The Hack: Let your staff know how integral and important they are to your success
Jennifer Wold, a New Hampshire native, and expat living in the picturesque town of Trondheim, Norway has a unique point of view on running her TEDx. She's a classically trained French Chef, and it's clear when you listen to her that she loves order and a mise-en-place. She's thrilled to be living with her husband in a community that's 80% students.
What's different about her approach to organizing is that she doesn't consider the team volunteers, she sees them as Staff and treats them as such. There's a Head of HR on the team, job interviews, and expectations for participation. When I talked to her recently, she'd just come out of two interviews with Malaysian students who will work on the 2017 event.
Jennifer said that Trondheim is the next Silicon Valley and they have a wealth of potential speakers in Tech, Science, Medicine as a result of their being a large University in town. She calls her group the Wild Tribe, they're seven teams, and each team is a tribe in and of itself. their motto: Tribe first.
Volunteering is a way of life in NorwayJennifer Wold, Executive Director, TEDxTrondheim
The Lightning Round
Jennifer worked as a volunteer at TEDxTrondheim with Martin, the license holder, and curator before being made Executive Director and running the 2016 event. She's trained as a chef and knows what it means to have a well-trained, well-orchestrated team.
2016, Executive Producer. She's a part of a growing Norweigan community of TEDx organizers.
The way in which volunteers are deeply integrated into the event. They have 50 volunteers from 34 countries. They've got a Director of HR and treat the volunteers as Staff, not free-labor.
Producing and Collaborating. She says that she's the Swiss Army Knife of people.
How they have never had to ask for volunteers. They always show up.
The money. It's a small town, and TEDx is not as well known as it could be, so there's a lot of educating that has to happen with potential partners.
Make sure that no team is left leaderless. Be sure to have all of your departments organized with clear lines of communication. Have very distinct groups. And keep your information clean. They use Google Docs to keep track of everything, and it's highly organized (Did you remember, she's trained as a chef?)
The venue. This year TEDxTrondheim expanded to a much larger and more picturesque venue that will hold 600 people.
TEDxSydney. (Remo: I've heard this enough times that we're going to either charter a plane or have you on the show, soon!)
Making sure that your staff knows how integral and important they are to the success of the event.
Featured Episodes
TEDxUCLouvain – Creating an Experience in spite of COVID
Finding ways to be creative and stay connected to your TEDx Community during these challenging times of sequestering and dealing with a global pandemic can test even the most creative Organizers.
Lara Stein – Founder of TEDx
On the first day of TED2019 in Vancouver, Randy Bretz, TEDxLincoln, Emeritus, and I were honored to interview the founder of TEDx, Lara Stein.