You'll be shocked … your next speaker at UpLift Live is me, John Espirian, the relentlessly helpful® LinkedIn nerd.

TRANSCRIPT
This is a solo episode of the UpLift Live podcast and that means that your next speaker at the LinkedIn-focused conference in Birmingham next March is … me. I'm John Espirian. Welcome aboard.
Yes, so, it's me – I'm one of the speakers. No great surprise, I assume, as the conference was originally my idea. Still, just in case you thought I was just going to be doing only admin behind the scenes, I'm not: I will be talking about some advanced tips for LinkedIn.
I can't really share too much about what we're going to do, firstly because I don't want to spoil the surprise and secondly, the goal posts move so much that it might not be relevant by the time March comes along, which is the same as I noted with the other speakers that I've interviewed.
Anyway, I have got something fun in mind and that won't be the only fun thing on the day. I think LinkedIn has the potential to be quite stuffy and boring for a lot of people, and that's the exact opposite of what I want for our conference, so as well as just being a welcoming place to do lots of nice networking, we're going to try and make a real day to remember here, and I hope all of you enjoy it.
The first thing I thought about when coming up with the idea for a conference was an event specifically for LinkedIn specialists. The remit is definitely a bit broader than that, though. We are appealing to anyone who already knows how the platform works and just wants to push themselves to a new level.
So, for example, experienced social media managers who use LinkedIn for their clients might be the perfect fit here: people like that don't need to be told about creating a profile photo or updating their banner or really basic stuff like that. They want to get to the real juicy details of some advanced tips for using the platform, and that's what we're going to do in Birmingham.
Similarly, there might be some businesses out there who have a person inside the organisation who acts as their internal "LinkedIn expert", as it were. And those businesses might want to sponsor that person to come and soak up all of the goodies and then go back and instruct all of their employees.
Essentially, anyone who already understands the real value proposition of a business networking platform like LinkedIn would be a good fit to come to the conference and learn from all of the best experts on various advanced topics.
The bigger picture for me here is that if we can produce a business model that works in the UK, perhaps we can export it to other places. I know I've got lots of friends in the USA who I'd love to meet, and I haven't been there for 20 years so it would be great to have an excuse to go for both business and pleasure.
As I record this, tickets have been on sale for a couple of weeks but we've already sold a good number of them, and lots of people are really excited about coming to visit Birmingham and see the speakers and the other attendees.
I've got a few lovely voice notes from some of our Espresso+ members who are coming along to the conference.
In order, you're going to hear the voices now of Ann Davies followed by Lois Cliff and then Marjolijn Cohen.
I'm so excited about attending UpLift Live, the first ever LinkedIn-focused conference in the UK on 21 March 2024. There's going to be so many internationally renowned speakers. I really can't wait. Hope to see you there.
John Espirian, you legend. You have put together something totally awesome for LinkedIn that the UK has never seen before. What a lineup. It's incredible. You're awesome. And the team is awesome. UpLift Live in Birmingham next March for the win. To infinity and beyond.
I'm thrilled to attend the UpLift Live conference on the 21 March 2024 in Birmingham, and the speaker list is endless. It's such a high level, and also the attendee list. Well, I'm really looking forward meeting everybody and getting a deep dive into all the topics. Cheerio, John. Well done.
Lovely stuff and bonus points to Marjolijn because she's flying in from The Netherlands to be in the audience for this conference.
Now, I'm not sure whether a podcast should be for public service announcements, really, but we're currently sorting out things such as hotel discounts and a pre-event get-together the night before the main event, so that people can break the ice before the big day. Details of all of that will go out to ticket-buyers very soon.
If you haven't already got a ticket, now is the time, as we will be increasing the price pretty soon. You can hop aboard at uplift-live.com and that will get you an in-person ticket to see the apex operators of LinkedIn onstage on Thursday 21 March 2024 at Millennium Point in Birmingham in the UK.
I should say that I'm not doing all of this alone. I'm joined on the Mission Control team by Jeremy Freeman and Gus Bhandal, both of whom have a lot more experience than I do in running events – which wouldn't be hard, as I have no experience of running events, at least not anything of this magnitude.
Since the tickets went on sale, a lot of people have asked me about watching on demand. Now, we're not going to do a livestream of the event only because every livestream event I've been to in the past has had some kind of technical hitch. So, we are recording all the sessions and then we will provide fully captioned and transcribed copies of those recordings to everyone who turns up with an in-person ticket but also we'll be selling those recordings as a separate package. That bit's not quite ready right now because we want to focus on the in-person experience, but do stay tuned if you can't make it to Birmingham and would like to watch along.
I really do think this event has a unique role in the UK. I couldn't find any other LinkedIn-focused event in this country, and very few across the rest of the world. LinkedIn themselves don't run their own official conferences, so it's really left to the independent LinkedIn training community to put something together. Frankly, if you'd asked me a year ago whether I'd be running a LinkedIn conference, I would've said no chance, but I do like to challenge myself, and I think now is a good time to move forward with this.
Even just looking at the names of the attendee list gets me excited, much less the names of the speakers who will be on the main stage. We haven't announced who all of them are yet but I will surely do some kind of follow-up content, perhaps with the Mission Control team to chat about the full lineup once it's out there.
I think you're going to be really excited by who we've got lined up. I can't pretend they are celebrities or anything like that, but if you pay attention to the way LinkedIn works, you'll know that each and every one of them is truly an apex operator of the platform. Given that I'm now officially a speaker, I'm officially committing to bringing you the best LinkedIn conference the UK has ever seen.
But, as we've already established, there hasn't been one of those here before, so it will be the best by default even if it's terrible. But I will try my very best to make it non-terrible if at all possible.
OK, that will do for now and do please stay tuned to find out who the remaining speakers are. If you've got any questions about the conference, I'm usually pretty easy to get hold of on LinkedIn. Look me up: it's John Espirian, and my direct messages are open to everyone, even if we're not already connected on LinkedIn.
Again, if you want to buy a ticket, please go to uplift-live.com – and I really look forward to seeing you in Birmingham.
So, for now this is John Espirian, one of your speakers and also a member of Mission Control team saying … over and out.UpLift Live Mission Control🟦 John Espirian🟩 Jeremy Freeman🟧 Gus BhandalTICKETS: uplift-live.comQUESTIONS/FEEDBACK: [email protected]

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