food. Moreover, the distributed power of Twitter brought TEDxVolcano to the attention of literally thousands of people in just a few hours.

#5. Say Thanks Constantly - When you ask for a lot, what follows is that you have to say thank you a lot. People are willing to help, but they want to feel appreciated for that help. Mess this up, and you leave people feeling resentful and tired rather than inspired and energized.

BONUS: Distribute Praise Widely - At the end of the day, great things happen not just because of leaders but because the right people join up. Speaking at the event, I said that TEDxVolcano worked because the right people said "Why not?!" to helping out a crazy idea, and that "why not?" soon became a chorus of "hell yeah." Everyone deserves praise for the success of the event, because like so many good things, it took an amazing amount of coordinate effort to pull it off.

Photo credit: "Speakers Sally Osberg and Larry Brilliant of Skoll chat moments before the start of TEDxVolcano, London." TED / Robert Leslie