‘Rip up the Rulebook’ – A Case Study

We’re a team of volunteers who work hard to put on the TEDxLeamingtonSpa event and uphold TED’s ethos and levels of quality. With two sell out events and a third on the way this year, we’ve inspired over 2 million people so far (which is rising by the day). Driven primarily by a need to spark deep discussion and connection, we seek out the community’s thought leaders to showcase.

Last year for our event titled ‘Rip up the Rulebook’, 13 speakers/entertainers took to the stage covering a range of diverse subjects aimed at altering the dialogue in our town. Notable talks falling under our theme entitled ‘My Bank is a Robot’ and ‘After Anorexia: Life’s too short to weigh cornflakes’ generated much conversation and a wealth of feedback from our audience as documented in our Net Promotor Score survey post event:

“Amazingly organised event from booking, pre-event communications, registration, speakers and the overall day.”

“Inspiring, educational and uplifting to listen to all the amazing talks and stories.”

“Just a fantastic experience. Very engaging, plus great speakers and good to be in the company of like-minded people.”

Although our organisation is related to TED head office, we are ourselves independent. All the time, effort and creativity supplied by our team is completely voluntary. Our team is also diverse and enthusiastic, which certainly paid dividends when organising such a big event. Here are a few stats from our last event:

  • 6 months’ prep
  • 12 team meetings
  • 1,000 emails
  • 200 texts
  • 5 What’sApp groups
  • 6 website blog posts
  • 12 Mailchimp campaigns (covering the whole mailing list of 1,400, ticket holders, sponsors and speakers)
  • 150+ speaker applications
  • 2 press releases
  • 1 website redesign
  • 14 sponsors/event partners (providing donations of funds, services and free goods for our goodie bags/event day)

You can read the full journey that our team went on in order to deliver last year’s event here.