My first 100+ people conference
After spending the last couple of years trying my hand at public speaking, helping out at local user groups, founding one, and saying yes to too many requests, I hosted my first 100+ people conference.
Since I kind-of-moved to Galicia (see Where do you spend the most time?) a few months ago, I’ve been trying to get into the local community. Galicia is a geographically difficult region with low population density where small events get very few attendants.
The premise
Mariel and Vanesa (previous GDG Vigo organisers and Tech & Ladies’) members, approached David an I about putting up a Women Techmakers event. Inclusion is a really important topic for me so I saw this as an opportunity to do my part in that area.
We wanted to host a free event, at a central location, with a variety of talk topics and accomplished speakers. I wanted to make get past the 100 attendants mark for a challenge.
Preparation
The first thing we did was decide on a date, then secure the venue. Once you have those two things down the rest becomes much easier. This is something I learnt the hard while organising Betabeers Barcelona. If you have to find a venue, a date and speakers every month it’s just too much uncertainty.
This time we had the help of our newest GDG organiser, Alicia, who at the moment worked at a great place that had hosted GDG events before: Círculo Financiero de Vigo. She managed to secure a date very early on and made our jobs a much easier.
Being a Women Techmakers event we needed to have an all-women lineup. Putting up a easy CFP using Google Forms didn’t help much and we had to contact prospect speakers on our own since we didn’t have a broad Social Media reach. It was really slow at the beginning, but we ended up with 20+ talk proposals.
Mariel, Diego and German sorted out the details of the trip for two speakers traveling from Madrid. They flew them in through different airports and they got a place for Gloria to stay the night before going back to Madrid.
As soon as we decided on a program, I prepared the website and posters for the event. I created Facebook Group and aFacebook Event. Then I made sure the website had the appropriate meta tags so social networks would show a preview and description that would help when sharing the links. I then scheduled a bunch of tweets with the program, venue info, speaker bios and mentions so everyone of them could interact and bring in their followers. Just as an experiment, some of the tweets contained emojis. It looks like they performed much better than plain text and image tweets.
I joke that organising this event I became an arts & graphics intern, but there’s some truth in it. I had to come up with the visual identity, design the website, program posters, roll-up and t-shirts. Exercising my Photoshop and Illustrator muscles felt good for sure.
Another thing I did was put together a press kit with an event description in PDF format, some logos and program posters. In the end nobody used them but I like to think that it would’ve helped in case anyone asked for a thing as a press kit.
After that, sponsors where the next thing. There were only a couple of things we wanted to get covered:
- Venue, provided by CFV.
- Swag for the speakers, provided by Google
- A speaker networking lunch, sponsored by Campus MVP
- Refreshments for the audience, provided by Mondariz,
Alicia got the venue and refreshment sponsors and I found the networking lunch sponsor. Mariel had done the work to get Google to support us to begin with by covering the trip expenses for two speakers flying in from Madrid.
The result
We had a total capacity of 120 seats in the venue and we got 116 registrations on Meetup. I tweeted like a maniac for two weeks straight, getting RTs from other communities, talking to bloggers and press, emailing them and then calling them on the phone with some help reaching the press from Diego. It was hard work but it paid off. Now, the thing is you never get 100% attendance. It’s going to be even worse if for free events; since people aren’t paying for their ticket they don’t feel like they’re losing money if they don’t show up in the end.
Before the event, I set up a camera so we could record some of the talks. It was a bit of a mes but I managed to get some footage that we may publish on YouTube soon.
I thought we would get 70, maybe 80 people and was really worried. When we opened the gates all the tension disappeared as the room filled up almost instantly. After the first talk was over we counted 105 attendees. I was amazed. When I got home I reviewed the attendees list, it was roughly 50% women.
Before we started, David took control over @GDGVigo’s Twitter and kept the social audience engaged. He worked tirelessly through the event and got a ton of engagement from the audience.
Noa Orizales opened up with a brief talk about working remotely, giving some important tips, like not being on your pjs all day long because it actually hinders your performance. She was a great speaker and kept the audience engaged and laughing along the presentation.
The following talk was by Ana Gómez, founder of Masque3d, a 3d printing and training company based in Galicia. Attendants were mesmerised by the talk, and they gathered to touch and feel the various 3d-printed pieces Ana brought as a small exhibition.
She was so awesome she even printed some WTM logos to hand out to the speakers. The organisers got one as well as a nice token from the event.
After a 15min break were I had to put together the slides for the closing talk of the event, people came back to listen to Ana Cidre deliver her brief talk about Web Design and A/B testing. It was Ana’s first talk in Spanish (she’s from England) but she did great. She kept the audience captivated and many attendees lamented that it was a short talk, they wanted more!
A few days before the conference we had a deck review and then a small rehearsal at Espacio Arroelo, the co-working space we both work from in Pontevedra. At first she was nervous, but she put in a lot of work and got a great reaction from the crowd. It feels great to be able to support somebody like this :)
Luz Castro took the stage to talk about the process behind video game development. People paid attention through the talk as she showed sketches and mockups of the characters and environment, describing the different roles and phases of the video game projects done at Imaxin Software, the company she found.
When Marta Verde got her turn, people where eager to learn about “Creative Programming”. She blew people away with the awesome visuals from her projects.
Then it was time for Gloria Bueno and her Polymer talk. It went over the head of part of the audience as not everyone was a a developer, but she had a nice reception as well.
The closing talk was delivered by Edita de Lorenzo, even though it was prepared by Lucía Gregorio. It was amazing. Lucía made a great job by putting together a series of interviews with high profile women working in big companies like Atos or Airbus, explaining their motivation behind their professional careers and some of the hurdles they encountered. Edita was a wonderful speaker and kept the audience engaged through the presentation. We even had some time for a healthy discussion with the audience regarding the role of women in the current state of the industry.
After that, I made the final presentation thanking our sponsors and announcing our next events at GDG Vigo and we were done.
We made a handful of press appearances (in Spanish)
- Reporting after the event http://www.farodevigo.es/gran-vigo/2016/04/09/google-promueve-encuentro-mujeres-tecnologas/1438185.html
- Announcing event, national online newspaper www.elplural.com/2016/04/04/wtm-galicia-las-mujeres-al-poder-tecnol-gico
- Announcing the event, local newspaper http://www.farodevigo.es/gran-vigo/2016/04/07/google-organiza-evento-visibilizar-mujeres/1436756.html
- Announcing the event, local newspaper http://www.atlantico.net/articulo/escaparate/looks-reconquista/20160403012551522962.html
Wrap-up
It might not seem like a big number, but having 100+ people on the event has great significance for me. It’s a validation of the hard work we put into the event as a group, and the confirmation that betting my time on the local community pays off.
We got really good feedback, but also some discussion regarding some talks delivered in Galician. It’s a touchy subject that I’d prefer not to get dragged into. Overall, everyone was happy with the event. We’ll find out exactly how much when we send the feedback poll.
We are already thinking of having a round #2 in 6 months. We’ll see how it goes the second time around.
