My first experience as a PR gal at a Tech Festival in Transylvania
Let me set the stage for you.
Welcome to Techsylvania! The year is 2019. The city is Cluj-Napoca, the most important city in Romania, outside the capital Bucharest, in terms of size and economic development. This is the leading technology event in Eastern Europe. The venue is impressive: the BT Arena is expecting around 3000 participants, and one of them is me.
It’s my first time here, at Techsylvania, as a member of the Bannersnack team. Since we joined the sponsor squad for the event, we got to bring a booth and show our brand around, for people to see and test how easy it is to save the world’s most precious resource (FYI: yes, I am talking about time) by using our platform for their business & personal needs.
Our booth was beautifully designed by our very own Gery (Head of Design here at Bannersnack), and a team of eight colleagues showed up at the event, willingly offering information, smiles & sweets for the passers-by. We were curious to see how people first interacted with a tool they’ve never used before because we believe that face to face interaction is super important for every online product out there!
We arrived on Monday, June 10th, day one of the Conference, armed with plenty of optimism and surprises, ready to face the unknown. I was thinking mainly along the lines of veni (I came), vedi (I saw), and hoping for some vici (I conquered) as a result, but I have to say the whole business exceeded my expectations.
First, let me tell you about the people.
We had numerous people interested in knowing who we are and what we do, and they belonged to start-ups and companies from a wide range of industries, from IT and industrial automation to marketing, HR, consulting and health. They were juniors or execs, mid-level or seniors, beginners or experienced professionals. They were genuinely intrigued by our amazing app and the things they can use it for (because the thing we strive for the most is design made simple for everyone). We had quite a few people who stopped by just because the tagline was intriguing. Some of them appreciated the cool design of the booth, others the creative message displayed on our tote bags.
Second, let me tell you about the opportunities.
Since it’s a big event (the leading tech event for this part of Europe), and it covers a huge range of tech topics, from AI to Product or Design, from Coding to PR and most importantly, Start-ups, there were amazing networking opportunities for all of us out there. I personally got the chance to talk to some pretty major professionals and got them to test our app on the spot. It was a team effort, with my colleagues and me collaborating on showing the great features our product has. And of course, we exchanged business cards and promises we’ll keep in touch for some more talking and possibly future partnerships.
Third, let me tell you about the value of the event.
I was able to sneak from our stand for a few precious minutes, in order to attend some presentations on the big stage, and I was very impressed with their quality. I got to see some professionals from the marketing & PR industry, and I enjoyed being there, hearing their wild ideas and that valuable content. I walked away from this conference with a lot of references and books to read for the rest of the year. To state some of them, I should really mention ‘Win Bigly’ by Scott Adams (about persuasion in a world where stories are more important than facts), or ‘Designing for emotion’ (written by Mailchimp’s user experience design lead Aaron Walter).
Back at our booth, as previously mentioned, we had some freebies for our visitors: the Bannersnack sticker, yummy candy and the hit of it all — the Bannersnack tote bag. With such an eye-catching message, people from all over the place came to get one after having tried our app. Talk about an easy-to-use conversation starter between people interested in the bag, who later became interested in our product!
All in all, it was a fun experience for me, as a new member of the team. I had a great time getting to know my colleagues, because, at these kinds of events, where there are all sorts of last-minute challenges popping up and one must solve them fast & professionally, you get to see just how many resources your teammates have (and I got to witness firsthand some amazing sessions of brainstorming).
Sharing a lunch, or just spending time making conversation or walking around the venue and witnessing a presentation — these are glimpses of the Techsylvania conference that will make some great memories for years to come.
