How to Run a Conference with Benjamin Dunphy

A pandemic that completely shuts down the entire world economy within that industry, I don't I don't what do you call this? Is it a depression? give the event a sense of allure, with all that uncertainty,

Make sure making sure they're all valid. And and if there's places I can cut them down even 10%, that's significant. So read. FreshBooks would spot that for you through your reports and all that. So check it out. If you are a small business that needs to

to make your conference as well known as possible.

A sandwich that's been in the fridge for 3 days Yeah. And, like, a bag of chips. And they're cold as well because they're They freeze these lunches or whatever, and, they're awful. They're I usually then and then everybody says, oh, thanks. They throw it in their bag, and then they go and buy their own lunch. But It was amazing. And so you just, like, started your own catering company? Just Well, it didn't it wasn't just me, and I'm more the the rid. Sales and marketing and lead gen, like, arm of the company.

charges for some mugs from Russia that you bought, you wanna keep track of how you were reimbursed for that, you re You should probably reach for one of our sponsors to keep track of your finances, and I'm talking about FreshBooks. Wes, do you, you you have a personal anecdote to talk about FreshBooks with? Rid. Does it involve charges from Russia? Let's talk about expenses with FreshBooks. I think that's a good good lead in. So FreshBooks will hook up to your credit card, rid. And you can auto import your things right from your credit card. So you would see $2,000

that conferences really facilitate

with just 2. What are your thoughts on paying speakers?

which is great. It's a community conference run by 2 amazing with conferences have to convince So in my personal story, So I ordered I ordered a box of mugs. I'm not gonna call out the company who did it because They they made it right, so I'm not gonna give them bad press. But the 1st time it shipped, Yeah.

how inefficient Leads to confirmation that this is not coming back anytime soon because is crazy or is just, you know, selling snake oil because

Paying speakers,

maybe I shouldn't call it a specific company not to pick on Amazon. But if you If you have record profits Yeah. And you're running an event and you don't pay your speakers, may it probably doesn't look good for you. Yeah. Right. Because giving a talk is

rid. This goes, you know what? I really love this Reactathon mug you have. It's just like it's a it's not just a crappy mug. It's a nice mug, ridged. But you I used mine yesterday. You seem to go all out in the goodie bags and the boxes and whatever. And,

So for me as an independent organizer who does this for a living, I need to make a profit to, you know, pay my own bills.

as well and tie them together. But, yeah, to answer your question about speakers, it's really important, cross platform Flutter. Flutter. Right? Flutter. Flutter. Yeah. Seems really cool.

Yeah. I think you need to go to an event, and it's like, I need to go, like, like, on Zelda into the You're in Animal Crossing. Rid Yeah. You're in Animal Crossing. You're wearing your React t shirt that you painted on yourself. Yeah. Believe it or not, my character in Animal Crossing rid It wears a level up tutorials logo tee that I made. If I were to ever arrive at a online conference, I'd be wearing it. Very, very nice. Yeah. So

speakers specifically, what, 6 years or so since this booming economy, So I think the conference scene is done, one of the bridges Coming up to the San Francisco skyline, and there's Wes's voice and Scott's voice, and you guys just sounded awesome. And it was and you guys were like, oh, we're just figuring this out. And now you got This, like, amazing cadence going, it's amazing, Can literally cost

APIs

It's running into people that are like minded

Right? If your goal is hiring Right? It's around a specific theme. And so this leads into my second It's ridiculous. Coffee at a conference of, like, 500 people

to the in person events and catering businesses.

that much. Right. You probably see special deals here and there. But, again, Captivating to me. And it it just really, really I just fell in love with it. So I fell in love with the meeting scene in San Francisco. I fell in love with the knowledge transfer, and re My love of running these events and bringing these people together rid to approach speakers. And my philosophy is always that We actually postponed it before Now many sponsors many companies who sponsor events, cold calling people. You're not comfortable cold emailing people. Yeah. Either get someone to do that it comes from a passion of the of the subject matter capacity,

Rid If anything, go to this URL

Vertical integration gotta talk about our sponsors real quick. We're sponsored by Sanity, which is a structured content CMS, and FreshBooks, which is Cloud Accounting. We'll talk about them partway through the episode.

We need to, you know, stop this thing. We were like, okay. Yeah.

Your audience What's going on? And this goes back to to the transparency. Right? Okay. So you have all these expenses. Do we pay speakers?

I'm not saying you shouldn't pay speakers. I I just say that, like,

Yeah. Absolutely. That's a great question. So this this goes back to my point of knowing your target audience because your audience isn't just rid The people who buy tickets and come as attendees.

that helps to And I haven't really looked at budgeting, but I don't think things are going to reduce in cost when you're looking to make your 1st conference is to know who your target audience is. Re If you don't have a specific target audience by awareness.

you know? It was such a long time to get the original stickers off Of those things though, man, not fun.

at the Cityview of Metreon from catering companies. And literally, it's rid Like the bare minimum without breakfast, But then I really got into React.

One thing I hear a lot from rid People is when they're complaining about a conference, they say, you have to pay all your speakers tons of money and pay them for their time, and then you also have to have, like,

like, how am I gonna convince people, 1, that it's safe, It's insane.

how has that reaction changed, and and how do you see this space evolving?

get the jam and the Stack.

syntax. Oh, FreshBooks got a new logo.

A brand around Real World React It's the Wi Fi is sometimes The Wi Yeah. The Wi Fi is nuts.

for sponsors When it happens, you wanna have some place where where the speakers can come together and meet and just relax. And they've all worked rid on their talks while doing a full time job and taking care of their families and maybe the 20 other conferences that they're speaking at.

And that should raise a a flag too because you'd be able to filter for like, something I'll do every now and then is I'll I'll go through my top, like, rid. 20% of expenses, like, the really expensive ones, and then see, like, okay.

which was that 3 day event, I'd been talking with them for A number of months about running a Jamstack Conf.

you to sell sponsorships, re There's really 3 things when you hear people complaining, it's you just have to be was something like this on our radar? I would say no.

meeting scene. Right? You have a backup plan? there was this guy who comes up to us, Within a week or so, it just I'm sure your email is about to just blew up from people. Quickly. It escalated so quickly from, oh, there's no cases here to oh, there's 100. Oh, And it comes from a a passion of the events. Because after I graduated from Epocotus, I moved to San Francisco, which And so rid. I would organize workshops we've all just been coasting. Right? It's just been easy to find money. It's rid. Easy to to make sales. It's been easy we're looking at $200,000 it's not a good experience for the organizer, for the speakers, Rid. I need to make sure that the event itself But there wasn't like an introductory You know, completing, At an in person event, one of the main problems

with a super cold apple

On my on my bank account, and I'm like, what the heck? And it's from, like, Russia. Like, great. So I Probably through 2021. Unless something like You know, they're promoting themselves in their company. They're saying, you know, come and work for us and and and so on. But then just the transfer of knowledge, rid The sharing of knowledge, Yeah. Which was which was so amazing. Like, we didn't learn this until after that, The community building.

And, you know, all that just rid that everyone is is happy that it's that it's still a good event.

When you first started having all this stuff in your mind space,

because they started to build out their internal events team. And so I ran that. And before that used to host events. Now let's talk about you considering hosting these, And the first thing is your motivation.

and one, like, markup jam, and my kids loved it. It was they, like, they gobbled it right down, and, I tweeted a picture of it, and people loved it. I thought that was

Yeah. Some of those little little touches and and whatever, they go totally noticed by the people attending conferences because I've been to a lot of rid of comfort isn't I think, like, some of the things that have always stood out about the comfort system we went to that you ran were

Right? And so that reduces your potential pool of attendees, potential pool of sponsors, of, Whether you have VR By inviting them, So they have an amazing San Francisco has an amazing meeting scene, which are, like, basically many conferences.

That make them so amazing and which and which is why I love them so much.

nature Just as a speaker, you gotta fly somewhere. You gotta go to the hotel.

to have jamstack jam. I I think it was I think it was someone from the Netlify team. I think it was Jessica Parsons Fortunately, they have a massive I think to have a number of invited speakers.

For the big conferences like How do you measure before coronavirus rid from

You know, she started it out of a hatred for the industry because when she put her own mother in an assisted living home, rid Like, when she went to visit her the 1st time, she was wearing men's pants,

like you said, the speaker dinner, Excellent. Every time, had great conversation, met some people that are talking to on Twitter for a long time, but just, like, set up in a way that definitely invoked that sense of rid. Camaraderie and, you know, just getting to really experience the people that you're there with. But, also, Wes has a note on here about your Your speaker goodie bags

you're a company don't just become speakers, they become stakeholders. Right? Because it's important for them and running the meetings should confirm a number of speakers just the excitements and thrill of being in a in a in person location with other like minded people.

So if you all of a sudden see some $2,000

they really but you're doing it at from a measured approach.

In the past, specific motivations of the conference,

$2,000 charges And, you know, in the events industry and every industry rid. Number 1, And that was in the works, when I saw that the national guard as I mentioned, running an event is enormously expensive. It's there's enormous amount of uncertainty around it.

And so with online events, That is being overlooked and something that we're working on but I provide, Facebook's is pretty advanced. Right? It's for people who are already in the React community. Right? You're going there as a quote, unquote React developer.

and they said, you know, we want you to to run this. So I was hired as the program manager ran. To run Jamstack Conf, and I ran the first 2 as the program manager. And then the next 2, I I helped at a more, like, organizer Reactathon becoming a a 3 day event. Still did the workshops, and we still did the the hackathon.

if not, like, how did you immediately react to it? And what we're now almost like a year later,

If someone from DevOps That will give you a bit of credibility shows to your shows up to your booth, do they want to see information and then you pair that with, like, a YouTube live stream.

There's a lot more that goes into it, and I'm I'm saying this as somebody who has been to a lot of conferences, talked to a lot of people like you who run them. Yeah. I I would encourage

as I mentioned previously, I think in person events rid. Are done for at least specifically among us developers, for months then I moved into web development.

and what your strategy is. But online, you can do some interesting things. So one thing we're working on with this new company, Eventloop,

it was, like, March, and I was just like, oh, like, we're we're still going to this. Right? Like, yeah. We're still going to this. And there's there was no cases

and the speaker goodie bags

And when my event business started taking off and I showed them how much We're working I'm talking, like, 5, 6, 7, up to 10 for just 500 people For, like, a 2 day conference.

And I saw the writing was on the wall

event.

And I just thought it was hilarious, and I was like, rid Right. I'm doing that as part of the gift. So I buy the stickers. I buy I buy the jam. I remember just the the night before actually, where she focused on, you know, actually, like, Right? Know who your potential marketing partners are. People who would be interested in coming to this event. You know? You wanna get the press involved. You wanna get as many people to make that's just very general? but you guys had never met to the online experience.

Oh, no. But but, yeah, like, guys But we got the bugs, and they're fantastic in

through 2021, They really do. Like, how often have you Log on to Twitter and you're like, oh, wow. This amazing conference is happening tomorrow.

Do your accounting, your invoicing, your expenses, all of that. Check out FreshBooks .comforward/

assisted living There's a lot of uncertainty around this, of course, but I think that uncertainty shoes that were, like, mismatched and didn't even fit and was just, Like, the food was just terrible. She said, so she started her own hundreds of thousands I don't know. Is it millions at this point? I don't know. It's a lot.

extremely hardly to try this industry. Yeah. That's a that's a whole other topic, but, And then for me, personally, I like to have a CFP or call for papers, a call for proposals, or Call for speakers, whatever you wanna call it. Yeah. Basically, inviting people to submit their talks. Some conferences, like, I think React Rally. Rid Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they just operate on CFPs, And I'm thinking to myself, oh my god. Like, there is no backup plan for this, right, in in this industry. Rid Because the contracts you sign, it's like Sitting there in the sink with, like, a razor and Yeah. Or or web developer who specializes in React as I should say. Or JavaScript developer who loves React.

last year, and, you know, it's just 10 minutes, but it took me days.

I think those are really sad.

the assisted living they run actually was was famed for their food because their grandmother who started it, Yeah. And and and this goes back to, you know, your motivation. Like, is your love of, like, this event, the attendees that show up into your booth see relevant content, is making money, and I need to make sure a precursor to Jamstack Conf The year prior, but I think they realized that it's it's a lot more involved. It's a lot more difficult to run office or I I think they used to. I think they're getting rid of that office.

or maybe Phil Hawkesworth that that posted that in the company Slack.

We said, well, we can do this. Right?

that's a waste of time. Right? But just to answer your question, so I'm rid. The organizer of Reactathon, which I've been organizing since just was not adequate.

Whatever it is, this community, going to show in what you're doing. You know? Because, like, running a conference isn't just, oh, I'm gonna put a schedule together and find a venue and Things will work itself out. It's like running a Yeah. Probably not.

They made it illegal because our policy as we wrote because we were monitoring this. Our policy was that if this has declared a pandemic, because remember, this is early March late February, early March. Yeah. Everything is still unknown. So we're, like, still figuring this out. But once that WHO was like, hey. It's a pandemic.

This is not counting the venue itself.

that experience because you're just not gonna get it.

Is it it's it's an entire ship now. It's Well, it depends on who's running the event. If you're I'm in such a unique position because I really love what I'm doing. I have the experience to be able to do that with sales and marketing. And then with Web development to a lesser extent, I I don't really get into code that much anymore. But when I first started, like, I built the website and, you know, I designed it. And, Like, it it showed because my design I'm not a I never worked at a company as a professional designer, but it got the message across and it was it was good enough. Right. You know, if you put your heart and soul into something, then it it definitely shows.

In San Francisco, about 500 people.

ready. Cold bread.

It was it was caused by economic forces. I mean, And if I'm an event organizer thinking about running a big conference,

Any thoughts on that?

rid of those mugs. Those mugs have a sordid history.

ahead of time, 6 months, a year, 2 years? Like, you look at this amazing product for rates you you won't get anywhere else. And that's kind of our our pitch now, you know, is that we can provide, like, very top tier catering at rates you won't find anywhere else.

And so I Put together, like, this nice dinner for the speakers to come together and casually hang out and meet. And then that makes the conference experience better for them too because, a lot of these people are meeting for the 1st time in person and I I spent a lot more time in that. And that's really where my passion lies.

Last note about real life conferences is just catering. I can't believe you started your own rid because the food was so good Fantastic. Versus the like, usually, conferences give you a box

welcomed your employees back to your office. You've instituted strict guidelines, rid Health and safety.

in person events ever on your radar. And

And more importantly well, not more importantly, but is equally importantly, And I think the main thing Here. I I'm gonna give you guys I'm gonna give your your company both the the audience and the speakers.

Then we trained Pinterest, and we trained a bunch of other companies. And we even, you know, flew to Chicago. We flew to New York. It was it was a lot of fun. But, honestly, my my conference rid Business really really started to take off, Just has an amazing of having a better half And then in Spain, And 2, that is actually gonna happen How far is the actual venue from the airport to get a flight? It's it's just a lot of time. It's a lot. Yeah. You're spending all this time there. Is it going to be worth it for you? And so that's something that you as the organizer And so what we did was we just I we basically said, let's run a a week of events to React. Right? So we curated And the speaker dinner to me is really important But everything I saw rid They now have policies against sponsoring in person events.

worth of Russian mugs that are broken as a line item in your FreshBooks,

I think for most people, to build a business.

it's like running a new product within a company or even more running its own company.

to go to an event that's also successful. You, Like, if you're a speaker, you don't wanna kills

interesting thing way to go down is just I'm gonna just say my favorite thing from the goodie bag was the Jamstack jam,

into your office It's these connections Actually, when I was running Jamstack Conf, Not just assisting them.

Yeah. It's it it's its own category. Right? Because, like, at least the great depression was in connecting with the right people?

and then none of the other speakers are announced They'll be announced at a later point, but they you sort of have to anchor it with, like, this is legitimate. We got Chris Coir to come for the Yeah. The It's a lizgitimizer.

It's it's it's really insane.

because we we you know, I gave them friendly rates. You know, they're paying me as an event organizer. And I say, And this is not counting the AV.

Right. You need to make a lot of noise because events live and die Right. You're managing a mid 6 figure or The main things out there are you got your Slack, got your Discord, a sense of, I'm at a loss for words right now. Premiumness. What's the words I'm looking for? Exclus not not so much exclusive, but but something that's more premium. Yeah. Re Total. You you often see that with, like, the conference will launch, and it'll say, Chris Corriere is headlining, If you're Amazon running

where

you know, smaller meeting scene.

which is

conference company. Yeah. You can

for the duration of the conference, and I provide a really good speaker dinner.

they're also many of them are, like, is more Like, for example, let's just say there's this really hot new technology out. I don't know. It could be React. It could be Vue. It could be

Money like these catering companies are charging, which is Yeah. It's fine because it's really expensive and, you know, you have your ups and downs in catering.

rid One

to potential super spreader events? That experience, you're just not going to. And anyone who promises that is And, you know, I had had been building this community. It's a there's a lot of

was any sort of event that would prevent

plus.

and you have these deadlines, and you got Sales, and you got marketing, a massive amazing speaker, even better manager of rid The over there at Facebook for the React team. And because I need to confirm sponsors.

the ones that take place at Moscone Center, for example, in San Francisco, which is our big convention center, This also goes back to, Worked hard on even improving that even more. So they became basically professional chefs.

How many people are going to risk taking events online.

a hotel confirm and say yes to an event that you are unsure of. Right? You can't be like, well, if I go to this event and I fly across the country this night, Reactathon started as just really just a week of events supporting Facebook's Books React Conf, which at the time We had a hackathon at GitHub over the weekend.

That can actually be more beneficial.

Are you going to welcome And then I guess it's not happening.

Yeah. Yeah. Insane.

that who has her own company. Mhmm. And it's it's assisted living. You know, they they run like a 30 bed assisted living, into events, and you want to be I think it started

re Super well catered lunch, and you also have to have x, y, and z. And sometimes I hear these people complaining. I'm like, you rid Don't know how much it costs to run a conference. It's very expensive to run a conference, I think.

It's very tight. Very tight security.

or meeting up again from a conference they've met before.

you know, a conference is so much more than the talks. Right? But it's not perfect, and it's always going to be But just a Long winded answer to your question. I also so Netlify was a sponsor of the very 1st Reactathon, which was just, you know, that week of events leading up to React Conf. And then they also sponsored the 2nd one.

we got 1 JavaScript,

limited to the amount of time and the amount of resources you put in. Right? Amount of people that are there at the events And be really involved in it as a as a major stakeholder, you many 1,000 of dollars.

The events that happen at company offices. Right? So let's say Sales and marketing and finance, the number of people you interacted with? ruined Strawberry. Yeah. Shoving everything on the stage, it was it was really great. And I I believe 1 of you started off saying, yeah, Between Two Ferns with Wes and Scott.

is measuring their ROI.

Sponsors, like, what what are the sponsors even get in an online conference? Right? The attendees, you don't really have the serendipitous Rid Legitimizer. There you go. No worries. Yep. Exactly. And and and these people who are, you know, well known, that So I started a company called those people to actually want to come to this event, Rid And you guys have given talks and anyone else who's given talk. You know how much work goes into it and how much care goes into it. And then pop not that's not even counting, like, polishing your slides and making them look rid. Right? So it is a lot of work.

having by audience, I also mean know who your potential sponsors are, Know who your potential speakers are.

for the new FreshBooks logo and make sure you use syntax in the how did you hear about a section. You're gonna get a 30 day free trial rid With that URL. Sick.

rid. Because and am the CEO of.

You hack it together on, like, a website. Use your OBS.

events over a 100 in person gatherings engineers, Or maybe more. I don't know.

So

Yeah. At least no reported cases at all. And

$10,000 And we got estimates

And so coming to the event, This gives them a chance to to, you know, hang out and meet each other and then go to the event Meeting up Pretty quickly, just overall revenue.

big megaphones. So if you can get someone We gotta hear about that story sometime.

7 figure budget even,

I would imagine that this would be pretty detrimental

I got the mugs. They're broken. Now I'm hacked by Russia.

you're never going to replicate and everything is so expensive.

yeah, I think that those are those are just, like, really fantastic

there's no insurance for this for an event like this. Right? There's there's force majeure, and that's it. And And this is why, You're doing that for your employees. You're taking a risk there,

things like that. Do you pay speakers? Should you? There's a lot of opinions on whether you should speak for free or not.

how many people unless your pockets are really deep, like, unless you're a Google or Microsoft, I was in talks with, Stripe to run events for them. And And I just need to deal with Apollo to help them with GraphQL Summit, like, in a limited capacity.

They've been running it for a number of years, and

were fantastic. And I kid you not, my wife yesterday

good fortune and having great conversations and saying, hey. You wanna go grab dinner? You wanna go grab a beer? that I cofounded I'm really understanding that, wow, there's a lot of demand for this.

So So now with remote events, that's gonna kinda flip that on its head a little bit, but we'll get into that a little later if we have time. But to answer your question about, like, And so that transfers, I think, Do you want to just bring people together? Are you establishing a new category? Let's say for argument's sake that you have

Cool. Can we talk about getting speakers and whatnot? I'm I'm curious about, like, How do you select who gets to speak at it? How do you ensure there's appropriate diversity in your speaker lineup?

It's insane. It's so expensive, so that What's that new one by Google? The new mobile I mean, it's happening When it completely So q 1, q 2.

I knew that this was something that is a once in a century should not try to replicate to welcome people

Man. Yeah. I remember

booking out two and a half years. Oh. Yeah. Do you have to plan, at a minimum, two and a half years for your event coming up? So the big events, what happens to those? And then you look at the smaller or efficient are you you know, round trip flights. I I put them up in a nice hotel basically a miracle happens, like our president said to happen.

So when we cater Jamstack Con, for example, I told you that it you know, we got estimates for, like, 200,000 minimum to do this. Well, we saved them over $90,000 Episode that I I No.

You're dealing with RTMP. You're dealing with streams. Rid Yeah. But everything's still super hacking fragmented.

And so hundreds of strangers stopped. Right? Oh, dang. Including Reactathon, which was

And the stack. Yeah. It's rid the stack of jams. So, obviously, we're living in a, like, a post pandemic or active pandemic society currently.

They wanna see stuff on DevOps.

Comparatively speaking, right, to a recession or talked with all these potential speakers and the speakers that we confirmed Anyone who, like, doesn't really have an idea of how expensive a conference is, just to request a catering menu You have to, 1, service that. You have to address those complaints. But I think Yeah. You're right, Wes. I think there there could be a a little more understanding and empathy on the other side you have to have can you classify a pandemic as economic? I guess you could, but it's just it's just so rid off of everyone's radar. But I think, Scott, to answer your question about going forward, difficult from any part of the world organizer, My career and, you know, much of much of the world is just so sad to to say that I was in talks with AWS.

or AR

And,

Rid So what I do for my speakers, I don't pay them with cash, Interest around React and this whole event space.

are you the right person for that though? You know? So you have to be connected But among us devs, You know, because in person events, again, you know, you have so much logistics.

rid The demand for this, It wasn't just like, oh, let's do, you know, these meetups because it's fun. It was lead gen for us. Right? Because we ran, like, a a a React training business. Right? We we started with public workshops, and our goal was to be, you You know, training in house before the end of the year, and we and we were doing that. Like, I think 6 months into Real World React, we were training NerdWallet in their office.

Web development and tech decimated the industry, like, this event this industry has completely gone to 0. Right?

re Goal that you need to understand the packages just Right? Everyone's abiding by them. You know, you're taking temperatures of everyone.

rid It and I was looking for solutions for It's a lot of work. You know? I gave a lightning talk at DevRelCon SF individuals, and you're talking to people who aren't looking,

I want to fill

Does that make sense? Totally. Rid. Yeah. I I think that's an an often overlooked aspect of just about everything. Like, what are what are your actual motivations here?

and you don't have, like, a brand already built, it's going to be tremendously But there are other things that you can focus on Yeah. So that's a really good question, rid. And I think to answer your first question,

for that.

Do you have an audience for that? Are you the person to run an event like that? Like, if your motivation It's just start my web development career almost solo. And what I mean by that is I have a background in sales and marketing, which if if you're thinking of running an event and you're not comfortable a decent distance away if you're, like, working in San Francisco and you're used to used to walking places. So we've been running events rid For over a year and look at the price of coffee.

And I think those are ex exceedingly important questions that often get overlooked.

with your audience. You have to know who they are, They want to see stuff on front end, or did they wanna see stuff on DevOps?

who is this serving is stuff that we even talk about in the context of whatever our freelance rid out. Right? Like, who is this is this project serving your ego? No. I don't think it is. I think this is serving some company's goals or whatever. So what are those goals? What is your motivation?

That sort of high level thought of

Yeah. Exactly. And since this is you know, since your show is all about

for you to run a conference.

Do you want to run this conference for recruiting?

Are you doing this for passion? others that it is. So if this is your 1st time running a conference, per megabyte.

Oregon. And conference. So the idea was, Okay. Since there's all this demand, let's create this one day conference that you need when starting to run a conference.

Sure. So I think and is providing them with amazing food. And so when when my my fiance and her her brothers took over the business, had quarantined an entire city in New York, when I saw what was happening in Italy that have a higher cadence. And, you know, we put a lot of effort into those because For us, that was also business. You know, I've been an entrepreneur since, like, 2014.

Are you doing it because you just love events? to the actual event itself.

you know, I have a background in

Are you an individual? Do you want to do sales of a product? let's say, in 2021, this this goes back to motivation and knowing your target audience. So are more conducive Okay.

And I was fortunate enough to really So that really inspired me to get into React. So for my personal story, So for their 2nd attempt, they they came to me, Why do you wanna run this conference? Right? Are you a company? I have the Actually, I started my own catering company.

when React was starting to come out. Like, I remember I just graduated this technology, this Your job in that regard is a bit harder. So you have to have so this goes back to to me and my personal story of of building just you have all of these aspects coming together in this one event that is just much more happening under the scenes than you can never imagine.

React Native was just announced on the stage, and I was just blown away. Right? I remember Tom Okino's keynote,

it was just so inspiring, so amazing. And they put on quite an amazing conference.

Who are you? well, this goes back to your motivation and knowing your audience rid. And defining a specific theme. Right? No one wants to go to a conference that doesn't have a theme.

For money? Now or again, your motivation of who you are and if you are the right person to run this.

Epicodis, little shout out to them, and in Portland, meetup scene. And meetup as in meetup .com, which curiously has a trademark for that word. So let's call them meetings.

the best conferences. So I think we have the best person to talk about this on because,

In my car. Actually, just thinking about it now, I was, like, driving across, on dynamic sponsor booths.

but Yeah. That didn't pan out. We were COVID had other plans for that. Yeah. But those were at at Ben's conferences, and he he had this, like, rid The really cool what do you call those big

that hopefully what's that, like, video game that they're like rid. Armvyl or whatever they're playing now that's, like, attending an event, like, I think, everything is broken. And I'm like, okay. Great. Now I have, like, a couple months left, and I need to order more. They sent more. These weren't broken. But then, like, a few weeks later, I see, like, these Right?

And we were supposed to do 3,

signs that you have made? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. With us as always is mister Scott Talinski. How are you doing today, Scott? Hey. I'm doing good. I do wanna say at the jump, Ben, The conference is the I don't understand. I'm not saying this to just butter Ben up here, but the conferences that I've been to that have been

seriously, the all of the conferences that whether it's Reactathon, whatever, Jamset com, those conferences re Always awesome at at Ben Storozel. Thank you very much for, 1, throwing awesome conferences, and 2, stopping by to talk to us about it. Yeah. Absolutely. It is my pleasure both to

it's amazing stuff going. So not to butter you up, but you guys you guys are awesome. I'll take it. We'll take it. Yeah. Ready. Yeah. We've been exceptionally into being buttered up lately. So Yeah. For those who are listening, our live I think we've done 2 live syntaxes, Yeah. Do you mind telling us, like, which of the conferences that you've run-in the past? Because, like, I know you've run some yourself, and then you also,

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in and get ready. Here is Scott Talinski and Wes Boss. Welcome

running conferences. He's run a whole handful of different rid. Web development and tech conferences in the past. So here to talk about how conferences are run and what's hard about them and and All of the all of the stuff that involves in person as well as, like, now we have coronavirus. So now we have a lot of online conferences. What makes a good re Online conference as well as, like, the tech behind

to Syntax. This is the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Today, we've got ready. A guest on for you. We've got Benjamin Dumpey. He's here to talk to us about

running an online conference. So welcome, Ben. Thanks so so much for coming on. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for having me.

I think you can still see it there on our meetup page. So a bunch of people did end up not coming in because the line was just so incredibly long. Rid But, like Hilarious. We stacked the deck with just amazing speakers. We talked about serverless, Redux. We had people flying from the East Coast. Rid. Justin Bacharach from formerly from NPR, I think he's at Capital One now, came all the way from Washington to to speak at this event. But we also did 7 different workshops from 6 different instructors.

all this content, in San Francisco Or don't do it at all because that is a major part of this. Because conferences are enormously expensive, How many of those turned into sales or recruiting, whatever your goal was, and how to classify them.

Did they make you log in before going into the office?

sorry. ReactCon.

There's already a conference in San Francisco, ReactCon, right, that takes place q one. Reactathon was taking place q one. So what do I do? But Reactathon is pretty, personally, shows in those events. And it's secondly, it's my pleasure to to come on this Podcasts. I've been a fan of your podcast for a long time, and I think you guys are are amazing individuals and amazing podcast hosts. I remember your first But just to give you a little background on on me to answer your question. Yeah. So I'm in a unique position because I'm an independent Nothing is easy, but and have a friend and have a friendly face that's that's around the conference for them.

And then on Monday Tuesday, which was React Conf, we had a a live viewing party of the conference. And so with all this demand, And the organizer can can help alleviate this and facilitate this to create hiring events and certain things that appeal to certain sponsors, and you can help that rid. For sure with with event design.

But at the same time, that has, like, a 100,000 followers on Twitter, like, that's good. That helps you to market that. Rid Because your speakers This is not counting the labor.

Basically, for people coming from, you know, other technologies or out of boot camp or just new to it in general.

Yeah. They had the they had the envoys there, and the line was extremely long. We had an RSVP of over 650.

just web development in general. You know, when I went to my 1st conference when I was working in finance, I remember the company I was with. We had a booth Right? Like, why didn't you hear about this before? It's like, hey. I'm rid. 10000 miles away.

which is which is very special both to San Francisco You have to convince Started off in rails, you know, went to one of those boot camps.

He probably even smelled like a banker. I mean, he's he's clearly our competition, it's

I don't I don't wanna be serious.

And I noticed that there was really only 1 React meetup, and it was happening a lot in the South Bay and not as much in San Francisco, which is where I was at the time.

rid meetup.comgroup, and it just grew from there. Right? And so the motivation is really important to establish. So me, it's a lot of passion. It's a lot of interest, run those events because it's absolutely my passion and it's thematic.

and he just looks like a banker.

because it's such a high level here, planning 6 months Lifted Plate.

this culture was just so

And you have these these companies that are hosting these these events at their offices.

every single night.

not really. Right? We're all about open source. We're about sharing knowledge. And this just rid Enormously risky.

I decided to start my own. And we started this

re Meetup group that's now running a conference. There's certainly lots of those. I'm not gonna name names, but there are there are conferences in our industries that rid in San Francisco at the time, and everything was gonna be fine. And then At least reported.

4 companies as well. And I always thought that was pretty interesting because, like, your also, your conferences are are there for profit. Right? You're not just, like, some sort of

You go to, and they're very much put on by companies looking to make a massive profit because their

some other sales are are down right now. What's the what's all I'll say? Yeah. So conferences are done for 2020, of course, probably 2021.

have run some for

2017,

rid. And I have a number of skills that allow me and just experience overall that allow me to run events And so when I saw this was happening. I saw it pretty early on. I saw how severe it was, Leading up to Facebook's ReactCon. So we partnered with a number of companies, including Pinterest to run our our meetup there, which we had over 350 people come there. It's rid It's insane.

was impossible to get tickets to. Like, they'd open up tickets, like, at 12 PM on x day. Right? And they would sell out in And so And then just bumping into people in these random conversations because, because we had this, like, proprietary software product, and he's asking us all these probing questions. But he's pretending that he's an attendee, and we're like, Dude, you took off your sponsor badge. You're not even wearing a badge. You're wearing a suit. You look like a banker. So he's, like, infiltrating us. Right? He's, like, coming to I'm sure that happens in software, that online conferences, online events right now is facilitating smarter connections with people. I'll give you I'll give you one example.

And if you don't have the confidence and so is the, I think as transparent as possible with who you are, how you're running the event, and why you're the right person to run that event.

That's part of why

through the Real World React meetup group.

Don't do it. Don't do it. It's just like, you have to enjoy it. Right? conference, With an online experience, you can create these dynamic booths

In, like, a milliseconds, I'm like, okay. How many tickets were there? Did people write bots for this? I don't know. They were they were just so hard to get. Secondly, it was in Santa Clara, Which if you're not familiar with the Bay Area, it's Many companies have policies against sending their people to in person events.

as in, like, giving them a lot of the profits if you're if you're if you're going for profits, rid Full stack engineers. There's front end engineers. There's back end engineers, and there's and there's DevOps engineers. Right? It's an engineering conference.

tickets, and just be on it All the freaking time.

Speaking to people, you're not comfortable They'd actually run are illegal.

We went out for ramen before. Which is fantastic.

What do you do when you're thinking like, okay. Now Now I need to start figuring things out. Like, what's step number 1 of of starting to throw a conference?

So you've decided that you would like to run a conference. Right? You said, oh, I I think a conference is a good idea.

state. Well, not on state. Well, I get it. Re Yeah. Basic More or less.

There are a lot of variables, which I'm I'm sure ready. Very aware of that there's just thousands and thousands of variables here.

Yeah. Yeah. That was that was good. Scott is exactly what I thought he would be, so there's not too not too many surprises there. Likewise. We

So it's just like an expandable, really comes down to transparency. Right? You have this whole culture of open source.

like, sign that we just put on the table between you guys. So you put up like The syntax logo. We put up the syntax logo on a table between you guys. We got rid Nice couches for you, and then we put some shrubbery up there, which we, like, set up, like, quickly during a break. We're like, everyone, don't go anywhere. It's good than they had previously estimated.

There's a lot of costs.

And after that 2nd conference, Like, people why does the Wi Fi suck? Well, because it costs fun fact for you. The the last in person event that we ran Okay. That's great.

I guess I'll run advanced conf too. And that was if not into 2022.

That was the impetus for But then Facebook announced that they weren't going to run React conf. And so I said, okay.