If you’ve been coming to CreativeMornings Chicago events since the start in 2011, you remember a time when you didn’t have to fear the waitlist button as much. When registration opened, you had time to log on, get a fresh cup of coffee and simply just breathe! Fast forward to the last 6 months and now our events sell out in 30 seconds, making you feel like you’ve won the lottery if you scored a seat. We know how frustrating it can be when you’re one of the unlucky ones. We completely understand, and we hear you! Which is why we wanted to take the time to write you the reasons why we don’t get bigger venues, why we do things this way and what you can expect.

It might sometimes look like we’re professionals at event planning who do this kind of thing full-time, but the reality is that we’re just a few people who have full-time jobs and volunteer our free time, and sometimes money out of our own pocket, to make CreativeMornings happen. Why? Because we LOVE this community, the good vibes it brings, meeting new people, watching others meet new people, getting inspired, hearing from someone we all admire, and all of us feeling motivated at the end of it to make positive changes in our own lives or in the lives of others, all at no cost to you.

Why the sponsors?
We alone can’t do CreativeMornings. To keep our events free to attend, we need people to donate the space and cover the cost of things like the breakfast, chair rental, event insurance and A/V rentals. We’re very careful about what companies we partner with to make sure we’re all a good fit. In return for their support, we give them thank you’s on stage, awareness through our communications and a big ‘ol hug. Everyone we partner with has a good heart, good intentions and truly cares about what we’re doing.

Please get bigger venues so more people can come!
We hear you, and we hear this a lot. We have gone from 100 people per event to 150-200 people per event as a norm now. In 2015, we did get bigger venues that held 200-300, thinking the more the merrier! What we didn’t anticipate was that more people means a more expensive event. Much more expensive. The cost of breakfast goes up significantly. And we move into a whole new category of venues—ones that are designated for events—which means they are not as inclined to donate the space when other people are willing to pay for it. We also noticed that the bigger our events got, the intimacy was lost. It stripped out the personal, small community feel we love so much about CreativeMornings. And when you go bigger, the expectations get bigger too. We started to be perceived at the same level of a conference, like a TED talk, and it’s just not who we are. In the end, we’ve learned that bigger isn’t always better.

Can you do the events more frequently or have the speaker give 2 presentations in the same day so more people can attend?
Because these events are all run by volunteers who donate their time outside of their full-time jobs, we have just enough time and energy to commit to planning one event per month. Each event takes around 25 hours to plan. One event per month is also the backbone of CreativeMornings. If we had a speaker give 2 presentations in the same day, we would have 2x the expenses, our volunteers would lose 2x the hours in their workday and our speaker would give 2x of their time for free.

My friend and I registered a minute apart. I got a ticket and they didn’t.
According to our stats, there are around 250 people trying to get a ticket the second they get released. Sometimes the rush does bad things to our website, and we’re always working to make sure that doesn’t happen. If you and your friend register even 10 seconds apart, there could be 40 people on the list between you. All tickets are first come, first served. When the clock strikes 11am, it’s a free for all - literally! The best advice we can give is to be logged in to your account at 10:59am so that when the clock strikes 11am, you are logged in and ready to click “Register”.

Do people really get let off the waitlist?
Yes! The earlier you can get on the waitlist, the better. When a person releases their ticket (and they do!), the next person in line on the waitlist gets their ticket. We also always release people from the waitlist to account for any no-shows.

The speaker didn’t feel too polished, like they haven’t done a talk before.
Our speakers are not professional speakers. In fact, CreativeMornings can sometimes be their first talk! They are all creative people who are doing amazing things in their industry, and we simply want to shine the spotlight on them to hear about their work, their process, their ideas, their inspiration and their story. This is the beauty of our events. It’s what we love about them! Our speakers work extremely hard to put together their talk for us, because speaking is usually not their forté. Getting a peek inside their heads is a very rare, fortunate experience for us all.

We hope this helps explain things a little better and answer any thoughts or questions you might have. We appreciate all of the support you’ve given us over the years and hope to continue planning these events for a long time to come.  

Much love,
The CM/Chi Team