Hindsight: Successes and Mistakes

Everyone who attended TEDxBU “Students Startup America” said is was great – informative and inspirational. However, as an organizer I could tell you everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. The 150 attendees witnessed a sliver of the chaos, but luckily our strong lineup of speakers saved the day.

Looking back, I now understand SO much more about what it takes for an event like this to be successful. The three things I wish I had done a better job on were:

1. More central location – The engineering building was a great location, but it did not attract as large a range of students as we had intended. The venue I picked was not common knowledge among the BU student population. Next time, the Entrepreneurship Club will check out a larger and more central location.
2. Start with a bigger team – I cannot stress this enough. I wish I had reruited more team members early on. We had 3 very talented people on our team, but the workload was still too large for us to execute it effectively. I wish I had recruited 6 people.
3. Raise more money – Having seen the costs associated with this project firsthand, I would like to raise much more funding for the next event. This would allow me a better venue, more food, and a better technical staff.

Despite having been warned about these pitfalls during training, there is nothing like experiencing them firsthand to really understand them.

On a positive note, there has been support at BU for sending me and perhaps one other student to a TED Talk so that our next TEDxBU can be larger and more influential. Very exciting!

– Joseph McMahon, Boston University