Our first ever FredCon: This is what we learned
On June 29th, we celebrated our first ever FredCon. After weeks working on getting everything ready, we can say that it went pretty well. It was amazing to gather part of the recruitment community in Spain to do networking while enjoying our guests, José Manuel Calderón, Irene de los Ríos, Bhavna Karani and Ramón Egea.
That being said, we have to recognize that it wasn’t easy to pull it off. Many challenges were faced, being one of them the coincidence with the NATO Forum in Madrid, which made everything a little harder. However, it was a remarkable experience and a good first step towards designing the recruitment event we would like to go to. Now let’s take a look into our goals for FredCon and its results.
FredCon is the BEST place to be
It's not easy to bring so many people from the HR industry together for our first event, so we believe our assistant numbers to be an awesomic achievement. A total of 70 people attended the #FredCon22, filling the room that TeamLabs lent us for the occasion.
Did we mention how hard it was to move around Madrid during that week? The results are great, considering the difficulties we had to face (plus, the nerves of the previous hours and the fact that the event was completely free. 😅).
Also, we were able to generate interactions on social media, both from attendees and speakers who decided to share the experience with the hashtag #FredCon22. It will always be a hashtag that we will cherish.
What went right…
The heat in Madrid made it clear we didn't want you to come and not fulfil your expectations. It was very rewarding to have a special guest from another industry to give us his point of view on and how to fight together for the same goal. First goal achieved. ✅
Who better to do so than José Manuel Calderón, three-time Olympic medalist, European and World Champion with the Spanish national team and with 14 NBA seasons under his belt. It was great to receive his insights on what makes a team great and how to add value to it. After the Q&A session, it was made clear that there was more than one fan in the room!
And what about the round table! Everyone wanted to take part in it, so we had to cut the Q&A to refresh ourselves with a good swallow of our cold beverages and the delicious ‘empanadas’ that we all enjoyed. It was a very interesting debate which sparked the interaction of all you.
We had a great time networking and getting to know each other out of the screens. Something that, after a couple of years of certain social isolation, is so enjoyable and appreciated.
…and what we have to improve
After stating some of the most positive points, we also have to strengthen those we are not fully-satisfied with. Organizing such an event has left us with many relevant learnings and ideas for future editions. And something that everybody talked about was the little time that we had to enjoy the informal chat with other assistants, organizers and speakers. Well, that is good news: time flies when you’re having fun, and we’ll definitely design a longer #FredCon23!
We would have liked to host many more manfredites, we even had a long waiting list due to the limited space available. For the next one, we will try to have a larger venue. Disclaimer: TeamLabs, thank you for making #FredCon22 possible, it was great to have you on our side!!!
On the other hand, some of you reported that you were not able to talk to as many people as you would have liked, so next time we will work on activities to promote the networking. Who knows, we may even add icebreakers to the recipe ^___^
At last, feedback wasn’t as prolific as we expected. We’ll get better on keeping you engaged in a very important stage for us. Let’s make the next a thousand times better!!
Keep moving forward
We were all thrilled with the result of our first ever FredCon, but we’re even more excited with it being a step forward into what we want to build. Knowing that we are still far from being perfect, we will continue to improve in every phase to make the next one memorable.