How do you lead an online conference that’s under-resourced and paid $0?

Define roles clearly, protect your team, and be ready to pivot instantly

Team leads of SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 closing the first day of our 2 day online event. At the top right corner is me; I lead the Marketing and Visual volunteer team of 7, we were located across 5 unique timezones.

Achievements

SDN Next Gen Conference’s two day online event attracted more than 300 registrants from over 40 countries, and scored a 9.2/10 rating.

As the Marketing and Visual team lead of 7, in 6 months we increased SDN Young Talent Board’s LinkedIn and Instagram followers by around 80%:
︎ 84% increase (929 ︎︎︎ 1710 followers)
︎ 77% increase (495 ︎︎︎ 877 followers)

Summary

COMPANY
The Service Design Network Young Talent Board (Remote)

SECTOR
Service design; Event design; Volunteering

DURATION
6 months, 2023

RESPONSIBILITIES
Team leadership, People alignment, Global collaboration, Project management, Workshop design

CONTRIBUTORS
Marketing and Visual volunteer team of 7, SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 volunteers, The Service Design Network’s Head of Marketing

View the SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 website︎︎︎
Experience the accompanying Metaverse︎︎︎
Play in our Afterparty Metaverse︎︎︎

Objective

The Service Design Network Young Talent Board (SDN Young Talent Board, or YTB) is a new initiative from The Service Design Network (SDN) founded in 2022. It was formed to bridge the gap between education and professional practice, and create a more diverse and equitable service design industry.

Through its own annual online event called SDN Next Gen Conference, YTB strives to nurture a vibrant, global community of service design students, young professionals, and career changers. The conference is entirely volunteer driven, each edition created in 6 months, by a team of students or designers with less than 5 years of service design industry experience.

I joined the sophomore SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 as the Marketing and Visual team lead. This team is responsible for the conference’s look and feel, content creation, conference brand narrative, promotional strategy, and social media channels management. By this point I had 3 years of UX Auckland community organising experience, managing their Instagram account, visual content creation, event photography, and general monthly event planning.

It was because of this background I knew I had the right skills to offer YTB and their conference. I also wanted to practice leadership in a fun setting, in a design discipline I care about.

A sample of my team's visual identity co-creation process: moodboard, ideation, refinement, decision

Excerpts from the SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 brand guidelines. Because the conference theme was future-facing, “Beyond Service Design in 2025”, the visual identity needed to reflect that. Although we explored exciting, illustration-based narratives too, the final concept still needed to be easy and quick to execute day-to-day. The concept was co-created by the Marketing and Visual team through multiple workshops.

Approach

Though earmarked to start with 5 volunteers, only 1 joined my team at kickoff! To prepare for new recruits, I crafted a welcome email pack and always commenced their volunteering with a one-on-one walkthrough call. As volunteers joining mid-flight, their first challenge would be catching up on knowledge gaps. Although personal onboarding is extra admin and time, I believed it’d greatly enable an enjoyable volunteer experience.

My Marketing and Visual team eventually grew to 7, a truly global crew located across 5 unique timezones. To compensate for the time differences I relied on polls/voting, weekly meetings on alternating days/times, meeting text summaries, and asynchronous over-communication.

I already knew it’s crucial to over-communicate when working remotely using asynchronous tools, in order to be perceived as typically communicative

I quickly learned it’s best to start using a project management tool ASAP. For my team, I found a Trello-type tool worked best because of its simple usage that’s still easy to overview.

I encouraged everyone to work smarter through AI tools: ChatGPT was great for synthesising long notes and generating social media captions, but Caption Spark was better for unique hashtags. Descript is a straightforward video editor, and DALL-E could generate specific images.

Through proactive and frequent communication, regular meetings, and appropriate workshops, my team co-created the creative direction of SDN Next Gen Conference 2023. We continued to complete tasks and collaborate with other teams, in an endurance marathon until the conference D-Day (May 26–27, 2023).

Pages from the Marketing and Visual team's Figma file. Designing was delegated to my team members. I would quality check and complete tasks my members didn’t have capacity to finish.

Insight

In my 6 months of volunteering, my key learnings about leadership can be summaried in 6 principles:

Make your own rules, but co-create and collaborate for everything, including prioritisation
There’s really no rules for how to do anything, just make it up! The tool or method doesn’t matter; do what needs to be done to keep people moving forward. The only caveat being collaboration is faster in the end because everyone gets informed at the same time, which is perfect for a remotely working global team. This does not mean you must wait for everyone’s schedules to align. Simply offer the best time and space, arrange for asynchronous participation, and inform “If you don't attend, your perspective won't be included”.
Rather than planning exhaustively, it’s better to be agile
Life will happen; expect the unexpected. It’s more important a team is flexible and ready to pivot instantly. Some scenarios:
- Slacking volunteers, ghosting volunteers, not enough volunteers
- Not enough ticket sales, not enough speakers, not enough of anything
- Simultaneous sickness, simultaneous exams, simultaneous life events
Implement learnings right away
Related to Principle #2: because I was orchestrating my team to be flexible, I was giving myself the permission to lead flexibly too. I reflected on what to start, stop, and continue doing at every turn of the project, effectively iterating on my own leadership style. Documenting my learnings and suggestions for next year cleared my head. Mentors who supported me through my leadership journey is SDN’s Head of Marketing Judee Bendiola, and YTB co-founder Jaidon Lalor.
It’s ok to fire people
In a volunteer setting it’s easy to put up with bad behaviour or dead weight because we’re thankful people are volunteering at all. But that commitment they’ve pledged may also be why some people can’t assess their situation sensibly and resign.

People don't want to feel like a quitter. Sometimes you have to relieve them from the anguish of quitting, by decisively firing them.
Clear, even harsh, delineation of priorities for each member
Volunteering is accomplished through the goodness of each person’s free time. To respect this sacrifice, it’s essential to define what each member will and will not work on. I think the best way to do this is yet again, co-creation. If each member defines their own role, their priorities, their relation to other roles, and their relation to other teams, they know their boundaries through-and-through. The intention with this is no one will get too eager and help out in non-priority areas, and feel like they wasted time. It’s then the team lead’s job (me) to divert people to miscellaneous P1 tasks as they arise.
Protect your team, embrace your fellows
A vital part of being a lead is shielding your team from unnecessary pressure and work. I’ve learned to block demanding requests by highlighting incomplete information, and communicating both factual and emotional consequences of such demands. However, most helpful was escalating my concerns early and pushing for action together, now. Once again, the best way forward is collaboration.

But most importantly, always remember we are volunteers, and volunteering should be fun. It’s fun to work together with peers who have the same goals as you. So remind everyone not to freak out, just do what you can with the time that you have.

Have fun, complain liberally, and let the hard times bring people together

Me facilitating a website IA workshop on behalf of my team member. I delegated the workshop design to my Content Designer, but she could not attend in person.

The project manager, team leads, and volunteer members in a meeting

Responses to our Instagram Stories. I learned from my team's Social Media Manager how to leverage Story features more to increase engagement with our followers

Me conducting a retro with half my Marketing and Visual team. Because my team was globally scattered, I organised two retro sessions to accommodate. For the DesignOps of my team of 7 across 5 unique timezones, I relied on polls/voting, weekly meetings on alternating days/times, meeting text summaries, and asynchronous over-communication.

Team leads of SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 closing the first day of our 2 day online event. At the top right corner is me, lead of the Marketing and Visual team

Screenshot of a "Next Gen Speaker session" at SDN Next Gen Conference 2023

We went all in on our future-facing conference theme and created two metaverses for attendees. This first one was designed as an experiential accompaniment to the conference.

Collage of the conference volunteers. Every single person here sacrificed their free time in order to build SDN Next Gen Conference 2023. We were a mix of full time employees, service design masters students, parents, career changers, and recent graduates.

Solution

While still working full time, I volunteered as the lead of the Marketing and Visual team for SDN Next Gen Conference 2023.

Through collaboration, flexibility, and constant reflection, I iterated on my leadership skills and felt myself grow continuously. I now have the confidence and proof I can handle any project.

The two day online event attracted more than 300 registrants from over 40 countries, and scored a 9.2/10 rating.

In the 6 months’ lead-up to the conference, my team of 7 increased YTB’s LinkedIn and Instagram followers by around 80%:
︎ 84% increase (929 ︎︎︎ 1710 followers)
︎ 77% increase (495 ︎︎︎ 877 followers)

We went all in on our future-facing conference theme and created two metaverses for attendees. This second one was designed as a wild afterparty venue.

Excerpts from the Evaluation Report, authored by the 4 YTB co-founders. The report was written before the final social media post was published, so the followers count for both LinkedIn and Instagram is presented as lower than the actual final number.

From 16.02.2023–23.06.2023:
︎ 84% increase (929 ︎︎︎ 1710 followers)
︎ 77% increase (495 ︎︎︎ 877 followers)

Reflection

After SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 finished, my fellow team leads and I were invited to attend the Service Design Global Conference in Berlin by SDN president, Birgit Mager. I took this as my sign to move abroad, from New Zealand at the bottom of the world, to Germany in the heart of Europe. I met in-person all the characters I’d only knew as faces on my screen: my team lead peers, YTB co-founders, and SDN mentors.

Soon after, two of the four YTB co-founders departed. Another team lead and I were invited as permanent SDN Young Talent Board members. I now mentor my conference Marketing and Visual team lead successors, improve the volunteer experience for future cohorts, and lead YTB’s other projects. What started as a fun personal challenge turned into a life-changing opportunity.

Lou Downe is infamous for saying “Service design is 10% design, 90% creating the conditions for design to happen”. I believe this is applicable to any industry, in any organisation: a good leader’s responsibility is people alignment, collaboration, priorities influencing through proactive communication, and conversation facilitation (i.e. workshop design) in order to unblock work streams.

A good leader does 10% work, 90% creating the conditions for others to do good work

View the SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 website︎︎︎
Experience the accompanying Metaverse︎︎︎
Play in our Afterparty Metaverse︎︎︎

Standing on the middle of the Service Design Global Conference 2023 stage is me. Surrounded by my fellow SDN Next Gen Conference 2023 team leads, president of SDN (Birgit Mager), and co-founders of YTB.