Are developer events worth it?

With AWS Re:Invent season upon us, I thought I'd cover some of my thoughts on how to build a quality events program. Note, this post is about third-party events. In a future post, I will cover my tried and true playbook for running your first developer conference. For now, let's dive in and figure out how to get the best out of an events strategy.

How to choose which developer events to attend

The first question on your mind should be: "which events should I attend?" I always tell my teams, "Events don't pop up out of nowhere. You usually get at least 6-9 months before the event to consider it." Events take time, effort, and most of all, advance planning to run well. Event organizers will announce their conference well ahead of time. If you're running a developer business, you're already plugged into your community. Start listening for conferences people are considering attending.

Your list should consist of conferences where there's a large concentration of decision makers for your product in your target market. If you're running a database company, this could be both database conferences and industry conferences where attendees are selecting a database for their project, for example an Oil and Gas trade show. The key is to make sure that the attendees are people who are in a position to make a technology decision. In that vein, while an Oil and Gas trade show may be focused on an industry where big technology decisions are made, are the actual attendees the same people who make those decisions? This is the first and most important analysis for you to make.

Once I have my list, I start prioritizing them based on a few factors. First, will leads from this conference have a high propensity to convert? In other words, will I be speaking with people who are capable of making an adoption or trial decision of my product? Second, is the conference located in a city where it will be feasible for me to send staff and attendees? And finally, what is the cost to sponsor the event and is it in my budget?

I cover more on how to measure events in my post on Measuring Developer Advocacy.

What to do at a developer event

I put events into three non-mutually exclusive buckets, meaning it's possible that for any given event of interest to your business, you will choose one or more of the following tactics:

Sponsoring the conference in some manner
Submitting talk proposals to the conference
Attending the conference and networking

Sponsoring the conference usually means getting a booth or table in the event's exhibits hall. It also usually includes some kind of mention during the keynote, including perhaps your logo on each slide deck at the event. It could also include a sponsored talk. I have been known to sponsor a talk but decline the booth because I do not have sufficient staff available. I've done this because being present at the conference in some manner is still important to the brand. You have to make the calculus yourself about whether the give-and-gets are meaningful to you.

One word of caution about sponsored talks: they are usually placed at the ass-end of the conference, such as a Friday afternoon when most attendees are gone or in the early evening when everyone is tired and heading home. It may still be worth it, but in all likelihood, you're not going to be able to buy your way into the keynote.

Everything about sponsorships is a case-by-case basis. There are no hard and fast rules, there is no formula, and the only thing you can do is make educated guesses about whether the sponsorship is of value to you.

Submitting a talk via a CFP (Call For Papers) is nearly always worth it. First off, working closely with your Developer Advocacy and Engineering teams to pull together a roster of speakers and talks is a lot of fun and brings the teams closer. You should do this no matter what as the ideas you come up with for talks are generally really good ideas for content. In fact, even if you don't win the CFP, you should write the talk and build the content anyway! And, as I've written several times, content repurposing is critical. Take your conference talks and turn them into blog posts, and vice versa. Record your talks and put them up on your own YouTube channel.

Beyond preparation for CFPs being really good team hygiene, conference organizers are always looking for new companies and new voices to fill out their conference roster. Beyond the requisite Google or Microsoft speaker to legitimize the event, organizers love to be seen as forward-thinking industry leaders. Thus, your chances as a startup to secure a speaking slot are actually pretty high, provided your content topic is of high quality.

Which gets me to content topics: never, ever, ever do product pitches. No one wants to be sold to. Instead, remember my mantra of Help First: teach developers something new. Use the talk to establish you and your brand as knowledgeable experts. People will check out your company if you are the kind of company that is known for solving hard problems!

Writing CFPs is an art form in and of itself. This blog post has some great ideas. In addition, Bridget Kromhout and Karen Chu are amazing, and their advice in this interview is phenomenal:

If I were to summarize my thoughts on CFPs it would be: don't submit product pitches, repurpose your talk content everywhere you can, and even if you don't win your CFP build the content anyway!

Attending the conference and networking is another great way to make friends in the community of your target customer. Arrange coffee conversations with people you know will be attending. Post on social media that you'll be attending and want to meet folks. Have hallway conversations. Ask speakers questions after their talks.

This isn't for everyone! Not everyone in your company is suited for this kind of extroverted approach. Identify and send your most gregarious developers to the event. Give them a budget to be able to pick up bar tabs and buy lunch and dinner for small groups of attendees.

Make sure they write up a trip report afterwards with as much detail about their observations as possible.

How to have a great booth presence at a developer event

Okay, so you're attending an event and have chosen to sponsor and obtain a booth. Now you need to maximize your presence and ensure that the event delivers a high ROI.

Several weeks before the event, you will need to do the following:

Booth logistics. Follow your event organizer's instructions to ensure that your booth's graphics, signage, and any A/V needs are met. Get your brand/design team together and start formulating ideas for your booth that are consistent with your brand identity. Take a step back and think about the average attendee walking by the show floor. What questions will be top of mind? What kinds of talks are typically given at this event and what kind of ideas will they typically spark? Your booth's graphics and signage should be consistent with your brand and positioning, yes. But they shouldn't be complete copycats of your positioning statement. Adjust your messaging for your audience and make your booth stand out in a way that it attracts passersby.
Start planning your booth demo. What kind of demo scenario and associated dataset do you need that will make attendees feel as if you get them and their industry? Do you need more than one demo depending on which vertical industry or use case a typical customer at the show will have? If you attend an Oil and Gas conference and are showing a demo about web analytics, you've failed. Knock out multiple birds with one stone: this is a great opportunity to merge your solution-focused content needs with your event needs.
Identify staff. Make sure it's not just Developer Advocates attending. Pull in folks from Engineering, Customer Care, and Customer Success. Everyone will benefit from meeting with real, live customers.
Buy swag. I hate t-shirts because of the bulk and expense of shipping. Socks are played out. Fidget spinners are so 2017. Figure out what kind of giveaway you want. In recent years, there has been a trend, which I love, of giving away a business card with a redemption code for your swag store or the option of donating $5 to a charity. This idea saves costs, is better for the environment, and makes customers feel good.
Build your comms plan. Identify journalists and key influencers who will be at the event and make sure you've reached out and secured time to chat.
Organic and paid promotion. Make sure you have a social media plan in place (it could be anything from posting hour by hour of key observations at the event, to posting once a day with a picture of the team at the booth and a reminder for where attendees can find you.) Don't forget to use the event hashtag. Also consider buying paid social ads that promote your presence at the event.

You'll want to prepare the following for execution during the event:

Lead capture devices always always always always always fail. Always. They are the most useless piece of tech in the entire industry. So while you want to teach your team how to use the lead capture devices provided by the event organizers, also train your team on a backup process. Maybe it's "take a pic of the badge with a cell phone" or "here's a bunch of notepads to get names and email addresses".
Identify roles at the booth. Everyone who attends will have a job to do. Do not let people just stand around twiddling their thumbs.
- The first and most important role is The Sweeper. These are your most outgoing folks. They're going to wait in the pathway further out from your booth and talk to attendees as they go by. "How's the show going for you? Would you like to hear about our new galaxy-class database?" Their job is to understand who the customer is, what's top of mind, and then bring them to the booth.
- The next role is The Demoer. This is the person who is going to listen to the customer's pain points and then subtly adjust the demo talking points to address them as they go through the demo.
- The last role is The Finisher. This person listens to the demo alongside the customer and once the demo is finished, engages the customer in a conversation about what they're looking for and how your company can help. The Finisher is also responsible for capturing the lead, and then taking notes about the level of interest.
Write the Know Before You Go guide and brief the team. Whoever is responsible for the event (your Events Marketing Manager, perhaps) should write a detailed backgrounder of the event (what is our goal at the event, what is our core message, what activities do we have planned around the event, etc.) and related logistics (where is our booth, what does swag look like, which hotel are people staying at, flight arrival and departure information, public transportation, contact information for everyone including emergency contacts, nearby restaurants, etc.) Leave no stone unturned and make the guide as detailed as possible. Marketing people often forget that most people in an organization never travel for business and need extra hand-holding.

You also need to plan your efforts after the event:

Post-event nurture. You've accumulated email addresses. What email will you send after the event, what call to action will be included, and who will the email be from? You should have this ready to send 2-3 days after the conclusion of the event.
Run a retrospective. Get everyone on a Zoom or in a room and walk through everything you’d like to Start Doing, Keep Doing, and Stop Doing. Summarize this information while the event is fresh in everyone’s memory.
Write the trip report. Solicit input from all attendees and codify your observations of customers, community, the event itself. Include the results of the retro as well. Be sure to answer the question of whether you'd do the event again.

Several weeks later, you should be able to gauge the ROI of the event and append it to the trip report:

What was the lead quality from the event?
Did any leads turn into big customers?
Did you lose any leads to competitors?

Summary

Events are a critical component of any marketing mix. If you choose events correctly and run a high-quality event execution, events can turn into fantastic lead generation and community engagement tools.