The recipe to getting attendees to your open source events Karen Vuong Principal Open Source Program Manager - Open Source Solutions @kar3nv [email protected]
The Recipe to Getting Attendees to Your Open Source Events
Aug 07, 2015
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The recipe to getting
attendees to your open
source events
Karen Vuong
Principal Open Source Program Manager -
Open Source Solutions
@kar3nv
About me
• Open Source Program Manager
• Citrix Open Source Business Office
• Apache CloudStack committer
• Founder/Organizer of CloudStack Silicon Valley User Group
• Helps organize CloudStack Collaboration Conferences and CloudStack Days.
• Fun facts: Bungee jumping, riding my motorcycle and backpacking in California
How many of you contribute
to an open source project?
Contributing to an Open Source
Project for Non-Developers
• Code is the heart of any open source project, but don’t think that writing code is the only way to contribute.
• Projects need contributions from everyone of all skills and levels of expertise.
• Open-source projects suffer from a lack of marketing awareness. You can help open-source projects get more exposure.
Ways to Contribute to an Open Source
Project without Being a Coding Genius
• Find an open source project that is interesting to you
• Start listening – mailing lists, blogs, IRC channel
• Work with Tickets – commenting on a bug
• Work with Documentation – how-to examples
• Work with Community – answer a question, write blog posts, improve a website, or help organize meetups and conferences
Open Source Meetups and
Conferences –why?
• Brings people with a common interest together to share that passion
• Brings developers, users, contributors and people who are interested in the project together
• Face-to-face interaction!
• Share, learn and meet eachother
agenda• Two common types of in-person open source events
• 3-step process: • Setup
• Promote (emphasis on this)
• What to do after the events
Setup Promote After the event
Two Common Types of Open Source
Events
Open Source Meetups Open Source Conferences
1,2,3,4,5,6…7(?)
What happened?
• There were two other open source cloud meetups going on at the same exact time
• We capped the attendee list at the maximum room capacity
• We did not do anything to promote the meetup
• We did not send reminders to attendees
Let’s not have this happen again
Setup Promote After the event
Setting Up your Meetup Group
Meetup Groups• Heard of meetup.com? Been? Organize? Want to?
• Tips and best practices for setting it up, promoting, and what to do after
• Yes, there are steps that you can follow - It’s SIMPLE
• I’ve made it even more SIMPLE with checklists!
Setup Checklist for Your Meetups
Setting Up your Meetup GroupIf you haven’t done so already, create a meetup group!
Even meetup.com says “you don’t need to be an expert to organize an awesome meetup.”
*Add 15 topics. If you add “open source”
People who search for topics, such as “open
source” will come across your meetup group.
Setting Up your Meetup Group:
First meetup
• First meetup: Start with a beginner’s talk “Intro to …”
• Send out a call for speakers note:• Reach out to the developers and users mailing lists
• Reach out to meetup group members
• Reach out to your own contacts
Setting Up your Meetup :
date & time
• Select a date/time for your meetup
• Check meetup.com’s calendar of meetups in your area first for conflicting dates
• Avoid Mondays/Fridays
Setting Up your Meetup:
venue
• Find a Venue
• Reach out to your contacts and ask if they can offer a space for your meetup
• They said YES? Go and check out the space (no surprises)
• Test out the speakers, mic, projector (especially if you are going to live stream)
• Remember to hit “record”
Setting Up your Meetup:
announce
• Now you’re all set!
• Announce the meetup to your members
• Provide a map and parking information
Setting Up your Meetup:
free event = no shows
It’s a free event – expect a
30% - 50% no show rate
Don’t take it personally
many things get in the way…
Setting Up your
Meetup: The big day
• The day of your meetup:• Arrive about 45 minutes to 1 hour early
• Registration table
• Name badges
• Directional signage
• Beer & Food
• Speakers prepare
Attendance
• How am I going to get people together?
• Put yourself in their shoes!
Promoting your meetup
Setup Promote After the event
Promo ChecklistCHECKLIST
Social media channels (the project’s LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) ✓
Announce to your meetup group members
✓
Post your meetup on event websites and event calendars ✓
Share a Blurb with meetup group organizers ✓
Email Blasts
✓
Tweet pictures during the meetup ✓
Promote your Meetup:
social media
• Social media channels:• The project’s LinkedIn page, Twitter, Facebook
• Twitter – schedule tweets (use Hootsuite), create click-to-tweets and ask the community to tweet
• Facebook – post statuses (use Hootsuite)
• LinkedIn – post discussions in the Open Source Groups and the project’s LinkedIn page
Promote your Meetup:
Announce & Remind
• Announce to your meetup group members:• Email members in your meetup group
• Don’t be afraid to send reminders!
• Send reminders 7, 2, 1, and 0 days before the meetup reminding RSVPs of the meetup.
Promote your Meetup:
Event websites
• Post your meetup on event websites and event calendars:• opensource.com
• eventbrite.com
• lanyrd.com
• eventful.com
Promote your Meetup: blurbs
• Write up a blurb that other meetup group organizers in the area can share with their members
This meetup will beAWESOME!
#MyAwesomeMeetUp
Example:
This is a partner announcement from the CloudStack Silicon Valley User Meetup group. It might
be very interesting for many of you:
____
Dear Community,
It's my pleasure to announce that our next meetup will be around Docker, Kubernetes, CoreOS
and Big Data in Apache CloudStack! Our main speaker of the evening will be Sebastien
Goasguen. He is currently a Senior Open Source Solutions Architect at Citrix, where he works
primarily on the Apache CloudStack project, helping to develop the CloudStack ecosystem.
Sebastien is a project management committee member (PMC) of CloudStack and Apache
libcloud and a member of the Apache Software Foundation.
RSVP NOW: http://www.meetup.com/CloudStack-Silicon-Valley-User-Group/
Promote your Meetup:
Email Blasts
Tweet pictures during the
meetup!
You’re done with the meetup!
Celebrate!
Now what?
After the meetup
Setup Promote After the event
After the Meetup Checklist
Good to see you!
Share Links to Slides and Videos
Upload Pictures
Write a Recap Blog Post
Tweets
• Create tweets with a link to the video or slides and tweet them out from the project’s Twitter page.
• Ask others in the community to tweet (create click-to-tweets)
Be Consistent and Poll!
• Keep a consistent schedule – every 1.5 months is good.
• Create a poll and ask members which topics they are interested in (make a list of 4 or so)
• Poll only takes 30 seconds!
Open source conferences
It is a larger event, but you can
apply the same practices!
Setup Promote After the event
Setting Up your conference
Setup Checklist for your
Conference
Set your goals ✓
Select a date for your conference ✓
Look at Open Source Event Calendars ✓
Consider the option to co-locate with other conferences✓
Logistics and Volunteers ✓
Set your Goals for the
Conference
• List out your wants!
• I want three tracks – one for developers, one for users, and one for building community.
• I want to have 300 attendees.
• I want to raise $30,000 in sponsorship money
• Remember: commit to the basics first, then build out the conference as you get more sponsors
Setting up an Open Source
Conference: Dates• Select a date for your conference
• Look at open source event calendars:• Opensource.com
• O’Reilly Media’s Big Conference List: http://oreilly-events.herokuapp.com/
• Lanyrd.com
Location, Location, Location!
• Consider the option to co-locate with other conferences
Setting up an Open Source
Conference: Logistics• Website
• Call for Proposals
• Registration
• Budget
• Sponsors
• Giveaways
• Evening events
• Conference Twitter Page
• Meeting rooms
• Number of breakout sessions
• Send out a call for volunteers to the mailing lists, list it on the conference website, make it known that the conference is open to the community.
• Use Trello.com to organize tasks and the todo list
Promoting your conference
Setup Promote After the event
Promoting your Conference Checklist✓
Post conference on event websites and event calendars ✓
Social media (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin) ✓
Encourage blog posts by partners/integrators/sponsors ✓
Email Blasts ✓
Project’s mailing lists ✓
Outreach to Meetup Groups ✓
Ask speakers to share a slide at presentations ✓
Student discounts ✓
Advertising ✓
Press ✓
Promoting your Conference:
Event Calendars & websites
• Post conference on event websites and event calendars• opensource.com
• eventbrite.com
• lanyrd.com (make sure to add topics)
• eventful.com
Promoting your Conference:
Social Media
“Save the date! CloudStack Days Seattle will be on August 20 clds.co/1FvPyo9”
“Call for Sponsors! Support the CloudStack community and help make CloudStack Days happen clds.co/1FvPyo9”
“The agenda is NOW live for CloudStack Days Dublin! Check out the talks clds.co/1FvPyo9 ”
“Submit your proposal for
CloudStack Days Tokyo
today! The deadline is May
10 clds.co/1FvPy09
Promoting your Conference:
Social Media
Promoting your Conference :
Blog posts
• Encourage blog posts by community members, partners and sponsors
Promoting your Conference:
Email blasts
• Send out email blasts:
• Send an invitation to contacts that you have collected from open source expos
• Send invitations to submit talks or to register for the conference
• Send invitations to previous conference attendees/speakers (if this applies)
Promoting your Conference :
Mailing Lists
• If this applies, send out the CFP information and deadline reminders to the project’s mailing lists
Promoting your Conference:
Outreach to Meetup Groups
• Outreach to Meetup Groups
• Create a blurb for local meetup organizers with a discount code to the conference
• Ask them to share the blurb with their members
• If you have extra space at the conference, offer it to meetup groups
Promoting your Conference:
ask speakers to share
• Community members within the project who speak at various conferences, meetups or webinars
• Create a slide about the conference for speakers to share during their presentations
• Add a special discount code
Promoting your Conference :
Student discounts
• Create a discount code for students
Promoting Your Conference:
Advertising Space
• Purchase advertising space on relevant websites and on social media sites to reach new people
Promoting your Conference:
Press
• Create a press release announcing the event and send to media
• Line up media outlets as media partners for the event:
• Provide the media outlets with their logo on:
• Conference website
• Conference emails
• Conference signage
• Exchange for ad space on their sites and social media posts
After the conference
Setup Promote After the event
After the Conference
Checklist
✓
Announce the next conference dates✓
Send a follow-up email and quick survey✓
Publish Videos and Slides✓
Schedule tweets of videos✓
After the Conference:
Announce next dates
• Announce the next conference dates
• Include a link/information about the next conference in post-conference follow-up email
After the Conference:
follow-up email & Survey
• Send a follow-up email with a quick survey• Surveymonkey – mention that it takes 2 minutes, offer a raffle prize if
you can giveaway prizes!
• Feedback from attendees on content, schedule, format, etc.
After the Conference:
Publish Videos and Slides
• Publish videos and slides to the conference website/YouTube
After the Conference:
Schedule tweets
• Schedule tweets of videos from the project’s social media channels
Takeaways
• Make it easier on yourself and follow the 3-step process
• Use the Checklists!
Checklists are for you!
clds.co/oseventschecklists
QUESTIONS?
Thank you
@kar3nv
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/karenvuong399/the-
recipe-to-getting-attendees-to-your-open-source-events
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