Are there mistakes really? Or only critical mindset? Obviously grievous ones exist in war and acts of fear. But what comes after?
Can you do an event planning wrong? Eventually there will be an event where my a combination of factors next to no one shows. But where two minds meet, what more can you want? Mobs of upward spiralling energy, but mostly that is rare.
I have a buzz after the last Haiku Canada Conference with no energy crash. That’s odd. Grocery shopping can give me an energy crash and days of trough. I did things differently, blew off talks, the day starting and ending for me when I got there or left. Not a strain to absorb everything. Chatting with folks or not. Where is this lack of pressure coming from? Who knows.
The core of life, of writing, of events, is about people, affections, connections, curiosity about people not “Networking” and “Learning”. Reflecting on the weekend there are all kinds of salient patterns, inner and outer.
There are high or low planning conferences and events. I’ve done committee for TESL and haiku conferences and Tree Reading Series. And been far more often on the audience side. Pet peeve for feedback of any is people not praising programming but complaining about the coffee or snacks. That is also universal human nature. Until we start programming for cats we can disregard that data.
There are two extremes of conference planning. High planning:
- A theme tagline that guides all the programming
- Corporate sponsors
- Schedule announced months in advance
- News releases to local papers or relevant journals
- Logos everywhere: on the website; on signs with arrows to event location; on the paper agenda; on the welcome package of tourist info, notepad, maps of town, parking, free chapbooks, coupons for meals
- Corp of volunteers for set up, registration desk and greeters
- Banner to announce event on site
- Theme-coordinated table cloths
- Early morning start and strict schedule
- A moderator to cut people off to prevent running overtime.
- Complimentary break time snacks & drinks
- Taking speakers out for a meal
- Formal gathering social time
- Plenary address with prestige speaker(s)
- Panels on theme
- Music or theatre interludes built into events
- Microphones
- Filming events and/or arranging for people to do photography and live-tweeting
- Live broadcast and pre-registration
- Chain of people introducing speakers
- Hostess gifts and reader gifts
- Formal thank you bouquet for organizer
Stripped down planning: A schedule released a couple weeks ahead, word of mouth for directions on the day, speakers adjusting for longer or shorter speakers, byob, organically spreading word and letting people photograph as they like, hearty thanks.
Both are for the same audience with the same budget. Both are style. Not right or wrong. And audience adapts.
And both work. The core thing is the people meeting and ideas exchanged. Everything else is bonus. Which is not to say chic is bad or good or that stripped down is good or bad.
An event has a lot of moving parts. A lot of people to coordinate. Behind the scenes is busy in either case.
You can get up in your head about perfect events, or perfect writing, considering every contingency, trying to accommodate every need. People are pretty good at meeting half or at walking away no matter how much you chase.
You don’t have to grow or shrink yourself and your impulses, to what you think would reach the most people. You don’t have to mask to an imagined normal. You don’t need heroic measures.
You can let your freak out & that works too. A narrow band of people feel less alone and most people are neutral.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
– Ernest Hemingway
People who started publishing after me have twice three times the number of book-books. People who friends praise… I don’t always get what the fuss is about.
Resonance like humour is personal. I can give myself permission to not get it, to not try to be everyone’s perspective and focus on following my bliss.
Part of me worries about siloing. Spinning off so far into arcane that I lose people but losing some people puts into position for finding other people. If people are contextual they will fall away no matter how you pursue. Keepers look after keeping themselves kept.
It requires a certain trust and acceptance of paradox of being enough. Knock yourself out and you are enough. Barely calling it in and also you’re enough. It’s not that it is subjective. It’s that being enough is inescapable.
Maybe it’s a paradox like universal basic income. Being provided for doesn’t make lazy people lazier and hard workers lazy. People who are driven are still driven but are cared for more. People who are under pressures internal and external that makes them in danger of going under are also taken care of. It’s a structural choice to accept a universe’s model of sufficiency instead of threat and scarcity.
It is easy for a pessimist like me to look at what is wrong, what isn’t working, what is broken, impending, excluding, disappearing. I have to train myself to see what is ample and welcoming. I get spoiled by like-minded people, shocked by something outside my usual. For example a Catholic magazine I came across that had a reasoned, articulate, compassionate, well-structured argument against anyone accessing abortion. A whole parallel isolated reality.
It’s easy to forget that most people are not English speakers, even locally. Most are not readers, nor readers at my consumption rate, let alone not writers. Most of those don’t read or write poetry, let alone read haiku, let alone write non-syllabic haiku and are in the subset of that that tickles me.
I’m more a line on a pie graph than a slice. But like a tree seed falling on a rock cut ledge, I only know what I immediately touch and that it’s good and enough to start.
There are people also on that narrow line.
It doesn’t matter what I am not. What I am not is also infinite. I love the idea of being a generalist, a know it all, a curious renaissance man or polymath, drilling down immersively also appeals.
I’ve kept one foot in familiar, compensated. I was the peacemaker, negotiator, translator, who was bridging worlds. I don’t need to be a runner, messenger on the bridge. I don’t need to shield people, make myself available as a piggy bank for other people’s secrets. I don’t need to use up my slack for people who are thrashing. I don’t need to affirm everyone and sooth and mute myself to not make waves. That may seem radical and selfish. That may seem to bear no relation to how I seem. I have spent a lot of time trying to justify my existence by helping and pleasing others, trying to be found acceptable by people who would use anyone convenient.
I don’t have a lot of life left even in best case scenario. Maybe a third if I’m lucky.
Being drawn by glimmers, by quiet yesses instead of being hampered and hammered by crowd of hectoring internalized voices condemning is a new idea. What if I could say, shush you, and be led by what lights me up.