JeffConf Hamburg: Budget transparency and tips on acquiring sponsors
On 16 February 2018, we hosted Germany’s first conference dedicated solely to serverless architectures: JeffConf Hamburg. As JeffConf conferences had already been held in London and Milan, we were able to build on the experiences of others and use the branding and, in particular, the network. The conferences in the JeffConf series (now called ServerlessDays) are intended to be community events, which means they differ from traditional conferences in a number of areas. The traditional tends to focus on profit (e.g. with high ticket prices and by selling talk slots).At a community conference, though, it is important to be as inclusive and fair as possible — so, instead of profit, covering costs is one of the main aims and this also tends to happen at a later stage. Two things were crucial for launching the conference under the JeffConf brand: firstly, using Slack to stay in the loop with the JeffConf core team (Ant Stanley, Paul Johnston, James Thomas and Alex Casalboni) and secondly, handling the budget as transparently as possible. First of all, lots of praise once again and thanks for the amazing support — we were undoubtedly not always easy :)
The budget
Keeping ticket prices reasonable is obviously a challenge. That is why we calculated the costs very carefully right from the start and continually updated our budget sheet so that we were able to consider new and better solutions. The situation was not helped by the fact that many of the costs were not actually known until much later on, for example, the costs for the catering and conference swag kept on rising as the number of attendees increased. However, the price of a standard ticket was not enough to cover the costs of catering and swag for each person. To begin with, we based our calculations on 120 attendees, but during the rapid sales process we quickly had to revise this number up to 150, then 180 and finally to 220 (including sponsor tickets and diversity tickets each time). The venue — the Altonaer Museum — was only able to accommodate 199 attendees in our setting, so we deliberately factored in a no-show rate of 10% (and that is also what we got). It should be noted that we had a couple of lucky breaks when it came to the budget as we did not pay the market price in at least three places.
You quickly realise that sponsors are essential for keeping ticket prices reasonable. Based on the experiences of the other JeffConf events, we initially decided to offer three different sponsorship categories: headline sponsoring (€5,500), community kickstarter (€2,500) and community supporter (€1,000).
As things progressed, we ended up offering customised solutions to individual sponsors, but we won’t go into these now for the sake of keeping things simple. Here’s a tip: if you are organising a conference, only deviate from your sponsorship packages in truly exceptional cases. Willing sponsors can often be talked out of special requests that will take a lot of effort.
It quickly became clear to us that at least 50% of our revenue needed to come from sponsors and — if we wanted to avoid sleepless nights — preferably a lot more.
We have frequently been asked for our tips on acquiring sponsors, so here are a few of them.
- Be fast, specific and prepared: when you contact a potential sponsor, send them all the relevant details and information right away (when, who, what exactly, why, target audience, packages, etc.). Aim to answer as many questions as possible and ensure decisions can be made and matters delegated quickly. Finish off with a clear question or call to action (“Do you see yourselves as a sponsor?”).
- Keep on asking: yes, it’s annoying but it needs to be done. For you, the conference is the most important thing; for the potential sponsor, it is just a maybe at first. You should follow up your request at least every two weeks and keep it as simple as you can (no new thread, a short “any update for me?” or “a quick yes or no is fine”).
- Lead times for large companies: just as you might already expect, but sometimes even worse than you imagine. There may be many months between confirmation and receipt of payment, and several things that can go wrong (at least for externals). In these circumstances, it helps to proactively seek solutions together with your contacts.
- Payment methods: a US-based tech company paid us via PayPal, while two others paid by credit card. To accept payments by credit card in Germany, we managed with a temporary Jimdo shop and Stripe Connect (very simple to set up). Takeaways for next time: add on handling fees for payments by credit card and PayPal, provide hidden tickets for sponsor packages in the ticket booking tool, build a simple but reliable storefront with the aid of Stripe.
- Do not underestimate local sponsors: they are worth their weight in gold as far as reliability is concerned, they frequently have experience of events and they can provide advice and support.
In the end, we generated 75% of our revenue from the following sponsors (thank you!): AWS, Moovel, BINARIS, Microsoft, Nordcloud, Epsagon, IBM, Google Cloud Platform, Google Firebase, InnovoCloud, AKRA, Silpion, SinnerSchrader, Serverless, Inc. and MOIA.
The surplus
At the end, we had a surplus of just under €7,200. This unexpectedly large amount came as a surprise. We have to say here that a chunk of this surplus was not generated until near the end (or more precisely, while the conference was running) and, according to other JeffConf organisers, we did a particularly good job.
Because we are committed to the concept of community and to transparency, here is an overview of what we are doing, or have done, with this money.
Our JeffConf Hamburg organisational team has decided on the following uses:
42% of the surplus has been donated to the following organisations:
- Repair Café Altona: repairing technical equipment instead of throwing it away
- App Camps: free teaching materials on digital topics
- Netzpolitik.org: platform for digital rights and freedoms
- Code.design: inspiring interest in digital careers
- Open Knowledge Foundation: organisation for open knowledge, open data, transparency and civil participation.
31% of the surplus will go towards the non-technical further development of the Hamburg organisational team (Ben, Soenke, Susanne and Hendric). Each of us now has just under €500 at our disposal which can be used, for example, for facilitator training, a language course, a graffiti course, a yoga conference or whatever each person wants to choose (but it cannot be a tech conference, a coding workshop or anything similar). We are setting aside 21% as a reserve for the next event. This gives us the opportunity to order marketing materials early on, and also to support speakers who have no or a low travel budget and little experience. The remaining surplus of just under 7% will be used as a buffer.
We have learnt a great deal this year and are already looking forward to the JeffConf Hamburg successor: the ServerlessDays Hamburg 2019 on 15 February 2019.