Many people like the idea of becoming their own boss but it can tough to know how to begin. The people of the Network Hub, a business that rents self-employed workers an office space alternative to wireless cafes or working from home, wants to help.
Its second annual Vancouver Freelance Camp kicks off this Saturday at the newly revamped River Market in New Westminster and aims to arm freelancers with the know-how to do their own thing for a living. As with freelancing, the so-called unconference will require participants to do much of the hard work.
It's not just another networking opportunity, explained organizer Minna Van. The difference between a conference and an unconference is instead of having some sort of guru or expert, what we have is real people sharing their own experiences about how they're doing thing with their own business and what lessons they have learned. So there's no set speakers until the day of. Everyone gets an opportunity to pitch and, by consensus of the audience, we give them a time slot.
This means that who exactly is going to give presentations is a bit of a crap shoot, but this hasn't stopped over 120 people from registering in advance at thenetworkhub.ca. Last years event offered a choice of more than 20 presentations and this year's installment (which will also use Google+ to allow people to attend the event remotely) is expected to draw more. Some speakers, including HootSuite's Kemp Edmonds, thenextweb.com editor Mike Vardy and comedian Greg Kettner, have announced on Twitter that they will be presenting. Possible topics to be covered include business ethics, intellectual property rights, how to negotiate a contract, task and time management tool, marketing and using social media.
Tickets for the daylong event are only $10. Graphic designer Matt Lorenzi said it is literally a small price to pay if he picks up any hints on how to make to stay-at-home father thing work.
I was kind of worried that it might just be three of us in a room, but they've already got like people from a whole bunch of lines of work, said Lorenzi, who recently left a regular job at printing agency over fears new technology would soon make the job obsolete. I have a feeling it'll be pretty useful stuff in regards to marketing and getting clients. Getting some work would be cool, but networking never hurts.
Twitter: @flematic
