All the Float Conference Questions – DSP 247

The Float Conference is an exciting time and the way the rest of the industry talks about it sometimes borders on reverence. If you’ve never been before, then it can be simultaneously exciting and overwhelming trying to anticipate exactly what this event is going to be like.

Fortunately, Graham and Ashkahn are here to walk you through what to expect from the Conference and how to prepare for the wildest weekend of the year for the entire float industry.

Buy your tickets for the 2018 Float Conference!

Book hotel rooms for the Float Conference

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Hey, everybody.

Ashkahn: Welcome to the Daily Solutions Podcast.

Graham: That’s Ashkahn over there on mic number two.

Ashkahn: That’s right. And that’s Graham over there eon mic number three.

Graham: That’s right. Mic number one is God’s mic. Save that one.

Ashkahn: Going to leave that one there for him.

Graham: A muse speaks to us through that. So we have a question for us from [you 00:01:49] today to read out loud from us to you, which is “Hey guys. I just figured I’d throw out a fun question. The upcoming Float Conference will be my first one.” Wooh! “Just wondering if you could shed some light on what to expect. Is there anything that is a ‘can’t miss’ event to attend? Should I take notes, record things? Is that even allowed? Are products besides float tanks being sold? What about what to wear? Do people dress up, dress in whatever? Rep their float centers? Wear lanyards? That was a Conference joke. Thanks, fellas. Shaka!”

Ashkahn: Nice, all right. Good question.

Graham: Yeah, if anyone else has questions like this.

Ashkahn: It’s almost like a perfect question.

Graham: Just asking us to brag or talk about upcoming relevant things that we’re putting on, please, please send them our way.

Ashkahn: We’d be happy to answer those questions for you.

Graham: We eat things like this for breakfast.

Ashkahn: Okay, let’s maybe go through these kind of piece by piece here. Is there anything you shouldn’t miss? Yeah.

Graham: Is that actually the first question? First, they wanted us to shed some light on what to expect.

Ashkahn: Oh, okay. Well-

Graham: A good time.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: A great time.

Ashkahn: It’s going to be super fun. The nice thing is-

Graham: You’re going to love it.

Ashkahn: You’re going to have a really good time. Expect to be tired. It’s all day, like morning to night, and we go really hard the entire time, so-

Graham: And some people just go all night too, so-

Ashkahn: Yeah, so get some good rest beforehand and then just know in your head that you’ll get some good rest afterwards and be kind of mentally prepared to kind of rage it for the four, five days or however long you’re out here. A couple weeks, a few months, whatever. Whatever you decide.

Graham: We also have a 24 hour float center so, you know, at 2 AM, when you start to lose your charge, come on in and help and float.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s right.

Graham: So, yeah, expect, I guess, expect around seven to eight hundred people to be out in Portland in force from the float world.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so it’s really cool. We do all this organizing and there’s speakers and there’s all these events and stuff like that-

Graham: It is a conference.

Ashkahn: It is a conference, but then people just want to hang out with each other and that’s the beauty of coming to these things, so definitely make time for yourself to socialize. I would definitely come for the Friday activities. Just plan on coming early. Those have been getting just bigger and better every single year and people are putting on cooler and cooler events and they’re really fun.

It’s the day before the conference, so the main conference is Saturday, Sunday, and then the day before on Friday is a bunch of just smaller workshops. So they’re in a bunch of smaller kind of breakout spaces, which means a lot of them are capped at, like, 25, 30, 35 people to fit into these rooms and, with the rest of the conference being kind of just this one big event, it’s hard to have these kind of silos of smaller conversations or interactions with people and that was kind of why we started the Friday activities in the first place, to be able to have these more intimate little nuggets of experience within the event.

They’ve become just super fun over the years.

Graham: Then we just felt guilty saying “no” to anyone who wanted to be on the main stage. We needed something so the people could participate, which is great. Honestly, I think I said this in another episode too, but the biggest complaint that we get for the Friday activities is that people can’t go to all of them because there’s so much cool stuff going on, so definitely head out for Friday.

And a lot of people end up staying for a couple extra days too, not even related to the conference, just because Portland’s really fun to explore around, there’s other float people who stick around.

Ashkahn: And it’s the best time to visit Portland.

Graham: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ashkahn: This is the time to come to Portland, which is why we host the conference at this time.

Graham: Because of summers in Portland. Portland is a very overcrowded city because people visit in the summer and they’re like, “This is amazing!” And show up any other time of year and it’s just overcast and drizzly, so yeah. It’s a good time to come.

Okay. Now, what was the second question?

Ashkahn: I was going to say in terms of just, I guess, without the things to miss.

Graham: Can’t miss, yeah. Right on to it. Let’s do it.

Ashkahn: The nice thing is the Friday activities are really the only thing you have to make any decisions about. That’s the only part of the event where there’s multiple things happening simultaneously. After that is a welcome party on a Friday night.

Graham: Yeah, it’s an endurance marathon in here.

Ashkahn: And then, from there, we kind of hold your hand through the rest of the thing. There’s a welcome party, then the conference starts the next day. There’s just one speaker at a time. You don’t have to choose between different tracks. It rolls right into a party that night where we have buses to take you places. Everything else is within walking distance. The conference is the next day, so it’s kind of just like a “strap yourself in” sort of situation, without having to make too many decisions or try to figure out where people are going to be. You can just hop on and enjoy the ride.

Graham: Oh, I will say there are booths on every level of the building that we’re in, so just keep going up and exploring more booths too. Sometimes, people don’t realize until the last day that there’s just multiple levels to this event and not just the first couple, so-

Ashkahn: Which is the next question. It’s about if people are selling stuff other than float tanks. Look at this, we’re just rolling into them.

Graham: Actually, the next question was should I take notes? Should I take notes and can I do recordings?

Ashkahn: You don’t need to do recordings.

Graham: “Should” is You don’t have to do anything, right? Like it’s a good memory, yeah.

Ashkahn: Yeah. In terms of the talks, we record the talks. We record them pretty well with nice-

Graham: It’s only a five camera set-up, you know, but-

Ashkahn: There’s nice gear. It’s nice production quality and we put them all online for free afterwards. It takes time for us to edit those, so we release them kind of one at a time as they get finished, so it might take a couple months for some of the episodes to come out, but they will all be up there. So if you’re okay with what I just said, then don’t worry about taking any notes and definitely don’t worry about videotaping anything.

And, if anything, I would just say take notes on the other parts of the experience. There’s so many interactions you have at the conference with people and you come up with fun things to do or information you want to send them or information you want them to send you, and then, two minutes later, you’re talking to a whole new person. I’ve always found that stuff hard to keep track of unless I write some of it down, so often when I go to conferences, I’ll make myself little notes throughout the day and I’ll even have a half-day set aside when I get back to do all that follow-through and actually reach out to those people or send those emails. That, I found, to be really nice and useful.

Graham: Yeah, we have a great illustrator too, so we’ll try to – after we get back from conferences – describe what people look like and she’ll kind of sketch them out, sort of like criminal sketch sort of thing, so you know. It’s better if you have some kind of device that could capture someone in real time.

Ashkahn: We have hundreds, thousands of these.

Graham: Yeah, but sketch artist upon return is a really good addition to these too.

Ashkahn: Or just bring one with you.

Graham: Yeah, sure. If you’re willing to pay for the extra ticket out, sketch artist on site would be amazing.

Okay, what else are people selling, besides float tanks over here?

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s been really cool over the years to see the increase in both the number and the variety of vendors that have been coming out to the Float Conference. It definitely started very float-specific and over the years, as we’ve grown as an industry, other industries, non-float related companies, have started to realize that a float industry exists and realized that it’s getting kind of big and realized it-

Graham: Someone sold this entire group of people on Nothing. What can we sell them on?

Ashkahn: So it’s been really cool. I mean, there’ll definitely be float tank manufacturers out there. The manufacturers, some of them will be bringing their actual float tanks out so you can see float tanks in person.

Graham: Some of them will be bringing multiple float tanks out.

Ashkahn: Some of them will be bringing multiple float tanks out. And then there’s companies that come out that have retail products for float centers. That, I would say, is a big category of them. It often starts with a couple centers selling something and it going very well, and that company kind of getting hip to the float world as a result and then coming to the conference to reach out to more people.

Graham: Yeah, some CBD stuff, some color therapy glasses, some supplements, things like that.

Ashkahn: And other companies that will do some construction stuff. We have a flooring company coming out. There’s a couple things like that for people in the build-out phase. Some things with complementary services. One’s coming out that manufactures the massage chairs that some float centers have in their place.

Graham: Yeah, stand-up vibrating things.

Ashkahn: Perhaps cryo? I can’t remember if someone’s bringing a cryo thing at this year.

Graham: Like dry flotation beds. Yeah, there’s an array. We had infrared saunas, I’m not sure if they’re coming out again this year, but yeah. Just kind of different devices, as well. I’d almost put them in this unmanned device category, just like float tanks are. I think a lot of those companies see the parallels, so yeah. There’s a bunch of fun stuff to explore around, so it’s just-

Ashkahn: We’ll be there. We’ll be there.

Graham: Yeah, sure. You can pay us to take photos with you or shake your hand, kiss your baby.

Ashkahn: And then there’s a booth, there’s a booth. Float Tank Solutions will be there.

Graham: I see, yeah.

Ashkahn: Well, obviously, the two of us will be there. The Helm, we have a booth for our software.

Graham: And you don’t even have to pay us to take a photo. We’ll do it for free, too. We’ll kiss babies, anything. The whole deal.

Yeah, The Helm. Great software, great software representation at The Helm.

Ashkahn: Whoever those guys are, man.

Graham: Great company.

Ashkahn: Yeah, killing it.

Graham: Great company.

All right, what’s the next part? “What about what to wear? Do people dress up?” Yeah, it’s basically a big costume party.

Ashkahn: Yeah. So you’re going to need a different costume every single day. Keep that in mind.

Graham: Yeah, like a watery Halloween is kind of how I like to think of it.

Ashkahn: This is a good question. I get this from many people leading up to the event.

Graham: Yeah, every year. Yeah.

Ashkahn: The answer is kind of whatever you want. There’s literally people in there with ties on. There’s not that many people with ties on, but there’s occasionally people with ties on

Graham: A minority. It’s the minority.

Ashkahn: To button-up shirts, sort of business formal or business casual, and then all the way down to shorts and flip-flops. It is the summer in Portland. It can get kind of hot. I would say it’s probably more on the shorts and flip-flops side than-

Graham: You don’t have to impress anyone. This is an industry of relaxed people-

Ashkahn: Yeah, you’re hanging out with a bunch of float people.

Graham: Like what you’d feel comfortable wearing to a family reunion is probably, like, you should feel as comfortable wearing it here, you know?

Ashkahn: As long as you don’t have a weird family. Like that-

Graham: And even then, that’s actually more in line with what you should feel comfortable with. If your family’s super bizarre, then-

Ashkahn: So yeah, dress comfortably. You know, you’ll be in these places all day. The Saturday, we do one party on Saturday night. Sometimes, people dress up a little bit nicer for that, but we’re in a giant science museum. It’s not like it’s a-

Graham: I was thinking about going white tie this year.

Ashkahn: Just full white tuxedo is what we’ll be wearing. But, really, you could wear anything and it would fit in and you would be fine so, you know. Be comfortable. Wear what you want to wear. Some people wear the shirts of their float centers and other people don’t.

Graham: Oh, that’s good. You remembered the “rep your center” part of that question.

Ashkahn: Yeah, I did. I mean, it’s kind of useful. There’s so many people there and there’s just like people bouncing around all the time. I don’t know, I kind of find it useful when people wear a shirt with their float center name, like, “Oh, yeah, that’s where you are and what the name of your business is.”

Graham: But also, you can’t assume that’s the case, because there’s a lot of people who rep other people’s float centers on their shirt too, so-

Ashkahn: That’s true, but they’re probably trying not to wear it at the Conference.

Graham: I mean, yeah, just wear whatever you want.

Ashkahn: Yeah, whatever you want.

Graham: Seriously. Just wear whatever you want. We also have nametags to just identify who you are, so Lanyards, I mean, we’re giving you nametags, so although it was a conference joke, you’re-

Ashkahn: You’re going to have a lanyard. You’re going to have a lanyard.

Graham: Yeah, you’ll have one. And then the last one was, “Thanks, fellas. Shaka.” Shaka right back at you.

Ashkahn: I got one more-

Graham: Question to add to this list of questions?

Ashkahn: Because this is just along the line with dress code that people ask me all the time, or are curious about leading up to the conference, so I thought I’d throw it in there.

Graham: Yeah, yeah. Toss it in. We should do this more often.

Ashkahn: Just a little breakdown of when food will be available or provided for people, just to help you with your planning. We do a party on Friday night, a welcome party.

Graham: If you’re trying to list the nights we do parties-

Ashkahn: We do a party every night. There’s a party every night. If you’re coming to the workshop, the lunch is catered for both days, Thursday and Friday. If you’re coming to the Friday activities, there’s going to be coffee and a coffee cart out there, but there won’t be actual kind of food provided throughout the day. There might be some light snacks, but not actual meal-meals.

And then on the welcome party on that Friday night, there will be food available for purchase. There’ll be some appetizers and stuff that are free, but food and alcohol will be there for you to buy. It’ll be kind of some cool food carts and stuff like that.

And then Saturday, during the Conference. Again, lunch will be provided and on that night, during our kind of reception, again, food will be actually provided that time so we’ll have a full kind of bunch of food for dinner and then you can buy drinks at the place that night.

And then on Sunday, we have a catered lunch again, so food’s provided for then, and the Conference ends, so then there’s kind of just like a general little after-party thing, but yeah. You’ll be kind of on your own from that point out.

So there’s a little breakdown of the journey of meals that you’ll be having over the course of the Conference.

Graham: Sorry, I had spaced out during that because my brain went mad with power thinking about just adding to people’s questions they submit now that we can do this.

Ashkahn: Well, do you have one that you want to add?

Graham: One? No, not for this one. Just for the future, you know?

Ashkahn: Just saying it? Okay.

Graham: It’s just swirling with ideas. Swirling with ideas up here.

Cool. Well, thanks for the question. That was really good.

Ashkahn: No problem.

Graham: Great question.

Ashkahn: Thanks.

Graham: I was not talking to you.

Ashkahn: Well, I mean I feel like it was partially my question now.

Graham: I was talking to my listener out there. You know who you are.

Ashkahn: Partially my question too.

Graham: And for those listeners who didn’t send in this specific question, get on it. Send us other self-promotional questions. This is a great episode, so you can do that at floattanksolutions.com/, P-O-D-C-A-S-T. What’s that spell?

Ashkahn: Podcast!

Graham: What’s that spell?

Ashkahn: Podcast! Podcast! Podcast! Okay. Talk to you later.

Graham: Bye.

Latest Blog Posts