The Power of the Community Booth

You’re proud of being a GDG lead or member, aren’t you? And you love to connect with other like-minded people, right?

In this post, I will explain what a Community Booth is, why it is the perfect solution to spread the word about the GDG movement and strengthen relations among different GDGs and why you should organize one at the next conference you will attend!

Why a Community Booth

The idea of the community booth started in Italy, where some GDG leads animated a community stand offered by the conference organizers. They observed that the booth, run and owned by the community, was the perfect place to promote the GDG movement within the conference attendees and scout for new speakers and members. Also, it was an opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge with other GDG leads from Europe and meet a lot of tech interested people. Fast forward to nowadays, GDGs organize community booths at several events, like Codemotion, Droidcon, Flutter Europe, etc.

How it works

The conference offers a space with a table or two, Google can help with some creative material, swag and success stories from previous booths, but all the rest is decided and managed by GDG leads and members staffing at the booth. Everything that makes conference attendees aware of the GDG movement is welcome, riddles, quizzes, pair programming sessions, etc: it’s your moment to shine and unleash your creativity!

All these activities work together as a hook. The real purpose is to attract people to the booth and start a conversation, give them the possibilities to chat around the latest technologies, present them the GDG movement and answer questions like “What is a GDG?”, ”What do you do in a GDG?”, “Where is the nearest GDG?” etc. The proactivity of the people staffing at the booth is crucial for good results.

The Community Booth @ Flutter Europe Conference

In January we organized the first community booth this year. The booth was special, because of the joint effort among GDG, GDE & Flutter Community. 17 community leads from 8 countries around Europe staffed it and engaged with the 500 conference attendees in several ways: ‘Catch the bug’, Dart & Flutter quiz and Q&A about communities.

Catch the bug

There was presented a Flutter app that had a bug in the code prepared and monitored by GDG lead Razvan Lung and GDE Evgeny Kot. The attendees had to find and fix the bug. Coding was shown on the screen to attract more people. If the attendee completed the task in less than 5 minutes, he received the prize.

Coding activities with a screen presentation are very attractive to the conference attendees. Thanks to this activity, the booth was always surrounded by interested people. The result was 412 tests in the challenge and many talks about communities.

Another way to bring coding activities to attendees was experimented during Droidcon Berlin, where people built an Android app from scratch, in sessions of 15 mins each. Everyone could have added any feature, and the only rule of the game was: “the app compiles and works at the end of the session”

“We repeated the same thing last year and the success was even bigger. The idea of bringing attendees together with something they already know, so they can exchange and learn together while also having fun, is a great way of enjoying a conference.” ~ Mario Bodemann, GDG Berlin Android, Organizer of community booths at Droidcon Berlin and Codemotion Berlin

Dart & Flutter Quiz

Attendees were asked to fill out a quiz containing questions related to Dart & Flutter prepared by GDE Muhammed Salih Güler. If they had 85–100% correct answers they received the price. Here is the quiz.

Quizzes cause many questions between attendees and booth organizers. Good if their topic and questions are community-oriented to cause questions connected with it.

In cases when quizzes are oriented on any technology (here Flutter), a good practice is to have that technology specialists on the booth to answer the questions in case of discussions.

Communities Q&A

Attendees who were interested in GDG, GDE or Flutter were able to ask our community members from 8 countries around Europe. The most popular questions:

• What is a GDG?
• How do I open a GDG?
• How to become a GDE?
• Are there any GDGs in my country/city?
• What do you do in your GDG?
• How can I organize Flutter Study Jam in my community?

Q&A oriented on communities is a very important activity at the community booth. Actually, all the activities should work as a hook and result in questions about communities. If after the conference we observe an increasing number of community members in the region or new open chapters, we can treat the booth as a success.

Does the Community Booth work?

Please look at the data from a few community booths at different conferences!

Flutter Europe Conference 2020:

• 142 Flutter quiz attendees
• 412 tests in ‘Catch the bug’ challenge
• Q&A interaction with around 200 attendees
• 17 organizers from 8 countries around Europe and 3 communities

Droidcon Berlin 2019:

• Actionable items for group organizers for their event planning
• 70 co-coders for “ze appp”
• 90 commits
• 14 organizers from 3 countries in the Q&A zone over 3 days
• Q&A interaction with 180 attendees

Codemotion Madrid 2019:

• 500 interactions at the Booth
• 12 GDG organizers from 7 different cities from Spain
• 57 tweets with #CodemotionGDG mentionings

But what can speak louder than figures? Words of the community members! Below you can check what your colleagues who attended the booths think about the Community Booth idea!

‘What do we really do at a Community Booth? We spread the word about what we do: sharing knowledge and experience, promoting diversity in tech, working for inclusion. There is something to learn for everyone, and in GDG we know that everyone has something to share, regardless if you are new to tech or if you have been in the field for a long time. This is what makes the GDG community and Women Techmakers so special — and if you ever have the chance to participate at a conference where there is a GDG booth, don’t miss out!’
~ Ann-Katrin Borgenstam, GDG Düsseldorf, WTM Ambassador, Organizer of community booth @ Codemotion Berlin 2019

‘I believe such initiatives are a great way to easily reach people that are curious, determined to learn and want to integrate with the community. While sharing our experiences as GDG Organizers, we found many people interested in starting or joining GDG communities in their cities so my fingers are crossed — hope we will meet again soon!’
~ Piotr Trębacz, GDG Warsaw, Organizer of community booth @Flutter Europe Conference 2020

‘Community booth at Flutter Europe Conference was a great experience. We had the chance to let the attendees know that GDG cares about the technologies they use and we are ready to embrace them at our meetups!’
~ Razvan Lung, GDG Baia Mare, Organizer of community booth @Flutter Europe Conference 2020

‘This was my second time to co-organize the Community Booth (the first one was at the Women in Tech Summit 2018). How is the Booth valuable for the event participants? They can meet (and join!) the community organizers, win cool SWAG and bask in the GDE glory✨ But what it brings to the community leads themselves, is that we can meet new friends and speakers for our upcoming events (why not both!) as well as share our experience, knowledge and event ideas.’
~ Alina Babiracka, GDG Wrocław, WTM Ambassador, Organizer of community booth @Flutter Europe Conference 2020

What’s next?

Interested in community booth organization? Here is the Guide!

Do you want to bring a community booth to a conference? Let us know here!