Organize a tech event in 2018!
Tldr: Do you want to expand the tech community by organizing an event in your field of interest? Do it! Apply for a grant from CommunityFund.is and use this article and accompanying open source todo list that can be imported into Trello.com to create small, medium and perhaps eventually large events.
Do you have an idea for a tech event but don’t know where to start or are unsure about some aspects? Then this article is for you! It is by no means complete but should give you a good idea of what you need to consider and where to start.
The reason for this article is that there exists a tech fund for events to help the Icelandic community grow and build events to make Iceland a full fledged partner in the international tech community. The community needs entrepreneurs to grow so the Community Fund was created to help you create your dream event.
As of January 2018 the fund has over one million ISK, so there is enough to support more events. As discussed in the half-way report published last year, this first year of operations is an experiment, and whether or not the fund will continue will be based on the outcome of that experiment. So why not make it your New Year’s resolution to organise a tech event and help make the experiment a success?
Fundings over 200.000 ISK are considered a hard sell. As you can see by the funding guidelines it is meant for smaller events. I think that is the perfect stepping stone to build up knowhow for creating larger events in the future.
I have accumulated some experience through the years on planning and executing events and want to share my experience to help grow this community. Whether you are thinking of having a simple or large event this guide goes into many of the steps needed.
The way I setup this guide is like a checklist. It contains the most important items you need to think about. Depending on your event you should pick and choose to implement what applies to you.
I have also created an open source list of tasks on Github that you can import into Trello (only tested in Trello but might work in other task tools). After importing you just use those tasks that apply to your event and archive or delete the rest.
The guide is split into seven main categories:
Each category begins generally and then goes into what applies to small, medium and large events. You pick and choose from those recommendation based on how much effort you can or want to put into making the event nicer for your guests.
Funding
There ain’t no such thing as free lunch.
To attract people you have to offer an attractive event that your community can not refuse. That most likely involves expenses. Venue, equipment and refreshments are not free so you need to find a way to pay for it.
I highly recommend that you apply for a grant at Community Fund. The process is simple, takes around 10 minutes and is made for and by the community. Read their guidelines carefully and note especially that they require that their funding covers most of the spending.
Secondly consider companies and institutions in the realm of your event. Thirdly there is selling tickets to your event and fourth is finding sponsors outside of your realm that would be interested in connecting with your audience to expand their market.
Also consider foreign sponsors. The tech community is global. This could also create opportunities for your attendees to connect with new markets and make it exciting for them to partake in your event.
Before you contact possible sponsors, gather data for them on what they would get out of sponsoring your event. It can be as simple as connecting them with your attendees to giving them access to your online network that might be interesting to them. They love numbers and hard data. So gather your stats and have them available before you reach out.
It is a good rule to first reach out by a short email stating your purpose and telling them you will be in contact within 2–5 working days. Make sure you address the email to the correct person, and best of all if you have personal connection or know someone that can recommend you, it will raise the possibility of success considerably.
Think outside the box. How about creating merchandise with your events logo or related graphics. Sponsors also might have some merch or would like to participate in making it and selling. There are plenty of ideas out there for you to rip off that can help you sponsor your events.
SMALL For small events, 10–50 persons, you might perhaps just want to meet for a few hours after work, get a few speakers from within the community to give talks and afterward to swig down a beer or two. You could make the event more exciting by providing food or snacks. Calculate the cost per person to provide your sponsors with how much money you need to raise. Consider getting a company to provide a venue, amenities and if you are lucky, refreshments.
MEDIUM Events with less than 200 attendees, that take less than a day and can be run in a single auditorium can be much more expensive than they appear to be. Your venue options are limited, you most likely need a sound system and feeding a crowd between 50–200.
LARGE For events with more than 200 attendees, that take a day or more and/or are ran in more than one auditorium you will need a team of staff to cover all posts. You need to make sure tech is perfect in all rooms, session managers to control the pace in each room and so much more. Here you should consider hiring help or at least working with people with experience. Every mistake can be very costly and run your finances into the ground before you know it.
Venue
Venue depends mostly on two factors: number of guests and amenities i.e. rooms and equipment are available on site. First and foremost you must decide how many guests you would like to host.
There are many routes to go when it comes to venues. There are professional venues but you can also think outside the box. Some companies have great venues they are willing to let out for the right event. You could also consider public spaces but you would then need to get a license from officials and likely need to pay some fees.
If you are selling seats you need to decide how many you have to sell so your budget will be above zero. Everything above will be extra income towards next events, higher salary or get better amenities for your attendees.
SMALL To cut down on costs consider companies that are willing to host events in your field. Remember to ask what amenities they have on site because that can make things much easier for you if they have projector and computer all set up. Some companies even provide refreshments which is a added bonus.
MEDIUM If you need to control the settings of your event you need a professional venue. You are likelier to get a better deal if you can book the venue well in advance. Also consider rehearsals and setup and takedown times. If you are going to livecast and/or tape the event you should be in contact with you video crew about their needs. See also “Technologie” below.
LARGE For full day or longer events, events with multiple sessions and/or workshops and more you should seriously consider hiring a professional event manager. The complexity of such events is very likely to overwhelm anyone with none or little experience in holding events. Professional event managers have connections with venues on that scale and can reduce costs considerably specially on details you would not consider.
Attendees
Creating an event for a community of people with like minded interests as you is what it is all about. You want to create an event that excites people and makes them want to spend their time and money on.
You need to consider what it is that people are after. Even though it is no space science it can be easily under- or overthought. Ask yourself first what it is that you like when you go to such events. Write down a list of pros and cons. Do not overthink it. Perhaps at last years conference you loved the DIY studio but disliked the bad jokes the emcee told between talks. Learn from that. Also ask your friends on social media to come up with pros and cons.
Boil these ideas down to around five of each to create a clear image of what kind of event you want. Use this list as a guide during the process and when in doubt ask yourself, does this fit with my pros or cons. This is a well known and effective method to reduce clutter and simplify projects.
SMALL For events with less than 50 attendees you most likely only have to worry about whether to many people show up, or worse, not enough. See “Advertising” below for further advice.
MEDIUM Events with between 50 and 200 attendees might require more attention to communication with attendees. We recommend even a small fee $10–20 to get people to commit to the event so they show up. Free tickets are likelier to result in no-shows.
Selling tickets is an added complexity. Consider using an online ticket sales company. Just know that fees from credit card payments will most likely be paid out after the credit card company receives their income from the sale and pay out to the ticket vendor. This could mean up to two months after the sale. This can affect your payments to your providers so make sure this does not get you into trouble.
LARGE larger events can attract people from all over the world. You need to provide at least information on how to get there, make sure there are enough rooms available for your guests and provide entertainment in the form of social events, tours and significant other programs. As before, the services of professional event organizers are recommended.
Refreshments
People’s attention span is greatly affected by hunger or thirst and general well being. High energy foods can reduce attention just as much as hunger. The energy provided by sweet foods can give jolts of energy followed by drowsiness due to fluctuations in blood sugar. Try to provide refreshment during the event that help attendees stay alert. Plenty of water and fruits are great while sweets and carbon rich diets like pasta and pastry are less so. Many fruit juices are sweetened just as much as sodas so they are not a good choice. 100% pure juices should be alright.
Depending on the length of your event you should at least try to offer some beverages. Many tech events offer alcoholic beverages, beer being the most popular. You should though always consider those that do not prefer alcohol and provide sodas and or carbonated water along with plain water. You should not provide alcoholic beverages before talks lasting more than one or two hours. Those are best served afterwards.
You should state specifically in the event description whether you will provide food or not and also which type of food. If people expect to be fed and arrive hungry, the mood will surely sour soon if nothing or too little is provided.
Classic foods at events include soups, breads, sandwiches, sushi, pasta or noodles. Exotic foods are risky unless the event has some connection to the food. Good idea for an event would be to pair it with specific food or drink.
SMALL For a short event consider offering at least water and coffee. If the venue does not provide coffee makers and/or drinking containers you could try to get a coffee shop to sponsor your event. If the venue sells drinks, you need to let your attendees know in the description. You can also consider “bring your own beer” i.e. BYOB if the venue allows. Put it into the event description in bold.
MEDIUM People love free food and drinks. It does not need to be fancy but variety and creativity is often preferred. If the same sandwich is offered at all events people lose interest and wont show up for the food.
LARGE For a full day or longer events you need to provide coffee, lunch and sometimes dinner breaks. Most often the ticket price includes these amenities. Some venues insist that you buy catering services from them. You can sometimes make deals with them especially if you are buying a lot of other services from them.
To provide variety consider food trucks. They can most often be parked close to the venue and provide fun atmosphere.
Speakers
The date and time of event is often decided around available time for specific speakers. If you want to bring in a rockstar speaker, their schedule is often so packed that this is the deciding factor. Keep your ears open for available speakers that are “in the neighborhood” or passing by.
Public speaking is hard for most people. Offer your community the chance to rehearse their public speaking skills at your events. But you also have to consider your attendees. Your event is primarily for their information and education. So you have to balance inexperienced speakers with experienced and professional speakers.
Consider collaboration with public performance coaches. This applies more to larger events where you intend on taping and publishing the videos. At minimum you should advice your speakers to test their talks on co-workers or friends to get helpful feedback and make the talk more fluid.
Many pro speakers have agents that book their appearances. They have high booking fees, $5000–20.000 and up, and they often do not include expenses like travels and accommodations. It is a lesser known fact that sometimes you can circumvent the booking agencies. If you have personal contact with the speaker or you can offer them something no one else can in the form of experiences, they might even ditch the speaking fee or lower it considerably. Just make sure their trip is worth the while. The word spreads out and you might help yourself and others getting similar deals if your speaker or speakers are happy.
If you are partaking in events or conferences abroad, make effort to broaden your network and approach people you think would be good for your community to consider visiting you and create an event around that.
Consider looking outside your community for speakers. It can broaden people’s minds and create new ideas. Also consider offering access to your community to other communities you think could benefit from the collaboration.
SMALL Your community is full of people doing interesting things. Give people the chance to offer their knowledge but you also have to contact those directly you think are doing interesting stuff that would benefit the community. Consider asking people with good or better networks than you to help out in finding talent.
MEDIUM Living on an island in the middle of the Atlantic with only 300K+ people has its pros and cons. Iceland has never been more popular than now and everyone and their grandmother wants to visit. Use this to you advantage to get talent you would otherwise not have access to. Mix it up with local talent and you have a fantastic event.
LARGE Tech conferences travel around the world to provide their communities great experiences. The professional conference market is extremely competitive because there are huge revenues in conferences. The JSConf that was held in 2017 proved that people from all over the world are interested in coming to Iceland for a unique experience. The local community also benefits immensely. If you know of an international conference brand you think would fit this market, start by connecting with the organizers to see if you have a common ground. The JSConf team proved we have everything needed if they want to come. Creating a new brand is much harder but kudos to you if you can.
Technologie
Audience concentration is fickle. If there are many extractions during your event due to technical difficulties, you might even start to see people leave. That is not a nice feeling for your speakers or attendees.
Make sure what amenities are available at your venue. Even though they say they have projectors, computers, sound systems et cetera, there are many complications that can come up. The projector bulb might be to old, the computer not have the right ports, the sound system not have the right output for your video team and so on. Make sure well in advance that everything works so that there is enough time to fix problems beforehand.
Also consider at least a short run through an hour before the event so speakers can test the sound system and run through their slides to see if they work. They then have at least some time to come up with a solution.
SMALL For a small event, shorter than a day and fewer than 200 audience. At least a week before the event you should visit the event site for a tech meeting. If the event site has a dedicated tech person that is included in the venue price you could trust them to go over the equipment and give you a green light but it is safer to visit and have them show you everything works.
MEDIUM At first opportunity visit the venue to go over everything and make sure their tech persons attends the meeting. If you need equipment not provided by the venue, find a rental company or someone willing to lend you the equipment needed and make sure it will be available for the event and run through if needed.
LARGE If you want a professional looking event and video recordings you need to consider stage lighting, sound system and multiple camera angles for editing. Venues with good lighting and sound systems will be the best choice, otherwise you need to bring in and setup a lot of equipment and take down. Get an experienced team to record the event and do not skimp on costs there. It will show in the end result.
You should also consider hiring professional photographers to document the event. Good photographers can work with your social media manager to instantly send out great images and afterwards if you repeat the event, you have great material to advertise.
Make sure you get the rights to use the videos and photographs for future use.
Advertising
Getting the word out and creating your community can take a lot of work. If marketing and social media is not your strong point, contact your community and ask interested people to lend a hand. You should also consider hiring marketing people for larger events.
You do not want people to forget about your event. Create an online venue for your attendees (Facebook event, Slack group, Twitter etc.) and update them regularly about progress. You can build up excitement by introducing key speakers one or few at a time. Tell your community about what awaits them when they come to your event and build up trust. People do not like to be insecure so the more helpful information you can give the better.
If you are selling tickets to your event and related events consider discounts. Early bird discounts or price hikes are well known methods to push people to buy tickets early so you have a better idea of how many your attendees will be. This can be very helpful in lowering costs by getting better deals if you order early.
SMALL At least create an event on Facebook where all the necessary data like place, date, time and such is accessible. Contact the admins of the Facebook groups that are related to your event to send out announcement if you want to reach more people than are in your network.
MEDIUM If you are providing refreshments it can be really hard not to know how many will show up. You need more work to get commitment from people if you need an accurate number. Be prepared for +/-20% show-up. To increase commitment you should remind people about the event regularly with updates. Also consider a small entrance fee, specially if your event contains an attraction that is worth paying for.
LARGE Longer events require a lot of work and can include costly factors like venues, refreshments, professional speakers and much more. You want to fill up your event so advertising is paramount. For these kinds of events you should get the best help your available money can buy you. It will pay itself back and reduce your risk of negative financial outcome.
Summary
Based on the size of the event you want to organize there are various factors to consider. I have hit on many of them here but this is by no means fully encompassing. That is why I am here to help you. The tech community as a whole gains from each event that is held if it is successful. Therefore I am rooting for you to succeed and want to help you. If you need information or advice get in contact (thorgilsv@gmail.com or messenger: thorgils) and we find a way to help you create a great event for the community.
Happy 2018, the year of the tech events!
