Our first standalone WiSE event: here’s what we learned

There is something slightly nerve-racking about organising the first of anything. You can build the website, send the invitations, book the room and convince yourself there is a good reason for people to come, but until they actually walk through the door, you never really know whether the idea you believe in is something other people want too.

Last week, we got our answer.

Women in Storage Europe held its first standalone event in Richmond, bringing together women from across the self storage industry for an evening that wasn't attached to a conference, squeezed between meetings or competing with an exhibition floor. For the first time, WiSE had an evening entirely of its own.

We knew we wanted people to enjoy it. What we hadn't anticipated was quite how much the evening would teach us about what women within this industry want next.

This is something women want more of

When WiSE first began, we weren't trying to create networking for networking's sake. The self storage industry already has an excellent calendar of events, conferences and opportunities to meet people, and many of the relationships within our community started in those very rooms.

What we kept coming back to, however, was the idea that there was room for something alongside them.

An environment where women from different businesses, roles and stages of their careers could spend enough time together to move beyond introductions and actually get to know one another; where someone relatively new to the industry could find herself in conversation with someone who had spent twenty years in it, without needing an introduction or a reason to be standing at the same table.

Throughout the evening we heard ideas about future meet-ups, conversations we should be having and ways WiSE could develop. The sense wasn't that people had arrived to consume an event we had created for them, but that they were beginning to see themselves as part of the community creating it.

Networking works differently when you give it time

One of the most interesting pieces of feedback came from a woman who told us she had never spoken as much at an industry event before.

It would be easy to treat that as a nice compliment and move on, but there is something worth paying attention to underneath it.

Industry events are busy by design. There are people to find, meetings to make, stands to visit and schedules quietly ticking away in the background. We naturally gravitate towards the faces we recognise, catch up with the people we already know and occasionally realise afterwards that there were ten people in the room we had meant to speak to and never did.

Richmond felt different because there wasn't anywhere else everybody needed to be.

Conversations were allowed to run their course. People moved between groups. Introductions turned into discussions about careers, businesses and experiences, and the evening continued over drinks long after the formal part had finished.

It made us think differently about what a valuable industry event actually looks like. Bigger isn't automatically better, and sometimes creating more connection isn't about adding more to the agenda. It’s about giving people enough time and space for conversations to actually happen.

The industry women entered ten years ago isn't the industry women are entering today

This became particularly apparent during our session with Joan Hughes, whose conversation around confidence, mindset and navigating change opened up a much wider discussion about careers and how differently people experience them.

Self storage has evolved enormously over the past decade. The businesses are bigger, the sector is more sophisticated and the career opportunities within it have expanded considerably. Alongside that commercial growth, something else has been changing too.

There are more women building visible careers across the industry, more women progressing into senior positions and more examples for somebody at the beginning of their career to look towards and think, there is somewhere for me to go here.

Some of the women in that Richmond room have watched the industry change over many years. Others are much closer to the beginning of their careers. Putting those experiences together is where things become interesting, because knowledge that would otherwise remain inside individual companies or friendship groups begins travelling across the industry.

People are willing to make time for connection when the connection feels worthwhile

Time is probably one of the most valuable things anyone can give.

Everyone who came to Richmond had work to finish, journeys to make and lives happening outside the industry. There was no conference they were already attending and no exhibition they happened to be walking around. They made a deliberate decision to spend their evening with WiSE.

We don't take that lightly.

It also challenged one of the assumptions we had made while building the community: that standalone events might be harder because people wouldn't necessarily travel without another industry event giving them a reason to be there.

As it turns out, the community itself can be the reason.

That opens up interesting possibilities for where WiSE goes next, particularly as we begin creating more opportunities outside the UK and connecting women across the European self storage industry.

Growth is exciting

The easiest ambition for a new community is to make everything bigger. More members, more attendees, more events, more reach.

Of course we want WiSE to grow, but Richmond gave us a useful reminder that growth isn't particularly meaningful if the thing that made people want to be involved disappears along the way.

We want the woman walking into her first WiSE event knowing nobody to feel able to join a conversation. We want somebody who has worked in self storage for twenty years to meet someone she wouldn't ordinarily cross paths with. We want introductions to continue becoming relationships, collaborations and opportunities long after everyone has gone home.

As the community grows, preserving that openness will matter just as much as increasing the numbers.

It is also why the future of WiSE won't simply be about organising more events. Pass the Mic is already creating conversations between women who may never previously have spoken, and as the community develops, we plan to introduce one-to-one mentorship that connects women newer to the industry with those willing to share the experience they have accumulated along the way.

The aim isn't to fill a calendar with WiSE activity. It is to create more ways for women within this industry to find one another.

So, what did we actually learn?

We learned that women want WiSE to grow, but they also value the intimacy that comes from smaller spaces. We learned that people will make time for networking when there is enough time to actually network, and that some of the most valuable conversations happen when there is no pressure to rush onto whatever comes next.

We were reminded how much self storage has changed over the past decade, while hearing plenty about where people would still like to see it go. Most importantly, we saw what happens when women from different companies, career stages and corners of the industry are simply given the opportunity to spend more time together.

Our first standalone event was always going to be an experiment of sorts. Until Richmond, we couldn't know whether people would travel for WiSE alone or whether the idea worked as well outside the established industry calendar as it had within it.

Now we know.

And that makes what comes next considerably more exciting.

p.s a huge thank you to the ladies who made our first WiSE meet up so special. Love, Simone & Neve x

#WeMadeSpace campaign: WiSE members share the people who made space for them, personally or professionally