{"id":3839,"date":"2015-07-31T11:58:32","date_gmt":"2015-07-31T18:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2015-07-31T14:18:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-31T21:18:27","slug":"how-to-organize-a-conference-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/entrepreneurship\/how-to-organize-a-conference-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Organize a Conference – Lessons from SHIFT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drawing from first-hand experience, one of the\u00a0founders of the SHIFT\u00a0Conference<\/a><\/span> shares advice on\u00a0how to organize a conference<\/em><\/p>\n

Last month we organized a very successful startup conference in Southeastern Europe, more precisely in Split, Croatia. It was attended by 1200+ startupers, IT geeks, investors, and media, and as far as we know, it\u2019s the biggest startup event in the region (keeping in mind that the Pioneers Festival<\/a> in Vienna belongs to Western Europe).<\/p>\n

In this post, I will share lessons we learned along the way, in the hopes of showing others how to organize a conference.<\/h3>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Why did we organize the conference?<\/h2>\n

Probably the most common question we get asked is “why did you do it?” Why invest all that time and energy to have a startup conference in your town?<\/p>\n

I’ll try to explain our motivation for the conference\u00a0in a few points …<\/p>\n

1. To bring a touch of Silicon Valley to\u00a0Southeastern Europe<\/h3>\n

Mike Butcher, Editor-at-Large of TechCrunch<\/a>, sent a message a few years ago as a speaker at the first\u00a0SHIFT Conference:<\/p>\n

“Everybody\u2019s trying to build the new Silicon Valley around the world. But they act like they don\u2019t know that Silicon Valley is a unique mashup of talent, market, money, and the American mindset. It\u2019s the ecosystem that\u2019s hard to replicate anywhere in the world, and everybody is still trying to do that. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

“So, stop building new Silicon Valleys. Instead, start building \u201cSilicon Bridges\u201d that will connect your region with Silicon Valley. Conferences like SHIFT are Silicon Bridges that can bring the best values from the Valley to your region.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Following Butcher’s advice, the SHIFT Conference is a way to create our own\u00a0\u201cSilicon Bridge,\u201d connecting our region of Southeastern Europe with the Valley!<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

2. To build an ecosystem<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s be honest, Eastern Europe as a region is not as developed as Western Europe, although it\u2019s trying hard to catch up.<\/p>\n

IT as an industry is usually strong in regions with developed economies because the economy generates requirements for various IT solutions that can improve business. The IT startup industry is strong in regions where you have a mixture of business-generated needs (market), talented IT experts (with ideas), and money that can support startup business growth (funding).<\/p>\n

These three components, along with infrastructure, together create a\u00a0strong startup ecosystem. Unfortunately, Eastern Europe\u00a0as a region lacks some of them. We have talented experts but\u00a0are missing some real business problems to solve because\u00a0business in our neighborhood is still under development.<\/p>\n

So you might\u00a0say that we’re lacking breakthrough ideas, and money that can support these ideas is definitely missing (the first low-volume VC funds will be raised this year in Croatia, and regional VC funds are usually 10-20M EUR in volume).<\/p>\n

Given that background,\u00a0the SHIFT conference is our contribution to building our local ecosystem and promoting our region as being IT-capable. This results in\u00a0more business for local companies.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

What are the\u00a0challenges of organizing a conference?\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n

Finding speakers<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0first challenge was\u00a0to find top speakers and motivate them to come and talk at our conference. The math is simple \u2014 top speakers will attract more people to attend and more companies to sponsor.<\/p>\n

One thing that’s interesting to note is that a startup conference is essentially a startup itself and, just like with any startup, you need to build a solid\u00a0team<\/a> that will be able to execute.<\/p>\n

Our story began in\u00a02011 when my fellow conference founders and I all had our own startups in the region, which was lacking\u00a0a real ecosystem. We traveled around the world pitching our startups, including attending\u00a0many startup events from Beijing to San Francisco\u00a0and began building up a large network.<\/p>\n

One of our startups had just failed, but Ivan Burazin<\/a>\u00a0was involved in another startup called Codeanywhere<\/a> that had just been\u00a0funded through a\u00a0small angel round. To gain visibility on the VC scene, Ivan organized the Startup Live event in Split for about 100 attendees and began reaching out to\u00a0potential speakers.<\/p>\n

It was very hard to attract top-tier speakers at that time as it was prior to building our name and reputation. And who would attend a startup event with a target audience of 100-150 people?<\/p>\n

Ivan succeed somehow, but his dreams grew even bigger and, to catch up with big dreams, you need a bigger team.<\/p>\n

That’s how I came to join Ivan as a partner, and we founded the SHIFT Conference together with a few other partners and many volunteers. SHIFT was officially born in 2013, with a\u00a0prize fund for our\u00a0Startup Challenge of\u00a0$10,000 for first\u00a0place.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see from the partial list of speakers above, we have managed to recruit many\u00a0top-tier folks,\u00a0and all of them were attracted with the same story. We sold them on sun, sea, fun, and startups. After all, that was what\u00a0we had to offer!<\/p>\n

The success of the startup that won our first challenge, Babywatch (recently rebranded as Bellabeat<\/a>), was important for the future of the SHIFT conference and rising level of quality. Bellabeat won the $10,000 cash prize at our event, also\u00a0won first place at Pioneers Festival that year, and ended up being accepted\u00a0to Y Combinator.<\/p>\n

Spending time in YC resulted in\u00a0excellent contacts, so the Bellabeat founders decided to give something back. They connected us with YC mentors, and since Bellabeat was a top startup at YC Demo Day, their reputation helped us convince Justin Kan<\/a> (YC, Twitch, Justin TV) to come speak at SHIFT.<\/p>\n

Once Kan was on board, others soon\u00a0followed, and we were able to land\u00a0speakers from\u00a0TechCrunch, Zynga, Mashable, The Next Web, TechStars, StartX, 500 Startups, GitHub, Reddit, and more.<\/p>\n

It turns out that startup founders\u00a0who succeed\u00a0are very open to offering\u00a0help to the startup newbies; whether\u00a0they’ve\u00a0just sold their\u00a0startup to Amazon for $970 million\u00a0or\u00a0founded GitHub, they\u2019re often willing to come and share their story and advice\u00a0with the crowd.<\/p>\n

Another factor\u00a0that was pretty helpful for us in building contacts with speakers was the time that Ivan\u2019s startup Codeanywhere spent\u00a0in the TechStars Boston program. It opened so many new doors for us.<\/p>\n

And of course, the process\u00a0gets easier once you’ve run the conference for a few years as word of mouth\u00a0spreads from past speakers and attendees.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Event promotion<\/h3>\n

Promoting an event of this scale in a region where “startup” is just becoming a new buzzword is not easy.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, having a great lineup of\u00a0speakers gives you credibility that will attract relevant media attention. And where there is media, there are local politicians, too.<\/p>\n

In its\u00a0second year, the SHIFT Conference was opened by the president of Croatia and attended by many representatives of the national and local governments. That’s a critical step here to start building the startup ecosystem because governments can help to create the right\u00a0climate and build infrastructure.<\/p>\n

And of course, event promotion requires a lot of manual work. So it was important to recruit\u00a0volunteers for data mining and heavy social media hustling, plus contacting startups\u00a0and\u00a0media.<\/p>\n

But don’t leave it all to volunteers \u2014 hiring a decent PR manager who\u00a0can write press releases and call upon\u00a0his or her network is critical.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Conference nightlife<\/h3>\n

Another challenge is providing fun nightlife activities, which are an important part of networking and the conference as a whole. We wanted to\u00a0create a party atmosphere that would be remembered by all attendees and would\u00a0differ from standard (read:\u00a0boring) IT conference parties.<\/p>\n

We decided to\u00a0hire a dedicated event manager to be in charge of all\u00a0conference after-hours\u00a0and\u00a0tasked him to create a startup-sexy atmosphere.<\/p>\n

To be honest, it wasn\u2019t that hard to achieve in Split, Croatia, with our party-oriented state of mind. And having Johnnie Walker\u00a0and local beer and wine makers as sponsors also helped to warm up the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Finding sponsors and covering costs<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s get one thing straight \u2014 a\u00a0conference\u00a0costs\u00a0money.<\/p>\n

You can have tons of\u00a0positive energy and goodwill to organize an event, but if you don\u2019t have money to pay for the venue, accommodations for speakers, plane tickets, production, staff, food and drinks, and all other costs involved with a startup conference (like cash prizes),\u00a0you just can\u2019t make it happen.<\/p>\n

Selling tickets to the conference can provide\u00a0a\u00a0decent revenue stream but will barely be enough to cover the costs for the first few years. That\u2019s why you need to have good sponsors.<\/p>\n

But how do you\u00a0explain the benefits of financing a startup conference to potential\u00a0sponsors? You should be brave, honest, and positive and know that big companies have budgets to promote\u00a0their brand at\u00a0similar events.<\/p>\n

Some companies\u00a0have an interest in specific industries covered by startups, some have a general interest in technology, some will be looking to recruit talented folks, and others will just be seeking\u00a0mass visibility.<\/p>\n

If you are approaching a telecom or software company, you should pitch them with an innovative technology-based story, whereas\u00a0if you are seeking sponsors from a company like Vine, you should tell company executives\u00a0that there will be plenty of businesspeople in attendance who love their product.<\/p>\n

Banks are easily convinced if you tell them that startups and SME\u2019s might open business accounts in their banks, and local governments love hearing positive stories about new jobs that will be created by successful startup companies.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember: volunteers are crucial!<\/h3>\n

Organizing an event for 1200+ attendees is impossible without volunteers, including\u00a0not just their hard work but also all of that positive energy they tend to bring. We had 30+ volunteers this year, and they all did an excellent\u00a0job!<\/p>\n

Volunteers are usually pretty easy to find at local universities. Lots of students are looking for opportunities to get inside\u00a0the business world and network with potential employers or to get some experience to improve\u00a0their resumes.<\/p>\n

The conference ends up\u00a0serving as\u00a0a\u00a0hiring event as well, as every year a few of the volunteers are hired by our companies after the conference.<\/p>\n

Closing Thoughts<\/h2>\n

Hopefully hearing my story and lessons learned will help others interested in learning how to organize a conference.<\/p>\n

Wondering\u00a0what happened to the Bellabeat team? They’ve raised\u00a0$4.5 million so far and recently launched a new product called Leaf that\u00a0sold out within a few days. And the SHIFT 2014 first-place\u00a0winners, Oradian<\/a>, also won the 2014 Pioneers Festival and have raised an\u00a0undisclosed round of seed funding.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile my own\u00a0company,\u00a0Profico<\/a>, is gaining lots of traction and good leads from exposure at the conference.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, we’ve touched and inspired many entrepreneurs, helped other companies, and have benefited our own. We can call it multi-win situation, and it has been an\u00a0awesome experience that we definitely plan to continue in the future!<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading and feel free to contact me with any questions on how to organize a conference. And\u00a0when in Split,\u00a0stop by and let\u2019s grab a beer or two. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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