2024-09-03 –, Man Track
Join Dan and Jason, two of the three DevOpsDays Global co-chairs, for a friendly refresher on how to plan and execute a successful DevOpsDays conference. Using data and feedback gathered from over a decade of global events, we’ll go over things like reverse schedules, marketing plans, and how to prepare a realistic budget. Then we’ll dive into one of the most important—and least understood—aspects of running a community conference of any type: sponsors. Specifically, how to find, attract, and form good relationships with these incredibly important members of our community.
This is a good-natured talk about a serious issue: community conferences (including DevOpsDays) aren’t as easy to organise, fun, and run as they used to be. If we want to keep doing these conferences around the world, we need to take real action on a year-round basis—and that’s work. Given that we all already have day jobs, figuring out how to optimise our actions, conserve our energy, and maximise our effort is key to success. So that’s what we’re going to talk about. Concerning sponsors, we’ll tackle the issue from the perspective of us as organisers, as well as the sponsors themselves. After all, attracting, building, and maintaining good relationships with the organisations that pay the bills will help ensure a healthy DevOpsDays community for years to come!
Dan is a fan of time zones and open source, and is currently co-chair of the DevOpsDays conference series.