What Makes a Conference Great

A few days ago, right after I posted my write-up of Head in the Cloud, my friend Sacha Judd, who spoke at beyond tellerrand three times already, published a piece called “What makes a conference great”. Reading it felt a little like hearing my own talk played back to me instantly. Coincidence from the other side of the planet. ;) Sacha Judd at beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 2022. Photo by Florian Ziegler. She comes at it differently than I did. Where I told stories from fifteen years of running events, she writes almost like an inventory of care: the website and communication that respects you before you’ve bought a ticket, the code of conduct you actually mean, name tags you can read without squinting, coffee that’s there when you need it. But underneath the details, we’re circling the same thing and content and statements overlap. A few places where our two posts agree: The real programme is the hallway – I keep saying the actual event happens in the breaks. At the tables, in the…