Food
We used Einstein Brothers for breakfast and lunch. We planned food for about 100 people and it worked out very well, with food taken to the after-party too. We simply booked online, chose a ton of food and it arrived at 8:15 for breakfast and 11 a.m. or so for lunch. Breakfast consisted of bagels with various schmears, coffees (remember decaf too) and some bagel poppers (think donut holes). Lunch was boxes of bagel sandwiches (remember vegetarian option), iced tea, lemonade, cookies (three kinds I think), chips (including chips that don't suck, like Sunchips) and gherkins.
Set up was very easy, there were a couple of fold out tables and a few people volunteered to set up the boxes, etc., along with the staff from EB. At the end of the day I asked everyone in the room to help clean up one item (we had boxes, empty cups, etc., etc.) and it was done very quickly.
Breakfast mingling took from 8:30-9 a.m. or so. Lunch was one hour: noon-1 p.m. It was a nice enough day that people wandered outside, chatted and so on.
Website
As a hangover from last year, I happily used Google Sites to host www.wherecamp5280.org for free. It has a super simple editing interface. I only built a couple of very simple pages listing the details upfront as you can see.
Tickets
Eventbrite was pretty awesome. You set up your event, add ticket types (with different prices), link to it and you're done. It's entirely free to use if your tickets are free. For wherecamp, the majority of the tickets were free. You can also use their iPhone app to scan peoples tickets if you like, but I didn't do this as it's free and it would have just been a hassle for very little benefit. Tip: tell the attendees this so they don't print out the paper ticket! Also see sponsorship next:
Sponsorship
I used Eventbrite again. This worked out fantastically. Usually people spend a ton of time setting out sponsor levels, making a brochure and all that stuff about what a sponsor gets for their money. What I did instead was set up Eventbrite "tickets" that were priced as powers of two. So $16, $32, $64... $1024. Sponsors could then simply go in to Eventbrite and buy a ticket. This was wonderful for me as I didn't have to screw around with checks and bank transfers.
It was wonderful for sponsors as they could buy a "ticket" and expense that, whereas sponsorship is sometimes a much harder thing to get and has to go through other channels. One big thing to learn from though is that powers of two is a cute way to get sponsorship, but it doesn't match very well to what can be expensed. Often people can expense things with some rule like "so long as it's less than $1,000." Next time I will price things like $190, $490, $950 and so on.
As for "what do the sponsors get," I didn't produce a brochure or have anything particularly in mind. I've run conferences before which do do this and that's fine but this was a volunteer event. If the sponsors didn't come through, all I had to do was not order food (the major cost) and instead point people at nearby cafes, etc. It helps that I've run conferences before and therefore have a level of trust from the people sponsoring to not fuck it all up. I was asked a couple of times, but simply said it was a volunteer conference therefore time was short and we couldn't really produce brochures, etc.
Next page: How about actually getting the sponsors?
Ever since the news hit that Newsweek‘s new owner is combining the publication with Tina Brown’s web-based media outlet The Daily Beast, there has been a frenzy of criticism over the decision to kill Newsweek‘s website and redirect readers to The Daily Beast site instead. Felix Salmon of Reuters, for example, called it “bizarre,” and Newsweek.com staffers quickly set up a Tumblr blog to complain about the move, which they said was a result of senior managers who “deep down, don’t understand the web.” But is killing Newsweek.com such a bad idea? Not necessarily.
In many ways, Newsweek is facing the same kinds of wrenching decisions that other traditional media entities are — such as the New York Times, which is reorganizing its newsroom even as it prepares to launch a paywall in an attempt to produce digital revenues and/or shore up its print circulation (lacklustre numbers from News Corp.’s recently launched paywall notwithstanding). The key question is: How much emphasis will be placed on the web as opposed to print? The Washington Post, which also recently merged its newsrooms, has been criticized by some because “the print side won.” Will the print side dominate at the NYT as well? At least Newsweek‘s decision shows the web has a fighting chance of driving the agenda at the merged entity.
The main reason most critics have given for keeping the Newsweek site (apart from the fact that lots of talented people have worked hard to build it, as the Tumblr blog argues) is that it gets a lot more visitors than The Daily Beast does. According to Quantcast, Newsweek’s site gets about 7 million unique visitors a month compared with about 4 million for The Daily Beast. However, as noted in a piece at Ad Age, the visitors to Tina Brown’s site return more frequently and stay longer when they are there. Those are important metrics when it comes to reaching (and keeping) advertisers, and that’s expertise that the new Newsweek desperately needs.
On a more personal note, while I’ve only visited The Daily Beast a couple of dozen times since it launched, that is still about 25 more visits than I have ever made to Newsweek.com — nor am I ever likely to go there. I realize that I’m not the typical online media consumer (and I’m sure the work being done by the Newsweek web staff is excellent), but there is an argument to be made that when it comes to an online audience, the Newsweek brand name may actually have a negative connotation rather than a positive one. The site won’t be disappearing entirely: Tina Brown says it will live on under its own banner, and links will obviously be redirected so that past content doesn’t disappear.
The reality is that Newsweek is a failing brand, with a failing business model — otherwise it wouldn’t have had to put itself on the block and be sold for the equivalent of $1 U.S. (plus the assumption of $40-million in debt). So why keep a website shackled to that fading name? Nostalgia? It’s true that the Daily Beast website is smaller, and that the startup is also said to be losing money. But at least its audience has been growing rather than shrinking, and regardless of Tina Brown’s print-based past, the Beast has a reputation as a smart web operator, not unlike the Huffington Post. Better to ride that pony than try to breathe life into another faded old-media brand.
The New York Times is a lot better off than Newsweek, obviously, but it has to make a similar choice: embrace the web, and all that entails, or allow the declining print side of the business to remain at the forefront and control the decision-making process? The fact that the newspaper is still considering a paywall (albeit one with openings to allow for social media, apparently) seems more like a defensive move than anything else. At least Newsweek‘s new owner is thinking differently.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):
- Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
- Lessons From Twitter: How to Play Nice With Ecosystem Partners
- What We Can Learn From the Guardian’s Open Platform
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Font Shop and Zarko Drincic
bench craft company reviews
Xtina's New Man Is Bad <b>News</b> | PerezHilton.com
Although she´s only been separated from hubby Jordan Bratman for three months, Christina Aguilera is head over heels for her new man Matthew Ruther - and she may be in for a while ride! ...
Sun TV <b>News</b> application approved - Need to know - Macleans.ca
Sun TV News has been green-lit by the CRTC after a long war with the regulator and critics who are opposed to the 24-7 news-and-opinion channel nicknamed “Fox News North.” The CRTC had previously refused to grant the Quebecor property a ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company reviews
Xtina's New Man Is Bad <b>News</b> | PerezHilton.com
Although she´s only been separated from hubby Jordan Bratman for three months, Christina Aguilera is head over heels for her new man Matthew Ruther - and she may be in for a while ride! ...
Sun TV <b>News</b> application approved - Need to know - Macleans.ca
Sun TV News has been green-lit by the CRTC after a long war with the regulator and critics who are opposed to the 24-7 news-and-opinion channel nicknamed “Fox News North.” The CRTC had previously refused to grant the Quebecor property a ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company reviews
We used the University of Colorado, Denver. The rooms were free. We had three rooms, each could seat between 50 and 125 people depending on the room and each had speakers, projector, lights and so on. You can find similar venues very easily, just ask around. We had the rooms from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. or so on the quietest day of the week for this particular campus and they were booked something like two-three months in advance.
Food
We used Einstein Brothers for breakfast and lunch. We planned food for about 100 people and it worked out very well, with food taken to the after-party too. We simply booked online, chose a ton of food and it arrived at 8:15 for breakfast and 11 a.m. or so for lunch. Breakfast consisted of bagels with various schmears, coffees (remember decaf too) and some bagel poppers (think donut holes). Lunch was boxes of bagel sandwiches (remember vegetarian option), iced tea, lemonade, cookies (three kinds I think), chips (including chips that don't suck, like Sunchips) and gherkins.
Set up was very easy, there were a couple of fold out tables and a few people volunteered to set up the boxes, etc., along with the staff from EB. At the end of the day I asked everyone in the room to help clean up one item (we had boxes, empty cups, etc., etc.) and it was done very quickly.
Breakfast mingling took from 8:30-9 a.m. or so. Lunch was one hour: noon-1 p.m. It was a nice enough day that people wandered outside, chatted and so on.
Website
As a hangover from last year, I happily used Google Sites to host www.wherecamp5280.org for free. It has a super simple editing interface. I only built a couple of very simple pages listing the details upfront as you can see.
Tickets
Eventbrite was pretty awesome. You set up your event, add ticket types (with different prices), link to it and you're done. It's entirely free to use if your tickets are free. For wherecamp, the majority of the tickets were free. You can also use their iPhone app to scan peoples tickets if you like, but I didn't do this as it's free and it would have just been a hassle for very little benefit. Tip: tell the attendees this so they don't print out the paper ticket! Also see sponsorship next:
Sponsorship
I used Eventbrite again. This worked out fantastically. Usually people spend a ton of time setting out sponsor levels, making a brochure and all that stuff about what a sponsor gets for their money. What I did instead was set up Eventbrite "tickets" that were priced as powers of two. So $16, $32, $64... $1024. Sponsors could then simply go in to Eventbrite and buy a ticket. This was wonderful for me as I didn't have to screw around with checks and bank transfers.
It was wonderful for sponsors as they could buy a "ticket" and expense that, whereas sponsorship is sometimes a much harder thing to get and has to go through other channels. One big thing to learn from though is that powers of two is a cute way to get sponsorship, but it doesn't match very well to what can be expensed. Often people can expense things with some rule like "so long as it's less than $1,000." Next time I will price things like $190, $490, $950 and so on.
As for "what do the sponsors get," I didn't produce a brochure or have anything particularly in mind. I've run conferences before which do do this and that's fine but this was a volunteer event. If the sponsors didn't come through, all I had to do was not order food (the major cost) and instead point people at nearby cafes, etc. It helps that I've run conferences before and therefore have a level of trust from the people sponsoring to not fuck it all up. I was asked a couple of times, but simply said it was a volunteer conference therefore time was short and we couldn't really produce brochures, etc.
Next page: How about actually getting the sponsors?
Ever since the news hit that Newsweek‘s new owner is combining the publication with Tina Brown’s web-based media outlet The Daily Beast, there has been a frenzy of criticism over the decision to kill Newsweek‘s website and redirect readers to The Daily Beast site instead. Felix Salmon of Reuters, for example, called it “bizarre,” and Newsweek.com staffers quickly set up a Tumblr blog to complain about the move, which they said was a result of senior managers who “deep down, don’t understand the web.” But is killing Newsweek.com such a bad idea? Not necessarily.
In many ways, Newsweek is facing the same kinds of wrenching decisions that other traditional media entities are — such as the New York Times, which is reorganizing its newsroom even as it prepares to launch a paywall in an attempt to produce digital revenues and/or shore up its print circulation (lacklustre numbers from News Corp.’s recently launched paywall notwithstanding). The key question is: How much emphasis will be placed on the web as opposed to print? The Washington Post, which also recently merged its newsrooms, has been criticized by some because “the print side won.” Will the print side dominate at the NYT as well? At least Newsweek‘s decision shows the web has a fighting chance of driving the agenda at the merged entity.
The main reason most critics have given for keeping the Newsweek site (apart from the fact that lots of talented people have worked hard to build it, as the Tumblr blog argues) is that it gets a lot more visitors than The Daily Beast does. According to Quantcast, Newsweek’s site gets about 7 million unique visitors a month compared with about 4 million for The Daily Beast. However, as noted in a piece at Ad Age, the visitors to Tina Brown’s site return more frequently and stay longer when they are there. Those are important metrics when it comes to reaching (and keeping) advertisers, and that’s expertise that the new Newsweek desperately needs.
On a more personal note, while I’ve only visited The Daily Beast a couple of dozen times since it launched, that is still about 25 more visits than I have ever made to Newsweek.com — nor am I ever likely to go there. I realize that I’m not the typical online media consumer (and I’m sure the work being done by the Newsweek web staff is excellent), but there is an argument to be made that when it comes to an online audience, the Newsweek brand name may actually have a negative connotation rather than a positive one. The site won’t be disappearing entirely: Tina Brown says it will live on under its own banner, and links will obviously be redirected so that past content doesn’t disappear.
The reality is that Newsweek is a failing brand, with a failing business model — otherwise it wouldn’t have had to put itself on the block and be sold for the equivalent of $1 U.S. (plus the assumption of $40-million in debt). So why keep a website shackled to that fading name? Nostalgia? It’s true that the Daily Beast website is smaller, and that the startup is also said to be losing money. But at least its audience has been growing rather than shrinking, and regardless of Tina Brown’s print-based past, the Beast has a reputation as a smart web operator, not unlike the Huffington Post. Better to ride that pony than try to breathe life into another faded old-media brand.
The New York Times is a lot better off than Newsweek, obviously, but it has to make a similar choice: embrace the web, and all that entails, or allow the declining print side of the business to remain at the forefront and control the decision-making process? The fact that the newspaper is still considering a paywall (albeit one with openings to allow for social media, apparently) seems more like a defensive move than anything else. At least Newsweek‘s new owner is thinking differently.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):
- Why Google Should Fear the Social Web
- Lessons From Twitter: How to Play Nice With Ecosystem Partners
- What We Can Learn From the Guardian’s Open Platform
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Font Shop and Zarko Drincic
bench craft company reviews
Xtina's New Man Is Bad <b>News</b> | PerezHilton.com
Although she´s only been separated from hubby Jordan Bratman for three months, Christina Aguilera is head over heels for her new man Matthew Ruther - and she may be in for a while ride! ...
Sun TV <b>News</b> application approved - Need to know - Macleans.ca
Sun TV News has been green-lit by the CRTC after a long war with the regulator and critics who are opposed to the 24-7 news-and-opinion channel nicknamed “Fox News North.” The CRTC had previously refused to grant the Quebecor property a ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company reviews
Xtina's New Man Is Bad <b>News</b> | PerezHilton.com
Although she´s only been separated from hubby Jordan Bratman for three months, Christina Aguilera is head over heels for her new man Matthew Ruther - and she may be in for a while ride! ...
Sun TV <b>News</b> application approved - Need to know - Macleans.ca
Sun TV News has been green-lit by the CRTC after a long war with the regulator and critics who are opposed to the 24-7 news-and-opinion channel nicknamed “Fox News North.” The CRTC had previously refused to grant the Quebecor property a ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment