A traditional business conference is done locally and can cost upwards of 5 figures. If the conference has some big keynote speakers, it’ll be even more. What if there was a way to get all the benefits of a conference without the cost of the overhead? Could a conference be done entirely online via Skype? That’s what we are attempting to do with the first ever Teen Business Summit.
Yes, I know. You’re probably not a teen. But a teen is someone under 30 and you’re reading articles about under-30 CEOs. So based on that, you’re learning something from under 30 year-old speakers. Besides, we got Guy Kawasaki as a keynote.
Now I have your attention.
How The Idea Came About
Ideally, we would have opted for a local conference. Everyone can network. That’s the biggest thing conferences are for. But we didn’t have a local presence. The members on Teen Business Forum are spread out in different countries. Getting even 10 of them in one place was going to be impossible. The only choice was to conduct a conference online. And make it free for everyone to get access to.
Why Teens?
Well… that happens to be what our members are. But anyone can still get a lot out of it. The conference is broken down into 3 days, with a distinct perspective each day. On the first day, we will have big topic issues like “How To Win Customers”, “Bootstrapping”, “Why The Job Economy Sucks”, etc.
On the second day, we bring in entrepreneurs in their 20s and early 30s who have started businesses as a teen. We want to show a snapshot of what someone would be like 10 years from now if they continue down the road of entrepreneurship. If you’re not a teen and just started a business right now, just tack on roughly 10 years. It’s the same concept.
And then on the 3rd day, we have teens talking about the businesses they are running right now. Again, if you’re not a teen, you can still take away from their presentations things you can do right now to start a business. Besides, seeing so much ambition from a 15-19 year old makes me even more motivated.
The Downsides
There are certainly challenges with an online conference. The technical side needs to be perfect. The video and sound quality needs to be good. We been doing interviews over Skype for many months and realized we can apply that model to a live conference. The streaming will be taken care of by Justin.tv. Why Justin.tv instead of Livestream or Ustream? It’s a preference but we noticed that many gamers stream their live gameplay on it. The gaming industry has always been in the leading edge of technology so we know it’s fast and secure.
The Upsides
There are a lot. First off, did we mention that we got Guy Kawasaki to keynote for us? That in itself is worth a conference alone. Because of a conference done over Skype, we’re able to get many top-notch entrepreneur speakers. It’s just an interview, except it’s going to be done live. In this era where everyone is big on social media, I can’t see why anyone would turn down an interview knowing that it will go out to 100 people, who will then tell another 100 people.
There’s virtually no cost to organizing the conference. We’re not paying any of the travel costs for the speakers. Both the speakers and myself are happy about that. They can spend more time with their family and we can save on the logistic headache.
Get Your (Free) Tickets
The conference is free. Had this conference been organized for 20s and 30s, we would have easily charged. Because of our demographic, we feel like older adults are getting a steal! Everything can be watched live during those days. We blocked off a time block where we will stream the video live from the website. If you need some motivation in business, the conference has it. If you want to hear some stories, we got it. If you need to take action, we’ll help you do that.
Are you attending?
Jack Liu is the Chief Community Officer of Teen Business Forum where he empowers teen entrepreneurs to be the next generation of business leaders. He is organizing the first ever global entrepreneurship conference, Teen Business Summit.
