Unlocking the Power of Conferences: Organizing and Advancing Causes for Your Community
In this episode, we're diving headfirst into the exciting world of conferences. We'll explore why hosting a conference is a fantastic idea and what it takes to organize a truly epic event. Get ready for some insider tips and tricks!
First things first, we'll chat about the importance of knowing your audience and what message you want to convey. Plus, we'll look at different types of communities that can benefit from hosting a conference, user groups, cause-oriented groups, and professional development groups. There's a conference for everyone!
We'll also cover the nitty-gritty logistical stuff, like budgeting and timeline management. After all, it's the behind-the-scenes details that make a conference truly shine. And guess what? Conferences are not just about logistics - they're also about building connections within a community. We'll uncover the magic that happens when like-minded folks come together to share ideas, insights, and inspiration.
Last but not least, we'll explore the power of groupthink and the contagious energy that buzzes at conferences, especially when it comes to advancing advocacy or cause-related work.
Highlights
0:01:51 - Questioning the Reason for hosting events
0:11:27 - Events for user groups
0:15:47 - Community and Conference
0:20:45 - Investing to Build Community
Why host an event?
"Like, what is the whole reason why somebody would want to actually meet you as an organizer or meet other people in your community. What is that draw that’s gonna bring them there? Because if you can't identify what that is, then you can't really build something around that. It's so funny because I run into this time and time again where people kind of think that a conference is the next natural step for whatever it is they're doing, maybe their marketing plan, maybe it's their business growth, whatever that is. But they haven't really stopped to think about why they want to do it in the first place. And so I started asking those questions and they're like, ‘Well, I don't know.’”
Events for user groups
"So let's say you have this software tool, you have a broad user base. We see this from big tech companies all the way down the little ones. There's usually some sort of event convened around a product launch, new features, things like that. But the intent beyond that is not necessarily to sell directly what they’re announcing. It’s actually to help the community learn and understand what's coming, to give them the tools they need to continue using it and to get them excited, to help them become advocates for your products."
Community and Conference
"And Notion's a great example because there are people that advocate for Notion and don't work for them. They're just super fans. People have websites about the things they've made and they're super excited about it. I don't know if they've done a conference, but there's still a Notion community out there. So if you're coming in and saying, I want to host a conference, but there's no community to present that to, that’s not the right choice. I think that's one the keys; you're not building a community in order to host a conference. And you're not hosting a conference in order to build a community. The two go hand in hand. You cannot have a conference without a community and a community does not galvanize purely around a conference. There has to be something else there."
Investing to Build Community
"I think a conversation we have time and time again with first time conference organizers is what are your budget goals? And time and time again, they'll say, ‘I wanna break even’. To me that says, ‘I don't wanna put any skin in the game’. Or it's like, ‘I just want money and I think that this is a product that I can get money out of’. Like, a get rich quick type of thing. That's not how it works. So I usually counter with, ‘And if we're not able to break even, how much are you willing to invest? If we end up in the hole, what's your limit?’ And if that amount is anything less than fifty thousand dollars I would seriously warn them to reconsider. Because when you're starting something like this, you have to invest in your community.”
Next episode: Telling your audience a compelling story
Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated by Podium.page using AI and has only been lightly edited to remove duplicate words.
0:00:09
Hi everyone. And welcome to the kick ass conferences talk show. I'm Nessa Jimenez. I'm the operations manager for Kickass Conferences. And I'm Isaac Watson Executive Producer. Conferences. And thanks for joining us.
0:00:23
So today's topic, we're gonna start with, I think, the very basics, the very essential. Today's topic is, why should she host the conference? And that's a great question. So why don't we jump right into it? I guess let's go first into what are your general thoughts of, , why host the conference? Why an event?
0:00:45
I think the why question is always a good place to start for an individual who's thinking about it. , why do you really want to bring people together into an environment into an experience. A lot of people who organize communities or are leaders in a particular space have the idea of bringing together their audience under some sort of shared, you know, theme or purpose as a way to to kind of develop those relationships and take them a little bit deeper and have something kind of intense even. Mhmm. And and and do something new and different than just, you know, or a newsletter or things like that. Yeah. So that's a good place to start. , the purpose of the purpose. So why so why do it? It's like, okay. So what's the reason for it? Right? , why? I guess you didn't even say, , what's the message? Or what are you trying to get out there? Right? Yeah. Exactly. , what is the whole reason why somebody would want to actually meet you as an organizer or meet other people in your community. What does that draw? Gonna bring them there.
0:02:04
Because if you can't identify what that is, then you can't really build something around that. Yeah. And it's something you've seen before. Right? Where people wanted to in effect, and then you asked them, okay, why? And there's this moment where they're like, oh, , I haven't really thought of it. Right? Kinda sorta have an idea, but I'm not sure. Yeah.
0:02:24
It's so funny because I run into this time and time again where people kind of think that a conference is the next natural step for, you know, whatever it is they're doing, but it's their marketing plan, maybe it's their business growth, whatever that is. But they haven't really stopped to think about why they do it in the first place or question that. And so I started asking those questions and they're like, well, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So if you don't know that reason, then it can be challenging to move forward from there. Yeah. And because my competitor did it. , that's not a good reason. Right. That's never good. monkey see monkey do. That doesn't work. Especially with, because you don't know what your competition's reasoning is behind anything. Right? , okay. They're doing it and it seems cool, but what's more important is , okay, what do we need to get from this? Right. Right.
0:03:24
And I think that in some cases, you don't, you also don't know what your competition has done to get there. Yeah. You know, what groundwork have they laid? Because, you know, if conferences from our perspective are very community forward. And that community could be, you know, a group of users of your product. The community could be an audience around a shared interest around a movement to cause whatever that is. There's a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid in order to convince that community that the next step is to gather together in an event format. And that groundwork is often ignored. And if you , you can try and host a conference if you want -- Right. -- without doing that. But you're that's an uphill battle because you have to do all of the groundwork and then also market the conference on top of that. Yeah. And you're already starting at a disadvantage. , instead of starting at zero, you're at negative ten. It's , don't do yourself a favor. Right? , don't -- Yeah. -- don't make it hard mode. Right. From the beginning. Correct. Yeah. So why don't we get into that then of, , the different kinds of reasons that someone could wanna host a conference.
0:04:44
I think that breaking it down could make it very clear. What are the different kinds of categories that we tend to find people fall into? Sure. I think that there are I. I don't know how many that are off the top of my head, but there are some common ones that our clients tend to come forward with. One, I mentioned this already, the user group. Mhmm. You know, if you build a software product or an app or a tool of some sort or a system that has a lot of users generated around it. That group of users can often form a community, especially if there's an open forum, if there's a training process, things like that.
0:05:33
I I think if I wanted to give some concrete examples, I think of people who use Notion. For example, notion is a very very robust tool, a database tool that a lot of people use and there are a lot of different ways to use and you have people who have started, you know, training other people on how to use it. You have a template community, you know, experts and all that kind of stuff. That's kind of a ripe community connection that -- Mhmm. -- that or that's a community that's ripe for a conference type of connection. Another example would be something more cause oriented. So you have, you know, maybe a community of people, a grassroots group focused on pushing for change within a particular industry or within a particular social justice.
0:06:27
So just this. Yeah. Of course. It's racism. All that kind of stuff. Yes. All of that kind of stuff. Those those are the types of shared interest in causes that are really that are really valuable and important to the community. And so hosting a conference centered around that can be a great way to bring those people together to contribute to either problem solving or leadership or sharing their own expertise or their own experiences in a way that helps move that cause or that that interest forward more quickly than just having conversations about it. Yeah. It's advocacy. Right. Yep. And that even with these two, , I can already identify the different types of people. , in a user group, for example, Notion. There are people that identify themselves as fans of Notion. Right? Yeah. But for the cause oriented, you wouldn't say I'm a fan of anti racism. Right? , no. I'm I'm an activist. I'm an advocate. I'm an ally. Right? So fighting for anti racism. Exactly. So I think that helps as well talking about, , okay, who are the people that are going to the thing? Right. Yes. If it's a fan, it's probably not the cause. Right? Right. Yes.
0:07:48
How do you describe your community members? I think that's a good place to start. The other kind of category that I was thinking of was more professional development oriented. So we see community who gather together out of a sense of mentorship, out of a sense of kind of industry support where having a conference around a particular whether that's emerging professionals in a particular field or you may have a, you know, a subset of the design industry, for example, that comes together to talk about the things that they do at work and how they do that. So that kind of professional development or industry based audience or community is also a good example of a type of community that would say is different than a user group or a cause oriented community or an advocacy group where you can still hold a conference around that particular industry in a way that's beneficial to them. Mhmm.
0:09:00
And you can even talk about education. When people think of conferences, that's kind of the stereotype, this last group of what people think of. I have to go because I have to get education credits. Right? Mhmm. , I have to because the law says I need to go to x amount every year Yeah. So that's definitely you're more likely to go there for professional networking and, , What's the word? Certifications, things like that. So that's more of a student, coworker, education type, thing? Yes. Cool.
0:09:38
So we've already talked a little bit, why? So to some extent, you've talked about, , purpose. Right? , you have a reason. There's a message. There's something you wanna get out there. There's something you wanna speak of. Are there any other types that you would wanna mention? Because I'm thinking about products. , what if you have something to So Right. Yeah.
0:10:02
I think that sales when you think about organizing something like this. They're , you have to think about what your goals are. , what oh, what's the whole point of , what do you hope to achieve by doing this. And sales could certainly be part of that. Mhmm. But I feel pretty strongly that if your sole purpose is to pitch who's attending on buying your latest, greatest thing or somehow giving you more money, then that's going to come across really disingenuous. It's gonna be very transparent for the people attending, , oh, this is just a sales pitch. Might as well be going to, you know, a free webinar where you get pitched on buying the book and the training program in the end. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I wish that those had gone away in the eighties and nineties, but they have not. So don't do that. But Time Sayers. That's another one. Timeshare. Right. No one actually wants to go to the thing to learn about timeshare. They just want a free lunch. Yeah. So don't do that.
0:11:18
However, I think that there is a valid place for marketing from a more indirect standpoint. Mhmm. Let's go back to the user group example. So let's say you have this software tool, you have a broad user base, we see this from big tech companies all the way down the little ones. Mhmm. There's usually some sort of event convened around a product launch, new features, things like that.
0:11:47
But the intent beyond that is not necessarily to sell directly what they are what they are announcing, it is to help the community learn and understand from what's coming to give them the tools they need to continue using it and to get them excited and to help them become advocates for your products more than give us more money. Yeah. Yeah. An example of that would be AdobeMax, they've announced this year. They did it last year online. Yeah.
0:12:23
And it's all done with Adobe. There's Adobe printing everywhere, but they're not literally saying , buy it from me. Right. Right. They don't, you know, send you a follow-up email at the end and say so. You wanna renew your creative cloud. Yeah. You should Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
0:12:38
About how it works. It's they're there to say, hey, look at all this exciting stuff we've done. We wanna teach you how powerful it is, how you can use it. We wanna show off some really fantastic creative projects, bring these artists to the stage, all that kind of stuff to support the product that they sell, but without literally selling it to you as part of the event. And that works so much better than doing, , the hard pitch of, , buy my stuff. It's it's it's yeah. It doesn't work. Why do people keep doing it? Exactly. You know?
0:13:13
I mean, I think some some of it is ego and and that's not to say that that all ego is bad, but those people who are so, you know, full of themselves or their business tend to think that, you know, that people are gonna be clamoring for what's new and what's next and that this is the perfect opportunity to capture their attention and to, you know, keep your business running out of it. And I think if you step back and remove yourself from it. And even, to some extent, remove your product from it or your service and say, oh, what does this hack do that this community actually needs? I think you're gonna be far better off because then you can think about, okay, you know, oh, let's go back to the Notion users. Example. These people need to know how to better use the tool. What are the , there are some brilliant people that have done some incredible things with our software. Let's show that off. Let's showcase community members and what they have done to help force the possibilities and the robustness of what we've created rather than saying, go tell five of your friends that we should that they should come and, you know, It's fine now. I'm trying. Yeah. Exactly. And you're already so you already started answering my next question because I wanted to flip it over and ask , okay.
0:14:34
One might not host a conference. And you've already mentioned it too, so the first one is sales. , if you're just trying to sell your stuff, maybe not the best choice. And the second is ego where it's all about me and how cool I am and check me out. Any other big reasons that we've told people , it might not be right for you.
0:14:57
Some of them are even as simple as logistical timelines. Yeah. , you cannot throw a first time conference together in three weeks. Or three months even, you know, it takes a lot longer to do that going back to what we were talking about at the beginning. If you haven't laid that community groundwork, you should probably think about doing that first. Yeah. Because if you don't, if you don't have a community that's primed to attend something like this, then you have to then go out and find that community. Find that community. Exactly. Okay. And then get them to attend. Yeah. And then convince them to join. And it's , yeah. You're trying to do two years of work in two months. So it's not it's not great. It's not the smartest thing.
0:15:47
And Notion's a great example because There are people that advocate for Notion and they don't work for them. They're just super fans. People have websites about the things they've made and they're, , you know, super excited about it. So if you take away the I told you for if Adobe doesn't see the conference, there's still the Adobe community. With Notion, there's I don't know if they've done the conference, but there's still a notion community out there. Right. Right.
0:16:20
So if you're coming in and saying, I want to conference, but there's no community to present that too. Yeah. Not the right choice. So I think that's one the keys is you're not building a community in order to host a conference. Mhmm. Mhmm.
0:16:35
And you're not hosting a conference in order to build a community. The two go hand in hand. You cannot have a conference without a community and a community that does not galvanize around purely a conference. There has to be something else there. And logistics also, I mean, budget. , that's just another hard fact of life. , we don't have the money for it. You don't have any type of idea of what goes into it in terms of money. That's another reason.
0:17:08
A pretty thought about it, maybe my business can't sustain this yet. Can you tell us more about that side of it? Yeah. I think that it's in a lot of ways, I I I tell people that running a conference or organizing a conference is very much like running an entirely different business from what you currently have. You're setting up something from scratch. It's gonna require some investment even if you go super DIY with it and, you know, put in the elbow grease and the sweat equity, it's gonna take either a significant investment of time or a significant investment of money. So you have to have a really good understanding of how much It may seem a little weird, but, , what is an individual member of your community worth to you in dollars?
0:18:02
And how much do you want to bring? , how much would you pay them to come and attend your conference? Think about it. Let's just say. And maybe that's a little weird. But if you don't, if you don't have a way of identifying, , how valuable your community is to you, in terms of your company's bottom line -- Mhmm.
0:18:22
-- then it's gonna be really hard to craft something and justify the expenses that come with running an event. And, you know, we're still dealing with pandemic times right now, but at some point, we're gonna get back to gathering in person. And when you do so, there's a lot of costs at play, whether that's a venue catering AV costs, all that kind of stuff can be a lot. We know, our general rule of thumb for the projects that we work on is that if you wanna gather a, you know, a hundred or a hundred and fifty people together, you should start thinking in terms of a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars ahead. And that adds up really, really, really quickly when it comes to producing the event. And I think the other piece of that is you don't want to put a direct ROI metric on the attendance of your conversation.
0:19:23
This goes back to the sales conversation where the conference is about deepening the connection you have here with your community and allowing them to deepen the connections with other community members. It's not about delivering dollars to your bank account. Mhmm. And so you have to, in a lot of ways, be willing to, you know, take the hit, so to speak -- Mhmm. -- finances if you wanna make this successful. And if you're willing to accept that risk, there are ways to offset it through ticket sales and sponsorships and things like that. But if you're not willing to lose everything that you're going to invest into the events throughout the process, especially as the first time, then you should probably reconsider. Mhmm. Yeah. Especially going into the first year, you mentioned earlier, it's you're creating a new brand within your business. And businesses don't you know, there's a loss at the beginning. Right? Until you start to build that profit. So going into it realistically, , okay, I'm gonna do this conference this year. I'm probably gonna lose money. Right? Yeah. I'm probably not gonna make a profit. But can I sustain that? And do I wanna keep this going? Right. Yeah. Yeah.
0:20:45
I think a conversation we have time and time again with first time conference organizers is, you know, how are your budget goals? And time and time again, they'll say, well, I wanna break even -- Mhmm. -- which -- Mhmm. -- to me says, I don't wanna put any skin in the game. Yeah. Or to me, it's , okay, I just want money and I think that this is a product that I can get money out of, , a get rich quick type of thing. And it's , no. That's not how it works. Yes. Yeah. So I usually counter with, okay, And if we're not able to break even how much are you willing to invest -- Mhmm. -- we end up in the hall, what's your limit? And if that amount is, you know, anything less than fifty thousand dollars or something like that. Mhmm.
0:21:29
I would seriously warn them to reconsider because it's when you're starting something like this, you have to invest in your community. Otherwise, it's gonna show that you're just trying to escape by and and go through the motions. Yeah. And it's not enough to say I wanna make money, which is the whole topic of this episode. Right? , why do you wanna do it? If it's just for money, you might have a place to make money. Let's be honest. Yes. Right? But that would be I guarantee you would be better off developing a new feature or a new service package or a new product or whatever that is, you would end up investing less in that and long launching it and making more money than you would off a conference. Conferences don't make money. Cool. Okay.
0:22:20
So let's with the last couple of minutes we have, let's try to wrap this up in a bow. Right? Some bullet points. Yeah. So why would you host a conference? So we already talked about, , purpose. Right? You wanna share a message? What else? You wanna share a message, you wanna bring a community together around a shared purpose and deepen the connection with them.
0:22:46
Some of the other reasons would be to further progress toward a cause of conferences. One thing about bringing communities together like this is that you get amazing group think -- Mhmm. -- and the energy that develops out of these groups is really, really palpable and you and it's really powerful. So if you wanna , go to the next level or make progress on something, especially if you're working on advocacy or any kind of cause worthy of time, that's a great way to do it. So that way. Okay. So thank you so much, Isaac, for that. I hope everyone found this conversation helpful. You can find us at kickassconf.com. All of our links are there, all on the web. We also published blog posts via LinkedIn, which I will also be sharing the links everywhere. And, yeah, we'll see you next time, everyone. Bye. Awesome. Thanks for joining us.