Interview: Amanda Perino (Organizer)
Links
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandabrookeperino/
Rails Foundation: https://rubyonrails.org/foundation
Transcript
Travis Dockter: Alright, we are, we're not live, I was gonna say we're live, but, we are started. Here we go. So, welcome to, my casual conference, chats.
Travis Dockter: Where I interview conference organizers and ask them all the burning questions that I have, about, your experience and any guidance or any knowledge that I can get, to help me and hopefully others,
Travis Dockter: organize our own conferences. So, I'm gonna try to… Start, kind of,
Travis Dockter: early in the… in the timeline, I was looking at, your history, and you had
Travis Dockter: Kind of a lot of, event-oriented experience
Travis Dockter: before Rails World. So, can you kind of give us a little bit of, an overview of your experience before Rails World, to give us context before we jump into that? And quickly introduce yourself as well, if people…
Amanda Perino: Wait!
Travis Dockter: Okay.
Amanda Perino: Alright, well, thanks for having me. My name is Amanda, I am the Executive Director of the Rails Foundation, and part of our work is organizing the annual Rails World Conference.
Amanda Perino: And then the first question was my history. Okay, my history with events specifically, it actually goes back before tech, when I worked… I did PR and marketing for a hotel chain for 12 years in Amsterdam. Three hotel properties and 2 restaurants.
Amanda Perino: And I actually did events from the venue side back then, as part of that, because for a small hotel chain, like, hands in many pots.
Amanda Perino: So I had a little bit of experience on the venue side on a small scale.
Amanda Perino: And then I started doing marketing consultancy and moved into tech to do event marketing specifically for HashiCorp, for their conference, HashiConf.
Amanda Perino: And from there, moved more into the event organizing space, and then eventually came over to the Rails Foundation.
Travis Dockter: That's cool. So you have… you have experience from both sides, you know, from the… the venue side, as well as the, the event side, I guess you would call it. Exactly.
Travis Dockter: Cool, yeah. So does that give you any, like, insight when you're going to talk to venues? Like, you kind of already know what they need and what they're looking for? Because my experience thus far has been…
Travis Dockter: my very limited experience, granted, is that I was expecting venues to be…
Travis Dockter: more engaged, because you're, like, trying to give them money, but oftentimes they're very busy, and hard to get a hold of, and that kind of thing. So, like, does your experience give you some, like, secret tactics to, like, get more engaged?
Amanda Perino: get their attention. That is honestly really, really hard. I understand how you're going through that, because if you think of a venue, their primary thing is to run events for people. It's the event space, so every week, there's several events happening, and they don't really have the bandwidth to think, okay, in 9 months, your event is coming.
Travis Dockter: Yes.
Amanda Perino: So you just have to prepare everything in advance and let them know a couple weeks out, like, this is exactly more than a couple weeks out, because if it's anything that you need from the event.
Amanda Perino: then you have to ask them. And it… it sounds like your venue is smaller and more, sort of, accommodating, and…
Amanda Perino: more friendly, but the larger the event spaces are, the harder that gets, to either talk to the right person, get the permissions for certain things. Like, for our events, we need to do, sometimes, rigging, so we need to get certain people to be able to hang things in the space. So, yeah, it's just a lot of…
Amanda Perino: following up, and if you have a good team helping you, this is what a producer does. They just constantly reach out to the venue and sort of nag them to get their attention.
Travis Dockter: Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, I imagine as it gets… because for my event, obviously it's very small, 100…
Travis Dockter: 150 people, a smaller kind of local venue, and it's basically one or maybe two people that I'm in contact with. But as the venue gets bigger, then they're gonna have a whole team, and you have to talk to
Travis Dockter: multiple different people, depending on what you are trying to achieve, what you need. You have to talk to the, you know, the tech person that handles the lights, you have to talk to the venue person that handles the, like, calendar, whatever. So yeah, it's…
Travis Dockter: More complex and more difficult as you kind of scale up.
Amanda Perino: But the good thing about… you're in a sweet spot with 150 people and a venue that does this all the time. The good thing is that they've done it so many times before that you can really lean on their expertise. Where's the best place for registration? When should we do this? How does it work here with that? Because they can just do copy and paste and take a lot of that thinking off of your shoulders.
Travis Dockter: Right, yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Travis Dockter: What were, what were some of the differences, or maybe, like, new things you had to learn or get used to going from HashiConf to your first
Travis Dockter: Rails world, was there any, like, big differences that you noticed, or were you kind of able to, just apply a lot of your experience straight across?
Amanda Perino: I actually applied all of the experience there. There was definitely a difference between an open source… I mean, there is open source at HashiCorp as well, Terraform was open source.
Amanda Perino: But an enterprise conference versus an open source community conference is different in a lot of… a lot of ways. For instance… and it… one thing to keep in mind, I was one of a team at HashiCorp, so we kind of divided and conquered.
Amanda Perino: Whereas with Real's World, it was primarily me with support from the board, support from a producer. So, the first one, I think the biggest thing, and you won't necessarily run into it yourself, but the biggest adjustment for me was that at HashiCorp.
Amanda Perino: and HashiConf. We put a lot of…
Amanda Perino: Support into the opening keynote with the founders and certain key customers.
Amanda Perino: so I kind of went into Real's world thinking I would do that with DHH, you know, like, let's prepare ahead of time, let's… let's get your concepts fleshed out, and he doesn't need any of that stuff. Like, he doesn't… he just does it on his own, he rehearses, he doesn't… he barely rehearses. He just needs a couple minutes ahead of time to make sure the clicker works.
Travis Dockter: So that was an adjustment, where…
Amanda Perino: I felt like I was going in blind, not knowing, like, what the opening keynote is gonna… like, can this guy deliver? Of course, I know he could deliver, but, like…
Amanda Perino: I always like to over-prepare, and he was like, no, I don't like to prepare at all, and I was like, that's…
Amanda Perino: a little bit stressful, but we're gonna roll with it, because you're the one on stage, and if you're comfortable with that, then we can go with it. But besides that…
Amanda Perino: I brought a lot of things over from HashiCorp and HashiConf, to be honest. The fact that we do turnkey booths so that the sponsor lounge is very consistent looking and not too busy, that's something I learned from HashiCorp and HashiConf. So, quite a lot, actually.
Travis Dockter: Gotcha. So, what were the… let's go to specifically the first Rails world.
Amanda Perino: Hmm.
Travis Dockter: What were some of the challenges that you had on that first one, you know, being the first one?
Amanda Perino: I mean, everything. Everything. To start… I mean, you're starting a conference from scratch, so it's going to be a lot similar. Number one, figuring out what the best
Amanda Perino: City was to have it?
Amanda Perino: finding the venue, I tried several cities, and I went, and I toured a lot of venues in another city first, and in the end, it was too expensive. And…
Amanda Perino: kind of defaulted to Amsterdam. I had already asked a lot of venues here, you know, what are the prices, what are… what are the dates, what are the options?
Amanda Perino: And in the end, I…
Amanda Perino: I thought our venue was too expensive, and then when I went to another city and I compared prices, I was like, actually, we're getting a great deal. That's why we came here twice.
Amanda Perino: And it did a lot of the lifting as far as a lot of the AV was in-house already, like, the stage was already there, so these are things you don't have to think about. They took care of the food, so you don't have to talk to a different F&B caterer, so that was really, really nice, and again, why we went back a second time.
Amanda Perino: But…
Amanda Perino: I didn't know the first time, like, would people want to come? Would people want to speak at this conference, would…
Amanda Perino: Sponsors want to sponsor this conference, so everything was an unknown that first year, and…
Amanda Perino: It went better than expected for a lot of things, but for instance, for sponsorship sales that first year, we didn't meet our goal at all.
Travis Dockter: Gotcha.
Amanda Perino: And it's a scary thing to go into to run a budget and say, I need X amount of money, otherwise it's going to be a huge net loss, and in the end, it was a bigger net loss than we were comfortable with, but we just had to kind of go through with it. So… but we had the foundation behind us, and I know that with smaller conferences, the risk lays on your shoulders a little bit, so it's…
Amanda Perino: I feel it, I definitely feel it.
Amanda Perino: If you're in that case right now. Where are you, by the way, with your event?
Travis Dockter: So we have venue, we have, a couple sponsors, and we just opened our CFP, so, and I also, have…
Travis Dockter: two, keynote speakers that I invited who already have confirmed. So, we're pretty far along. Basically.
Amanda Perino: Cool.
Travis Dockter: Right now, I'm waiting for the CFP to kind of go through, and then choose those speakers, and really, I'm now in the stage of, okay, I have the…
Travis Dockter: the foundation piece is set, what do I want this to look like? What do I want the experience to be?
Amanda Perino: Yeah, cool. Now that I have…
Travis Dockter: you know, it is a conference. Now, I say, if you have sponsors, speakers, and a venue, you have a conference.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: And now I need to make it a good conference. Okay, cool. So, yeah, that's kinda… kinda where… where I'm at.
Travis Dockter: Kind of, piggybacking off of that, what were the… What were the things…
Travis Dockter: and it doesn't have to be your first one, I guess, but what are the things that you feel Rails World has done really well?
Amanda Perino: Hmm…
Travis Dockter: Like, what are the successes?
Amanda Perino: I
Amanda Perino: I can… I'll just… things I like about Rails World, let's just call it as that. I don't want to, like, compare it to other events, but these are things I like that we do.
Amanda Perino: we…
Amanda Perino: give people an opportunity, because events can be really overwhelming. Even for me, I'm an outgoing person, but that first year, I was running to every quiet room I could find, just to take a breather myself, and then…
Amanda Perino: coming back down to talk to people, and then going back up again. So I was constantly running around just to, like, hide and come back. So what I'd like to do then is to create
Amanda Perino: things and spaces for people who need to get away from everybody. Even if it's a small conference, I find this really, really important. So, for instance, the first year we had this wall, that if you didn't want to talk to anybody, you just go up to the wall, and you could write on the wall, and you could read the timeline, and you were busy doing something without necessarily having to talk to anybody else.
Amanda Perino: And there's also these little, like, snuggy corners that you can sit in if you need to. We also had a chill-out room this time with a really beautiful view, and…
Amanda Perino: In Toronto, we had all these tables and couches set up in this, in the kilns. It was an old brick factory.
Amanda Perino: just so that people could get away from… it's really, really important. I think…
Amanda Perino: the Ruby community in tech is quite a chatty community, but we're all still… even in general, if we're outgoing, we're all still overwhelmed, I think, by being around a lot of people. I don't know if that's post-COVID or what, but…
Amanda Perino: I always think, like, okay, if I'm as outgoing as I am, and I need a break, then I have to think of people who are less outgoing than me.
Amanda Perino: We also…
Amanda Perino: push… and again, this is something that I learned from HashiCorp, we push our videos live on YouTube within 2 weeks. The keynote and all the following keynotes go live as soon as possible, so they get processed first, and all the rest within 2 weeks. I like how we do that.
Amanda Perino: And then I guess, just…
Amanda Perino: the polish and shine. I like also how we do that. It feels weird to say I like… because it's…
Amanda Perino: tooting my own horn, in a way, and I don't mean that, but it's, like, the things that I care about, I think.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, you're proud.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah. So… you haven't been to one, right? You haven't been to one.
Travis Dockter: I really wish I had, because then I…
Amanda Perino: Alright, this call is over.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, next year, you know, it's happening much closer to me.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: And, I'm… I am already planning on… on getting a ticket.
Amanda Perino: Oh yeah, so this is also another thing. I like the venues that we choose, and in Austin, it's a little… gonna be a different venue, actually. So, I… I'm a little bit nervous about that.
Amanda Perino: It's gonna take extra energy and thought into making it a cool experience, because it's really just kind of like a box.
Amanda Perino: Because before, we've had daylight, and we've had beautiful monumental buildings and stuff, or repurposed buildings, and this one doesn't really have that, so I'm a little bit nervous about that compared to other things, but then you have Austin, and it's a fantastic city, and the city will do the heavy lifting, I hope, so…
Travis Dockter: Right, right.
Travis Dockter: Was there anything that you learned at this year's Rails World that you are saying, okay, I want to do that better? Or just any lessons learned?
Amanda Perino: Yeah, all the time. This one in particular, the lesson learned, Was… don't over-program at all.
Travis Dockter: Hmm.
Amanda Perino: the reals world… Essentially, for most people, is pre-registration on one day, and then two full days.
Amanda Perino: But for a certain group of people, Rails Core, they come in a couple days early, they have a private meeting, a private dinner. This year, we had the Rails at Scale Summit, which was a
Amanda Perino: pre-event for 100 people.
Amanda Perino: after that, we had the board meeting, and like, it was just every day and night, there was something from Monday to Friday, and it was by day 3, which Real's World hadn't even started yet. By day 3, I was exhausted. And then I was thinking of…
Amanda Perino: DHH, who had to give his opening keynote, and the Rails Core, who were gonna be flooded with people wanting to talk to them on Thursday and Friday of Rails World, and I thought, okay, we can't do this every year. I don't want it to be exhausting for myself, much less for the Rails Core team, for instance. So, we're gonna definitely slim that back.
Amanda Perino: next year, and have a much more simple… it was also really confusing for
Amanda Perino: comms, you know, like sending the Rails core certain information, sending the board of the Rails Foundation certain information, sending speakers certain information, but then if they're on the board.
Amanda Perino: they need two groups of information, or if they're on the core team. So it was just, like, this comms nightmare that I want to try to fix for next year.
Amanda Perino: So yeah, there's… there's always learning… lessons to learn after an event. In hindsight, everything, right?
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, because you were essentially organizing, like.
Travis Dockter: almost 3 different events, like company off-site, and a conference, and a mini-conference with the Rails of Scale.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, plus all the audiences.
Travis Dockter: do that.
Amanda Perino: core is an audience, the issues and committers teams are another audience, the board is another audience, speakers are another audience, and then we have our… our biggest audience of all the attendees who are coming. So, yeah, there's gotta be a better way. Oh, and the Rails at Scale Summit.
Amanda Perino: So.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: Speaking of audiences, and speakers, specifically, is there anything that you…
Travis Dockter: what is the speaker experience? Because is there two tracks at…
Amanda Perino: Jacks.
Travis Dockter: two tracks, for two days. You have quite a number of speakers. What is the speaker experience like? Do you do anything, to kind of, like, make them feel special and help them, navigate the conference? What is that like?
Amanda Perino: We could do better.
Amanda Perino: With people who are speaking at conferences for the first time, or who are generally nervous with their talk.
Amanda Perino: We assume a lot of speakers, if you get in, you've got the chops to give the talk, so we don't do, for instance.
Amanda Perino: speaker prep. We asked them to submit their, presentation, I think, two weeks before, which is already really difficult for a lot of people, because people like to work on their talks quite late. But we want to… everything is run from front of house, so it's not a plug-and-play conference at all. We don't want people fumbling with
Amanda Perino: Plugging in their laptop on stage, so it's run from the front of house.
Amanda Perino: Which means they need to download all the fonts on their computers, make sure everything works good, they have to run through it in rehearsal, so it asks…
Amanda Perino: It moves the timeline for speakers.
Amanda Perino: we could do a better job of coaching anybody who needs it through, like, making the talks a little bit better. I don't know how we would do that. I'm sure the board would be willing to speak to speakers, but for… other than that, which I think is something that we could be better at.
Amanda Perino: we… We cover their…
Amanda Perino: hotel, and quite a nice hotel, usually. We have a speaker gift, and we have a speaker dinner.
Amanda Perino: And one year, a sponsor…
Amanda Perino: gave money so that we could pay our speakers a small travel stipend. It didn't cover most speakers' flights, but at least it was something, like a gesture. But that turned out to be quite a financial nightmare of getting everybody paid, and how to pay them, and different currencies, and different…
Amanda Perino: platform, some people wanted Wyze, Revolut, so in the end, I don't think we're going to do that again unless there's a really easy way to do it, because it was just a really logistic nightmare. So that's generally what we do.
Travis Dockter: Gotcha. How about, sponsors? What does the sponsor experience,
Travis Dockter: you know, do you do anything special for them? How do you make that a smooth experience?
Amanda Perino: This is a hard one, because there's generally different types of sponsors. There's the ones who have a booth.
Amanda Perino: there is…
Amanda Perino: booth plus, I'll call them, Platinum. It's always been AppSignal up until recent… well, up so far. There are sponsors who… we call them program sponsors, that have something else, like Buzzsprout, they have the podcast booth. It's a setup on-site, but it's not necessarily
Amanda Perino: the predetermined booth, the turnkey booth. And then we have others that are, for instance, sponsoring Wi-Fi, where they just, like, need their brand there, they're happy to donate some money towards that, and then they just want to attend themselves.
Amanda Perino: So, I think the most effort goes into the booth sponsors, because you actually have to build something for them, or at least give them space and that.
Amanda Perino: And they have more to do, because they don't just…
Amanda Perino: turn up, they have to work on demos, they need to submit logos, so what we do is, the turnkey booth thing is
Amanda Perino: you get a booth that looks like this, we ask for one color, and we give them a mock-up of what the booth will look like. We ask for one brand color, and that goes on this wall, and we put your logo on that wall. And…
Amanda Perino: A lot of companies, especially the larger companies.
Amanda Perino: Are so used to having to brand both walls, with…
Amanda Perino: any number, like, the branding. To me, that looks really, really messy in a sponsor hall, if, like, each…
Amanda Perino: Sponsor has a different look and feel, so we.
Travis Dockter: stupid.
Amanda Perino: really consistent. You give us one color, you give us one logo, then you have a screen, you can do anything you want on the screen, but it's contained here, and then when you enter the sponsor lounge, it's not overwhelming, it's really nice to look at, it…
Amanda Perino: It's consistent, and that's pleasing on the eye.
Amanda Perino: And that's a really hard thing to explain to sponsors ahead of time. Like, trust us, it's gonna look good, you're gonna look good, but you only can give us one color. And then they're like, but can we make a gradient? Can we put a pattern on it? Like, absolutely not. And saying no to a sponsor is really hard sometimes. They don't really like that.
Amanda Perino: And the message there is we're taking it off your hands, you don't need to get your design team involved, you don't need.
Travis Dockter: Too late.
Amanda Perino: Fabricate a booth yourself, you don't need to bring banners or ship banners or anything like that, like, we do it all for you, you just need to show up with your demo and your swag.
Amanda Perino: And it… Only after they're on-site do they realize how nice it is.
Travis Dockter: Right.
Amanda Perino: So do you know yet what you're gonna offer sponsors?
Travis Dockter: A little bit. I've talked with a couple of them to kind of figure out what is the most value for them, and like you said, there's different… different kinds of sponsors, like, for us, there's, like.
Travis Dockter: Sponsors that want to get, awareness for hiring purposes, and then there's the ones that want to get awareness for product purposes, and then there's people that just want to support
Travis Dockter: the conference and the community, and just have, like, a good face in the community. And…
Travis Dockter: I'm… because it's so small, and I only… my costs are really low, and I don't need a lot of sponsorship money, so I'm not… I'm not gonna have, like, 10 sponsors. It's gonna be, like, 3 or 4. I'm trying to tailor it, to each one, because I have that bandwidth that I can say, like, hey, do you want, a booth, or do you want some time on stage, or do you want…
Travis Dockter: you know, a couple, like, emails going out right before the conference, or something like that. So, we haven't nailed all those, all those details down.
Travis Dockter: Completely yet, but… because it's smaller, I can get a lot more custom. But I do like that…
Travis Dockter: Kind of uniformity that brings simplicity, yeah.
Travis Dockter: Which might seem like a constraint to them at first, but…
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: that they later, appreciate, because I think that… Complexity is…
Travis Dockter: the enemy of most, conferences, and… Yeah.
Travis Dockter: And organizers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I want them to, have a great experience, and I want to be able to customize that for them.
Travis Dockter: And I think I'm… I'm able to do that because it's only 3 or 4 of them, and it's a small conference, but yeah, we'll see how that goes this year, and maybe we'll change it this year, but,
Travis Dockter: yeah, I don't have, like, a sponsor hall with… with…
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: you know, 5 to 10 booths or whatever. So we'll see. We'll see. Kind of talking about that… oh, sorry, did you have something to add there?
Amanda Perino: Yeah, there's another, caliber, let's say, of sponsor that I really, really love working with, and it's the…
Amanda Perino: I almost want to call them, like, the yes-end sponsor, because, like, I have a lot of ideas, and sometimes I just want the right sponsor to understand my vision.
Amanda Perino: It doesn't always work. Like, there's so many ideas I've tried to pitch to sponsors, and they're like, but for instance, and it's a matter of finding what works for the brand as well. That's really, really important. So if you have, like, a good idea, there might be a perfect sponsor to match with it, and I'll give you one example.
Amanda Perino: Buzzsprout podcast booth, so that was an idea. I was like, I would really love a space. I saw it at another conference, a greenhouse-type thing.
Amanda Perino: And so, I reached out to them. Buzzsprout is great. They're a great company to work with. They were immediately on board, and it's been this program that we keep going every year, because it's nice. It's nice to have something like that. It creates content for Rails World, for Rails in general. It gives…
Amanda Perino: Podcast or something to come, and you have, like, 800 people in the community at your disposal for interviews.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: So they get a lot out of it as well?
Amanda Perino: Another one is working with Avvo on the Passport and Ruby embassy that we just did.
Amanda Perino: And that was…
Amanda Perino: that was definitely a joint effort, but it was Adrian from Avvo saying, like, I kind of want to do something, and I was like, well, this idea that we had, that we had banded around before, let's talk this out, and like, let's make it fun, and make it more by working together. Another one is…
Amanda Perino: this year we had boats bringing people from the speaker hotel, or from the conference hotel to the venue, and it was the same thing. Rubiness, the guys who run Baltic Ruby, they were like, we want to be involved, we don't know yet what it's like, and I was like, well, I know that you guys
Amanda Perino: are event organizers, so you appreciate fun things, so I have this idea, and I pitched them several.
Amanda Perino: And when I mentioned the boat to bring people to the conference, like, who shows up to a conference by boat, you know?
Travis Dockter: Yeah, awesome.
Amanda Perino: I saw their eyes go, and I was like, okay, we're on to something here. This is, like, a company who really likes
Amanda Perino: fun, weird things. So finding those sort of sponsors that… you have the idea, and then they bring the right attitude is really, really fun as well. So if you have anything like that, like, this is a good community for that.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, and it's definitely, like… You know, sponsors can get kind of…
Travis Dockter: Ignored if they just do…
Travis Dockter: the… the same basic thing. Like, if they just have a booth, and they just have their logo up, and they have some, like.
Travis Dockter: swag that we've all seen before, it's really easy to forget that they exist, right? But if they do something interesting and enhance the experience of the conference somehow.
Travis Dockter: You remember that, and it's a huge boost to their brand, in my opinion.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: I love the, the Buzzsprout,
Travis Dockter: you know, idea and the booth that they have, every year, and I'm always, like, you know, after Rails World, I listen to a couple different podcasts in the community, and I love hearing the.
Amanda Perino: Yay.
Travis Dockter: ones where they're like, oh, we're at the Buzzsprout, you know, greenhouse or whatever in Rail's world.
Amanda Perino: Yay.
Travis Dockter: And they get to be in person, which, you know, doesn't really happen when you're just interviewing people from.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: all over the world, and that's really cool, it's just a different vibe. So that's, like, such a cool thing. I have such a positive image. I've never even been to Rails World, and I've never met anybody from Buzzsprout, and I have such a positive image of Buzzsprout.
Travis Dockter: Because of that, that experience.
Amanda Perino: Love it.
Travis Dockter: So yeah, I am trying to think of, you know, different things to do with our sponsors to do something like that. I have a little bit of time, so…
Travis Dockter: Hopefully, hopefully we'll… we'll make that happen.
Travis Dockter: Kind of along those lines of, like, experience and…
Travis Dockter: perception, you don't, at Rails World thus far, you have not had any problems selling tickets.
Travis Dockter: Which is something that smaller conference organizers have to think a little bit more about. But do you do any, like, marketing, or do you think about that much at all, or is it more… are you more just focused on the experience and the tickets sell themselves?
Amanda Perino: I…
Amanda Perino: I don't know if… yeah, this is a funny thing. No, we don't worry about marketing, but because I come from the HashiCorp and HashiConf.
Amanda Perino: background, where my first job on the events team was sell tickets, and I did marketing in tons of different ways. The first year, I did that for Rails World.
Amanda Perino: In the end, I didn't have to, and it was also different. It's very…
Amanda Perino: specific… I mean, so is Hashi… HashiConf, it's very specific, but, like, we were reaching out to websites that have, like, top 10 lists of… top 10 tech conferences to attend.
Amanda Perino: reaching out to specialty groups to promote it, reaching out to certain Google groups. So I was doing all this for Rails World that first year, in preparation, and in the end, I really didn't have to do that much, because the community took care of it. And for 3 years, it's gone really, really well, but I…
Amanda Perino: There's only so long that we can sell out that quickly and not get on people's nerves.
Amanda Perino: You know, like, it's quite frustrating for people if they can't get a ticket, and while it's fun the first couple of years, the whole board is really kind of sitting and going, okay, how do we make this a more…
Amanda Perino: fair, equal experience. Anybody who… in the end, people, if they want, because of the changeover in tickets, if they want to attend, they eventually do get a ticket.
Amanda Perino: But that first not getting it in the first round can be really frustrating. So we're trying to think of how to sort that out, and then eventually, like, we will have to do marketing again. This… it's the shiny new thing for the first couple of years, but I don't…
Amanda Perino: Imagine.
Amanda Perino: that it could last. I mean, it would be great if it did, and we didn't have to worry about marketing, because already the event experience itself takes up so much time and energy, but…
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: Eventually, it's gonna be something we have to think about.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: How do you think about the conference,
Travis Dockter: like, the conference purpose and its size, because I… I think that…
Travis Dockter: the experience and also the purpose is different for regional conferences versus something like Rails World. How do you think about that? Like, what is the role of something like Rails World versus a regional conference?
Amanda Perino: Yeah, it's a good question. I'd like to hear your opinion as well, because what I think of Rail's world as
Amanda Perino: Pushing the framework, this is what's new, this is, like, where we're going, this is the direction that we're taking.
Amanda Perino: Whereas I see the regional conferences, and I'm excited now that I can go to more of them, to be honest. The regional conferences have a much more…
Amanda Perino: community.
Amanda Perino: oriented aspect. Like, you do get that at Rails World, but it feels like, because of the intimacy of the smaller regional conferences, you get more of the community, there's more space for newcomers to the framework, or to the community.
Amanda Perino: there's a… it's so much easier to walk into an 150-person conference and feel like you really got to meet a lot of people versus 800 to 1,100 that we've had at Rails World. That can be intimidating for a newcomer, maybe a little exciting, depending on the newcomer.
Amanda Perino: the content…
Amanda Perino: is also quite advanced, or at least we aim for it to be advanced and technical, and we have heard feedback that for somebody… actually, really good feedback this year, a guy came up and said, like, I'm mid-level, and this is way above me. And I had to tell him, like, we had… the board had a talk, and we decided that that's…
Amanda Perino: what we would aim for. Like, it would be highly technical, so that even if you're mid or a beginner, you know that you're not going to know everything, but you can aspirationally look at it aspirationally.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: Because there's just not space for a beginner track, and I think maybe there's space to pepper in a regional conference more beginner talks, and a very… have it be a very welcoming community, because it's smaller. So I think the biggest… the biggest difference, I would say, is the community building can happen in a much more…
Amanda Perino: intimate way at regional conferences, whereas Real's World is really focusing on the framework. The framework ahead of everything. And then, where is it going, what's new, what's coming?
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: It's not for everybody, that's the beauty of it. Like, you have a conference for every size that you could possibly want, in every country, almost, it feels like, more and more and more. So, it's really like a choose-your-own-adventure with conferences. Like, what are you comfortable with? What do you want to experience? You can find it in this community.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, definitely. And that's… yeah, that's been my experience. Like, something like, I've gone to,
Travis Dockter: Sin City Ruby, the past couple years, and that was, like, you know, 100 people, and…
Travis Dockter: that was more, you know, I went, not knowing anybody, and, it's…
Travis Dockter: Small enough that you can just walk in, and you'll kind of just find yourself in a group of people, and get to know them, and
Travis Dockter: versus, you know, going to something… for me, going to a Rails Conf, where it's, you know, this year's 800 people, and that one is more fun to, like…
Travis Dockter: maybe get a couple of your coworkers together to go, because it's… it's harder on… when it's that big to insert yourself into a… into a group. Still very possible, but maybe that's just me, I'm… I'm,
Travis Dockter: I don't know if shy is the right word, but it's hard for me to just, like, go and insert
Travis Dockter: myself into a group at a conference that big is just kind of overwhelming. So that one's more fun, to, like, go with a group that you already know, and experience the fun of hanging out with them at a big conference.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: And seeing the, you know, the cutting-edge, talks and stuff like that. Getting the swag, and, like, that's more of, like, a,
Travis Dockter: like, a conference trip experience, you know, with, like, friends or something like that, whereas you can go to a much smaller conference by yourself, and get to know a couple new people, and have a, you know, a more intimate kind of experience in that sense. Yeah.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: It's funny, I… I was thinking about this recently, because this year, I went to… besides Real's World, of course, Brighton Ruby.
Amanda Perino: RailsConf in Philadelphia, and Yuruko, I just got back from in Portugal.
Amanda Perino: Varying sizes, but generally on the larger side, all of them.
Travis Dockter: Hmm.
Amanda Perino: And at Rills World, my primary job is talk to new people. Talk to new people, talk to new people, talk to new people. Run the conference, of course, but talk to new people. And then I found that at the other three conferences.
Amanda Perino: I was kept rotating back to people I knew already.
Amanda Perino: I was kind of, like, off work, but I shouldn't be. In this role, I'm never off work at a community conference, but.
Travis Dockter: Right.
Amanda Perino: at a certain point, I was like, stop bothering these people, like, you're constantly going back to the same people, because that's just how I am as a person, like…
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: The friends that I know, I don't necessarily like to talk to new people when I go out to, like, a bar. I'm with my friends.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: And I really observed that difference in myself, going, oh, yeah, no, no, you should make an effort, because, like, you're.
Travis Dockter: at the screen.
Amanda Perino: opportunity where you don't have to run the conference, you don't have to be on stage, and you have more time now to talk to new people. So in the next…
Amanda Perino: I don't know what my next event will be, but in the next one, I will try to be more proactive and talk to new people more, because you're right, I'm the same way, whatever you call it. Even though I'm outgoing, reserved with new people.
Travis Dockter: Right.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah. There's… and I think I've heard you say that next year… I mean, how many people were at Rails World this year?
Amanda Perino: 800, just over 800.
Travis Dockter: 800, and I think I've heard you say that you guys want to increase that number for next year?
Amanda Perino: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's gonna be…
Travis Dockter: so many people…
Amanda Perino: Oh, this is the feedback that we got, by the way. This, and which you can do really well, and I know Jason Sweat, does his force participation.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: we… I got a couple, because we send the feedback survey out, and some of the people said it would be nice
Amanda Perino: and I also heard this in person, more… not matchmaking, but more, like.
Amanda Perino: not forced networking, but more facilitated networking, because they were either new, or they were traveling alone, or something like that. And part of me was like, I don't know how much of that is on us to do, but I think as just, like, a
Amanda Perino: a human, I think it would be really nice to do. I don't know how to do it yet, but several people called for it, especially as it gets bigger and bigger. What we… the thing that we do is called Curated Connections, so we do, like, a chat roulette random pairing beforehand. You have to opt into it.
Amanda Perino: And then you can say, I want to meet one, two, or three people before, and they randomly pair you, this program, built on Rails.
Amanda Perino: I think we did it too late, because some people only got the pairs
Amanda Perino: after the event, or during the event, or something. Okay. In the end, you just get on a call, like we're doing now, and you chat, and at least that's one person, or two or three that you know before you go to the event. So we do it on a very small scale, but on-site, there's probably more that we could do. I just don't want to over-program. It's that over-programming thing again.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: That's something that you would be able to do at a smaller conference in a lot more of a genuine, natural way.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, it is nice, and I did like Jason's forced,
Travis Dockter: forced, socialization, I think he called it, because it was…
Travis Dockter: It… even if you are going to a conference and you're like, I'm gonna meet people.
Travis Dockter: It's so easy to go, and then just…
Travis Dockter: sit on the sidelines, and then afterwards, you're like, I didn't, you know, I didn't take any chances, I didn't talk to these people, so,
Travis Dockter: Giving that little boost, is nice. And making an opt-in, like…
Travis Dockter: I like the idea of forcing it, because then…
Travis Dockter: some people that already have a bunch of friends at the conference and want to hang out with those friends are gonna, you know, they're gonna roll their eyes and say, ugh, I don't… now I don't want to do this thing, I just want to hang out with my friends, and maybe it's not as fun for them, but…
Travis Dockter: Yeah, it is really nice for the newer people.
Amanda Perino: I hear such good things about, and I haven't experienced it, I've only asked people at Ruby Central generally about it, but the guides and scholars that.
Travis Dockter: They do? Yes.
Amanda Perino: I hear such good things about that, and I wonder if there's a way to not limit it to the scholars necessarily, but anybody who kind of wants a buddy, like a buddy system, you know, like, meet somebody
Amanda Perino: even if it's just for a coffee, or a quick chat, or something like that. I wonder how that would work, if it was not limited to
Amanda Perino: scholars, or scholarship recipients.
Travis Dockter: Right. That's a really… that's a really good one.
Travis Dockter: I should think about that more, how to, maybe make a…
Travis Dockter: a system out of that, or expand that, like you said, just outside of the guides and scholars, because I think that one is important.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: Interesting.
Amanda Perino: just do, like, pull a JSON, and just randomly pair people up by email, and surprise, here's your buddy.
Travis Dockter: Right, right.
Travis Dockter: Okay,
Travis Dockter: Okay, some more general questions.
Travis Dockter: So, this is obviously a big conference. How big is your team, and how do you delegate stuff?
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: this is my big challenge for next year. So, the team… I had more people this year than in previous years, so that was really, really nice. But in previous years, it was me plus…
Amanda Perino: A duo who works on a production team.
Amanda Perino: like, a production agency. So we have the… the luxury of working with that. I think for smaller organizations or smaller conferences, you wouldn't necessarily work with a production team.
Amanda Perino: But it's… that team will do things like…
Amanda Perino: Contacting a hotel, because we also have, like, the hotel contracts.
Amanda Perino: Contacting a hotel, managing the speaker list of who's staying at the hotel,
Amanda Perino: running registration on-site, so that those are the folks that you see who are, like, handing out the badges, they've set up the registration, they've stuffed the swag bags, on-site. It's really the on-site things that help.
Amanda Perino: actually, that's not true. The whole, the whole process. Then they are the point of contact for sponsors, like, where do I go that first day? How do I set up my booth? Where do I find my booth? So…
Amanda Perino: In the first two years, it was me plus those two, because it just so happens to be,
Amanda Perino: Pairs who run these, agencies all the time.
Amanda Perino: This year, it was a little bit more. We had that same duo.
Amanda Perino: But I also had the designer on site, which was really, really nice. Like, we… the designer has worked with us for a couple of years, and he's great, and he… it was a very hands-on
Amanda Perino: All-hands-on-deck mentality.
Amanda Perino: And then we had, Amani, who's a new freelance project manager for the Rails Foundation, and it was her first… she was just onboarded. So I just gave her, like, one work stream, run the upstairs studio that we were creating videos, to push online all day.
Amanda Perino: And then I had marketing help this time, and marketing by way of the emails we sent out, the social assets that we shared online, the blog post that we wrote, and that was somebody named Gaia, so it was…
Amanda Perino: All three of those were my team this year, and they were on-site when I couldn't be, like, running around doing all, like, the important things.
Amanda Perino: because last year, my feedback was, like, I… I can't be all the places at once. I definitely need more people on site. So that was my first attempt at delegating. It was good. It was so good. It was so nice. So I'm going to learn how to do that more, but the thing that happens with…
Amanda Perino: the scale that Real's World is at.
Amanda Perino: And I was telling you, like, those audiences, like, I know CORE needs to be there, and I know CORE needs to be there, and I know the board needs to be there, so it's really hard to just…
Amanda Perino: it's possible, it's not impossible, but to, like, offload some stuff and trust that all the work streams are gonna work well together. So that's just something that I'm already preparing for next year.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Perino: And I can't wait, because it'll be so nice. Yeah.
Travis Dockter: Is there any,
Travis Dockter: any small things that you did that had an outsized or unexpected impact, on the conference, something that maybe you did, and you didn't even think about it, and then people came up to you afterwards, and they were like, I loved this thing, and you're like, oh…
Amanda Perino: Yeah… it wasn't, like, a large impact thing, but it… last year in Toronto, and this… I was like, darn, I'm gonna have to do it all the time now. But I, like, I told you these audiences, right? Like, we have Rails Core, we have the board, and we have all the speakers.
Amanda Perino: And the production company I worked with last year.
Amanda Perino: who I also worked with at HashiCorp and HashiConf.
Amanda Perino: they did these one-page itineraries, because you can, like, put all the calendar events in somebody's thing, you know. For speakers, it would be, this is your rehearsal time, this is your speaker dinner, where to be, this is, like, your hotel booking reservation number, and…
Amanda Perino: in Toronto, we also picked them up at the airport and brought them back as well, because, like, you don't want your speakers having to deal with navigating a city and getting places. So it was just a one-page itinerary.
Amanda Perino: Which sounds, like, nice and easy, but when you have…
Amanda Perino: people who fall into different audiences, you have, like, different templates, like David, for instance, he's a speaker, he's on the board, he's on the core team, so he gets all the information.
Amanda Perino: And then various people get parts of the information, so it's really… it's a complex thing to do. And we shipped about…
Amanda Perino: and I think it was Eileen was like.
Amanda Perino: Thank you so much, because that landed right when I was like, I just need somebody to tell me where to be and when. And I was like, darn, I'm gonna have to do it all the time now.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Perino: So much work on our end.
Amanda Perino: But in the end, I really like it, because it also helps me understand, okay, who needs to be where and when, that kind of, like, oversight, because you're just moving people around all the time, and asking them to be here, and asking them to be there. And then I printed it out, and a lot of people said, thank you so much, that's so handy, because it's just one page, that's the one thing I don't have to look at.
Amanda Perino: the agenda online, I don't have to look at my email, my calendar, it's just one page in front of me. So that's a small thing that we're gonna do all the time that had a big impact on the people that are super important, you know, the speakers and the board and the RELS core team, so…
Travis Dockter: Yeah. Did you print that out, like, last minute? Because I… I love having a physical itinerary, but then, like, if it changes.
Travis Dockter: then the physical one you have is wrong. You either have to print it again, or, you know, write on it or something.
Amanda Perino: I was just like…
Travis Dockter: Print that very last minute.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, and this is one of the frustrating things about events, like, there's so much happening, and it's still happening, and it's still happening, and it's, like, closing and closing, and at the last minute, okay, finalize, finalize, finalize, finalize, so everything is last minute in events, like, you can't complete anything ahead of time. It all has to happen in the last two weeks. That's another thing.
Amanda Perino: the last… I always try to have everything done in the la- like, 2 weeks before the event, because I know
Amanda Perino: people, like, I'm the… I'm the same event…
Amanda Perino: I am going to an event next week, and I was just today going, alright, so where's the venue? What time is my talk? Like, what's…
Amanda Perino: that's when all the emails come into the Rails Foundation, asking all these questions, so I want everything else to be buttoned up so that I can focus on attendees, you know, and also, like, the… I need to get rid of my ticket, I'm sick, I have COVID, I can't make it, and, like, family issues.
Amanda Perino: That takes up so much time in the last two weeks.
Amanda Perino: trying to manage those two workflows, knowing that nothing can actually finish until the last minute, so…
Amanda Perino: Yeah, it's all people and communication management, actually, and project management. It's really tricky. How are you going to manage it? Do you have a partner that's going to help you? Because you're not in events unless you have a partner, and you rope your whole family into it.
Amanda Perino: Everything.
Travis Dockter: Definitely…
Amanda Perino: badges.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, I am, I'm gonna work with Adrian to, get the,
Travis Dockter: the Ruby, passport there, and I'm gonna steal your idea, and I'm gonna rope my mom into, running the.
Amanda Perino: Is she… is she like my mom, where she was like, say no more? I got the brief, and I was like, okay, but I really want you to give them a hard time. She was like, say no more.
Travis Dockter: I think, I think she'll be game. I think she'll be game.
Amanda Perino: So that's one thing, I think.
Amanda Perino: if I were to give any advice about when you're thinking of all these, like, how to… the experience that you were saying…
Amanda Perino: this community really, really loves a good bit, and they will lean into it. Like, they love to be charmed, they love to be surprised, and the more weirdness you can add into things, the more they'll appreciate the work that you're doing for it. They'll appreciate it anyway, but then this… these sorts of funny things, I think.
Travis Dockter: Or, like…
Amanda Perino: not jokey bits, but the experience is really important, so if you have something planned there, then amazing.
Travis Dockter: Yeah. I love that advice, because it really is, like… You know, people…
Travis Dockter: You go to conferences, and the kind of, like.
Travis Dockter: default purpose of a conference is the talks, right? But…
Amanda Perino: Should we say…
Travis Dockter: You can watch those on YouTube afterwards, like, you don't have to be there in person for those. And, like, you… you want to meet people, like, that's really good, but it's also really easy to go to a conference and, like, not talk to anybody if you don't make any initiative, and…
Travis Dockter: making the entire experience, more memorable, and doing those little things kind of…
Travis Dockter: I think can help people get into it, and… Yeah.
Travis Dockter: when people start to get engaged and have fun, they're more likely to…
Travis Dockter: you know, reach out and talk to the people around them, and say, oh, did you do the… did you do the Ruby, embassy? That was really funny.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah.
Travis Dockter: Or… and it just makes the whole experience more engaging, and it gets people…
Travis Dockter: More of what they actually want out of a conference, which is the community…
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: aspect of it, you know what I mean?
Amanda Perino: Indeed. The one thing that makes me laugh, and in Yuruko, it was, like, happening all the time, is the ability for this community to be, like.
Amanda Perino: how can we have fun? And what happens is…
Amanda Perino: things come out of it, like, and, like, I'm going back now, and the first thing I heard about, Ruby on Ales, where it was, like, brewery… brewery-based conference.
Amanda Perino: Ruby on Trails, which Jeremy Smith was just doing in a thing. We did a Rails surf camp that, after Yuriko, several Ruby developers went and went surfing together.
Amanda Perino: post-conf. Hey, we're gonna hang out for a couple days after the event. The Ruby Triathlon. It's just like, how do we take this thing that…
Amanda Perino: every community does tech conferences, community conferences, and just push it a little bit more. Like, make it, like, a little bit more fun. It usually starts with, like, a silly name.
Amanda Perino: Ruby on Waves, or something, like, I can't remember the ones that were coming up at Yuroko, but people were like, what if we do this? What if we do that? What if we do that? And it's just like, how do we take this conference, but make it in a weird place, or… with a weird theme, or something like that, so…
Amanda Perino: It's like, I think that's a testament to the community. Like, it's just all about fun.
Travis Dockter: Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
Travis Dockter: Do you have any, this is such a boring question now, after that. Do you have any, resources on conference organizing that, like, anything that inspired you, or anything that you… you know, it could be a book that you read, or,
Travis Dockter: A conference that you went to, or a blog you follow, or anything that inspires you?
Amanda Perino: I think the most that I've gotten from events is really, like, the HashiComps that I've been a part of. Even after the first Rails world that I did, I wrote to the whole team, all the people, and I was like, hey, I learned this from you, I learned that from you, I learned that from you. It was…
Amanda Perino: intimidating going into my first Rails world without the backing of an events team in an enterprise company.
Amanda Perino: But I was able to kind of pinpoint it back and say, like, you all taught me all of this, so thank you. Thank you for getting me here, because our first real world was a success. So I think it didn't… I don't have any other ones. One event, GitHub Universe, would be a benchmark as well.
Amanda Perino: I constantly see what they're doing online. I haven't been able to go in person, but I'm screenshotting it for my little, like, inspiration deck with the designer. Like, how can we take elements of this and put it in our own, event coming up, maybe in Austin? So that's what I would say, like, just…
Amanda Perino: Obsessively stock other events online to see what they're doing.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yep.
Amanda Perino: And you've gone to a couple. What events have you gone to this year besides Rails Comp, where we met when I was choking on my breakfast?
Travis Dockter: That's when I almost killed Amanda.
Travis Dockter: I have been to, Rails World, I went to, .
Amanda Perino: cities.
Travis Dockter: Thin City Ruby, I'm planning on going to,
Travis Dockter: Rocky Mountain Ruby, which is next week. I will be there. If I can, I'm gonna try to make it to, San Francisco Ruby.
Amanda Perino: That'll be a good one.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, that's kind of it for this year.
Travis Dockter: next year, I'm… I'm hoping to make it to at least… Maybe one conference before…
Travis Dockter: Blast Off Rails, which will be in June, so if I can make it to one or two more, because it is really nice just to, like, see how other people are running things, and say, I like that, I'm gonna steal that, or…
Travis Dockter: Or sometimes, oh, I didn't like that, I'm gonna make sure.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah.
Travis Dockter: Adam.
Amanda Perino: You bet it is.
Amanda Perino: There's a good amount of that going on as well.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah, you can…
Amanda Perino: you know.
Travis Dockter: just, just, yeah, experiencing other events and, seeing what you like and don't like, I think is really, really helpful. So, yeah, I'm trying to make it to as many as possible, but,
Travis Dockter: Yeah, it's hard. I feel like, Europe right now has way more conferences than the U.S, and I think there's some new ones coming in the U.S, but this year, I felt like, was… there wasn't a lot of…
Travis Dockter: There weren't a lot of conferences in the… in the U.S. this year.
Travis Dockter: So, yeah.
Amanda Perino: Interesting, because I know I am hearing more pop up, like, there was one in Austin. I saw rumblings of one in Austin before we announced it, and I was like, please don't be close to September.
Travis Dockter: How many years.
Amanda Perino: But XO Ruby, as well, with their roadshow.
Travis Dockter: Oh, yes. Yo, that, yeah, that one's really cool.
Travis Dockter: XO Ruby, I think, is the name of that.
Travis Dockter: Jim Remzick. Yeah, that one's really cool. That's, like…
Travis Dockter: Yeah, like a mini-conference. It's just one day, and doing it in a bunch of places.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: Good show. And then SF Ruby, of course, is new. So I think maybe… with Sin City ending and RailsConf ending.
Amanda Perino: I think we'll probably see even more pop up. That's usually how it happens, you know?
Travis Dockter: That's what prompted…
Travis Dockter: that's what prompted me, was because I pretty much just went to SunCity Ruby and Rails Conf every year, because where I work, they give us, like, a budget for conferences, or it's kind of our, like, training, conference budget, so…
Travis Dockter: those were kind of the ones that fit, and, both of those were ending this year, and I was like.
Travis Dockter: what am I gonna do next year? And there weren't a lot, but when I learned that it was Rails Confs last year and, Sin City Rubies last year, there hadn't been announcement for SF Ruby, or RBQ, I think is the Austin one.
Amanda Perino: Yep.
Travis Dockter: So there wasn't a whole lot of options. So, yeah, I was like, okay, maybe there's a… there's some space, to… to fit another one in there. So, yeah, and a couple of…
Amanda Perino: Never travel abroad for one?
Travis Dockter: So, our, our budget doesn't cover international. They won't pay for international conferences, so I would have to pay for that myself, and that's a large, financial and time commitment to take time off of work.
Amanda Perino: There you go.
Travis Dockter: you know, you have to have at least full-day travel days on each end and everything, so… I would love to go to international conferences, but I haven't had the space yet for that, so… Maybe next year…
Amanda Perino: Yeah, this brings up a good point that, as well, that I'm reminded every year. I try to go into Rail's World remembering this, but…
Amanda Perino: People give up a lot to come.
Travis Dockter: to an event.
Amanda Perino: bed.
Travis Dockter: It's a big commodity. Of all size. Yeah, yeah, so…
Amanda Perino: being considerate of that fact, that they're either… they're stepping away from work, family, they're traveling long distances, sometimes further, sometimes closer, sometimes it's in the same town, it doesn't matter. It's still, like, stepping out of your life to do this.
Amanda Perino: I don't know what you can do for that, like, make it more worthwhile, or just be considerate of it, but that's something I keep in mind, especially because we're…
Amanda Perino: often in a place where people are traveling really far to get to it, so jet lag is playing an issue, over-programming is really a problem then, and that's something I realized this year.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to, like… I mean, that's the point of regional conferences, is to make it easy. If you have a bunch of small conferences, people can go to the closest one.
Travis Dockter: And it's not as… as big of a lift. You know, Albuquerque is relatively centrally located. I'm trying to, like.
Travis Dockter: push out, like, hey, like, there's a bunch of direct flights, from all these other cities to Albuquerque that are, you know, less than, less than a 3-hour flight direct, so…
Travis Dockter: you know, that makes the decision a little bit easier if they… it's not, like, a full travel day. Like, they can go after work on Wednesday, they can fly into Albuquerque, and spend the two days, and, you know…
Travis Dockter: trying to make it easier in that… in that respect. Albuquerque in this conference, is also a very…
Travis Dockter: comparatively a very low financial commitment as well, because, you know, it's a smaller city, so our hotels are a little bit cheaper. The conference expenses are cheaper, so I made the tickets cheaper, so it's… as far as conferences go.
Travis Dockter: I'm hoping it's, low effort to get here, so that will encourage more people.
Amanda Perino: I saw on your blog how much your venue costs.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, did it make you cry?
Amanda Perino: Amazing. It did! I shed a tear, then I had to, like, wipe it up and get on the call.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, no, we got really lucky, with expenses, because it's, you know, it's like, you know, $1,000 a day.
Travis Dockter: I think a little bit more than that, but we have AV included, and, you know, only have to deal with really one person who's kind of organizing everything, so we got really lucky with.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: venue, I think, which is gonna allow us to do
Travis Dockter: more fun stuff, and lower the prices, and, you know, try to make this as, engaging of a… of a conference as possible. So, yeah, we got… we got lucky.
Amanda Perino: Can I ask you a question or two about things?
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Amanda Perino: Turn the tables a little bit?
Travis Dockter: Sure.
Amanda Perino: What has surprised you most so far about organizing an event?
Travis Dockter: What has surprised me most?
Travis Dockter: I guess, probably… This is gonna sound bad, but what surprised me most is… Actually, how…
Travis Dockter: simple it is to put on a conference, and that.
Amanda Perino: How dare you?
Travis Dockter: So, and let me, let me explain that, because obviously, you hear about Rails Conf and Rails World, and these are huge, very complex.
Travis Dockter: conferences that take teams of people to put together. And when I was asking people that had organized conferences before, telling them, I want to organize my own conference, one of the first things that
Travis Dockter: not everybody told me this, but one of the first things that most people said was, oh, who is your co-organizer? Do you have a team of people to organize this? And I didn't, and that kind of made me nervous at first, but once I got into it.
Travis Dockter: And I… I had… Kind of decided, like.
Travis Dockter: I'm… this isn't going… this is gonna be my first one. It's not gonna be super polished, it's not going to be super extravagant. I just want a place for people to gather and have a Ruby and a Rails experience.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: That isn't super complex. You need speakers, you need sponsors to cover the expenses, you need a venue.
Travis Dockter: Yeah. If you have those things, if you do nothing else.
Travis Dockter: People can still have a good time, just because you've given them a space To have that connection.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: You can have a conference with only those 3 things, and…
Travis Dockter: Getting those three things isn't easy, but is not impossible for one person to do part-time after their job.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Travis Dockter: So that kind of… was something where I was like, oh…
Travis Dockter: it wasn't surprising, necessarily, but it was kind of a mind shift of, oh, okay, maybe I can do this. Because before, I was a little nervous at, do I need a team of people? How hard is this gonna be?
Travis Dockter: I mean, you don't even have to have any swag. You don't have to have name badges. I really… I had an awesome experience every year at, Sin City Ruby, and…
Travis Dockter: Jason handed out blank stickers and a Sharpie, and you.
Amanda Perino: My name is…
Travis Dockter: wrote your name, and you stuck it on your shirt, right? Like, badges are something that, like, a lot of conference organizers complain about, because you have to get them printed, and then people are changing stuff, and you want to, like.
Amanda Perino: looking at.
Travis Dockter: put different, like, logos on them, and what are QR codes and everything, but you don't have to.
Travis Dockter: I had a great time at Sin City Ruby every year, and it was, I made good memories there, and it was not a super complex conference.
Amanda Perino: Nice. I love…
Travis Dockter: going to Rails Conf, and I'm super excited to go to Rails World, but if you want to do a conference yourself, you can. I think that was the…
Travis Dockter: the main thing that kind of surprised me as I got into it.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I have said several times, and I really, really stand by it, that
Amanda Perino: you could… Throw beanbag chairs.
Amanda Perino: In a parking lot.
Amanda Perino: and project The content against a brick wall, and people would make it a party.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: The fun for conference organizers, if you're really, really into it, is all the extras that you can bring to it, and, like, your stamp that you can put on it, but you don't need it. Absolutely not. Yeah, I agree with you on that one. For… for Rails Conf, Rails World, RubyConf.
Amanda Perino: you definitely need more than just that, but yeah, I agree. And that's the beauty of regional conferences as well, like, you can just be like, instead of a name badge, introduce yourself to somebody.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Perino: Or wear a t-shirt or something, yeah. Yeah.
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: Nice.
Travis Dockter: Is there anything that you…
Amanda Perino: I'm trying to think of another, like, good question to get you.
Amanda Perino: What are you most looking forward to in it? That's my last question.
Travis Dockter: The people, honestly. Like, just seeing… Who goes, and
Travis Dockter: Yeah, as a… as an attendee, that's… that's always fun to, like, see who you would… you're gonna meet. But as an organizer.
Travis Dockter: It's slightly different, because it's like…
Travis Dockter: You want to see who comes, because you're like, oh, this person… Trusted me.
Travis Dockter: And they, like, decided to come to this thing…
Amanda Perino: Ehh.
Travis Dockter: I made, like, that's very… gratifying.
Travis Dockter: And we're still pretty far out, and maybe nobody will come, but maybe a couple people will come, and that'll be, like, meeting people in that context is, like…
Travis Dockter: Oh, wow, like… These people came to this thing that I put on, that's really cool.
Travis Dockter: and getting to, yeah, getting to meet those people will be… Will be fun.
Amanda Perino: When are you releasing your tickets?
Travis Dockter: It's already up,
Travis Dockter: I was gonna… I thought about doing the whole, like, marketing buildup, and then, like, a release date, but then I was like, that sounds like a lot of work, and I don't really have the, like.
Travis Dockter: sway of the bigger conferences to… to get people excited, so… I'm just gonna release them in,
Travis Dockter: People can… can buy them when they…
Travis Dockter: think about it. And we're still pretty far out. I just opened it up so that people can buy if they want, and I'm gonna do more of a…
Travis Dockter: marketing push, if you want to call it that, in the, you know, February, March, April kind of…
Travis Dockter: Timeline to…
Travis Dockter: to say, hey, get your tickets now, this is what's gonna be happening. Because I also, you know, I haven't…
Travis Dockter: hashed out a lot of the experience parts of the conference yet, and I'm gonna be doing that kind of at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, and then I…
Travis Dockter: Hope to give that…
Travis Dockter: as people saying, here's what the conference is actually gonna be like, here's why you should buy a ticket. Because right now, I'm just…
Travis Dockter: somebody that nobody knows, who got some sponsors, some speakers, and a venue. And that's, you know, maybe if you live in Albuquerque, that's a reason to buy a ticket, because you're like, oh, I'll go, it's right here. But, you know, later on, I'll be hoping to give people more reasons, to buy tickets.
Amanda Perino: I… the…
Amanda Perino: ticket timing is such a thing, we had to do it too early in Toronto, because so many people needed visas, and Toronto's government said, okay, or immigration said, okay, you need to open tickets at a certain amount to give people 6 months leeway, at least. So, of course, you want to give them more.
Amanda Perino: And in the end, that meant a lot of change tickets later.
Amanda Perino: Because people… plans change. Like, I don't know where I'm gonna be, like, next year or whatever, but I remember at Hashi Comp, we would always see, like, okay, steady, steady, steady ticket sales, steady ticket sales, oh no, shouldn't we panic? And then the last minute, all the last tickets. It would always sell out, but it was, like, very much a steep…
Amanda Perino: And probably the way you're looking at it this way, but… Yeah.
Amanda Perino: You'll probably see that as well, even though things are, like…
Amanda Perino: People plan last minute a lot more, especially now, these days, yeah.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, I've heard that from multiple conference organizers, and I am one of those people that I…
Travis Dockter: see the conference, and I… even some of them, like, I know I'm going, but I just won't buy the ticket yet until.
Amanda Perino: Like, it's crazy.
Travis Dockter: or…
Amanda Perino: Hey, yay.
Travis Dockter: And… yeah. I… sometimes that has to do with, like, my job and how, like, expense requests happen in fiscal years or whatever, but sometimes I'm just like, okay, I just want to know…
Travis Dockter: you know, am I making this a long trip or a short trip? Yes. So, or, you know, I want to make sure that I'm available that weekend, just in case something comes up.
Travis Dockter: And then I'll… I'll end up buying my ticket. I… I usually still buy the ticket a month or two ahead of time. Some people will, like, literally the week before they're buying their ticket and hotel and flight, I don't.
Amanda Perino: God, I couldn't live like that, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it.
Amanda Perino: I'm a little bit late for my own liking, but…
Amanda Perino: for the most part, I like to know generally in advance.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, I mean, I think Jason told me that from Sin City Ruby, like, the two weeks before the conference, they sold, like, a large portion of their tickets in the two weeks before, and then I just saw a post from,
Travis Dockter: Rocky Mountain Ruby, that they had just sold out, you know, a week before.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah.
Travis Dockter: So yeah. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not banking on a bunch of ticket sales months out.
Travis Dockter: But it is nerve-wracking as the organizer of, like.
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: You know, you're a month or two out, and you've sold, like, 20 tickets, and you're like…
Travis Dockter: Is anybody gonna be.
Amanda Perino: Is anybody coming to my party? Yeah, yeah.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, is it gonna be literally 20 people there? There's almost as many speakers as attendees.
Amanda Perino: messenger.
Travis Dockter: Come on, that's a little…
Amanda Perino: There's your buddy system. Every speaker, grab an attendee.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, exactly, yeah. So…
Travis Dockter: I am, not looking forward to that anxiety, of… of watching ticket sales. It hasn't hit me yet, but yeah, that's…
Amanda Perino: Oh, there's plenty of time. And also, like, I think this community, if you just make Albuquerque appealing enough, and give a good enough excuse, everything that you've already said in this, I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. Like, especially when the experience, when you start understanding what that is, and what you can talk about.
Travis Dockter: talk about, you know? Sometimes it's nice to keep things a surprise, sometimes it's nice to leak it a little bit, so… I'm sure you'll sell out, I'm sure.
Travis Dockter: Fingers crossed, I hope you're right.
Travis Dockter: Awesome.
Travis Dockter: Alright, well, I've kept you for over an hour. Any other last, last words or advice for people organizing their own conferences?
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: Think of every small little detail.
Amanda Perino: As far as, like.
Amanda Perino: well, you don't have to be as obsessive as I get about an event in, like, the two months beforehand, but for instance.
Amanda Perino: think already of the end. You… are you recording your sessions?
Travis Dockter: I believe so, yes. It's kind of based on how many sponsors we get, but I think we have enough to, to get them recorded.
Amanda Perino: Nice. So then already think about, like, the YouTube descriptions, the thumbnails.
Amanda Perino: That sort of thing, like, what… where are you going to put it? Is… is the YouTube channel already made?
Amanda Perino: And after the event, the feedback survey, already have that. Like, you have to think of all the tiny, tiny little details, and just, like, map it all out, so then it's just execution, execution. That's… that would be my advice, like, think of the tiniest little details and what you might miss, so that you don't miss anything.
Travis Dockter: Do you, keep, like, a list? Do you have, like, a master list, or… because I have, like…
Travis Dockter: a whole Note app, but it's just, like, all, like, I'll think of an idea, and I'll be like, where does this go? I'll just throw it in there, so I have, like, a bunch of unorganized thoughts and notes and checklists and stuff.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, I tried to make one for, like, an event template for Basecamp.
Amanda Perino: But we haven't been consistent, because the vendors that I usually work with, they're very anti, like, new software, because, like, every customer would come up with, we want to use Asana, we want to use Jira, we want to use… not necessarily Jira, we want to use, Trello, Basecamp, so…
Travis Dockter: Yeah.
Amanda Perino: Up until recently, it's been very much, no, we're not going to use that. So, I haven't had any consistency, but next year, I'm going to be more forceful, and like, it needs to happen in Basecamp. We need to have some consistency that we haven't had. So, haven't had it yet, but I have, like, a spreadsheet that we usually work off of.
Amanda Perino: good old-fashioned spreadsheet. When all else fails, Excel wins. Excel excels. Yeah. But just, like, throw everything down, and yeah, that's exactly it. Like, the little details in the middle of the night when you're like, oh…
Amanda Perino: what about this, and put it somewhere? As long as it's somewhere, then you're… that's kind of, like, your low-key way to obsess about it, which is…
Amanda Perino: Fine, mine's a little bit more obsessive.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Perino: The obsessiveness sometimes makes it…
Travis Dockter: Great, you know?
Amanda Perino: Yeah.
Travis Dockter: Your… your stress is somebody else's incredible experience, so…
Amanda Perino: Exactly. That's a great way to put it. It's terrible on your own body, but as long as somebody has a good time. Actually, I'll finish with this one story. I also do events for my friends for fun, like mystery trips.
Amanda Perino: Where I tell them, like, you know, give me… like, block off this weekend, give me X amount of cash, you don't know until you need to know where we're going or what we're doing.
Travis Dockter: I love that.
Amanda Perino: Usually, like, flying all over Europe.
Amanda Perino: So this time, I, like, had my little… my little clipboard of, like, what had to happen, like, step by step, and I was running around Venice. I had, like, flown my friends to Venice.
Amanda Perino: And they were like, you know, you should try to have a good time. Like, relax and have a good time. And I was there with my clipboard going, like, oh, this is how I have a good time, like, I am in my element right now. And they were like, okay, whatever, that's on you.
Travis Dockter: Yeah. You having a good time is my good time.
Amanda Perino: Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Travis Dockter: Awesome. That's really cool.
Travis Dockter: Alright, well, thank you so much for your time and your expertise, and… Me too.
Amanda Perino: If you need to bend ideas off of, you have so many people in the community, so I'll put myself forward as well, if you ever have… if you just want a rubber Docker brainstorm or something.
Travis Dockter: Yeah, awesome.
Amanda Perino: Let me know.
Travis Dockter: I appreciate that, and I will probably take advantage of that, because, yeah.
Travis Dockter: I really love the… Even though I haven't been to Rails World,
Travis Dockter: Seeing, from other people's, posts and stuff, the…
Travis Dockter: attention that you put into the experience, is something I definitely want to try to emulate. So, I'll be, bouncing ideas off you.
Amanda Perino: Obsession. Yes, yeah.
Travis Dockter: So I'll definitely be doing that, and, thank you for letting us record this, and hopefully, other people will, will watch this and start their own conference, and, yeah, put some obsession into the details.
Travis Dockter: Really appreciate it, and we'll talk again soon.
Amanda Perino: Thanks a lot!
Travis Dockter: Bye.
Amanda Perino: Bye-bye.