Rocket Code Goes to IRCE
An exercise in deliberate team building
I wonder: What can we achieve at an ecommerce industry conference that we cannot simply “get” online?
I convinced our CEO to put Rocket Code in the proverbial test tube (and our editorial director to publish the findings) so we can ask and answer the following question: Why spend $30K to take 15 people out of the office and away from work for a week, to keep up with the “trends” we already encounter every day, at work, on the Internet?
Our destination in this case is the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago next month. We want to know what we can accomplish measurably and significantly by networking in person at the conference that we can’t achieve networking online. And, perhaps what we aren’t explicitly asking but may discover—call it our null hypothesis—is the global question of the value or worth of the human element in the development of a business like ours in a digitally focused industry.
The hypothesis
IRCE has ambitions. For one, it strives to bring to life the stimulating feeling of discovering new trends, something you can increasingly accomplish on the web through sites like Medium and Product Hunt.
“The #1 reason for attendees to come to IRCE is to keep up to date with the changing trends of the industry.” — quote from the IRCE website.
It’s not CES, SXSW, or Burning Man, so, fortunately no one claims to be looking for a techno-spiritual awakening to the next viral social media platform. (Our office manager, Emily, simply wants to bring us all back alive.) So, while there may still be a fair amount of showmanship and spectacle, this is a different headspace than the over-glamorized tech-sexy conference circuit you read about in GQ, and it requires a different strategy.
We at Rocket Code see attending IRCE as a practice in our eternal journey of optimization. Let me unpack that.
The experiment
A common service we at Rocket Code offer our ecommerce clients is conversion rate optimization, and we tell them two things when this type of work kicks off: “If it’s not a ‘hell yes,’ then it’s a ‘no,’” and “Test everything.” These philosophies are sometimes at odds, because they force us to test what we often think we already know.
Consider, for example, the idea of creating a revised homepage UX paradigm that follows the full-width image asset trend many retailers have adopted. Subjectively, this could be a “hell yes,” but in A/B testing we may find no significant difference from the current homepage layout. This dichotomy can force us to revisit which industry trends and standards work for us and our clients, rather than just take them at face value.
The same is true for our own organic ideas—and that is the point, because the dissonance drives us to do better and to be better. IRCE is no exception when it comes to turning this philosophy in on ourselves.
We see IRCE as a “hell yes” because we want to believe there is value and resonance in people coming together to drive innovation in our industry. But we will not blindly accept our expectations without collecting and recording data that measures our actual success or failure at meeting those expectations; we sincerely believe in this process and hope that our findings will inform the future endeavors of not only Rocket Code, but other retailers and agencies alike.
For the first time in our company’s young life, we are exhibiting at a conference. And we do not plan to simply dip our toe to test the waters. We do not view this as a business trip to send four business analysts to pass out business cards.
Personally, I tend to learn on the skeptical side of such events. At my last job, which I will generalize as “sales,” there was a conference I was fortunate enough to be selected to attend because my boss saw my potential for growth. But in attending, I had the opposite experience that any boss would want their employees to have at one of these events: Sitting in the audience, I was unable to visualize myself on the stage as a successful leader in that particular sales field, talking about best practices and innovative techniques I could potentially pioneer during my hypothetically illustrious career.
I felt disenfranchised at the time by what seemed like a spurious, Hollywood-like experience—but I realize in retrospect this was in part a product of my own attitude. If I could do it over again, I’d approach it with smarter goals; with questions rather than expectations.
A month later, I quit that job, and I’ll carry the lessons from that day with me to IRCE.
Thus, I agree with Rocket Code’s choice to not only attend but the choice to invest in the team by attending. Because the way we are approaching IRCE is different. We do not plan to simply sit back and be amazed by the speakers or exhibit booths, we do not plan to settle on small-talking people at cocktail receptions, and we will not simply put up a booth and solicit people to come hear information they can easily find on the web.
Rather than planning to passively absorb the conference experience, as I had done in the past, from the earliest preparation phase we’ve been priming ourselves to project our goals onto this conference, and to set ourselves up for success. And, with proper retrospective reflection, we will validate that our investment was worth it, and that the success of our business was enhanced by sending our team to IRCE.
The trip is structured to strengthen the bonds between our team members, and grow our team’s confidence in themselves and in the public eye. It’s the details of the trip that we hope will produce these results: the 350 mile Megabus ride to and from the conference, sleeping 15 people in an Airbnb, team trips to famous comedy clubs. Professionally, we are not leaving the networking to the sales team: Each engineer, designer, and business analyst will be trained on how to win connections to follow up with after the conference.
The hundreds of hours of preparations over three months, and the thousands of dollars of travel, lodging, and exhibiting costs — we will show that the return from our investment in IRCE will be significantly more positive than the opportunity cost we’re paying to go.
So how will we measure our success?
Key performance indicators
Rocket Code is constantly challenging the status quo in the ecommerce space. The work we do for our clients is bleeding edge. The apps we develop are disruptive, and our business philosophy wants to turn what it means to be a digital agency on its head. But this is not just about the bigger picture for our brand.
We surveyed all 15 team members who will be attending about their personal and professional goals for the conference. The most commonly stated personal goal was something along the lines of developing confidence, something we can easily survey for by asking our team retrospectively: Do you feel more confident in your position with Rocket Code after IRCE? I predict that people’s responses will cite things like unplanned interactions with team members on the bus to the conference or at the house we rented, spontaneous conversations with passing contemporaries or new colleagues on the exhibition floor, or a sense of greater purpose felt while reflecting on the scale of the conference and their place in it.
When surveyed about their professional goals for IRCE, our team cited networking the most often—almost across the board—and not in terms of face-value, Linkedin-esque connections, but genuine ones that lead to business and partnerships, connections with people in similar roles in other companies, or even with people with different opinions that can broaden our perspectives. For the sake of simplicity, we will quantify “networking” as “sales leads,” or people who actually follow up with us after the conference.
So, following the conference, we’ll post the results of our retrospective, detailing our analysis of 1) team members’ post-conference personal confidence and 2) the number of sales leads who follow up with us the week after the conference.
Stay tuned, and see what the test tube turns up.
Are you going to be at IRCE? Stop by booth 480 and say hi!
