Response from BVE North freelancer seminar

The seminar was full!  Photo: Alex Beaton

The response was amazing, the seating area was full with folks standing round the edge to pick up some tips. At the end some people waiting over 20 minutes to talk to me as well as folk coming up to me throughout the two days to continue the discussion.

Apparently there were over 2400 visitors across the two days and the event organisers are already planning for BVE North 2012. Event director Charlotte Wheeler said: “Exhibitors have already begun taking options on stands for next year, and we will be revealing plans for BVE North 2012 very shortly.”

The union BECTU who hosted the seminar on How to be a successful Freelancer have also reported on the success of the event....

The Panel  - Photo: Alex Beaton

John Crumpton, BAFTA-awarding winning freelance and union official, delivered the session with excellent contributions from Christine Pyke, an experienced programme-maker who now runs her own company, Puma Training; Mike Thornton, Pro-Tools genius and award winning audiomeister (our words not his!) with a string of credits across genres, formats and platforms; and Faisal A Qureshi, established writer and editor, associate producer of the award-winning feature Four Lions, producer of Khalil the Great for FACT Liverpool and a visiting lecturer at the Northern Film School in Leeds.
Reviewing the seminar, John said: “These days being a freelance means considering oneself an ‘owner/manager’ who effectively is running their own small business. As such I felt that after the audience had learnt what the panelist did and why they worked freelance, they’d want to know about the practicalities of freelancing.

Key questions
"How frequently did they do their accounts to keep an eye on cash flow? How did they decide their rates for work? What did they feel were the benefits of social media and how much time did they spend on ‘cultivating’ their online presence?

John & Mike  Photo: Alex Beaton

"Mike Thornton told how in the space of two years and through training opportunities provided by the union, he’d learnt how to blog, and later delivered training to FEU members on uploading audio-podcasts. In the process he developed the skills to launch two successful blogs, one of which has just secured commercial sponsorship.
"These types of success stories were contrasted with accounts from all the panelists of having their fingers financially ‘burned’ by bad and non-paying clients early in their careers.
"Such tales of woe certainly hit a chord with the crowd. A number of new entrants told me later that when they’d been on the receiving end of similar bad treatment they’d felt foolish, humiliated and alone. They felt a bit better that it had also happened to others who’d learnt the lesson the hard way but gone on to create thriving careers."

I certainly felt we struck a chord with our honesty and openness and the genuine advise we gave.