Is the Modern Conference Becoming Obsolete?
As more businesses become conscious of the environmental implications of using print media in their advertising, some are becoming reluctant to use it in their on-going campaigns. However, research shows even in our digital age, “hard copy” versions of your materials are still crucial to success, so many companies have adopted policies to create a more common sense approach to designing their print advertising campaigns.
Their answer was to take your radical new approach and put together a conference that was “100% volunteer, 98% free and open (one event had tickets it went to charity).”
Hyde had become frustrated and trying to attend conferences that would not even talk to him unless he paid cash up front to help defray the cost of “speakers wouldn’t attend if they were not speaking, to a conference that wouldn’t exist if it were not getting paid.” He decided that there must be a better way, and wanted to take advantage of the dynamic that happens when people meet face to face and determined that this could be done without insisting on huge attendance fees.
Not only was it a smashing success, but his ability to host 55 events and five days would have made even a hardcore professional conference organizer blanch, but using the newest in conference planning technology like Plancast [http://plancast.com/] for their RSVP system, were able to make it work with only four cash sponsors and a couple of other companies picking up the tab for the events.
All in all, the entire event hosted 33,000 people, sold 37,000 beers and served 450 meals all for less than what a single sponsorship cost at most modern conferences.
Hyde admits that he was inspired by the success of local community events like Austin South By Southwest (SXSW) yearly festival and wants to see such models expanded to help small businesses and local start-up groups.
To learn more about the success of Boulder Start-up Week, check out Andrew Hyde’s blog to find more details about how to have bootstrappers’ enthusiasm drive a conference instead of the almighty dollar.
