We often drop a lot of references to conferences and events we've attended and even produced together, in this episode we talk about the history of the Converge conference.
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Carl: So, Gene.
Carl: Gene. So, we did that four episode series.
Gene: Oh, was it four? I thought it was like 10.
Carl: It felt like 25.
Gene: I'm just kidding.
Carl: For the listener.
Gene: Yeah, it's all right, man.
Carl: We did that on the nGen Works story. And that was amazing. Thanks again to Hans for suggesting that.
Gene: Hans.
Carl: And I will say it's proven to be popular. It's like our out of the gate, the fastest or most listened to podcast. It's the exact same speed as the other podcasts.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: But I have something I want to talk about, something that I've never fully understood that matters to me. I want to understand the story of Converge. I know bits and pieces of it.
Gene: Okay.
Carl: I know the dark sorted side of Converge. I was there. It wasn't that dark. It was a little sorted, but I want to understand the origin story. How did Converge come to be? I was there during the height of it and just like we did with nGen, kind of see where did it taper off? What happened there? So, what brought Converge to life? What were you doing? I mean, you were running a shop, you had some other people. Why did you say we should put on an event or did you?
Gene: Wow. I haven't actually thought about that in a while. Even though, we used to get like eight minutes out of this show, it'd be awesome. No, it was a mixture of we ... So, I'd been involved with AIGA. So, I went, that's what I got my degree in, was illustration design. And so I was involved with AIGA and became the president of AIGA. Don't know why the hell I did that, still don't. Yeah, whatever. It's not as big a deal as you think it is.
Carl: Now president national or president-
Gene: No, no, no, just the state.
Carl: Okay, okay.
Gene: South Carolina. And so the thing that I enjoyed out of that was the meetups. Getting together with all the people and sharing information and that's, fuck, when was that? I don't even remember what year that would be.
Carl: Mid 2000s maybe.
Gene: Yeah. Somewhere in there, 2005, six, somewhere in there. I don't know. A long time ago, over 10 years ago. And I really enjoyed getting together and sharing information and stuff. And right around the same time we sort of shared a lot of this in the discussion about nGen. It was a very cool time to be sort of in the industry. Because it was a lot of sharing. There was, you remember these things called blogs, when people used to have those? They would write-
Carl: We still do.
Gene: They would write things.
Carl: Yeah. And they were good things.
Gene: Yeah. It was a lot of them.
Carl: You could build your career on these things.
Gene: Yeah. So, I was really in, I got into that like a lot and we started right around the time, I think internationally something called Refresh started if you remember those.
Carl: [inaudible 00:04:38].
Gene: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's right. I was trying to remember name when we were talking. So, we started a Columbia chapter of that. And so I was sort of hitting Refresh and AIGA every other week, here locally. And then we realized, oh, there are these things in other states and other cities. So, we would venture to those and meet people. And around that same time, there was an here, homegrown called, like everything else in the state it's Palmetto something. I'm sure Florida probably has like gator something or I don't know [crosstalk 00:05:11] something.
Carl: Flamingos, it's always flamingos.
Gene: But here it's Palmetto. So, it's the Palmetto Open Source group conference. Yeah. It's like everything's Palmetto [inaudible 00:05:21].
Carl: When you think about Palmetto is bug and that is not good. Those are some gross things.
Gene: I think they're referencing the tree.
Carl: I know, I know, but you say Palmetto, I think bug. Continue.
Gene: That guy was, he did that event and it was, he did it at the university of South Carolina engineering department and he had like eight speakers or whatever. And he was able to get a couple hundred people to come here from the Southeast region. And I just went to it. It was free. And just went to it. And I thought it was the coolest thing that all these people kind of came together to ... and it was open source. So, it was all like free information. And I just thought it was really cool. I just thought it was neat. Everybody pitched in. And that sort of, that's how we started it. We were originally Converge SC.
Carl: Yeah. I remember that.
Gene: South Carolina and we were a nonprofit when we first started it, we was me, the POSCON person, Palmetto Open Source person and two other people who did other types of ... there was like a designer person and then a web front end person that was sort of doing the Refresh stuff and then there was me. And we all got together and wanted to put the thing together. And so the idea was that we would have, whoever was part of the group would get a speaker and bring them in. And so we'd have this day of five or six speakers that represented all the different aspects of the industry. And that's why we called it Converge. That's where the name came from. And so we did that and it was fun, but it was a lot of work and all of those guys promptly quit. They're like, no.
Carl: That's the thing. We talked about that. You put on an event, it's a ton of work.
Gene: It's a ton of work. So, they quit.
Carl: Okay. And so they quit and you're still doing AIGA and Refresh at this time.
Gene: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Carl: And so this is a third thing.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And what was the time period between doing that with everybody when they quit and doing the next Converge?
Gene: We did that event like a May. Early summer. The students were gone. So, we had kind of run of this engineering department's big, it's like a auditorium where they had classes or whatever. It's like the typical college class where they have like 200 students in the class. One of those big old auditoriums.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: And one of the people in the group was a grad student, so he just had the key. So, we just used it.
Carl: So, you kept cost down.
Gene: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We brought in sandwiches from Chick-fil-A or whatever for everybody. Subway actually.
Carl: Oh, there you go. Both are sponsors of this show by the way. Neither one.
Gene: That was the very first one. And I would say it was a success because everybody really liked it.
Carl: That's one measure of success, for sure. [crosstalk 00:08:13]-
Gene: They did like it, I mean, they didn't want to do it anymore, the original group, they didn't want to do it. They all were like, I'm out. A couple of them got other jobs and moved to other states or whatever. So, that was May. And then somewhere around fall, I was just like, should I do it again? What should we do? So, I did it again the next year. It was me and a couple of the guys I worked with, Jay and Gio wasn't actually, he wasn't working [crosstalk 00:08:44]. It was really just Jay and then another guy who worked at a web shop across town kind of pitched in, but it was still sort of like my thing that I wanted to do.
Carl: Gotcha. So, in the fall you decided to do it again, but you didn't go again until the following year.
Gene: Yeah. The following summer. Yeah. Yeah. So, I gave myself six months or so the plan it. And so what I did then is it was still called Converge SC. And I wanted to get somebody from all the different areas of South Carolina. I wanted to make like a South Carolina community event for everybody that worked in the industry. So, I had a couple of developers, a couple of designers, an agency person, a copywriter, a creative director and then a web creative person. And we just built the day around that. And that was the second year.
Gene: And that's sort of when it started to take shape and I sort of got my feet wet, really in terms of how to produce an event, how to make something worth a shit, how to build a budget for it and get sponsors, because I wanted to do a little bit more with it. And so that was that. I would say that's the second year, the first year of it, probably how you would know it would be today. The first one was very, what are those word camp? Or what were those things?
Carl: Yeah. Yeah. Bar camps.
Gene: Bar camps, word camps. Those were kind of happening at the same time. So, the very first year were sort of like in that vein of [crosstalk 00:10:09]-
Carl: Gotcha. Just everybody come together. We're going to kind of, we'll have a couple of speakers, but we're just going to kind of hang out. So, when do you switch from SC to SE? When do you make [crosstalk 00:10:20]-
Gene: That third year.
Carl: That third year you decide, okay. You know what? Let's make this regional.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Now what was the thinking behind that?
Gene: Speakers. So, just people I wanted. So, I realized through traveling to the Refresh stuff and you put on an event and you meet people. Between doing the very first year and the second year I went to future web design, a couple of those, if you're old school, you'll remember those.
Carl: Carsonified. Ryan Carson.
Gene: Carsonified. And now it's, they don't do events anymore, but what is the teaching platform?
Carl: Treehouse.
Gene: Yeah. Treehouse. You'll know them as that. Anyway, went to a couple of those, went to front end design conf with Dan Denny down in St. Pete.
Carl: St. Pete. Yep.
Gene: Went to another one and I'm having trouble remembering. Anyway, so I was like, wow, I want it to be like that. Where those were like, like future web design was like the whole world.
Carl: Oh, it felt huge.
Gene: Yeah. And in front end conf really did too. Dan did an amazing job of bringing speakers from everywhere and making it feel bigger. It was the industry. It wasn't just like, hey, it's your little city. So, I wanted to do that. And I realized, and through traveling through Refresh that, wow, these people that I sort of, I read their blogs and their books and I want to meet them and hang out with them. I was like, if I could trick them into coming here.
Carl: That's how you got me. You tricked me. You bastard.
Gene: But I could be friends with these people. And that would just be cool. And so that's how the second year, we had some amazing people that second year talk about out some amazing stuff. In fact, and I'm so old I can't even remember. It wasn't Ethan Marcotte. I should have been more better prepared.
Carl: No, you're good.
Gene: Anyway, what was her name? Do you remember her name? She was a speaker who was talking.
Carl: You have to give me a little more.
Gene: I will [crosstalk 00:12:34]-
Carl: I wasn't there the second year.
Gene: And put it in the notes. Anyway, we had her, Zoe Gillenwater, God.
Carl: Oh, Zoe. Yeah, [crosstalk 00:12:40].
Gene: Zoe Gillenwater. She came and was talking about the future of HTML and CSS and how we're going to do these liquid designs. And we're going to use images that are liquid as well. And then we're going to do these things, there's these things called media queries and how we can target actual screens. And if we put these three things together, it could change how we do stuff. And we were like, whoa, what is that? And she's showing us how to do it. So, everybody's kind of like talking about that shit from her talk and stuff. And then nine months later, Ethan Marcotte's like, we're going to do responsive web design and they all come together and it changed the industry. So, it was like being on this wave of stuff that changed. And we were able to be a part of that and it just hooked me.
Carl: Well, I just want to say for a minute, as somebody who ended up part of the Converge family, I can totally see with Dan and what he had going on at front end. And I'll say this to the end of time, Dan Denny just watching the way he and Sherry did things changed the way that I wanted things to be, because it just felt so warm and it felt inclusive and everything. Yeah, it was on a budget, but you didn't care, because it was a reunion.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: It wasn't like you were there to be pampered.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: Even though I will say that chocolate covered bacon in the green room's pretty amazing. But then, and nothing against Carsonified with future web design, it was a totally different concept. Wasn't that kind of reunion. It wasn't that kind of thing. It was much more of a big event. So, you learned from that, oh, you signed a contract to be a speaker. Oh this has to be a certain amount of original material, because they're trying to go for this. So, you learn a lot on that side too. It's not that same thing. So, then Converge to me, seemed like, and I think I came in the third year, because you had contacted me because of the blog.
Gene: You were third year.
Carl: You reading our blog. But you really kind of harnessed a little of both, because you had that warm feeling that you scaled. So, talk a little bit about the first time. So, the second year were you also in the university setting?
Gene: Same thing.
Carl: So, that third year you moved to more of a theater.
Gene: That's right. That's right.
Carl: So, what makes you go, we're going big?
Gene: So, it was a direct result of what you just said. It was getting to know Dan, going to some more of the bigger world class events. I mean, none of the events were really world class, you know what I mean? They were all homegrown mom and pops, just different approaches in scale. So, it was learning from those two and then realizing, not really thinking about, oh, this is like a product or a thing we can make money with. But realizing that we have to treat it with that respect and we have to do that work with it. And we could build something that eventually could maybe become that. And so it was time to go to work and do it, like run it as a project through our company. And at that point, Gio had started working with us and stuff and so we had a little bit of juice, because he's incredibly, I mean world class, honestly creative individual.
Carl: Oh yeah.
Gene: And it really gave us some juice to do some really fun branding stuff and push the envelope with what we can make it look like and feel like, and just try to do some wild and crazy stuff, but at the same time have that professional undertone. Like mom and pop with a good professional undertone is what I was going for. And so we knew we have to get a real venue, we have to put it somewhere nice, somewhere sort of that would stack up anywhere else. And we just luckily happened to have, it was still the university, but they had just built a technical-
Carl: Amphitheater.
Gene: ... facility.
Carl: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gene: It was for people like us. And I got into that through the Refresh and the AIGA and I to know them. We just rented that out and put it in there and we went crazy. We just had workshops and that's where I met you. I was just reaching out to speakers. I want to try different tracks and different things and see what we can do. And invited you.
Carl: I remember I was, I don't know if this was that year, but I remember giving a workshop on your money-
Gene: That was the first year.
Carl: ... your money or your life, where it was all about how you could have balance and you could do all these things. And a guy upstairs was handing out free beer. And I remember looking at everybody in my room, I probably had like 30 people in a room that could seat 60 or whatever. And I said, do y'all just want go upstairs and get beer, because I'm down with that. I mean, I'm not getting paid for this. Let's just go. And it was one of those things where everybody was like, no, no, we want to hear this. And I was like, damn it. I really wanted to go upstairs.
Gene: Would you go get me the beer?
Carl: Could you get me a beer? You know what? I remember walking in, one of the first things. And this was when it was all in one area, like the workshops were down one hall and then there was the theater and there was all this kind of stuff.
Gene: That was important to us.
Carl: You had FreshBooks and Harvest as sponsors. And they were both on the same table with bagels and coffee. I remember I looked at you, I said, "Who do I thank for the bagels? And who do I thank for the coffee?"
Gene: That's right.
Carl: Because I don't want to piss off either one.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: And it was just so funny to me because I did not realize that, I mean, first of all, outside of, South by Southwest, which was a big thing at the time. We see that being like holy crap. I didn't really think about sponsorship. So, how, in that third year, do those people become sponsors?
Gene: There's no real magic to it other than I was friends with these people. We talked to them, we'd use their products. They believed in us, we believed in them. I think.
Carl: So, Mike and Danny, you knew them.
Gene: From harvest? Yeah. We knew Peldi from FreshBooks.
Carl: Okay. Okay.
Gene: I think he sold it by now.
Carl: No, Mike still owns it.
Gene: Oh, does he? Oh, we knew Peldi. We knew Peldi.
Carl: Okay, cool. But then Danny at harvest. And so you knew them.
Gene: And so like Sticker Mule like I had met Tony and he was just trying to, Anthony, however you might know him, and he was just trying to get it off the ground and where I was like, "Look, man we're doing this event. And I think all these people they're like designers and stuff. I think all these people would like to know who you are. Because they hate stickers from wherever." He was like, "Well, how about I print a bunch of stickers for you?" I was like, "Cool. What you should do on the back is just put your logo or whatever."
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: So, we started like that.
Carl: And still, I don't know that they still do it, but that was the way they would get into everything. That was the beginning for them as well. That's pretty cool.
Gene: So, it was like the beginning of working and MailChimp was new. They were, believe it or not, they were small.
Carl: Oh yeah. They were tiny.
Gene: It was like 20 of them. And I had met Ben at a UIXE or whatever the hell it was called.
Carl: Ben Chestnut. Yep.
Gene: Ben like ...
Carl: And they were still Rocket Media at the time.
Gene: Yeah, they were, it was like a-
Carl: Whatever.
Gene: It was like a UX seminar. I sat next to them and we ... That's back in the day, man. That's how it was. It's hard to remember that all these companies were like 10 people or whatever.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Then now they're like multimillion billion dollar corporations or whatever.
Carl: I remember giving a lunch and learn at MailChimp. And I walked in and they were doing grilled cheese out of a truck and some stuff in the back. And I remember looking going, where is everybody? And they're like, oh, this is everybody. I was like, oh my God.
Gene: Yeah. But that's how it was. And so that's, I mean, that's how you get Harvest and FreshBooks at the same thing, because I feel like they wanted to be there.
Carl: They wanted to be there. Now who else? Were there any other sponsors that third year? I remember those two.
Gene: MailChimp.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: I'm sorry. I'm sure there was.
Carl: No, didn't, I thought, no, this is something I think you learned from, I learned from, I thought in that third year you had some sponsor that got up to give a pitch.
Gene: We did.
Carl: I remember that, because I was sitting in the audience going, oh this isn't going over very well.
Gene: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forget who that was. And I'm not doing that just for the sake of the video. I honestly don't remember.
Carl: No, no, no worries. I don't remember either. It was some sort of a SaaS product.
Gene: Yeah. If you're an evangelist, remember that we don't remember [crosstalk 00:21:28]-
Carl: You're hitting your desk.
Gene: We remember the coffee sponsor more than you, who tried to sell your shit on stage.
Carl: For everybody listening to this episode and you keep hearing this ding, it's like Gene's getting animated and he keeps hitting his desk every time. And it's just I had to let you know. So, you go through that third year and how many people were there? It felt like a few hundred.
Gene: Was a couple hundred, about 300 people. Maybe 250.
Carl: Yeah. And so I remember I showed up to speak there. I really hadn't spoken many places. I was part of this Adobe tour that went around.
Gene: That's not what you told me.
Carl: Oh well, okay, did I? Well, I remember we were talking and I was just like, okay, well I don't know what I'll talk about, but okay. But yeah, no, I was excited. I remember going in and seeing everybody and I remember just running down the front row, high fiving everybody with no idea, like it was The Price is Right or something, but I was having so much fun. So, that-
Gene: That was alive, man.
Carl: That year kind of set the tone for the trajectory, huh?
Gene: Yes, it did. And from there we started getting a little crazy with the website for the event was always an event for us in and of itself. We spent a lot of time on those things and we won a lot of awards for those websites. And that was a great result of Gio and Jay, even though they were like terrible to work together. They fought and argued. They made some really good shit. And I think it's some of the more memorable stuff, if you're from around that time.
Carl: Just to say, I think it elevated a little bit because now I wasn't there the first two years. But that third year I remember walking and seeing, was it a dragon illustration? There was something in that third year. I just remember seeing it going, whoa.
Gene: Yeah, it was Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Carl: Oh, there you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.
Gene: [crosstalk 00:23:21] of shit. It was just a goofiest stuff.
Carl: Yeah, it was just craziness, but you know what, so was the event. It was just such a great vibe. So, you get through that third year, you get past it. I'm just curious. Are you making any money? Are you just covering, because the time commitment has gotten crazy? I'm sure.
Gene: Yeah. At that point it was a labor of love. And I'll say until the end, it kind of was. We didn't really make, I mean not really, not really.
Carl: You look at the numbers and you're like, oh wow. But then you look at the time and it's not even, I'll say this as somebody who does events, it's not even the time, it's the life energy. It just demands so much of you. And the stress is so crazy.
Gene: I will say, I never once paid my own money for anything. It always made its own thing.
Carl: Right. You didn't have a loss.
Gene: But when you put in your time, you're like, we spent eight months on this. There's no way it'd be like a three and a half million dollar invoice. You know what I mean?
Carl: Oh my God.
Gene: There's no way.
Carl: You would never, if you ever got the estimate, you'd be like, nope. So, you get through that third year, you are now on a rocket to the moon.
Gene: Yeah. So, that third year, and then the fourth year we got real serious with it. We were like, okay, I see what it can do. And we were starting to do our road show. So, we had-
Carl: Really? That was that early?
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carl: Okay.
Gene: It's took a long time, man. People like to, it's like the overnight success. We had been running a website called Unmatched Style.
Carl: Oh yeah.
Gene: For a couple of years before the events we'd started it.
Carl: You featured nGen on it.
Gene: Yeah. Yeah.
Carl: When we did our slanted header, I remember that. It was a big deal for us. I really thought-
Gene: That's what the site was about. It was about finding those unique things and talking about them and bringing it to light. And then the events kind of fed into that love of the industry and love of the work. And so we realized we can pull all this together and really try to, from the early experiences with things like Zoe and like we had Samantha [War 00:25:23] in there and stuff, talking about stuff that shaped the industry to watching the next couple of years and having people in that were like you, I mean like cornerstones in the industry in terms of the projects they're doing and the way they're shaping how people work.
Gene: I'm like, we can actually affect how, we're small, but we can really affect how people look at our industry, how they work in our industry, how we share information. We can help make that happen. And that was really energizing. So, that fourth year we were like, okay, let's get serious with this and let's see what we can do. We put a lot of effort into just getting it together and stuff. And we sold that event out in 30 minutes.
Carl: I'll never forget that.
Gene: It was like [crosstalk 00:26:02] it was gone.
Carl: I remember, I think you and I were talking, I don't think we had started BizCraft yet, but you and I were talking and you had said it and you were just like, we're sold out. And I was like, what does that mean?
Gene: It was gone.
Carl: And how many tickets were there?
Gene: That would've been about 400 seats.
Carl: Yeah, crazy.
Gene: So, not a lot. I mean, not a lot from like ...
Carl: Oh no, in our world that was every-
Gene: It was a lot at that time.
Carl: Now, is that the one where you had multiple venues?
Gene: That was the last year where we [crosstalk 00:26:30]-
Carl: That was the last year.
Gene: In that one space. So, we were limited by the amount. We had people stand. They were standing in these little [crosstalk 00:26:39]-
Carl: Yeah. Fire marshal would not have been happy.
Gene: No, no, no. We definitely had more people than we should have.
Carl: So, I got to ask this question though. So, you go through, you sell 400 tickets in 30 minutes. What does that money feel like? Because you know you've got to spend it on a lot of stuff, but how much money was that? Because your tickets were like 200, 300 bucks?
Gene: Like 250, 200. I mean, it wasn't, again, it wasn't a ton of money. I mean, for us at the time it felt huge.
Carl: It feels huge.
Gene: And so, yeah, we just, we were like, well, that's our budget. And that's no sponsors. That's just what we can do. And so we put it back in. We got nicer shirts. We got more stickers. We got better food.
Carl: I think you might have said this to me. I'm not sure, but I think it was break even on the tickets, make money on the sponsorships. That was like a thing.
Gene: [crosstalk 00:27:30].
Carl: Yeah, that was pretty heavy. So, you kick it off. Now you feel like you've got something you can lean on with this money. You know you've got an energetic crowd. Did you ever think, should we try to find a different space?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Maybe we could open this up. What was that like?
Gene: Yes. So, it was awesome. So, planning for the next year, we were like, okay, this is bigger than us in terms of not fucking this up. So, we hired a company to help us manage the operations-
Carl: I remember that.
Gene: ... of the people during the day, because that was overwhelming. And I was like, okay, if we're going to double this going to be a thousand people.
Carl: Customer service.
Gene: I don't know how ... We need some professionals so that no one gets in trouble and all this shit.
Carl: They had a tree in their name. I can't remember it, but it's some sort of ...
Gene: And at the same time, the word had kind of gotten around that it was a cool event in the city of Columbia.
Carl: The city stood up and was kind of offering you the keys to the city.
Gene: Yeah, they were. They were like, what are you thinking? So, we were like, well, I'd like to take it on main street, because there's a few venues. And I would like to spread it across the whole downtown. And around the same time they finally, Columbia brought back a farmers market that hadn't been there in like 50 years or something.
Carl: I remember that. Yeah.
Gene: And we were like, okay, so let's go big. Let's go big or go home. And we spread it around Columbia and it just exploded. And we sold that one out just in a day or two.
Carl: And that was 500 tickets or 650?
Gene: 800 people.
Carl: 800. Oh my goodness. Now did your ticket price go up or you kept it the same.
Gene: Same.
Carl: Yeah. Kept it the same. And that was multiple venues. I remember walking around like looking at everything.
Gene: Yeah, up and down main street. Yeah.
Carl: And I was just blown away. I was like, oh my what?
Gene: Yeah, we got-
Carl: I saw you at one point and those listening, I was trying to explain this, but I saw you at one point and you just kind of went, hmm. You just had this look on your face. Like, I don't know what's happening, but you did. And I'm sure inside, at some point, you were stressed out, but you always had this outward demeanor of whatever. You just let it all roll. And it was like, it was soothing as a speaker and a friend-
Gene: I hope so, I hope so.
Carl: ... to see that you were okay. I've told Brett this a lot of times and he's told me this a lot of times when we're out there and I think it stems from you, everybody's going to feed off your energy. So, if you're kind of wigging out, they're going to wig out. If you're kind of like whatever, they're going to be whatever. And if you're super energetic and positive, they're going to feed off that as well. So, I think you really showed me that.
Gene: Well, that's awesome. Yeah, it's sort of like the duck metaphor, where the Duck's all cool on top, but underneath it's like, Ugh. [crosstalk 00:30:16].
Carl: Yep. Paddling like crazy. So, you get through, you have this huge opportunity. You also did like a startup, like a quick pitch kind of thing that you did for startups. This thing's really expanding out.
Gene: Yeah. And I'll tell you, all that kind of stuff was really, it was from the pressure of other people.
Carl: Yeah. They were kind of taking your event and saying ...
Gene: Well it's like, it became, my vision was to make it part of the city. I wanted to help the city. I wanted to do something cool. It wasn't about building a business for myself. And so when you start to open that up, people put their own pressures on it and they bring their own biases and things they want to do. And you have to learn how to navigate that. Because it can take you over and make your event a pile of shit.
Carl: And if you don't like the event you're putting on, that's the energy people are going to feel.
Gene: That's right. And you talk about that demeanor that you give, if you're walking around like fuck this place, everybody else is going to feel that too.
Carl: Yeah. Yeah.
Gene: So, we did, we did that sort of spread out for a couple of years.
Carl: Really? I only remember the one year. [crosstalk 00:31:21]. Okay.
Gene: Yeah, we did it, I think, three years. The first one was smaller and then it was bigger. And then the one we started getting this and even Chris Coyier was on stage was like, let's make this the South by of the Southeast [crosstalk 00:31:34].
Carl: Well, now that, I remember that year where he said that my talk is just going to be about how we don't need South by anymore, because we have Converge. Now, I do have a question for you. What year was the laser light show?
Gene: That was that year.
Carl: That was the same, that was the year that Coyier said we don't need ... See, that laser light show. I remember sitting there, we were inside and there's this laser light show. And I just remember in my head, I'm going, what's happening? They have a laser light show.
Gene: She that's a good lesson in trying things. Things you try don't always work out. But you have to be willing to just push the ...
Carl: Why not?
Gene: Don't be so serious about everything. I mean, the chicken, it was called chicken head was the guys name. I don't know. It's some weirdo. And got this laser light show. It took him like two days to set it up. We get everybody. It was like a thousand fucking people in that room. Standing room only. It was huge. Daniel Burke is there, he's just started working at Google.
Carl: Oh, Google.
Gene: Like Google imagination factory, whatever the hell he was. And we're like, he's going to talk about fucking spaceships or whatever, laser lights. And they blew the speakers.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: So, it was like ...
Carl: I remember Burke that year talking about-
Gene: There's no sound.
Carl: ... the importance about being a generalist. That this whole thing, you have to be a generalist. So, I remember that year and I was just like-
Gene: That was our Game of Thrones year. We had houses for each track.
Carl: ... what's happening. Oh my God. There you go. So, was that the biggest it ever got?
Gene: Yes.
Carl: Was like a thousand people.
Gene: Yeah. That was the biggest it ever got.
Carl: Now, the following year, was it a conscious decision to get smaller or did it just happen?
Gene: It just happened. It was really weird. I don't really know. So, we moved it. In Columbia there's main street. And then there's another area that's a little bit hipper and trendier called the Vista and a new venue had opened called Music Farm. It was like a rock club. It was very cool. And we were like, I mean, it's been here for three years, it's the same city, but let's just try something a little bit different. We put it over there and it wasn't like a thousand people, but it was 800 people. So, I don't know, it's kind of the same. I don't know. It was smaller technically.
Carl: Now did it sell out still?
Gene: Yeah, we sold it out.
Carl: Still sold it out. Okay. Got it. Got it.
Gene: Now I will say, the last two years we were sold out, because we limited it. We cut it off at 900 people or whatever plus workshop. You're going to have people you give shit to and they bring friends or whatever. So, we specifically cut it off, because I didn't want to just keep selling tickets forever. I wanted it to have that exclusive feel to a point of like, you need to work to get here sort of a vibe. So, we did it in there and that's when we wanted to ... So, a year before we were like, let's do some different shit. So, we got like a Navy SEAL to come talk to people.
Carl: That was amazing.
Gene: Then the next year we got Thunder Levin, the guy who did Sharknado. And you did an interview with him.
Carl: Interviewed Thunder and we're still friends. We still talk like every couple of months or so. We'll get ... we don't ... I mean, yeah, he's funny as hell.
Gene: Yeah. And you can get into the deep dive into the reasons why we did [crosstalk 00:35:00].
Carl: So, you did that. I mean, you almost had LeVar Burton right before Reading Rainbow got picked back up. You had him scheduled. I remember I told like a hundred people.
Gene: I put a deposit down with his, what do you call him? His handler or his [crosstalk 00:35:16].
Carl: Yeah, his agent.
Gene: It was a thousand bucks, put a deposit down. And all that did was he would look at it. That's all they would say. Well, [crosstalk 00:35:25]-
Carl: But you don't get the money back.
Gene: Yeah. He will, this is to have him look at your proposal for the event. And apparently he was like, I like it. But that's the word I got? I don't know. The guy could have been lying. I don't know. But then like, he was like, got other shit, can't do it. And I was like fuck.
Carl: Yeah. So, you go through you get, I remember that year, the laser light year, Chris is on stage explaining what South by has and what we have. And he's kind of making this juxtaposition. He is making it so that we're all starting to understand what you and the team have created here.
Gene: Right.
Carl: And then I remember the polka band. Wasn't there a polka band one year?
Gene: Oh, yeah.
Carl: With food when you're eating and there was all these little ... But it was that kind of thing. It was like, what's going to happen? There's going to be something funny. And when you talk to people about Converges, you don't want to talk about the year that so and so was there, you talk about the year that such and such happened. That was-
Gene: [crosstalk 00:36:23] dinosaur, the year they got the-
Carl: So magical.
Gene: ... polka band. Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. So, then what? What happens that starts you going into that-
Gene: Mistakes.
Carl: ... I don't want to do this anymore. What was it?
Gene: Well, that's when we're doing this stuff and we're traveling a lot. It's [crosstalk 00:36:46]-
Carl: You did Converge Florida in Tallahassee.
Gene: Yeah, we did. We expanded, we did three other Converges. We did Washington DC. We did Richmond. We did Tallahassee. We did Jacksonville. We did, somehow I'm thinking Orlando, but maybe not. We did Austin. All these places and we're just trying to bring the mission out.
Carl: You made it a road show.
Gene: Made it a road show. And then I bought a breaking development conference.
Carl: You bought a couple of things, yeah.
Gene: I bought that. We took over front end design conference. It was all this stuff that we just kind of, we created this thing that was bigger than us. And it was just like, but the thing is, is it wasn't really bigger than us. I didn't get that part right. It was bigger than us, but it was still us doing it. It was still me pushing it and taking the hits with the family and not being home and taking the risk. Because as you know, putting on an event, it's still a monetary risk. And you're doing eight a year. That's a lot.
Carl: You're never stopping. You're never stopping. And you're just one team.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And it just got overwhelming. It just got too much, too much work. And we're also trying to produce this website at the same time that has a full content schedule. You and I were doing BizCraft, one of, I think, four or five other podcasts that we had going on. We had a couple of other ones that we were getting-
Carl: But BizCraft was the only one that you liked.
Gene: That's right. It was the most important.
Carl: Making sure. Just making sure.
Gene: So, I don't know. Maybe a good word to say is like not sustainable.
Carl: So, basically just expanded really quickly, started trying to do a bunch of different things. At what point when you're doing that. And I really appreciate what you said about taking hits with the family. Because I remember one year I was on stage 38 times and it was great for the company. nGen was making money, all that kind of stuff. But family wise, I still remember [Kayley 00:38:50] 12 years old, I walk in, Kayley and my wife are kind of having a disagreement. And I remember looking at Kayley and saying, "You can't talk to your mom that way." And she looked at me and said, "You weren't even here, you don't get to be part of this conversation." At 12. And I'm just like, whoa, she's right.
Gene: You're right. I don't know. I don't have any words for that.
Carl: I remember I went out back and I just sat down and went, what am I doing? So, for you, you get in the middle of all this stuff, you're stretched super thin. Your family is kind of, you're feeling that irritation. I can only imagine. You're also trying to run your shop, because you got to make money while you're also trying to finance some of these things. And I remember you got upside down with BD because you were at the Peabody. No, you were some big resort in Orlando.
Gene: Gaylord hotel.
Carl: Gaylord Palms, which yeah, if you open the door they charge you a quarter. So, when did you say enough?
Gene: 2017.
Carl: Okay.
Gene: 2017. We still had some commitments to finish up. You start planning events the year before. So, I still had those last few together. And a lot of people will say like, hey, and I think you've said it, the past year, last Converge we did maybe even the year before that or whatever, hey, they're not like they used to be and stuff. And it was like, I'm barely alive here. You're lucky you were getting together. I can't take the ... Because, it's not about the fact that I don't love the industry. I don't like these people. It's, you just get creatively drained after a while, you're like, maybe this is all the ideas I have.
Gene: And it's finding that spark that gets you up to create the thing. It's just like, you only have so many times you go to the well man and you're doing it eight times a year, nine times a year, like wow. And the team is starting to try to make plans on how to reuse things. And let's make this last. And I'm like, nah, we can't do that. That's not what we do. We bring the thunder every time. And they're like, bro, we're tired. [crosstalk 00:41:05].
Carl: And you're starting to see the same lineups. You're starting to see the same kind of like the road show just became rebranded events.
Gene: That's right.
Carl: And I'm not dogging you. It was just, it was a thing.
Gene: Well, you live it, you know the ins and outs of this. And I would say that there was the only templates that we had to follow of people doing things like this, in my opinion. I mean maybe there are, and I'm just full of myself, but are just big national businesses that do these events. That have lots of funding and stuff. We were like mom and pop trying to pull this off, multiple cities, just three people. And then some volunteers. It's just not sustainable. Even if somebody would've come in and put a million bucks into it, it still wouldn't have been spiritually sustainable. It just wouldn't have been. So, that's where that went. We just did too much. And I started up CoWork at the same fucking time.
Carl: Because why not?
Gene: Why the fuck not?
Carl: Nobody else is. I'll do it.
Gene: Yeah. And we started up a code school. We were the first Iron Yard franchisee, whatever. We started that up too. And it was like-
Carl: And that was kind of, that was your big move.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: That was kind of the, okay. And I asked this from the bottom of my heart, because I know for me, when I had to change things, I wanted the story to feel right. I didn't want it to be Carl gave up on that. I wanted to be Carl shifted his focus to this. So, for you, was there something about Iron Yard that felt like it was a way out?
Gene: Yeah. I like those people. I liked the team and they were small like us and they were scrappy and I'd known them for a long time. And Peter Barth, the CEO was a early sponsor of Converge. He sponsored us that first year we were in that very first non pirated space. He was one of the first on board and he loved it. He loved us and we loved him and he wanted to support us. And it was a really good marriage in terms of people and time. And I like their mission. Their mission at the time was very similar. So, it felt good. It felt like a good way to sort of keep doing this and not have to keep building websites for people at the same time to pay. It was just like, this could work.
Gene: We started the CoWork and started the code school as part of all that. And this, we don't know what it looks like, but for the next year or two, we're going to work on it and bring it together and it could be really awesome. And that just didn't work out. They, I mean, they're not [crosstalk 00:43:48]-
Carl: They grew really fast.
Gene: They exploded, they got a bunch of investment and they took off. And then before long I'm like, I've had this vision and then not to be offensive, but I got some 24 year old person that's like, we need to have a standup every day at 8:30 in the morning or whatever. And I'm like, stand up about what? Why would you do everything you did yesterday. And I'm like, motherfucker, I'm planning events. What do you want me to report to you? I need to give you to dos. And that's my own ego talking, but I just-
Carl: No, no.
Gene: I'm like, that's not how it works, bro.
Carl: You get to a point where somebody asks you to slow down to explain what you're doing. And you're like, I can't slow down, I'll fall off the wheel.
Gene: Yeah. And it just got like that and it just didn't work.
Carl: Yeah. Well, I just want to say on behalf of everyone you impacted, the thousands of people who came through, those of us who were fortunate enough to get to speak. Thank you.
Gene: Oh, thank you.
Carl: I mean, you have no idea the energy that you put out into the world with those events and to Gio and Jay and everybody else that you had that was involved, you made a difference and you made a really, really positive impact. So, thank you.
Gene: And they were equal parts of it too. So, I appreciate you mentioning them.
Carl: Yeah, we can edit that out.
Gene: I still love those guys, man. They're awesome. Thank you, man. Thank you.
Carl: Well, Gene, are you happier on this side of it?
Gene: Oh, very much so.
Carl: I knew it. I knew it.
Gene: Made the right decisions. I wouldn't redo any of it.
Carl: Yeah. You ended up right where you're supposed to be.
Gene: On this podcast with you.
Carl: I know that's all you do all day long, is this podcast and then you go home. All right, everybody. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And we are going to bring more of these origin stories. I think this is just kind of the thing. It's, and I was mentioning this to you, Gene, it's kind of the, how I built this and behind the music and all that kind of stuff, but for us. So, thanks for sharing and thanks for being open about it.
Gene: Yeah.
