An update on LaunchPad call 1 and news about the next call.

TRANSCRIPT

And I'm so glad you're putting this together because we need this for our community, we need this for bonding, we need this for learning. And I'm so proud of you, the three of you, for putting this event together because I know how hard it is.

Welcome back to the UpLift Live podcast. My name is John Espirian and I'm one of the Mission Control team for the UpLift Live conference which is the first of its type conference in the UK in Birmingham in March 2024.

In the buildup to the event, we decided to create a set of Zoom calls so that attendees of the conference could get to know each other. The first of these so-called "LaunchPad" calls happened at the end of October and it was a great success. We had almost 40 of the conference attendees showing up, including some of our speakers on the big day.

The whole point of the LaunchPad calls is to break the ice ahead of time so that when we arrive in Birmingham, many of us will already know each other and there won't be any need for that awkward, stuttering bit that you get at the start of most networking events.

Here's a quick snippet of the discussion from LaunchPad call 1, and you're now going to hear the voices of Niraj Kapur, Kim Johnson, Kevin D Turner – who's one of our conference speakers – and Mic Adam.

You know, I asked LinkedIn twice, this is 2 years ago and last year about doing a LinkedIn conference like Salesforce style how Salesforce do it with Dreamforce.

I said, look, I spent 15 years in events, it'll be fantastic to do this.

And I'm so glad you're putting this together, because we need this for our community.

We need this for bonding, we need this for learning.

And I'm so, so proud of you, the three of you, for putting this together, because I know how hard it is putting an event together. It's such hard work.

And I don't think people will realise how much of your life it takes up.

So, I wanted to say a massive thank you to you and Gus and Jeremy for doing this.

Really can't wait for the chance to meet Gillian from Vegas and Tiina from Europe. I mean, this is just amazing. It really is.

I just wanted to chime in and say, I've never been on a Zoom call with more than 10 people where every single person has their video enabled. So, kudos to all of you. I've never seen anything like this. And I'm looking forward to seeing all of you in person.

But it's everybody that's in the audience. I mean, it is really, John, turned out to be the who's who of LinkedIn. And so that to me is fantastic. I wish it were 3 days.

I want to thank you, John, for organising all the things that were on my bucket list, which is: I want to meet a bunch of these people that are already in this call and all the people that are speaking, but I've heard from other people that they're coming. So, you've organised for me the perfect bucket list. How could I not be excited to be there?

Isn't that lovely? So, if you come to conference, you'll meet those nice people and plenty of others.

Now, we want to have some more of that good spirit again so we are organising a second LaunchPad call.

That next call is scheduled for Friday 8 December at 1pm UK time, and we'll be in touch with ticket holders with the Zoom link. I'm trying to organise each call for a different time so that we can do something that suits our audience and give everyone a chance to take part. Don't worry if you missed the first call or if you can't make the second call, as we'll have a couple more of these in early 2024.

You are welcome to come along to the LaunchPad calls so long as you have a ticket to the UpLift Live conference.

We've now sold more than 100 tickets, which is not bad going as we still have several months before the conference.

If you'd like to get a ticket, you can join us via uplift-live.com. We know that some people would prefer to spread their payments rather than paying outright so we've created uplift-live.com/plan which has a payment plan option via a service called Klarna. This will give you a chance to pay for your conference ticket in 3 instalments. And it's interest-free.

One of the bit of news for now: we've updated the ticket-buying page so that you can include the name of anyone who referred you to join us at the conference. We're doing this so we can reward the people who are spreading the good word about the event. If you've already got a ticket, do let your colleagues know to mention your name when buying their ticket and you'll get a little reward as a result.

OK, that will do for this update. Thanks again for all of the lovely comments and DMs and posts about the event. It's all much appreciated as we build towards our launch in March. So, for now, this is John Espirian for Mission Control saying … over and out.

UpLift Live Mission Control

🟦 John Espirian

🟩 Jeremy Freeman

🟧 Gus Bhandal

TICKETS: uplift-live.com

QUESTIONS/FEEDBACK: john@uplift-live.com