When There's Nobody There

When I was 18ish, a friend and I were fans of this band who were so great I can’t even remember their name. They weren’t very big, but they used to play clubs around the country. One day the singer got in touch with us and said they were playing in a club in London, and it’d be great if we could come along. Sounds like fun, we’re up for that. We get on the train, head into London, we find the club, but clearly we’re early as its empty inside. We buy some overpriced drinks, we sit, and we wait.

And we wait.

The band turns up, we say hi, they go off to get ready, we get some more drinks, and we wait some more. Looking around, the club is very empty. Awkwardly empty. As in, we’re literally the only two people in there who aren’t working there empty.

Time goes by, and a couple walks in and sits down at one of the tables, and we think ah ok we’re just REALLY early, people will start turning up now.

Then the band comes on.

Two songs in, and the couple get up and leave.

Four songs in, the management turns the lights on.

After playing six songs, they finish their set, and we do our best to sound like 150 people clapping and cheering, but its obvious that they are clearly and understandably disappointed. A short time later the band came out from backstage and joined us for drinks. We chatted and drank for a few hours before they decided to wrap up for the night.

“Hey” the singer said “we’re heading back to our hotel, you want to come?”

We had the best night. Having jumped in a taxi across London we found ourselves in a hotel in Regents Park, sitting in the bar with the band and a few other musicians who happened to be in the city, drinking and talking and listening to stories and admiring guitars. Then – unexpectedly – another band turned up, having finished up their evening from playing somewhere else in London. I wont say who they were, but they were a much more famous band from New Zealand who I was a massive fan of, and I found myself sitting listening open-mouthed in awe to them telling stories of hanging out with Oasis and Paul Weller. It was the best night out and it all came about because we happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Ok so why am I telling you this? Well, I’d actually forgotten about that night until very recently when (humblebrag) I got to record an episode of the Community ROI podcast with Yurii Lazaruk, and we talked about community ‘disasters’ – for example when you organise an event and only like five people turn up. Whilst obviously having a really low turnout is bad, it happens. Anyone involved in community has been there, and as an organiser it really does suck. Its easy to take it personally, it’s easy to blame yourself, and its easy to feel like a failure. But its ok - you don’t have to. I once got advice from experienced meetup organiser and all round awesome human Lee Rathbone, and I’ve retold it many times since. If you run an event where 50 people turn up, but at the end only 10 people have got something valuable out of it, then would you consider that to be a success? I presume like me the majority of us would say no, we would not consider that to be a success. What if then, you ran the same session, only 10 people turned up, but all 10 found it really valuable, would you consider that to be a success? Again I will assume that, like me, your answer would be yes. Whilst we can (and need to if we want to be given budget again!) learn from the actual event hosting itself if turn out is considerably lower than expected, that’s a job for tomorrow. The task here and now is to make sure that those who have made the journey, made the time in their day, have been looking forward to the session and who have turned up, making sure that it is as meaningful and as valuable and as impactful as possible. Right now, you and I don’t know who is going to benefit and in what way, and what incredible things may come from what they learn or what impact it is going to have on them.

And its not just for the audience or the community members that this can be beneficial.

Have you ever been to a conference or a meetup or some type of event, where you’ve heard a session that just absolutely blew your mind? Where you learned something that has fundamentally changed the way you think about things? Now imagine you could go back to that moment, but instead of a whole audience of people listening to the speaker, it was just you and them talking directly to you. How much more amazing would that be? How much more value would you be able to create if you could talk and engage with the speaker instead of having to listen in a purely transactional relationship? And think how good it would feel to the speaker to go home at the end of the event not wondering whether their session was valuable or if it meant something to the audience, but to KNOW with 100% certainty that someone has had their mind blown by what they’ve shared and you have made a meaningful difference to their lives? What a gift that would be! This is the opportunity presented to you when there is a low turn out at a planned event – as a community leader or an event organiser, this is your chance to make something truly special for those attendees. Don’t let it go to waste, don’t feel sad – embrace it, and make it something wonderful

Just to add - if you’re not bored of listening to me yet, here’s a link to the episode of the Community ROI podcast that I mentioned above 😃

Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee 🙂