Getting Started with DevFest
During the last Google Dev Summit France, I got many questions on how to start a DevFest and on how to create a successful event like DevFest Nantes. The first goal of this article is to show that organizing a beautiful DevFest is not something impossible. The second goal is to give some tips through my own experience.
Let’s do a quick introduction to DevFest and the first steps to be successful organizing a community-driven event.
Background
Hey 👋 I’m Julien and I co-created the GDG Nantes back in January 2011. GDG Nantes had the chance to go to Google I/O in 2011 and in 2012. It was awesome! A mix of great talks, demos, networking, codelabs and afterparty! Such a good moment! 💚
From our organizer perpective, we were so enthusiastic that we were willing to create a mini Google I/O in our city “Nantes”, in our country “France” 🇫🇷.
💡 In September 2012, The GDG Program proposes that GDGs could organize a DevFest “Developer Festival” to create a multi-track 4h-long conference. We jumped in and today, DevFest Nantes is 10 years old and we will be back in October 2023 for 2 days with more than 2500+ attendees per day. Please check the aftermovie here.
What is DevFest?
DevFest is a trademark. GDGs around the world can use this name to create a conference. The main advantage to be called DevFest is to get supported by the Google DevRel program:
- 📖 useful guidelines from the community
- 💸 a first sponsorship package (from Google itself 😁) and some swag
- ⚙️ a tool to find speakers (Googlers and GDEs)
- 🎨 great materials to do the design and the communication.
⚡️ To organize a DevFest, you have to think about 4️⃣ aspects to deliver the best experience : Attendee, Sponsor, Speaker and Organizer.
First steps
“Start small, think big. Don’t worry about too many things at once” — Steve Jobs
👐 However, it’s not easy to start from scratch to create a community event. To begin, we started creating a “not so big” event with a target of 150 attendees the first year in 2012.
🏫 To begin, we tried to find a free location. To achieve that, we made a partnership with a school. We get a super feeling with Epitech Nantes and we did the first two editions of DevFest Nantes overthere. We grew from 150 to 250 attendees.
💸 To keep our budget low, we didn’t offer any swags for the first editions. The first website was designed using Google Sites (no-code before it exists 😁).
🎟 We created tickets at the price of 10€ (paid event to avoid no-show) and we created our sponsorship offers at the price of 500€ and 1000€. At this time, sponsorship was about 75% of our revenue and tickets 25%.
We also started with strong principles:
- 🎙 Find awesome speakers with a mix of local, national and international speakers
- ⚡️ Create a multi-track conference to be more inclusive and present “discovery” talks (non-tech topics but related to the tech ecosystem like Agile, Management, Diversity)
- 🍽 Deliver a delicious meal at lunch
💪 The first run was not easy but we get sold-out just 2 days before the events and get some press releases about our events.
Scaling
Scaling before you are ready means you will scale any existing problems in your business! — Lor Bradley
The first two editions were successful. We got some problems but that’s how you grow up!
😎 The very good idea was to stay in a one-day conference format and keep looking at a location where the event can scale in terms of:
- Speaker experience: great venue with awesome rooms
- Sponsor experience: capacity to host more sponsors and booths
- Attendee experience: a location near the train in the city center
- Organizer experience: a place where we can rent partially and grow with the DevFest Nantes journey.
🏡 We find the perfect place for us : “La Cité Nantes Congress Centre”
🚀 Important things also about our event, it is the fact that it is recurring that gain visibility and attractivity. People get to heard about it, to love the experience we deliver and share it to others!
Tips & Tooling
“When making experiences, attention to detail matters.” — Richard Branson
📌 Here are some useful tips to deliver the best DevFest:
- [Speaker] Try to let the speaker pay for its travels using company expenses. Otherwise, allow a budget for your top-priority speakers.
Advocates are used to do that. - [Speaker] Help speakers to go to the venue
For example, use uber vouchers for the travel of your speakers - [Speaker] Organize a speaker dinner the evening before the event
Welcome speakers and do some networking! - [Speaker] Create beautiful designs to announce your speakers
They are willing to share it to improve their personal brandings. - [Speaker] Get a beautiful record (HD, clear sound) for the talks
Speakers love to reuse the content. - [Speaker] Offer a dedicated speaker swag
Something sustainable and/or useful. - [Attendee] Offer a beautiful Tshirt
We see many people with the DevFest Tshirt every week in the street. - [Attendee] Deliver a good meal experience
Breakfast, lunch, coffee, barrista, afterparty… it’s all in the details. - [Sponsor] Offer a souvenir
We offer a special poster with the name of the company. - [Sponsor] Create beautiful designs to announce your sponsors
- [Sponsor] Book your sponsors ASAP
You don’t need money after the event… - [Sponsor] Set a theme for your event
It helps sponsor to be creative and showcase theirs skills using the theme. - [Sponsor] Provide a Media Kit for the press and sponsors
They love to get work done quickly! - [Organizer] Keep some local speakers as backup
You know… “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. — Murphy’s First Law” - [Organizer] Get partnership wit local schools to engage theirs students as volunteers
You cannot manage from 250 to 2500 attendees with 11 gdg organizers in the team.
⚙️ For the tooling, here is a good list to start with:
- 🎙 Conference-Hall: a platform to host your CallForPaper and get proposals from around the world created by Benjamin Petetot, GDG Nantes organizer.
- 📝 OpenFeedback: a platform to gather attendee feedbacks for the speakers created by Hugo Gresse, Montpellier Android User Group organizer
- 🌐 Website with the full schedule: the gdg-x repository or our own DevFest Nantes website based on Gatsby created by Arthur Maury, GDG Nantes organizer.
- 🎟 Billetweb: the ticketing platform with low fees and customized by Aymeric Fouchault, GDG Nantes organizer.
- ✉️ And other tools provided for non-profit organization like Slack or Google Workspace (Meet, Docs etc)
Conclusion
🏔 Organizing a DevFest is a journey. You have to dedicate your time and energy but it also opens new opportunities in terms of upkilling, networking, sharing and accomplishments!
😊 Personally, I use to say that I organize DevFest Nantes because I wish I could attend such an event in my own town to learn when I was a student!
