A Chat With: Jo Walters at brightonSEO
By Donna Fielder and Sarah Cronk
With a month to go until brightonSEO kicks off, we caught up with Jo Walters, a freelance communications specialist on the conference’s team, to learn more.
Chalk: Just a month to go until brightonSEO kicks off - how are all the plans going?
Jo: “I do find it magical how it all comes together. From a huge flurry of emails and to-do lists, we get this massive event. Everyone comes, has a great time, and then before you know it it’s over again!
“I started working on brightonSEO quite a few years ago when it was still being held at the Brighton Dome. Kelvin Newman asked if I could help with managing Twitter on the day of the event, as it was getting too much for him to do alone. As the event has grown, there is more to do so Kelvin built a team of freelancers to help run it. Now I coordinate most of our marketing and comms, all the emails, and talking to attendees - and I still manage all the Twitter activity on the day, along with my colleagues.
“We are due to sell 5000-6000 tickets for the event and we anticipate we will get about 4000-5000 through the door on the day too. It’s huge.
“But, even with the size of the event, it’s not faceless. It’s still friendly and welcoming, not a giant, intimidating thing. If you are someone who wants to go to the talks and do some tie-dying or lego-building in between, there is a space for you. If you are someone who wants to go to all the parties and rock up at lunchtime the next day, there is a space for you.”
The event has come so far in the last 13 years. Why do you think the conference has done so well and become so successful?
“Kelvin identified a need - he wanted to get a few people in a room to chat about SEO, and there were a lot of others who wanted to join. It just spiralled from there. We now have people attending from 50 countries around the world.
“With SEO, there is always something new to learn. The industry is so fast-moving and Google is always changing things, so we never run out of ideas or things to talk about. We also try to keep the event fun and not take ourselves too seriously. Whether that's giving out free ice cream, or people going around dressed as dinosaurs. These elements help make it memorable, give people other things to talk about, and just add an element of silliness! It gives people different ways of engaging with the conference.
“And, of course, people love a day out by the seaside. Brighton is only an hour from London, so it’s not hard for people to reach us. But we also get lots of people from Europe, and even some from Australia!
“Some people use the event as their main team meet-up for the year, especially as there are so many elements to the conference. As well as the main conference event, we have the training workshop day and lots of Fringe events and meet-ups, from a beach clean to yoga.”
How has it been coming out of the pandemic and putting on an event of your scale?
“I can remember getting an email from our project manager with some information on the potential pandemic saying, ‘You might just wanna keep an eye on this, in case it changes anything’! We were due to have the conference in April 2020. So we switched to online.
“Now we run it as a hybrid event, something I’m not sure we would have done if it wasn’t for the pandemic. People can watch the talks as they’re broadcast for free, or they can upgrade and watch them back at a time that works for them. So that helps us reach more people around the world, who then don’t have to travel.
“It was so nice to be back together again post-pandemic and everyone was so grateful to be there. Some people who had been hired during the pandemic met their colleagues for the first time at the conference.”
We assume you get lots of attendees coming back every year. Do you also attract a large number of newcomers each year?
“Yes, we do get a hard-core group of people who keep coming back. About 10% of attendees have been to more than 5 conferences. About 40-50% of people are coming for the first time, which is great. It means the conference isn’t static, we always have new people coming, with fresh ideas.”
We saw you were advertising scholarship opportunities for minority groups - do you find diversity in tech something tricky to tackle as part of your event planning?
“It is definitely a hot topic and certainly speaker lineups get talked about a lot with conferences. You see some conferences where it’s largely white dudes! We are very conscious of this and for our lineups to include people from those underrepresented groups.
“We did a lot of stuff deliberately at the start to encourage diversity and attendance from underrepresented groups; this is now paying off in terms of people pitching to speak. It shows that if you do some work at the beginning to make people feel welcome, it pays off.
“There is a lot of interest in the scholarships. One of my favourite things to do is to go through the applications and give out the tickets. You see so many people who are so enthusiastic about SEO and the conference. There is a range of people who apply, including those who have been on a career break or maternity leave and want to get back up to speed, or a person of colour who feels their career has been held back by people’s prejudices. People are so passionate and motivated: I want to go to their employers and say ‘look, you should give these people training, they are so keen!’
“We also work with ‘Women in Tech SEO’, who are hosting a meet-up at our conference this year and B-Digital UK.”
What are some of the highlights of this year’s conference?
“As always, there will be some silly unexpected elements that we like to keep as a surprise!
“I imagine we will be hearing a lot about AI and ChatGPT, reassuring people about the future of their jobs. And, of course, we will be hearing things about Google updates - Google always makes changes, sometimes right before the conference!
“Sometimes we have ‘big names’ speaking, but usually it’s more about the topic than the name. We are very supportive of new speakers.”
What kind of sponsorship opportunities do you offer? And is there anything still up for grabs if any Chalk readers want to get involved?
“We are always happy to chat with companies and find something that works. We have people who exhibit, others just want one of our supporter packages so they can hand out tickets to clients and staff. Some want to sponsor parties. We are offering something that we are really confident in and we have sponsors that come back again and again so it obviously works for them.
“There are definitely still opportunities to sponsor. Visit our sponsor page for more information or email dre@roughagenda.com.”
brightonSEO is taking place at the Brighton Centre, 20th-21st April 2023, with training workshops and fringe events on the 19th April.
The online event runs from 3rd-5th May, then brightonSEO is back later in the year on 14th-15th September 2023.
Find out more at brightonseo.com.
