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Cameron Roberts chats to Gaby Mendes , founder and director , Talk Twenties , about how community pulled her event through adversity
aunching an event is never easy , but for TwentiesFest , which took place on 1 October 2023 at Camp and Furnace , Liverpool , there was an added twist of fate .
I spoke to Gaby Mendes , founder and director , Talk Twenties , about the ace up her sleeve when it came to navigating these debut event challenges .
Derailed The key challenge facing TwentiesFest was the train strikes taking place on the weekend of the event , meaning many attendees ,
“ The event had to battle through train strikes that weekend , which for any first-time organiser is the words that you don ' t want to hear .”
Gaby Mendes
speakers and sponsors were suddenly unable to travel to Liverpool .
Speaking about the strikes , Mendes said : “ The event had to battle through train strikes that weekend , which for any first-time organiser is the words that you don ’ t want to hear . Immediately that wiped out quite a lot of our speaker line up , we had to make a lot of last-minute arrangements .”
However , the organisers had an ace up their collective sleeves , TwentiesFest is an event that was built on the back of Talk Twenties , a long-running podcast series with a large community . Many of the attendees were part of this community , so pulled together to make it onsite .
Mendes said : “ We had people driving from all over the UK , from Glasgow and Watford to London and Birmingham . We had people carpooling with people that they had only met online . It really added to that community feel .”
All aboard The strength of the community is what helped pull people together onsite despite adversity , but how did Mendes forge with community ?
She said : “ I think a lot of people look at podcasting as something that you can just launch overnight and you ’ ll get fans who will then come to an event . That ’ s not how it works in terms of building a community . You must remember I ’ m talking in someone ’ s ears , it ’ s a very intimate situation . My audience has probably listened from when I started the podcast three years ago . So , they ’ ve built that real connection from listening and me showing up and being consistent with the content that we provide .
“ We ’ ve been releasing content consistently for three and a half years before launching the event . I think a lot of people think , ‘ we ’ ll launch 10 episodes of a podcast and it ’ ll be done .’ They then wonder why the community aren ’ t showing up . Well , you haven ’ t built a community , you ’ ve built a series that people can kind of tune into .”
The content consistency leading to real-world benefits is something event organisers can learn from , creating community is not a tokenistic gesture , it takes real hard work and a dedication to providing value to your members . CN www . conference-news . co . uk