DeveloperEventGuidelines.md

Developer Event Guidelines

Organizing your first event can be intimidating. This short guide will walk you through the key steps to running a successful event, including:

• Sourcing or creating good content
• Finding speakers
• Booking a venue
• Working with sponsors
• Marketing
• Registering and communicating with attendees
• Day-of details and extras (e.g. swag, name tags) We’ve also provided timelines to help you get everything in order as simply as possible. The timelines cover details that are specific to the type of event you’re organizing—hackathon or meetup—while these guidelines cover more general tips.

Content and Speakers:

• Know your audience. Who is attending this event? Is it developers with depth of experience in one platform? Is it beginners? App developers in general? Are you going to be including PMs, designers, or digital marketing people? Think of the background knowledge they bring and what they may be interested in learning.
• Think about the length of your event and how many talks you can have in a single night. 20-30 minutes is standard for a meetup talk, and you can fit 2-3 in a night without exhausting attendees.
• Take proposals from speakers in advance, and go over their talks if you can. This will help you make sure that what they cover is of general interest, and not just a product pitch.
• If you aren’t finding any volunteers, consider beginning with a discussion group or series of lightning presentations by people who are working with the technology. The informal nature of a discussion group can help people feel more comfortable presenting.
• Leave time for Q&A and socializing at the end of the event. This is often the most valuable part of a developer event.

Venues and Sponsorship:

Venue rental can be costly, so for a low-key developer event, we suggest looking for companies that might want to sponsor your meetup by hosting it. To find a potential match, look for companies that use the technology your meetup is covering. They’ll be more willing to host if they have an interest in furthering the technology or recruiting attendees. Hosts often cover the costs of food (think pizza and beer rather than catered dinner), but you may need to seek outside help for that.

Sometimes government institutions, art centers, schools and universities offer their venues for a minimal donation or even for free, particularly for events that can be deemed educational. Depending on the size of your event, some companies may also have suitable venues you can exchange for sponsorship. Do some research about such institutions in your area and don’t hesitate to reach out to them. The earlier in your planning process you confirm a venue, the better.

When working with sponsors, it’s important to communicate your expectations plainly and up front. You should approach potential partners with a clear picture of what you need from them (e.g. covering costs, co-marketing) and what you can offer in return (e.g. a recruiting opportunity, speaking slots). Be in touch with them frequently to make sure all their questions about day-of logistics are answered.

Marketing:

The first thing you should look into is an event website. Your website will be the visible face of your event to potential sponsors, speakers and attendees. This can be hosted at its own domain, or on a simple Facebook page, but be sure it’s publicly accessible and has all of the information people will want to know about your event, including:

• Dates
• Location
• Speakers
• Agenda
• Sponsors
• How to register, and pricing
• Links to your event’s social media presence

Once you have a site where people can register, you can start getting attention and sending people to that site. Three good areas to begin your outreach include: your own social media accounts, classic media outlets (such as tech blogs, or other publications), and sponsor/speaker media. We recommend that you try with social media first, and reach out to local meetup groups that gather people who may be the target audience for your event. Speakers may be able to help you with this, as may sponsors. For larger events like hackathons, you may be interested in getting press coverage. Typically, the press will only pick up and broadcast a story about your event after it’s clearly established. When approaching them, remember to mention what makes your event a great story: what you’re offering to the community, and the speakers and sponsors who are backing you up. To find publications that may be willing to cover your event, look for who has featured local hackathons in the past. Also, don’t hesitate to ask your sponsors for media contacts. Lots of local companies have them and they’ll benefit from the exposure, too.

Attendees and registration

When it comes to registration, there are a few things that you need to take into account:

• Not everyone who registers will attend. Drop-off rates may vary by region, community, and type of event. Expect ~50% attendance for a free event and closer to 70% for a paid event, depending on the cost of tickets.
• If you’re charging for your event, consider not only how much money you need to raise to cover your costs, but also the value of what you’re offering relative to other similar events in the area. Also think of your audience: students and independent developers will have a lower willingness to pay than people who are attending on behalf of a corporation.
• Create discount codes for people you want to give a special offer to, which might include students, VIPs, and/or sponsor attendees. People are more likely to respond when they feel they’ve gotten a special invitation. Make your discount codes readable. It will be helpful when you want to track which ones were most useful and where your attendees come from.
• Feature the path to registration prominently and liberally on your website. The easier you make it for people to register, the more likely the will be to complete a sign up.
• Common registration problems will happen: multiple registrations, registrations that didn’t go through, someone who registered multiple friends all under their own contact information, etc. Have a plan to deal with these, if necessary, at the door (having more people than you think you’ll need handling registration is usually a good idea, that way you’ll have an extra set of hands to handle this type of problems). You’ll also need to decide if you will allow people to register at the door.
• The day of the event, show up early and prepare your tags and lanyards at the registration table in advance, if applicable.

Etc. (the bells and whistles)

The following things aren’t strictly necessary, but if you’re considering adding them to your event, they should feature in the planning process:

• Video and photography: are you recording anything? If so, what?
• Do you need to translate any materials?
• Prizes for contests and event swag
• Lanyards and/or name tags
• Volunteers for day-of coordination. Depending on the size of your event, someone may need to be on hand to:
• Staff the registration table
• Find speakers right before their sessions and make sure they’re ready for their talks
• Pass a microphone at the Q&A
• Take care of possible Wi-Fi, sound, or projector problems
• Oversee the food and drinks, including cleanup
• Mentor attendees (hackathons)

These are the basics for getting your first event off the ground. This list is not completely comprehensive; you may find there are things that are missing here that you would like to add. If you do, please make a pull request here to share your knowledge—and happy planning!