8 ms·

Why you can't Kickstart a conference

116 points by abnercoimbre 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago
Does any tech conference not have sponsorships in some form? I know small conferences, unconferences, etc. and they all seem to rely on sponsors--maybe primarily so to have low/no conference prices. The $495 ticket price in the article also isn't especially high in this day and age but I don't consider it especially cheap either. Definitely a destination conference sort of price which has implications relative to cheap and local. Also of course life can get in the way of speakers (who are typically not paid at tech events unless they're some non-vendor "draw"). If anyone wanted me to sign some contract with consequences if something came up I'd laugh.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Conferences are absolutely insanely expensive to put on, unless you have a "building sponsor" who has rooms already setup with A/V, etc. You're not having even a single ballroom conference at a hotel for less than $20-30k, unless you're at the Motel 6 or something. If you are not high-rolling, consider getting a university, trade school, etc to sponsor or participate, as they do have auditoriums with A/V already.
  - antonjs 3y ago
    University conference, catering, and AV rates can also be pretty ridiculous, even at the internal / dept sponsored prices. They can have similar terms to hotels (ie, you have to use our tech people, our approved caterers, etc)
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The trick is to find a university (or college, or technical college, etc) that has A/V and cafeteria but doesn't really have departments dedicated to those.
- munificent 3y ago
  Handmade, the conference that Abner, is explicitly sponsor-free. Sponsorship is definitely a good way to save a lot of money, but it also makes you somewhat beholden to those sponsors.
  - ValentineC 3y ago
    > Sponsorship is definitely a good way to save a lot of money, but it also makes you somewhat beholden to those sponsors. I've organised a couple of conferences here in Singapore. I find the asks by the sponsors in the article to be a bit over-the-top. Organisers need to establish firm boundaries on what they're willing to give in to (booths, shoutouts), and what is non-negotiable (anything to do with programming and content), and put that in their sponsorship prospectus. It's the job of most marketing people to push for more, and it's the conference organiser's job to push back.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Yeah, I definitely know conferences that have sponsorships but there are no sponsor talks or anything along those lines. Some free passes, shoutouts, logos on signage, maybe the right to have logo giveaways etc. Even when a company is providing a venue there are pretty much always other sponsors in my experience. And, yes, companies will pretty much always want more for their sponsorship dollars and it's one of the jobs of organizers to push back which given a good professional relationship tends to work.
    - oreally 3y ago
      Pretty sure Singapore isn't the best place for more developer-centric, radical talks to take place given it's makeup of foreign workers afraid to rock the boat. Have your speakers given a talk that's considered radical at your conferences?
      - raesene9 3y ago
        I've spoken at a Singaporean Security conference and I'm not sure what you're saying entirely chimes with my experiences. At the conference I spoke at there were plenty of local attendees and as the topic was hacking, there were talks I'd imagine could be considered radical (depending on your definition of that word). As a speaker, I wasn't restricted in what I said, nor did anyone pre-review my talk.
- floren 3y ago
  The 9th International Workshop on Plan 9 (http://iwp9.org/ http://iwp9.org/) took place in Ontario a few months back. It was free to attend, I believe the venue (a lecture hall at Waterloo) was free, and the t-shirts were donated. Now, it was a very small conference, and it was organized by the Plan 9 Foundation, but to the best of my knowledge (as a member of the Program Committee) it didn't really cost anything.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There are still costs though: streamed talks, presumably AV people, the university presumably pays people to clean up. Maybe some of this is volunteer labor but there are still some costs that presumably the university or the department is picking up. There are free events at universities in general but that's just the school picking up the costs. Even FOSDEM (held at a university in Brussels for free) has sponsors as does Devconf.cz.
    - floren 3y ago
      I mean I guess the university did pay the cleaning staff to go through afterward. AV was done by volunteers, and the streaming was free AFAIK (https://bsdtv-player.secdn.net https://bsdtv-player.secdn.net was the host for the stream, I'm not sure who runs it but it worked fine). So yeah, you could say the University of Waterloo sponsored it by allowing us to use their conference room. Somebody did have to empty the trash cans after the attendees left. But to the best of my knowledge the only money that changed hands was for the t-shirts, and as I said I think that ended up being a donation from a Foundation member.
- jedberg 3y ago
  > If anyone wanted me to sign some contract with consequences if something came up I'd laugh. Yeah, I'm surprised that was mentioned. The only way you'll get me to agree to consequences for no-show is if you pay me to show. I mean I already have consequences for no-showing -- my reputation. I've spent a long time building a reputation as a speaker who not only always shows up, but can do a talk with less than a day's notice. So I'm likely to show up so as not to ruin that reputation.
swyx 3y ago
as an events organizer i empathize. the venue and food costs stack up surprisingly quickly and many events are run at breakeven or loss, and attendees dont often have empathy for the stress of putting together even an average event. if i might suggest one way to build up to a conference is to run meetups beforehand. not many are needed, say 3-6 of them before you probably have the community trust and events experience to go big. https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups
- Swizec 3y ago
  +1 to this. I used basically this same approach to start the biggest JS meetup in my town. We eventually got ~200 people showing up regularly. I think it’s still running even after I moved out of the country 8 years ago. edit: Our venue trick was “Hey, if we pack your bar/restaurant on a random weekday night so you make a killing in drinks, can we have the place?”. Venues were happy to say yes.
  - Uehreka 3y ago
    The “tell us your quietest night and we’ll get 20+ people to come that night” trick works wonders, not just for tech meetups but for things like karaoke nights and other kinds of adult social activities too. It’s a great win-win.
    - Tomte 3y ago
      Unless you're dancers who are famously stingy and usually order one drink a night, often water.
      - nicbou 3y ago
        Dancers?
        Tomte 3y ago
        Let me be more precise: Swing, Tango Argentina etc. They all need bars to dance. They all use the same argument. And quite often they are politely asked to find somewhere else after a few months.
jezzamon 3y ago
The XOXO festival is a counter example of a "conference" type thing that was kickstarted and has been running for multiple years (aside from recent ones thanks to COVID)
- whatyesaid 3y ago
  That appeals 50x more to the Kickstarter general audience. For a PL conference on Kickstarter you're going to need to reach people elsewhere and only rely on Kickstarter as funds and perks.
- detaro 3y ago
  Seems like it was more using Kickstarter as a ticket shop: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waxpancake/xoxo-festival https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waxpancake/xoxo-festiva... ? (175k raised, 160k of that are from tickets)
  - jezzamon 3y ago
    That's the same as any Kickstarter though, you offer people the product or experience you're trying to build with the funds. The failed Kickstarter in the article similarly offered tickets.
whatyesaid 3y ago
If you have a conference theme that nobody else is targeting just start off as virtual, it's free aside from organization time. You miss interactions but if you're having big speakers or a niche topic there's still value and more participation possible.
- welfare 3y ago
  I’m sorry but networking for me is part of why I go to conferences. Being able to hit speakers and people up for conversations is what generates more value for me than the talks themselves. Virtual conferences are not comparable to a live one, they’re as valuable as mandatory corporate e-learnings in my opinion. Maybe it’s just me.
  - whatyesaid 3y ago
    These kinds of famous speakers I'd imagine would be surrounded 24/7 anyway. Personally I do watch recorded talks and lectures from conferences every now and then. This conference could have too much emphasis on networking for experienced people if the talks are targeted more towards beginners in PL though. Any advanced conference would have enough informative talks since very few people have time to read up on everything in their niche as often there's sub-niches and sub-sub-niches. I'm also not saying it needs to be a permanent virtual event but it could start out that way if you don't get enough funding. And even if the talks are much more intended for beginners and the conference is about networking, it's better than nothing to get started with. Unless those famous people promoted the Kickstarter it was never gonna hit 50k anyway.
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    I get the networking aspect but sounds like you have to waste 80% of the time and inordinate amounts of money on all sides doing this mating display of a traditional conference with useless bs talks (like an inauguration) circle jerk award ceremonies, overpriced junk food (not to mention the outrageous amount of food and boxed lunch packaging waste) just so that you get that 20 min or so 1-1 time with some experts? Surely there should be a more streamlined method to get the same? Maybe just a high powered meetup where you invite out station experts or something.
bestekov 3y ago
It gets even tougher if your conference or convention does NOT target a business audience (who often can just expense a $500 ticket). For general interest or hobby conferences, you are much more money limited while the costs of venues remain just as high. It is possible to kickstart conferences, but hard. One that has been going for several years is a bit more of a high-end conference retreat: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wargamergirl/valhalla-in-the-fall-2023 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wargamergirl/valhalla-i...
yrocaz 3y ago
Next week my co-founder and I will be throwing our first paid conference, so this is a rather timely thread that we’ll be monitoring closely. Following the advice of the parent article & some comments thus far, we first packed the house with standing room only for 1.5yrs before deciding to throw a paid event. For what it’s worth, we are the largest event of its kind in the local area’s history. We have raving fans and a mailing list and in-person attendance that has gone up and to the right since we started. People park blocks away, arrive 30-45mins before our scheduled “doors open” time to secure their seats, and come back repeatedly (we track attendance, rsvp’s, check-ins, etc). We just recently moved into a bigger venue to accommodate our growing crowds because our core audience was starting to fall off (it was becoming too inconvenient to attend for some given the event’s popularity). Even with our having to change the days of the month (from 2nd Tuesday to the first) and moving to a new venue, our attendance has continued to increase - a huge win for audience stickiness by any event’s standards. Our paid event has 12-speakers over 2-days, including local & national level speakers, $2k+ weekend national trainers, a nationally recognized author, and the topics are extremely applicable to our niche. We have 2 of the nicest venues in town lined up for classroom training and our VIP dinner + cocktail reception. All of this is to say that it hasn’t been enough to drive ticket sales. We’ve announced this event at our meetup since March (80-100+ in attendance each time), we’ve hit our mailing list and everyone in our sphere multiple times, and our FB ads have had over 300k impressions (with all the usual a/b testing & landing page tweaks). We made all of our plans to accommodate 200-300 in attendance but it looks like we may just barely break 100. We launched with $499/$799 General Admission/VIP ticket pricing (prominently placed!) and the market spoke very loudly with very low sales. So, we repriced it to $150/499 (we’re now losing on each GA ticket), refunded the difference or upgraded all of our early believers, and unfortunately it has not made much of a difference. This has been a rather difficult pill to swallow, but it's been interesting to watch the Reddit drama play out in real time and continually read articles about the "community vs audience" or "village vs train station" dynamic. It also speaks to the difficulties surrounding monetizing a free/freemium model facing many of today’s businesses. I plan on doing a full write up and after action report so that others can learn from our mistakes. I’ll end by saying that our event is in an income producing/sales driven industry where people are accustomed to attending paid events for professional development and education. Our outreach numbers are such that even taking full responsibility for not assembling the right team, the right lineup of speakers, the right venues, or choosing the right days (weekend vs weekdays), we believe that the incredibly low conversion rate we’re seeing is possibly a harbinger of times ahead. It may just be a bad time to throw events ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ PS: I've been lurking on HN for longer than my account would suggest but I've been waiting for the perfect thread to finally spend my "first comment.” I started reading before I was involved in tech, so it’s kind of funny that my first comment is on a thread that isn't exactly about technology! edit: typos
dhosek 3y ago
When I was an undergrad, I ran a small TeX conference. I forget how the finances worked out, but I used the college facilities (I may or may not have asked permission for this) to host this. There were some workshops which were an added fee and the workshop presenters got that money. No food or swag, publicity was all done via the late 80s internet venues (so comp.text.tex and TeXhax if I remember correctly). I think I may have run into an issue depositing checks at my bank account since they were made out to “Cal TeX” or something like that and I didn’t have a DBA on file with the bank (or that might have happened later with another project). But I do remember that the amount of work and the low payoff were enough that I never tried to do a second conference.
peteforde 3y ago
Two-time conference organizer here. People are incredibly fickle; moods and motivations seem to ebb and flow and there's no way to predict whether people will buy tickets even when they look you in the eye and swear that they will. That's because we've been trained from birth to tell people what they want to hear. Our first conference was sold out and highly-lauded, with GOAT being thrown around. So we did a second one that aimed even higher and while we still managed to break even without sponsors - assuming we donate our time as organizers - we actually only sold about 60-70% of the available tickets. I remember asking a guy who had said that our first conference had changed his life why he wasn't coming to the second one. "The economy, man." (ooohkay) Doing these two conferences was a lot of fun, and encapsulate some of my proudest memories. They really helped cement our credibility at the time. However, it probably cost my partner and I half a year of productive time. Not only did we not make money for the hundreds of hours we poured into our labour of love, but that was hundreds of hours that we didn't spend building our actual business, which more than defeated whatever growth goals we had when we started. All of which is to say that running a conference is a vanity flex, and it's basically all but guaranteed to lose money unless you have such a large social following (see: XOXO) that it literally doesn't actually matter if you lose money because your YouTube check that month could pay for everything. So, would-be conference organizer, you have ask yourself two potentially awkward questions: why on earth do you actually want to run a conference, and why do you think anyone would pay to come? Remember: the easiest way to get $100k running a conference is to spend $200k. These days in particular, it's incredibly likely that the market is conferenced out. There's just so damn many events people can go to. At some point, a lot of people seem to realize that they don't need to make any new buddies. Invent a way for them to get an uninterrupted weekend of hacking time and you'll be rich.
- aardvark179 3y ago
  So, you seem dismissive of the reason for not attending your second conference, but in general people go to conference their employer will pay for them to attend, and if companies aren’t paying you will see a drop in attendance. There are a few conferences I love, but I’m unlikely to use up holiday and pay my own registration fee and travel to attend them. If it’s on my own dime I’ll probably watch the talks on YouTube. Edit: I should clarify that this about work related stuff. I’ll happily pay my own way for hobby related things, and have helped organise a few such things and volunteer to help at them. Even more strongly than work events those are affected by the economy. They depend on people have enough spare money and wanting to spend it on attending your event. If it’s a really good event they may scrimp and save money so they can go, but your event is a luxury they will cut if money is tight.
raesene9 3y ago
I've run a couple of Community security conferences and whilst some of what's said here chimes with my experiences, other bits not so much. On sponsors, I don't think there's always that much influence from sponsors, typically it's an exchange of money for booth presence, mentions during the conference, and some social media marketing, there was no control over content from them. Costs are very geography specific. For example in the UK it was possible to put on a conference for 100-200 people in a decent venue for ~ £20-25k. This was not for profit obviously, but we kept ticket prices low and relied on sponsorship money to break even. I'd agree that the first year is the hardest, we had to pay deposits out of personal cash while working on sponorships, so that's tricky unless you've got a source of funds. After a while it gets easier with sponsors as you're a known quantity and hopefully you have some cash from previous runs available for next year's deposits. The most expensive items are anything that's per attendee. Even a small expense (like snacks or lunch) gets expensive once you multiply by 200! The speaker contract thing was also odd to me, I've spoken at > 20 conferences and I've never been asked to sign a contract (also never been paid to speak but that's the reality of most tech conferences)
- _notreallyme_ 3y ago
  From my experience, there are conferences where sponsors have a lot of influence on the content. But these conferences are mostly commercial-oriented: talks presenting products rather than talks about the state of the art in the domain. For the venue, it is possible to get it almost for free. Partnering with a (private) engineering school did work several times for me. It's free advertising for them and they are already equipped for such events. Another way is a partnership with an artist collective, provided that their situation with the municipality is well defined.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > On sponsors, I don't think there's always that much influence from sponsors, I assume this varies with the topic, and sponsorship level. A sponsor paying £2000 for a booth won't expect much beyond the booth. But if you're running an AWS User Group conference, and Amazon is providing a venue that would otherwise cost a five-figure sum? And given the topic, there probably isn't anyone else likely to sponsor you at that level? You might want to make sure they're happy so they sponsor next year as well.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I've been involved with a nonprofit organization for decades, and we have frequent conferences. They [usually] have nothing to do with tech; They are just gatherings of like-minded individuals. I've been on a number committees, organizing these events. The process of putting together one of these shindigs is pretty intense, and there's no way that a single person can do it. It's good to have some leadership, but they can't be too heavy-handed, and these things are usually volunteer efforts, so it's important to not be an asshole. In the case of the conferences I've attended, there's often a 1- to 3-year period between concept and keynote. There's usually a lot of fundraising and awareness-building. I've never heard of Kickstarting or GoFundMe drives. In my experience, fundraisers are fun social events or meetups with an entrance fee. These also act as advertisements for the main event. Of course, nowadays, you also have the option of paid webinars. These can be a great opportunity to project the brand, and also test out possible conference presenters. Another option that tech conferences have, that the organization I'm involved with does not have, is branded sponsorship; especially from local businesses. Having someone that's a good glandhander is a big deal. My mother used to do that for her NPO, and I saw her land some big fish. Insurance is a biggie, and no one ever seems to give this much thought. Poke around. Find out what it will cost to insure one of these things. Not all companies will do it, and the prices can be all over the place. A lot of times, you can cut deals with hotels, and they'll let you have the conference rooms for free, as long as you commit to a room block (so getting the word out is important). Conference centers are usually not willing to cut breaks, but many hotels can't deal with anything of any size. I've attended a number of smaller (including tech) conferences at Holiday Inns. Nowadays, there are some great SaaS options, for things like schedules, Web sites, badges, etc. Some may cut deals for NPOs. And, for the cherry on top, you generally have colossal egos, battling back and forth, like a kaiju movie. It can be great fun, but it's a ton of work. I would not be surprised if many folks on this forum have been involved with Science-Fiction/Comic/Fantasy cons. That's a good place to find experience.
Applejinx 3y ago
I've been on convention staffs a lot. Everything here rings true. I've got less experience with heavy corporate sponsorship micromanaging content, though I don't doubt it: for everything else, as far as I can tell this advice is gold. I've even tried to organize an event myself, knowing that it had to be vision first and the content would follow: got a little way along and brought in some good people, but one of the key fellow organizers showed he was an astute choice by having his OWN vision and running with that :) I went along with this, as it was also a good vision and less ambitious, but covid hit and the whole thing rather fizzled. It's possible that, had it not been for a pandemic, we'd still be growing an event: we were at least somewhat interested in the process and how events take hold and grow, and we had some comparable events we'd been involved with that had recently flamed out through running into all these problems. No, you can't Kickstart a conference, and what's more be cautious about attempting one. Think of it like a small college, except it's an event. Sayre's law applies: the reason the politics will be vicious, is that the stakes are so low. After the event, everyone will go home, including you. Therefore, anybody you bring in to help run the event will feel mighty licensed to get their way on their 'fun weekend'. Your job may well be to keep your vision intact (and, along with it, the conference itself). 'cos you likewise can't Kickstart a vision.
- ValentineC 3y ago
  > No, you can't Kickstart a conference, and what's more be cautious about attempting one. Think of it like a small college, except it's an event. Sayre's law applies: the reason the politics will be vicious, is that the stakes are so low. After the event, everyone will go home, including you. Therefore, anybody you bring in to help run the event will feel mighty licensed to get their way on their 'fun weekend'. Your job may well be to keep your vision intact (and, along with it, the conference itself). 'cos you likewise can't Kickstart a vision. People wouldn't think that way once they've had a look at a conference budget, and how so many (community) conferences tread that tightrope between making losses and a decent amount of profit. That's also probably why the article, and a lot of the comments here are all about finances and sponsorship.
open-source-ux 3y ago
The Context Free YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@contextfree/videos https://www.youtube.com/@contextfree/videos) has a lot of interesting programming languages and interviews. It's a shame that the Kickstart conference was unsuccessful for funding. I can see why single programming language conferences are often popular. But is a "Programming Languages Festival" too broad for a conference? Are attendees mostly from academic interest?
surprisetalk 3y ago
I'm organizing Outland right now and learning some of these lessons the hard way. We're planning to lose lots of money and have a small group of attendees, and we're okay with that :) [1] https://outland.sh https://outland.sh
ankaAr 3y ago
Many times conference organizer here. Every year was the same, we organized an installfest plus talks about free (as in freedom) software and open source products or projects for people. Every year was thinking where to do that and start talking to places to get the space. Every year we declined the idea of patronage from private companies to avoid them controlling something. So, the upfront cost was paid by us (think that a team could be from 10 to 20 people) That could took us maybe 4 months to organize one day, that must be THAT DAY. Over the years we got experience and we learn a lot from the people doing this event before, setting a schedule to start meetings, having a base of providers, having contacts to ask for space, etc. Our budget was 0 (yes it is a zero) and all cost should be paid by us, the organizers. So to recover that we made t-shirts, and souvenirs (that needed to be paid in advance) then maybe you didn't lost money when the event was finished. Because people didn't pay a ticket for it, it is a free event. It was a huge effort to make something like that. Months sleeping few hours, people going crazy to setup tracks for talks, approving them and talking to the people that gave the talk to accommodate the schedule. Having the t-shirts on time and the souvenirs, because if not, we will not broke, but we cannot recover the founds. Having the cables and the network ready, the software and servers to install was also a huge task. Food and water..? Yes, that is a crazy nightmare We even developed Eventol[1], a software to schedule this kind of events. Yes it is open source also. Organizing a conference looks easy but really, if you work and you do that, get good people around you. Look what they are good for and what they enjoy doing and give them task that make them happy. It could sound almost a stupid advice, but is not, if they are not being paid and even when they are paid, if you gives a task were they are bad to or something they don't like, it could fail and that means delays. And your conference is already scheduled and you cannot say: sorry, it will be not this weekend, will be the next one. No. I was happy to be attendant first, volunteer for some years, then get the experience to be the manager of sooo experienced people and got milestones in the event history, from record of attendance, to earn money and stop losing it (that was for the next year event) or the software we used and it is open to everyone. Anyway, after the conference.., you needed 8 months to relax your mind and body and start again that crazy idea to run a conference about free Software and for free. As an acquired experience, when you got that running, you can start thinking to be a wedding planner if you wants to move from IT, because a conference is something like that when we talk about organization :v [1] Eventol: https://eventol.org/ https://eventol.org/

116 points by abnercoimbre 3y ago

Does any tech conference not have sponsorships in some form? I know small conferences, unconferences, etc. and they all seem to rely on sponsors--maybe primarily so to have low/no conference prices. The $495 ticket price in the article also isn't especially high in this day and age but I don't consider it especially cheap either. Definitely a destination conference sort of price which has implications relative to cheap and local. Also of course life can get in the way of speakers (who are typically not paid at tech events unless they're some non-vendor "draw"). If anyone wanted me to sign some contract with consequences if something came up I'd laugh.

bombcar 3y ago
Conferences are absolutely insanely expensive to put on, unless you have a "building sponsor" who has rooms already setup with A/V, etc. You're not having even a single ballroom conference at a hotel for less than $20-30k, unless you're at the Motel 6 or something. If you are not high-rolling, consider getting a university, trade school, etc to sponsor or participate, as they do have auditoriums with A/V already.
- antonjs 3y ago
  University conference, catering, and AV rates can also be pretty ridiculous, even at the internal / dept sponsored prices. They can have similar terms to hotels (ie, you have to use our tech people, our approved caterers, etc)
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The trick is to find a university (or college, or technical college, etc) that has A/V and cafeteria but doesn't really have departments dedicated to those.
munificent 3y ago
Handmade, the conference that Abner, is explicitly sponsor-free. Sponsorship is definitely a good way to save a lot of money, but it also makes you somewhat beholden to those sponsors.
- ValentineC 3y ago
  > Sponsorship is definitely a good way to save a lot of money, but it also makes you somewhat beholden to those sponsors. I've organised a couple of conferences here in Singapore. I find the asks by the sponsors in the article to be a bit over-the-top. Organisers need to establish firm boundaries on what they're willing to give in to (booths, shoutouts), and what is non-negotiable (anything to do with programming and content), and put that in their sponsorship prospectus. It's the job of most marketing people to push for more, and it's the conference organiser's job to push back.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Yeah, I definitely know conferences that have sponsorships but there are no sponsor talks or anything along those lines. Some free passes, shoutouts, logos on signage, maybe the right to have logo giveaways etc. Even when a company is providing a venue there are pretty much always other sponsors in my experience. And, yes, companies will pretty much always want more for their sponsorship dollars and it's one of the jobs of organizers to push back which given a good professional relationship tends to work.
  - oreally 3y ago
    Pretty sure Singapore isn't the best place for more developer-centric, radical talks to take place given it's makeup of foreign workers afraid to rock the boat. Have your speakers given a talk that's considered radical at your conferences?
    - raesene9 3y ago
      I've spoken at a Singaporean Security conference and I'm not sure what you're saying entirely chimes with my experiences. At the conference I spoke at there were plenty of local attendees and as the topic was hacking, there were talks I'd imagine could be considered radical (depending on your definition of that word). As a speaker, I wasn't restricted in what I said, nor did anyone pre-review my talk.
floren 3y ago
The 9th International Workshop on Plan 9 (http://iwp9.org/ http://iwp9.org/) took place in Ontario a few months back. It was free to attend, I believe the venue (a lecture hall at Waterloo) was free, and the t-shirts were donated. Now, it was a very small conference, and it was organized by the Plan 9 Foundation, but to the best of my knowledge (as a member of the Program Committee) it didn't really cost anything.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There are still costs though: streamed talks, presumably AV people, the university presumably pays people to clean up. Maybe some of this is volunteer labor but there are still some costs that presumably the university or the department is picking up. There are free events at universities in general but that's just the school picking up the costs. Even FOSDEM (held at a university in Brussels for free) has sponsors as does Devconf.cz.
  - floren 3y ago
    I mean I guess the university did pay the cleaning staff to go through afterward. AV was done by volunteers, and the streaming was free AFAIK (https://bsdtv-player.secdn.net https://bsdtv-player.secdn.net was the host for the stream, I'm not sure who runs it but it worked fine). So yeah, you could say the University of Waterloo sponsored it by allowing us to use their conference room. Somebody did have to empty the trash cans after the attendees left. But to the best of my knowledge the only money that changed hands was for the t-shirts, and as I said I think that ended up being a donation from a Foundation member.
jedberg 3y ago
> If anyone wanted me to sign some contract with consequences if something came up I'd laugh. Yeah, I'm surprised that was mentioned. The only way you'll get me to agree to consequences for no-show is if you pay me to show. I mean I already have consequences for no-showing -- my reputation. I've spent a long time building a reputation as a speaker who not only always shows up, but can do a talk with less than a day's notice. So I'm likely to show up so as not to ruin that reputation.

swyx 3y ago

as an events organizer i empathize. the venue and food costs stack up surprisingly quickly and many events are run at breakeven or loss, and attendees dont often have empathy for the stress of putting together even an average event. if i might suggest one way to build up to a conference is to run meetups beforehand. not many are needed, say 3-6 of them before you probably have the community trust and events experience to go big. https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups https://www.swyx.io/manifest-meetups

Swizec 3y ago
+1 to this. I used basically this same approach to start the biggest JS meetup in my town. We eventually got ~200 people showing up regularly. I think it’s still running even after I moved out of the country 8 years ago. edit: Our venue trick was “Hey, if we pack your bar/restaurant on a random weekday night so you make a killing in drinks, can we have the place?”. Venues were happy to say yes.
- Uehreka 3y ago
  The “tell us your quietest night and we’ll get 20+ people to come that night” trick works wonders, not just for tech meetups but for things like karaoke nights and other kinds of adult social activities too. It’s a great win-win.
  - Tomte 3y ago
    Unless you're dancers who are famously stingy and usually order one drink a night, often water.
    - nicbou 3y ago
      Dancers?
      - Tomte 3y ago
        Let me be more precise: Swing, Tango Argentina etc. They all need bars to dance. They all use the same argument. And quite often they are politely asked to find somewhere else after a few months.

jezzamon 3y ago

The XOXO festival is a counter example of a "conference" type thing that was kickstarted and has been running for multiple years (aside from recent ones thanks to COVID)

whatyesaid 3y ago
That appeals 50x more to the Kickstarter general audience. For a PL conference on Kickstarter you're going to need to reach people elsewhere and only rely on Kickstarter as funds and perks.
detaro 3y ago
Seems like it was more using Kickstarter as a ticket shop: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waxpancake/xoxo-festival https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waxpancake/xoxo-festiva... ? (175k raised, 160k of that are from tickets)
- jezzamon 3y ago
  That's the same as any Kickstarter though, you offer people the product or experience you're trying to build with the funds. The failed Kickstarter in the article similarly offered tickets.

whatyesaid 3y ago

If you have a conference theme that nobody else is targeting just start off as virtual, it's free aside from organization time. You miss interactions but if you're having big speakers or a niche topic there's still value and more participation possible.

welfare 3y ago
I’m sorry but networking for me is part of why I go to conferences. Being able to hit speakers and people up for conversations is what generates more value for me than the talks themselves. Virtual conferences are not comparable to a live one, they’re as valuable as mandatory corporate e-learnings in my opinion. Maybe it’s just me.
- whatyesaid 3y ago
  These kinds of famous speakers I'd imagine would be surrounded 24/7 anyway. Personally I do watch recorded talks and lectures from conferences every now and then. This conference could have too much emphasis on networking for experienced people if the talks are targeted more towards beginners in PL though. Any advanced conference would have enough informative talks since very few people have time to read up on everything in their niche as often there's sub-niches and sub-sub-niches. I'm also not saying it needs to be a permanent virtual event but it could start out that way if you don't get enough funding. And even if the talks are much more intended for beginners and the conference is about networking, it's better than nothing to get started with. Unless those famous people promoted the Kickstarter it was never gonna hit 50k anyway.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  I get the networking aspect but sounds like you have to waste 80% of the time and inordinate amounts of money on all sides doing this mating display of a traditional conference with useless bs talks (like an inauguration) circle jerk award ceremonies, overpriced junk food (not to mention the outrageous amount of food and boxed lunch packaging waste) just so that you get that 20 min or so 1-1 time with some experts? Surely there should be a more streamlined method to get the same? Maybe just a high powered meetup where you invite out station experts or something.

bestekov 3y ago

It gets even tougher if your conference or convention does NOT target a business audience (who often can just expense a $500 ticket). For general interest or hobby conferences, you are much more money limited while the costs of venues remain just as high. It is possible to kickstart conferences, but hard. One that has been going for several years is a bit more of a high-end conference retreat: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wargamergirl/valhalla-in-the-fall-2023 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wargamergirl/valhalla-i...

yrocaz 3y ago

Next week my co-founder and I will be throwing our first paid conference, so this is a rather timely thread that we’ll be monitoring closely. Following the advice of the parent article & some comments thus far, we first packed the house with standing room only for 1.5yrs before deciding to throw a paid event. For what it’s worth, we are the largest event of its kind in the local area’s history. We have raving fans and a mailing list and in-person attendance that has gone up and to the right since we started. People park blocks away, arrive 30-45mins before our scheduled “doors open” time to secure their seats, and come back repeatedly (we track attendance, rsvp’s, check-ins, etc). We just recently moved into a bigger venue to accommodate our growing crowds because our core audience was starting to fall off (it was becoming too inconvenient to attend for some given the event’s popularity). Even with our having to change the days of the month (from 2nd Tuesday to the first) and moving to a new venue, our attendance has continued to increase - a huge win for audience stickiness by any event’s standards. Our paid event has 12-speakers over 2-days, including local & national level speakers, $2k+ weekend national trainers, a nationally recognized author, and the topics are extremely applicable to our niche. We have 2 of the nicest venues in town lined up for classroom training and our VIP dinner + cocktail reception. All of this is to say that it hasn’t been enough to drive ticket sales. We’ve announced this event at our meetup since March (80-100+ in attendance each time), we’ve hit our mailing list and everyone in our sphere multiple times, and our FB ads have had over 300k impressions (with all the usual a/b testing & landing page tweaks). We made all of our plans to accommodate 200-300 in attendance but it looks like we may just barely break 100. We launched with $499/$799 General Admission/VIP ticket pricing (prominently placed!) and the market spoke very loudly with very low sales. So, we repriced it to $150/499 (we’re now losing on each GA ticket), refunded the difference or upgraded all of our early believers, and unfortunately it has not made much of a difference. This has been a rather difficult pill to swallow, but it's been interesting to watch the Reddit drama play out in real time and continually read articles about the "community vs audience" or "village vs train station" dynamic. It also speaks to the difficulties surrounding monetizing a free/freemium model facing many of today’s businesses. I plan on doing a full write up and after action report so that others can learn from our mistakes. I’ll end by saying that our event is in an income producing/sales driven industry where people are accustomed to attending paid events for professional development and education. Our outreach numbers are such that even taking full responsibility for not assembling the right team, the right lineup of speakers, the right venues, or choosing the right days (weekend vs weekdays), we believe that the incredibly low conversion rate we’re seeing is possibly a harbinger of times ahead. It may just be a bad time to throw events ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ PS: I've been lurking on HN for longer than my account would suggest but I've been waiting for the perfect thread to finally spend my "first comment.” I started reading before I was involved in tech, so it’s kind of funny that my first comment is on a thread that isn't exactly about technology! edit: typos

dhosek 3y ago

When I was an undergrad, I ran a small TeX conference. I forget how the finances worked out, but I used the college facilities (I may or may not have asked permission for this) to host this. There were some workshops which were an added fee and the workshop presenters got that money. No food or swag, publicity was all done via the late 80s internet venues (so comp.text.tex and TeXhax if I remember correctly). I think I may have run into an issue depositing checks at my bank account since they were made out to “Cal TeX” or something like that and I didn’t have a DBA on file with the bank (or that might have happened later with another project). But I do remember that the amount of work and the low payoff were enough that I never tried to do a second conference.

peteforde 3y ago

Two-time conference organizer here. People are incredibly fickle; moods and motivations seem to ebb and flow and there's no way to predict whether people will buy tickets even when they look you in the eye and swear that they will. That's because we've been trained from birth to tell people what they want to hear. Our first conference was sold out and highly-lauded, with GOAT being thrown around. So we did a second one that aimed even higher and while we still managed to break even without sponsors - assuming we donate our time as organizers - we actually only sold about 60-70% of the available tickets. I remember asking a guy who had said that our first conference had changed his life why he wasn't coming to the second one. "The economy, man." (ooohkay) Doing these two conferences was a lot of fun, and encapsulate some of my proudest memories. They really helped cement our credibility at the time. However, it probably cost my partner and I half a year of productive time. Not only did we not make money for the hundreds of hours we poured into our labour of love, but that was hundreds of hours that we didn't spend building our actual business, which more than defeated whatever growth goals we had when we started. All of which is to say that running a conference is a vanity flex, and it's basically all but guaranteed to lose money unless you have such a large social following (see: XOXO) that it literally doesn't actually matter if you lose money because your YouTube check that month could pay for everything. So, would-be conference organizer, you have ask yourself two potentially awkward questions: why on earth do you actually want to run a conference, and why do you think anyone would pay to come? Remember: the easiest way to get $100k running a conference is to spend $200k. These days in particular, it's incredibly likely that the market is conferenced out. There's just so damn many events people can go to. At some point, a lot of people seem to realize that they don't need to make any new buddies. Invent a way for them to get an uninterrupted weekend of hacking time and you'll be rich.

aardvark179 3y ago
So, you seem dismissive of the reason for not attending your second conference, but in general people go to conference their employer will pay for them to attend, and if companies aren’t paying you will see a drop in attendance. There are a few conferences I love, but I’m unlikely to use up holiday and pay my own registration fee and travel to attend them. If it’s on my own dime I’ll probably watch the talks on YouTube. Edit: I should clarify that this about work related stuff. I’ll happily pay my own way for hobby related things, and have helped organise a few such things and volunteer to help at them. Even more strongly than work events those are affected by the economy. They depend on people have enough spare money and wanting to spend it on attending your event. If it’s a really good event they may scrimp and save money so they can go, but your event is a luxury they will cut if money is tight.

raesene9 3y ago

I've run a couple of Community security conferences and whilst some of what's said here chimes with my experiences, other bits not so much. On sponsors, I don't think there's always that much influence from sponsors, typically it's an exchange of money for booth presence, mentions during the conference, and some social media marketing, there was no control over content from them. Costs are very geography specific. For example in the UK it was possible to put on a conference for 100-200 people in a decent venue for ~ £20-25k. This was not for profit obviously, but we kept ticket prices low and relied on sponsorship money to break even. I'd agree that the first year is the hardest, we had to pay deposits out of personal cash while working on sponorships, so that's tricky unless you've got a source of funds. After a while it gets easier with sponsors as you're a known quantity and hopefully you have some cash from previous runs available for next year's deposits. The most expensive items are anything that's per attendee. Even a small expense (like snacks or lunch) gets expensive once you multiply by 200! The speaker contract thing was also odd to me, I've spoken at > 20 conferences and I've never been asked to sign a contract (also never been paid to speak but that's the reality of most tech conferences)

_notreallyme_ 3y ago
From my experience, there are conferences where sponsors have a lot of influence on the content. But these conferences are mostly commercial-oriented: talks presenting products rather than talks about the state of the art in the domain. For the venue, it is possible to get it almost for free. Partnering with a (private) engineering school did work several times for me. It's free advertising for them and they are already equipped for such events. Another way is a partnership with an artist collective, provided that their situation with the municipality is well defined.
michaelt 3y ago
> On sponsors, I don't think there's always that much influence from sponsors, I assume this varies with the topic, and sponsorship level. A sponsor paying £2000 for a booth won't expect much beyond the booth. But if you're running an AWS User Group conference, and Amazon is providing a venue that would otherwise cost a five-figure sum? And given the topic, there probably isn't anyone else likely to sponsor you at that level? You might want to make sure they're happy so they sponsor next year as well.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I've been involved with a nonprofit organization for decades, and we have frequent conferences. They [usually] have nothing to do with tech; They are just gatherings of like-minded individuals. I've been on a number committees, organizing these events. The process of putting together one of these shindigs is pretty intense, and there's no way that a single person can do it. It's good to have some leadership, but they can't be too heavy-handed, and these things are usually volunteer efforts, so it's important to not be an asshole. In the case of the conferences I've attended, there's often a 1- to 3-year period between concept and keynote. There's usually a lot of fundraising and awareness-building. I've never heard of Kickstarting or GoFundMe drives. In my experience, fundraisers are fun social events or meetups with an entrance fee. These also act as advertisements for the main event. Of course, nowadays, you also have the option of paid webinars. These can be a great opportunity to project the brand, and also test out possible conference presenters. Another option that tech conferences have, that the organization I'm involved with does not have, is branded sponsorship; especially from local businesses. Having someone that's a good glandhander is a big deal. My mother used to do that for her NPO, and I saw her land some big fish. Insurance is a biggie, and no one ever seems to give this much thought. Poke around. Find out what it will cost to insure one of these things. Not all companies will do it, and the prices can be all over the place. A lot of times, you can cut deals with hotels, and they'll let you have the conference rooms for free, as long as you commit to a room block (so getting the word out is important). Conference centers are usually not willing to cut breaks, but many hotels can't deal with anything of any size. I've attended a number of smaller (including tech) conferences at Holiday Inns. Nowadays, there are some great SaaS options, for things like schedules, Web sites, badges, etc. Some may cut deals for NPOs. And, for the cherry on top, you generally have colossal egos, battling back and forth, like a kaiju movie. It can be great fun, but it's a ton of work. I would not be surprised if many folks on this forum have been involved with Science-Fiction/Comic/Fantasy cons. That's a good place to find experience.

Applejinx 3y ago

I've been on convention staffs a lot. Everything here rings true. I've got less experience with heavy corporate sponsorship micromanaging content, though I don't doubt it: for everything else, as far as I can tell this advice is gold. I've even tried to organize an event myself, knowing that it had to be vision first and the content would follow: got a little way along and brought in some good people, but one of the key fellow organizers showed he was an astute choice by having his OWN vision and running with that :) I went along with this, as it was also a good vision and less ambitious, but covid hit and the whole thing rather fizzled. It's possible that, had it not been for a pandemic, we'd still be growing an event: we were at least somewhat interested in the process and how events take hold and grow, and we had some comparable events we'd been involved with that had recently flamed out through running into all these problems. No, you can't Kickstart a conference, and what's more be cautious about attempting one. Think of it like a small college, except it's an event. Sayre's law applies: the reason the politics will be vicious, is that the stakes are so low. After the event, everyone will go home, including you. Therefore, anybody you bring in to help run the event will feel mighty licensed to get their way on their 'fun weekend'. Your job may well be to keep your vision intact (and, along with it, the conference itself). 'cos you likewise can't Kickstart a vision.

ValentineC 3y ago
> No, you can't Kickstart a conference, and what's more be cautious about attempting one. Think of it like a small college, except it's an event. Sayre's law applies: the reason the politics will be vicious, is that the stakes are so low. After the event, everyone will go home, including you. Therefore, anybody you bring in to help run the event will feel mighty licensed to get their way on their 'fun weekend'. Your job may well be to keep your vision intact (and, along with it, the conference itself). 'cos you likewise can't Kickstart a vision. People wouldn't think that way once they've had a look at a conference budget, and how so many (community) conferences tread that tightrope between making losses and a decent amount of profit. That's also probably why the article, and a lot of the comments here are all about finances and sponsorship.

open-source-ux 3y ago

The Context Free YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@contextfree/videos https://www.youtube.com/@contextfree/videos) has a lot of interesting programming languages and interviews. It's a shame that the Kickstart conference was unsuccessful for funding. I can see why single programming language conferences are often popular. But is a "Programming Languages Festival" too broad for a conference? Are attendees mostly from academic interest?

surprisetalk 3y ago

I'm organizing Outland right now and learning some of these lessons the hard way. We're planning to lose lots of money and have a small group of attendees, and we're okay with that :) [1] https://outland.sh https://outland.sh

ankaAr 3y ago

Many times conference organizer here. Every year was the same, we organized an installfest plus talks about free (as in freedom) software and open source products or projects for people. Every year was thinking where to do that and start talking to places to get the space. Every year we declined the idea of patronage from private companies to avoid them controlling something. So, the upfront cost was paid by us (think that a team could be from 10 to 20 people) That could took us maybe 4 months to organize one day, that must be THAT DAY. Over the years we got experience and we learn a lot from the people doing this event before, setting a schedule to start meetings, having a base of providers, having contacts to ask for space, etc. Our budget was 0 (yes it is a zero) and all cost should be paid by us, the organizers. So to recover that we made t-shirts, and souvenirs (that needed to be paid in advance) then maybe you didn't lost money when the event was finished. Because people didn't pay a ticket for it, it is a free event. It was a huge effort to make something like that. Months sleeping few hours, people going crazy to setup tracks for talks, approving them and talking to the people that gave the talk to accommodate the schedule. Having the t-shirts on time and the souvenirs, because if not, we will not broke, but we cannot recover the founds. Having the cables and the network ready, the software and servers to install was also a huge task. Food and water..? Yes, that is a crazy nightmare We even developed Eventol[1], a software to schedule this kind of events. Yes it is open source also. Organizing a conference looks easy but really, if you work and you do that, get good people around you. Look what they are good for and what they enjoy doing and give them task that make them happy. It could sound almost a stupid advice, but is not, if they are not being paid and even when they are paid, if you gives a task were they are bad to or something they don't like, it could fail and that means delays. And your conference is already scheduled and you cannot say: sorry, it will be not this weekend, will be the next one. No. I was happy to be attendant first, volunteer for some years, then get the experience to be the manager of sooo experienced people and got milestones in the event history, from record of attendance, to earn money and stop losing it (that was for the next year event) or the software we used and it is open to everyone. Anyway, after the conference.., you needed 8 months to relax your mind and body and start again that crazy idea to run a conference about free Software and for free. As an acquired experience, when you got that running, you can start thinking to be a wedding planner if you wants to move from IT, because a conference is something like that when we talk about organization :v [1] Eventol: https://eventol.org/ https://eventol.org/