Advicetap Blog

Today we caught up with Vancouver Entrepreneur and Marketing Consultant Minna Van…She’s helped organize an event called “Freelance Camp” that’s coming to Vancouver and we wanted to get the lowdown on what it’s all about – check it out!

Hey there Minna welcome to the Advicetap blog! First off for any of our community members or blog readers who aren’t yet familiar with you and what you do please hook us up with that info.

I wear a few hats but the one I am very happy to elaborate on is my Vancouver Entrepreneur Meetup host hat. Third Thursdays of every month, I host a wine and cheese with a speaker relevant to entrepreneurship at The Network Hub. It is a wonderful opportunity to get new entrepreneurs mingling with established entrepreneurs from all different industries. It is the meeting of minds with a no-pressure, fun twist.

I know we could chat to you for hours about all your interesting ventures but let’s focus on the upcoming Freelance Camp here in Vancouver. Can you tell us what exactly Freelance Camp is, how it got started, and the whole concept behind it?

Freelance Camp was started in San Francisco by Shane Pearlman. The idea of it is, “In business for yourself, not by yourself” and that is a wonderful concept to work with. Many freelancers toil away in isolation and there hasn’t been one event that is specific to freelancers. The great about this is it is presented by freelancers and for freelancers, no theories but rather from experience. It is about the sharing of best practices, resources but more importantly to pull together the pockets of freelancers from different industries who are already out there networking into one big community event.

Nice! So this is the first Canadian Freelance camp to be held…Let me ask you in your opinion what makes Vancity a good place to hold this event and can you reflect a bit on the freelance scene out here?

As a host for Vancouver Entrepreneur Meetup, I get a lot of suggestions from entrepreneurs/freelancers/small business owners and for the last two years, there was an overwhelming request for sharing and hearing of experiences from their peer groups. I think people are tired of hearing about theories and they want to hear from the people who have gone through the same thing as they have. Theories are great to explain in hindsight but practical experience is tangible, applicable and relevant to real life.

Minna you work with all sorts of freelancers, consultants, small business owners, and the like…from what you see what is one of the biggest business challenges these professionals face and do you have any advice for how they might deal with that challenge or overcome it?

In my point of view as a marketing freelancer, I find myself sometimes overwhelmed with the changes in contracts, strategies, etc and it becomes all so frustrating trying to keep up. Great thing about hosting Vancouver Entrepreneur Meetup is that every month I have the opportunity to vent, ask and share my frustration with 80-160 other people who have gone through what I went through at some point. So what has worked for me is just going out there and connecting with other people.

So Freelance Camp is this month on Saturday the 29th of May? Where is it? How much is it? And where can we sign up?

Yes May 29th is the magical date freelancers in Vancouver need to note down. It is happening at The Network Hub – the location is close to skytrain, West Coast express, sea bus and major bus route so you have no excuses as to why you cannot come. It is $10 dollars but 100% of it will go to charity.

You can sign-up online at: http://freelancecamp.thenetworkhub.ca

Last but not least can you tell us one or two cafe’s or cool spots with wireless for a freelancer to do their work out of? Any good secret spots?

Well other than my absolute favourite place for coworking; The Network Hub, I’m also slightly biased as a co-founder of the space! My cool spot for working is Waves because they not only provided wireless, the people who come to Waves are super cool and they are open to talking to you (yes I like talking to strangers). Once in a while, I like going to Central Library to relive my many years of studying exams on the 4th floor.