# Learnings for future conferences - everything we learned organizing GenC **URL:** \ **Category:** Marketing DAO\ **Tags:** marketing-dao\ **Created:** [January 15, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://gov.near.org/t/learnings-for-future-conferences-everything-we-learned-organizing-genc/13074 "2022-01-15T14:41:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![philipruffini](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/gov.near.org/philipruffini/32/13219_2.png) [@philipruffini](https://gov.near.org/u/philipruffini)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://gov.near.org/t/learnings-for-future-conferences-everything-we-learned-organizing-genc/13074/1 "2022-01-15T14:41:45Z")
Would like to credit @amartin for helping to pull this together **Regarding Speakers** - _Source more speakers_ - We sourced 26, we should’ve sourced more. The more speakers you get, the more free distribution the event receives in multiple ways. For one, each speaker shared their session out to their network which increases engagement, awareness, and even proposal submissions. Additionally, each additional speaker allows for more content to market the event. - _Shorten the sessions_ - Each speaker session doesn’t need to be an hour. Hour long educational sessions tend to drag on and bore the audience. Plus they take away from allowing for additional speakers. I think speakers can get their points across in 20-25 minutes and we’d still see the collateral return (engagement, shares, etc.) - _Start outreach earlier_ - We started engaging LinkedIn 1 month before the conference. We should’ve engaged earlier to build better awareness and let the business development cycle play out. - _Focus on high-network speakers more than high-quality speakers_ - the larger the network, the more outreach and exposure we get. Much more worth our time to go after 1,000 little fish rather than 10 big fish - _List each speaker session on Eventbrite_ - Speaker sessions are important to drive awareness to the conference. Something we struggled with early on was driving traffic to the speaker sessions. One way we solved this was by listing each speaker session as an event on eventbrite and then putting some ad spend behind it. - _Standardized the requested bio and photo of all the speakers_ - _Advertise speaker sessions on Twitter to encourage a bigger audience_ - _Cross-post all of the Speaker sessions to the NEAR runner social media accounts_ **Regarding Sponsors** - _LinkedIn was the most successful form of outreach to Sponsors_ - _Leave more time pre-conference to run the business development cycle of finding sponsors_ - S_oftware companies didn’t see the benefit of participating in a conference branded around blockchain_ - _It’s much easier to convince someone to sponsor an event when in meeting in person_ - _You can’t run an event without an ecosystem map_ - _Create a bullet proof crm of sponsor information_ - _Create a sponsor package early and share it often_ - _Communicate that the agency proposals and introductions will not be silver bullet solutions_ - _You need 100% commitment from sponsors or they will bail_ - _Have NEAR leadership be involved from the beginning to get sponsors to participate_ **Regarding Awareness Marketing** - _Event name should reflect the event function_ - Though extremely understandable, the event name and mission needs to be clear and understood by all shareholders. Would the sponsors understand it, will the speakers see it’s importance, and will the audience know how it works? We had massive misunderstandings about whether Gen C was a hackathon or a contest, this is something we definitely could’ve cleared up earlier - _Gen C is not a conference, it’s a media brand_ - During a conference you can assume if someone comes for the day they’ll stay for more than one talk. Because GenC spans an entire month, there are unique challenges around getting attendees to return for multiple events. The main systems being put in place are email campaigns to signups that let them know 3-4 times a week about the upcoming events, what they missed, and links to be the best content of the week. These email campaigns only started working during week 2 of the conference due to being banned - _Find the ecosystems top influencers / voices early_ - Get alignment from the c-suite (+ other loud ecosystem voice) to have them help push the narrative out. Smart to look into who are the top influencers in Near, internally and externally. - _Event name should reflect the event function_ - Though extremely understandable, the event name and mission needs to be clear and understood by all shareholders. Would the sponsors understand it, will the speakers see it’s importance, and will the audience know how it works? We had massive misunderstandings about whether Gen C was a hackathon or a contest, this is something we definitely could’ve cleared up earlier - _Gen C is not a conference, it’s a media brand_ - During a conference you can assume if someone comes for the day they’ll stay for more than one talk. Because GenC spans an entire month, there are unique challenges around getting attendees to return for multiple events. The main systems being put in place are email campaigns to signups that let them know 3-4 times a week about the upcoming events, what they missed, and links to be the best content of the week. These email campaigns only started working during week 2 of the conference due to being banned - _Find the ecosystems top influencers / voices early_ - Get alignment from the c-suite (+ other loud ecosystem voice) to have them help push the narrative out. Smart to look into who are the top influencers in Near, internally and externally. **Regarding Distribution of Event** - _Run the event as a marketing effort, not a hiring effort_ - In our messaging, the hybrid event was mostly perceived to be a hiring effort which created a few barriers that blocked us from going viral on a vast number of popular marketing subreddits (Literally all the ones listed on here - [https://lookingformarketing.com/](https://lookingformarketing.com/)). - _Quantity over quality_ - Mods were adversarial, which resulted in many deleted posts and accounts. Start early to hit many with different accounts - _Be specific when talking about the event or the bounties_ - Not enough specificity on the tactical marketing bounties hindered our conversion rates according to feedback from engaged leads. - _Inbound interest might not fit available bounties_ - On Reddit most of the inbound interest came from SEO agencies/freelancers for which we only had two specified bounties that were not appealing enough based on the incentive amount. - _With a tight deadline, you possibly can’t follow through with every suitable channel_ - The tight deadline meant that we had to abandon/disregard a number of channels that could have prove to be fruitful ([Freelancer.com](http://Freelancer.com), FB groups, Discord, Telegram, etc.) **Regarding Video Production Content** - _Much easier to interview the sponsors if you’re an expert in that category_ - I’m not sure the best way to accomplish this but something that always stood out as we interviewed sponsors about what they’re looking for, is the fact that we didn’t know the right questions to ask. For example, when interviewing someone looking for SEO help, I don’t know what kinds of questions SEO agencies need to have answered on the interview. - The session were originally planned to be AMA’s so this wouldn’t be a problem but people tuned in more to the recordings than live - _People didn’t tune in live_ - The sponsor interviews were supposed to be AMA’s where the interested agencies would ask questions about the sponsor’s RFP live. That vision turned out to be very idealistic. Most people preferred to watch on their own time and very few asked questions - Need to better advertise before the day of the event that an event is upcoming (we did every day for a week for a single AMA) - We still don’t have an engaged live audience, the viewership picks up in the evening and late night! - _Source a list of questions to ask during sponsor sessions_ - Given the fact that there were no live questions coming in, the host always had to come up with questions on the fly. This is hard because it takes away from the host’s engagement because he is consistently thinking of the next question to ask. One thing we started doing which seemed to help immensely was to brainstorm questions pre-session. - _Moderators should be decided in advance_ - One of the largest problems week by week was that we didn’t have a clear idea who was going to moderate each session. The first week, we only knew the morning of, but as we started going we made sure to have a schedule made before the week started. In a perfect world, the moderator schedule is made before the entire event starts, that way no sessions fall through the cracks. - _Require each participant to share their session on social media_ - Make them share the livestream too - Write up what they have to share - Require them to use the #NearGrowth and @genCryptoConf - Require them to send us a link of where they shared it - Keep a master spreadsheet of links to all the social posts from partners - _The “waiting” and “loading” screens in between sessions should be leveraged_ - Use a countdown for the session kickoff. but during the countdown screen, the call to action should be to “Sign Up” and get the NFT for attending this event - “The easiest way to get hired in blockchain” Sign up at genc.win - “While you wait, signup and get credit for attending this session to increase your chances of getting hired into the Near Ecosystem.” - _Each video should be turned into long form content to be shared and distributed_ - Each session includes an incredible overview of the protocol along with pointed questions on their roadmap and vision. Content is king so following the video session, hire a content writer to transcribe the session, create a long form article and short form blog posts / tweets with the information provided, and start distribution.