Organizing a conference means more than just finding a room and some speakers if you want to succeed. To make sure people hear about it and get excited, Melissa Pierce and Brad Wilkening have collected their five best tips. This is Melissa's first year organizing Pitch Refinery and it's a lot of work. This is Brad's second year organizing ChicagoWebConf and it continues to be a lot of work.
1. Promotional Codes Do Double Duty
Create a promotional code for each technology news outlet you pitch your conference to. They'll appreciate having something to offer their readers, and you'll learn who gave you the most exposure. When you know where your audience came from, you can more accurately target their advertisers for partnership and sponsorship opportunities.
Create a promotional code for each technology news outlet you pitch your conference to. They'll appreciate having something to offer their readers, and you'll learn who gave you the most exposure. When you know where your audience came from, you can more accurately target their advertisers for partnership and sponsorship opportunities.
For instance :)
- Use Promo Code "BuiltInChicago" to get into Chicago Web Conf on October 6th for just $50! https://chicagowebconf2012.eventbrite.com/
- Use Promo Code "TechCo" to get into Pitch Refinery Conference on September 22nd and 23rd for only $100. https://www.pitchconf.com/
2. Low Conference Prices Mean a Wide Variety of Attendees
Of course, it works the other way: don't price it too low, or people won't show up. Price the conference as low as you can such that attendees still have contributed something. Price can also be an indication of the quality of the conference. A higher price tag could mean Panera instead of Papa Johns for lunch. Last year ChicagoWebConf had 95% attendance. Given that this was our first time around and it was over labor day weekend this was an amazing turnout.
As much as pricing tells people, don't forget:
3. Content Is King
Be as agressive as possible in making your conference worthwhile to guarantee attendees come back next year. We've been to conferences that had sponsor content dominate presentations This makes attendees feel like they're paying for commercials. SXSW has a very rigorous process for presenters. They aren't even allowed to mention their company or book. Our conferences filter out those arrangements with speaker agreements and a rigorous selection process for our presenters. We choose presenters with strong reputations in their industry, balancing proving experience at great presentations with new, potentially great speakers.
4. Community Support
The Chicago tech and entrepreneurial community is great! Let your community know what you are building. Chances are they know exactly how to help you or exactly what they want from your next conference. Through surveys performed after the conference we discovered that attendees really value the open networking time to make new friends and expand their personal networks. Surveys can play a big role in shaping your future and present conferences as well. You can also do a survey before the conference to get feedback on food, venue, and speaker selection.
5. Be Ready to Change
Take your community feedback seriously and be ready to learn that you've made mistakes. What you think is perfect might not matter, and maybe you'll have left important things out.
Have back-up plans for things like a speaker dropping out at the last minute or your caterer going belly up. Initially, Pitch Refinery was targeted to Mom Entrepreneurs, but when the Chicago Teachers Strike pushed the pocketbooks of mompreneurs from conferences to childcare, Pitch had to quickly change marketing and speaker line-up to reach out to a wider audience. We now attract solopreneurs and freelancers. Keep your content solid, everything else is flexible.
Thanks for letting us share our lessons learned. We're always open to hear more, so feel free reach out to us or comment with your thoughts on building great conferences in Chicago.
Thanks!
Brad & Melissa
