How #GHConf18 was built.
View the Final 2018 GrowthHackers Conference Agenda
Every year, the GrowthHackers Conference planning team gets together to plan with one mission: bring together growth experts from or working with fast growing companies to create a wholistic program to teach teams and individuals on how to adopt sustainable growth practices.
We obsess over the agenda and frankly, it’s one of my favorite projects to work on. While we’re still in the process of putting the GHConf18 puzzle together, I thought I’d show you how we develop our conference program using a growth process to ensure we meet your needs. Meta of me, I know.
Plus, this should give you a good idea of what to expect at #GHConf18 so that you can go ahead and register before prices go up again.
[ Analyze ] The questions
Before we curate our program, we brainstorm what questions we want to drive the ideation of our topics and speakers.
- What companies are fast-growing and sustainable?
- Why are they fast-growing and how are they sustainable?
- Who are in these fast-growing companies leading growth?
- What emerging platforms, new technology, and changing consumer behavior do we need to understand better?
- What are the biggest things holding back individual practitioners, startups, and enterprises from sustainable growth?
And two more very important questions…
- How do we bring diverse perspectives to stage?
- How do companies make an impact in 2018 and beyond?
We monitor the news, read case studies, study trending topics on GrowthHackers, interview growth experts, review feedback from previous events, evaluate speaker applications, and dissect our own hands-on experience to understand why teams are or are not successful with sustainable growth.
As we interviewed teams that attended the 2017 GrowthHackers Conference, we began to see a trend. When we asked past attendee, Ethan Garr from TelTech Systems, about his experience, he shared all about kickstarting his company’s growth process and had the following to say…
“Building a growth team and getting a High Tempo Testing process to hum along is a tall order. I attended GrowthHackers Conference 2017 looking to apply insights and ideas from successful growth leaders who have already overcome similar challenges to those we were facing.
The speaker roster was so well-conceived and the learnings so powerful, that I went home more energized and excited about our potential than ever before. By aggressively applying what I learned at the event to our own process we were able to drive and manage explosive growth.
So I figured, in classic GrowthHackers style, we should double down on what worked! This year, I am bringing my whole team, so they can extract learnings specific to their individual roles in growth.
Usually you attend a conference hoping that it will have value, but with this one it isn’t a gamble, it’s just a good investment.” — Ethan Garr, VP Product, TelTech Systems
Back to the planning process…
[ Ideate ] Brainstorming topics & speakers
This is where we brainstorm topic ideas and potential speakers to answer the questions above and help individuals, startups, and enterprises truly transform the way they approach growth.
At this point, no idea for a topic or speaker is a bad idea. Our team captures all ideas for topics and speakers that we’ll consider for the event.
[ Prioritize ] Creating a program for transformation
We have a lot of ideas for what topics could make up the GrowthHackers Conference agenda and lots of interested speakers. Now it’s time to put together what I call the GHConf puzzle.
At this step it’s really important to use our conference mission to guide the prioritization of what and who should be on stage. As a team we revisit some of the earlier questions to identify trends in what’s holding companies back from growth. This year, we’ve identified the following areas and will be focusing on…
Data Instrumentation
If you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it. How do you ensure the proper tracking is in place and how do you analyze data for meaningful insights?
Finding Leverage
Often times teams focus on acquiring new users instead of understanding what will truly drive growth for your organization. How do you identify the biggest opportunities for growth at any stage of a company with Product Market Fit?
Activation
Getting users onboarded to show the true value of the product is hard and often overlooked. How do you understand the value your product delivers to passionate users in order to get more of them? What does activation look like in fast growing companies and what resources should be allocated to this part of the funnel?
Testing
Growth is driven by experimenting with new ideas driven by qualitative and quantitative data. How do you ensure you’re experimenting for the right reasons, designing experiments correctly, measuring results, and making informed “next step” decisions?
Team Buy-in
The biggest impediment to adopting a growth process is getting the right people moving in the same new direction. How do you breaking down silos, create new processes, shift executive and team mindset, and embrace change?
[ Test ] Your attendance
We’re making this one-day program jam-packed with the resources you need to make sustainable growth a priority for your company.
And while any individual can attend and get value from the conference, we know that growth doesn’t happen in a silo. You can’t send one person to a conference to learn and expect them to transform your organization. It’s simply not that easy.
We’ve found that the larger the company, the more seeds of innovation that need to be planted for a transformation to happen. That’s why we just launched a new discounted ticket option to incentivize teams of 4 or more to attend.
Not only will you hear from experts in these topics, but you will be in the company of other teams experiencing similar challenges. This year we are creating even more opportunities for you to network with each other, and you’ll walk away with your own growth support group as you get back to the office to begin implementing change.
[ Analyze ] Our #GHConf18 promise to you.
We know there are a lot of challenges when it comes to adopting cross-functional and sustainable growth. If you attend this conference and find that your growth challenges were not addressed or you need more direction, and I will work directly with you to understand your situation and help you find a solution.
