An Inside Look at WordCamp Sponsorships

Katie (00:00):
Hi everyone and welcome to Woo BizChat at Do the Woo. I’m Katie Keith, co-founder and c e o at Bantu Plugins, and this is my co-host Marcus Burnett, and we’ve got an excellent topic for you today.

Marcus (00:14):
Yeah, thanks Katie. I’m Marcus Burnett from GoDaddy and we have a couple of guests joining us today that are experts in sponsorships for WordCamps, which has been historically a little bit of a black box and we want to get to chat with these folks a little bit and find out what it is that they do and how that all works and we’ll get into it. But let’s go ahead and let them introduce themselves. We have Jason Rouet. Welcome.

Jason (00:45):
Thanks. So I’m happy to be with you today. That’s the first time we emit with Jon because we send us a few emails before about the sponsorships between Europe and Asia and that’s very fine to connect together.

Marcus (01:05):
And as mentioned, we also have Jon Ang welcome to the show. John.

Jon (01:10):
Hey everyone, I’m Jon. I’m the director of Sales for Human Made. We make great websites and beyond that we do a lot of stuff in the community. I’m really happy to be on the show.

Marcus (01:25):
Awesome. And Jason, you are here representing WordCamp Europe sponsorship organizing. Correct. And John from WordCamp Asia. So we have a couple of arguably the largest camps in the world and sponsorship is a huge part of how these camps are able to happen and so we get a chance to chat with Jason and John A. Little bit about their experience in getting sponsors to help make these camps happen.

Katie (01:54):
Yeah, cool. So we can talk about the whole kind of spectrum of sponsorship. We’ve got two people from the sponsorship teams and then Marcus and myself have experience of being sponsors. So I suppose our goal is to help W business owners think about do they want to be sponsors and maybe do they want to consider volunteering for the sponsorship team as well? So I’d love to know more about what happens behind the scenes in terms of organizing the sponsorship side of things. Because when you apply for sponsorship, you have to go through a certain process where you’ve got to sign paperwork, apply in the first place. How do you, for example at the beginning, choose who you accept as sponsors? Which of you wanted to go

Jason (02:43):
The one with the money? So I can talk about it for Europe. So that was for the joke, but we’ve got a process for that. The first come first is our rule. So as soon as the call for sponsors is up, everyone is about to fill it and apply for one of the levels of sponsorship we are offering. And as we have some levels with a certain number of seats, we are applying this first come first save so that there is no political or problem at all. Because yeah, the first two reply will be the first to be accepted if they are compliant with the trademark and so on. Then if we see that one sponsor is not replying, we are warning them or we are trying to understand what is happening on their side. But in the end if one of the sponsor, at least one of the companies that applied is not replying anymore, then we will clear the spot for someone else and we’ve got a waiting list for the people that are a bit late in the process for example. That’s a simple process.

Katie (04:20):
Does that happen at Asia? Because I have sponsored Europe and I’ve applied to sponsor Asia, but my impression is it is not first come first serve and that decisions are being made. So is it different?

Jon (04:32):
Yeah, it’s a little bit different in Asia, just to be clear, Europe is the mothership of all flagships. We all started learning from Europe and one of the things that I pretty much care about and I’ve been to a lot of work camps is you end up having work camp whereby it’s predominantly hosting companies sponsoring. That is not an exciting hallway track for us and we’re walking through. So one of the things we did was, while as much as time is one of the factors when we choose a vendor and whether they could sponsor, it’s about the balance of the type of companies we want to be growing the WordPress ecosystem across product companies, agencies related ecosystems that Google and so on and hosting companies in that kind of setup. So when we bring those in, there are two layers. I guess the first layer will be like word central, allow them, they’ve got a bunch brew, it’s got to be, if you’re selling web press products, it’s got to be G P L.

(05:45):
You can be just saying you’re doing GPL it’s got to be in terms and conditions, it’s got to be a new website, we’ve got to check all those. So once you’ve passed through those, that’s the second layer for us which is how are we delivering the event? Is that going to be a proper representation of the WordPress ecosystem? So we try to balance it out as much as possible, even to the point that we don’t want all the top tiers to be taken up by hosting companies. We want them to be a fair representative across all tiers of sponsorship. So we do as best as we can to make it again, a proper cross-section of the work press ecosystem and we don’t always get the possibility of doing that, but we try our best.

Jason (06:36):
I think there is a difference between our flagships because in Europe we’ve got an history that is way longer. So we’ve got sponsors since a lot of years that are coming back every year, every edition. So it’s a bit different because we are in this premium seat where people are coming to us, sponsors are coming to WordCamp Europe and contacting us for Asia and maybe for us, but there is no representative today. Maybe it’s a bit harder because you have to go to the sponsors and chase them a bit. Yeah, I don’t know, but maybe that’s the difference.

Marcus (07:24):
And that definitely feeds into one of the questions that I had as well and I guess you alluded to it a tiny bit, but we’ll set aside the fact that I’ve heard that some camps have had a little bit of trouble getting sponsors and we can talk about that in just a little bit. My question is, I guess how do you approach getting sponsors? It sounds like it’s a little bit different for Europe and Asia I guess it sounds like more companies are returning to Europe that have been sponsors before, but do you just generally put out a call for sponsors and kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best or do you proactively reach out to folks that you would like to have as sponsors, folks that sponsor other events? How do you think about how you make sure that you fill up your lineup of sponsor spots?

Jon (08:15):
So we definitely don’t just post a thing and I hope that people will just sign up, it’s just not going to work. Even the kind of budget that flagship work work’s run, we’re talking minimum hundreds of thousands if not into the millions, at least for us it’s a year before WordCamp Asia 2023 which got postponed from 2020 and then all the way to 2023, we already had maybe half of the sponsors agreeing that they will apply again and then a few of us would go to flagship work cams or some of the bigger ones to top the sponsors of might missed. I was just at work M us talking all the sponsors and addressing with them how we’re going to change the way that sponsors work in flexible work camps. So it’s a long journey, it’s a year of work and by the time I’ll say the call for sponsors open, we probably already have 90% of the intended amounting. That’s not necessary that we’ll pick them, but we’re going to go broad spectrum talk to everyone that we can and by then we probably have 90% like the idea that we’ve got because 90% of our budget.

Katie (09:32):
Interesting. So let’s talk about the impact of sponsorship for the businesses who are becoming the sponsors. So there’s a lot of feeling that sponsorship is all about giving back to the community and that’s definitely an important part of it. But for small businesses they do expect there to be a benefit for their business of course because they don’t have the budgets to just be seen to be basically giving back in that way. They want that to be a side effect maybe, but they need the R O I as well. Is anything ever done centrally to try and monitor that? I think I remember as a sponsor I filled in a form afterwards for feedback. So is any information collected or anything to help people to know what they might get out of it?

Marcus (10:20):
And to be clear, that’s important to the large sponsors too, not just the small businesses.

Jon (10:24):
You’re saying you want to go first?

Jason (10:28):
That’s a tricky one. So I’ve been the sponsors team lead for the two last edition of WordCamp Europe first in Porto in 2022 and then this year in 2023 in Athens 2022 was like for John the postpone edition for 2020. I felt like hair y at that specific edition wasn’t important for everyone because it was kind of the first big event in the community to be in person again and it was kind of a show for a lot of brands to be there and say hey, we are still there. We are still vibrant, a vibrant community so let’s have a big party together. And a lot of companies, I’m not naming, but a lot of big companies and also smallest one were not very interesting into calculating. I directly. It was kind of a bit different this year.

Katie (11:45):
Interesting. It’s like the reunion one sort of the Porto interesting

Jason (11:51):
Kind of, Hey friends, we are still, it’s nice to see again. And it was like a specific feeling I guess this is my experience with the sponsors, but I guess it was the same for all attendees. For example, page had a parade board party that was awesome. Other things were crazy that year, but this year it was completely different. It was back to business. We had some problems with companies that having less marketing budget than before. I think that the party was over and we were back in a standard year, standard edition and we had to chase them a bit more than the year before. My politics for the team was not to get into AI at all. That’s not all rule to do this. We don’t have a data team with statistics and things like that. We don’t have a lot of things to be honest.

(13:06):
Even this year we made the decision not to provide any badge scan of device or anything. It was all this r i conversation, which is very important, was kind of in the plugin territory. It was the sponsor territory, not the organizer territory at all. So we can provide a few information, how many people we think we will have during the camp. We can give you some basic information from which countries in the last edition they were from or which kind of personas they are. Like more developers or more entrepreneurs or just regular, I dunno, professionals or even end users. But we don’t have more than that and we don’t want to do this at all. We are not a regular trade show. It’s community. I’m seeing a lot that we are an event by and for the community first. This is not a commercial T trade show at all.

Jon (14:33):
I come from a commercial background and before this I spent a lot of time helping big events think about how they’re going to sell more to the sponsors, how they’re going to get speakers over, even had designs around where foot traffic was, how you price the sponsor booths higher at a specific area where foot traffic is better, how are we going to track this data and so on. Obviously this is not a work cam, but I come from that kind of a space. So one of the things that I want to, we’ve been trying to push work cam measure is as much as we rely on the graciousness of companies that thinking no, we want to give back to the ecosystem, that alone is not going to sustain a flexible camp and the prices of running one is just rising every single year. So we are thoroughly looking into how we can drive a better sponsorship experience and that goes beyond a bigger booth, it goes beyond a nicer sponsorship area.

(15:41):
It’s the entire design around house speakers and attendees. The experience of getting into the sponsorship booth, what you’re doing, sponsors maybe getting outside of the booth area and engaging the rest. How is that being tied specifically into the talks that’s actually going on? And we’re not talking about pushing a product, we’re talking about organically getting sponsorships to sponsors attention they kind of need. And even if we don’t take all these deliberate methods, the data gathering that I’m trying to push and Jason mentioned the whole batch system, we’re trying to hire a proper batch vendor so that we can collect the kind of data to prove to the sponsors are they getting what their money’s worth. And they might not be that that could be the result of that, but we want to give the proper data to our sponsors. So we’re working on those aspects and I can give a really good example of where it’s not just about giving back.

(16:44):
So a long time ago, I’m not going to even talk about a vertical where this company is this specific WordPress company, not the most liked in the WordPress world. Spent many years working with the WordPress community, helping world camps, sponsoring the top tiers. Now they’re liked, they’re loved people trust the brand that’s not just giving back, that is actually getting the reputation fixed. That is actually getting tons of people to subscribe to their services and that’s through work camps. That’s I think the reality I understand and I want to be very honest with our sponsors with

Katie (17:23):
As a first time small business sponsor in Athens this year found the sponsor team. Were really supportive with the logistics of the booth and the details of how I would connect my video to the TV for example, all that stuff. But there was a lot of things that I felt I was having to figure out on my own, such as largely relating to swag because obviously everybody thinks WordCamp sponsorships, everyone loves the swag fairly essential. I was like, I’ve never done this before. I dunno how much to spend, how much to order. I don’t want to order extra but I don’t want to run out in the first two hours. So I was doing things like Googling trade shows more generally to see. And I found things like you’re meant to have a piece of swag for 25% of all attendees for example, which might be if it’s really expensive, fancy swag, you need more.

(18:18):
If it’s rubbish swag like stickers, you need less for example. So I was having to reinvent the wheel or by myself, which I felt it would be good to have maybe sponsors could say this is how much swag I bought and this is how much I ended up giving away. And then that could be shared and then we’re not reinventing the wheel. So after WordCamp Europe, I published a blog post of my own sponsorship story, which I’ve asked if Bob can put in the show notes in which I’ve said how much I spent on swag and how much I actually gave away to help other people learn. But we need more than just my experiences, we need multiple sponsors sharing together.

Jason (18:59):
That’s interesting. So I feel like I’ve killed the enthusiasm with what I said before, so I’ll jump on that. So in all strategy there is no real SMBs at WordCamp Europe. Even the SMBs are kind of established companies. I dunno for Pan too, but some of the SMBs are big companies into our space. So most of them, when you became a sponsor at Whatcom Europe, most of the time you sponsored a local Whatcom before. So you kind of know how it works because what can pure up or a flagship event like that, it’s just 10 times a local one. It’s the same thing. The template of the event is the same.

Katie (19:58):
So I should have worked my way up instead of going straight for the biggest one.

Jason (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I’m just saying they are professional collectors of swags at every event in the world. They are just jumping into your booth, they are taking everything, not even they are saying, hi, what are you doing? What’s your booth about? They are just grabbing things and jumping to the next booth to collect something else or to go to, I dunno ruffle or whatever this exists. Maybe we should have some kind of guideline for the responses saying hey, be aware of this or that because you will lost your swag in one hour if you are putting everything on your booth the first day and then you will be naked at your booth with no swag and no one will come to you to say hi because there is nothing on your booth anymore. This is kind of something that you will learn on the ground I think. But that’s a bit tricky sometimes. I dunno. Yeah,

Katie (21:14):
One thing we did to avoid that was that we hid some of our swag behind kind of a paywall but it was a quiz so they had to fill in their email address and do a fun WordPress quiz and then they get our best swag and we could put in different types of swag based on how quickly we were getting through it. So we were like, oh we’re running out of this, let’s give the rest away if you do the quiz and so on. So we were kind of able to do that. What do you do Marcus at GoDaddy to kind of manage the flow of swag?

Marcus (21:45):
Yeah, it’s a little bit of the same. I mean it depends on how many days any given camp is. If it’s a multiple day camp, then yeah, we’ll set some of it aside for the following day and try to engage with as many people as we can to try and not have the booth collector, the swag collectors just running by and grabbing things. Some of it’s just positioning too. If you have your swag right up front, it’s easy for people to just run by and grab it if it’s set towards the back of the table or whatever and they kind of have to engage with you a little bit to see what you have going on there. But yeah, it’s definitely a game and each of the camps is a little bit different, a little bit different of an audience. And so just the whole thing is hard trying to pick, like you said, I did the same thing. You just have to read a bunch to see percentage-wise how much to order and still some things are more popular than others and we’ll run out of something immediately and something else will last a lot longer. So it’s really all just kind of a guessing game to some degree.

Katie (22:52):
I got some great data from one of my colleagues who went to WordCamp Asia in Thailand and on the last day he went around all the booths for me and he asked them what they gave away and how much they had left. And so that really helped as well. So we actually got it right amazingly we got rid of everything at exactly the right time and I dunno how we did it, but it could go very wrong.

Jon (23:15):
I think I’ve got a slightly different tick about this. It’s not planning the exact amount of swags and so on. I think the game needs to change. So just as a basis, one of the things that all the flagship work have right now is the chat channel across all of our Slack instances. So we’re sharing best practices, we’re talking about how we can prevent other things from happening. And across all flexible camps you have the same problem of people doing the whole sweat collection and not actually providing valuable conversations between all these parties. So one of the things that we’re talking about on what can measure is advising sponsors to move away from the swag game. And even if you have swag, like what you guys have talked about, it needs to be not just giveaway, you need to be there to have a conversation before they get something.

(24:07):
And we’re trying to move sponsors outside of just where the booths are. So if they’re not just engaging in a booth and giving swag, the engagement becomes different. It’s not swag based, it’s about having good conversations. I’m going to tell you that I have all the solutions, but my plan is a two to three year plan to change the interface of this. And across time we’re going to get to a stage whereby we are going to ask the sponsors, how are you going to engage the attendees between the choice of choosing sponsor A or B? It’s not going to be about the time spent anymore. It’s not about who applied first. It’s not about which is a bigger brand. It’s going to be how are you going to engage the attendees? Are you just going to give swag or are you going to do something different? So I saw this time at work m as a remarkable in how they were addressing attendees as well and I can sense that this is going to keep evolving at this flexible work camps. Eventually the idea of SWS running out or they’re just going for swag hopefully dies away as we change the mode of engagement.

Jason (25:20):
Besides there is a sustainability topic about it, giving away thousands of t-shirts every year at every world comes in the world. It’s huge. And it’s not only about sponsors but also about organizers. How you think about your swag being an organizing team is a challenge. It’s a lot of money, a lot of time to design things and think about how to print it or whatever. And also a logistical nightmare to get everything at the Whatcom before it starts. And that’s the same at a different scale for each of our sponsors. They are big brands with logistical team that is doing it for a lot of events every year. And then you’ve got the middle or small businesses that don’t know how to do it at all because maybe you, Katie managed your own swag personally because you don’t have someone to do it for you.

Jon (26:34):
Absolutely,

Jason (26:34):
Yeah. And you have to learn in the process, you have to check where to store your swag before the event, what to do with the remaining things after the event. And it cost a lot of time, a lot of money and that’s not effective at this point. We don’t have the capacity in the organizing team to do it for our sponsors. But it could be something to think about in the future maybe with the community team support to his things and maybe to provide, I dunno, a global provider for this works at least for the most common things. Like you don’t have to print your t-shirt in 10 different companies in the world. It could be a local one that is selected for the Whatcom, for the organizers that is also provided to the sponsors for example. I dunno, at least there is space to think about it.

Marcus (27:38):
Yeah, it’s an interesting conversation. We’ve had some conversations internally too on how we can sort of change the way that we think about the things that we give away and in some instances do things that are more sustainable as well because a big topic especially here in the US is sustainable swag and stuff. Adam Warner from my team was just on with Bob not too long ago and chatted a little bit about that if people want to hear a little bit more. But I kind of had a question for John, but I think it’ll apply to both John with WordCamp, Asia being newer, do you feel like you have the flexibility to try some new things that haven’t been done at some of the other camps? And then I guess follow up for Jason, do you feel like you have that flexibility as well having a more established camp that’s been around for a while?

Jon (28:28):
I think if we take from the basis of flexible camps, we have a fair bit more flexibility than most local WordCamps. We are the experimental points of trying things out. Like years ago you couldn’t do ads, you didn’t really have a marketing budget and so on. Whereas now through work flexible camps, testing it, local work camps can do so as well. So I think there is a expectation that flexible work camps should lead the charge into running events and the rest of the local work camps will learn and pick up somewhere. Honest with WordCamp Asia, I’ll say that given our space within Asia where things are a little bit cheaper, it allows us the flexibility to use the budget to do something a little bit more experimental and when it’s going to be better. I can’t quite assure you on that, but yeah, that is that space for us to try fail, make something better for our sponsors, do something better for our attendees. And my key mantra for the next few world Asias and starting from this one is experiments and feel quickly and that’s actually within the slides of our town hall every month. So yeah, we have that going for us

Jason (29:55):
It’s complex to radically change things for what computer because it’s a thing since so many years that we are used to a certain way of working with our sponsors. Well the team lead is changing every two years. That’s an internal rule we are applying, so I’m not going to be the next sponsors team lead. So a new one has been selected and will pick his crew and start something new for 2024. But we are only volunteers so we don’t have time to change everything every year. We are not paid for that. We are not full-time on it. So as John I’m working for web agency full-time responsible for a lot of things. So it’s on my own time plus the fight for the future program but that’s not enough because it’s around 10 and 15 hours every week to be a team lead and to be effective.

(31:11):
So you don’t have time to change everything for a new addition but you can make some adjustments for the next one by, I don’t know, improving the plan from the previous team lead and things like that. So that’s a bit different. Maybe I would like to start something new like Asia but it’s also complicated because you don’t have the previous years to help you out with the processes and you have to learn everything again and build everything from the ground. So that’s not very easy. I think that’s two different positions. I dunno, it depends also on your team members, it depends on the availability to change things. If there are experience like John said before with sponsorships or if they have to learn everything because we have to train them from an addition to another because the team is not the same.

Jon (32:20):
I think it’s a combination of both really. So a rotation of team leads making sure that no one single company is running a flagship bootcamp or a single bunch of companies is doing. So it’s important but it’s also important that we have someone setting like this is a strategy for the next few years. Now obviously how you do it, it’s up to the interpretation of each person takes over, but by and large the strategy of how you’re going to expand webcams, how you’re going to run a different flagship. If we trust in the direction, I think eventually when it’s Jason that picks it up afterwards or someone else does it, they will follow suit in that strategy and that thing has to be shared in every single edition of the world camp. It needs to be picked up by the global leads when they take over, they have to accept that this is how we’re going to push through over the next few years. So for me at least I’m setting up a five years plan for working measure and that’s something I’m also working to discuss with Central and that five year plan. And obviously they can change it afterwards, but we’re going to set up a direction they’re going to keep iterating the plan. It’s not a new webcam every single time. It’s a iterative experience.

Jason (33:41):
Yeah, it depends a lot on the endover between a team and another from the previous one to the next and especially when the team, one of the team lead or all of the team leads are changing because then you will kind of lose the most experienced one in your team or it will or she will go to another team. It depends on the situation but something that the previous global leads from what computer apps started in portal was to documentate a lot more processes internally and have a solid KU drive and infrastructure to hand over to the next, and this was kind of new I think I’m not in the world company since long, but when I became a team lead in 2021 for the 2022 edition in portal, we had to think everything again from scratch because we had no the competition at all, no processes.

(34:53):
We had to learn with the foundation subsidiary, how to sign a contract, how to make an invoice, things like that. Because when you are handling 65, 66 sponsors, that’s not the same as just a bunch a dozen sponsors in your local one. So you need a process like a regular company is doing and it’s kind of a second job sometimes. And so now we have a more solid approach to under things to the next, but it’s only volunteering so that cannot force people to document things, that’s not how it’s working. So you need to educate them on why it’s important for the future and why they need to do it.

Jon (35:53):
I left the fact they brought up this handover issue. We are starting to see that as well. So one of the changes we’ve done in working can major this year is we’ve brought in a operations manager role and she’s got two things to do. And number one thing is making sure that all teams are documenting the processes so this is possible to hand over to someone else. And then as part of that, making sure that there is a unified way that we’re working, there’s a unified project management tool and so on. The second thing she’s seeing is that how are these teams working with each other and if there’s any gaps that are seeing between that. So at the end of this, when we have the 2025 edition, obviously we’re now planning for 2024 when we have the 2025 edition, these documents in our Google drive good to go, the new team that picks it up, they have a solid piece to start off from and that’s again all of these learnings that we discuss on our shared Slack channel where I consult all the experts that have been running Europe, bmm us and what’s the biggest pain points and how can I avoid it, kind of emotion.

Jason (37:04):
Yeah. What sponsors need to understand or need to know about us organizes is that every world camp is organized independently from the org. Even if we have a global name world camp, it’s not unified at all. For example, on the cell, the new sponsors team lead in Asia contacted me during the summer asking me about the sponsors, how we are handling them in Europe and if we had a database of contacts to kind of chase them after they call for sponsors. And there are legal involvement like G D P A and things like that. But besides, there is no global approach at the moment, even if it was discussed I think during the community summit this summer in the us but there is no cross-channel for organizers of flagship events. For example, we don’t know each of us. This is something that we are aware of and we want to offer a more identified approach to the sponsors to help them understand why in Europe we’ve got some rules because we’ve got this history and why in Asia other things are permitted for example in the booth or whatever because we are not managing the things in the same way.

(38:46):
Sometimes for example in Europe we’ve got a logistical company, a contractor helping us with the logistical things, how to build your booth, how to print things on your booth, et cetera, how to, I dunno, order more tables or more chairs a couch or whatever. We are not ing this in the sponsors team, this is a different process and a different team. So there are things that are common to all the what comes. Of course most of the processes are the same, but we also have some kind of maybe a cultural approach which is different or an historical approach that is different because of this or that or because of the people that are managing the sponsors teams at the moment. I dunno.

Katie (39:42):
And it kind of helps explain some differences that I’ve observed across the different ones. So I didn’t sponsor WordCamp us but I wanted to but it was twice the price and I was really shocked. So it was two and half thousand dollars for Europe for the cheapest one, the small business one, two and a half thousand for Asia and 5,000 minimum for us. So that really surprised me because as you were saying, the sponsors think of it as WordCamp, it’s one unified thing but it’s not necessarily. But also other differences like the European sponsor booths I felt looked a lot more professional than the US ones. They were really nicely done with the custom printing on the front and the screen behind each one and I felt that people were getting better value for half the money. And there were also some talk of hidden costs, which Marcus will know more about than me, that they were charging extra for things like electricity and in Washington whereas in Europe everything was included and you got a really great service.

Jason (40:47):
This is a new thing I think for Europe. I don’t recall for Berlin in 2019, but I know for sure that in Porto it was decided by the global leads to offer everything included in a package but also included the booth itself, the structure so that every booth are the same, at least if you are choosing to go with that option, which is the sand one, if you choose to go with your own CustomMade booth, that’s in extra for you, but the price is the same. You don’t have a cut on the sponsorship, you will have to pay it and then you will pay your own logistical booth maker, I don’t know how to call it. So it was a unified design decision to make everything at the same heights and the same sizes and so that there is no complaint about this booth being higher than and the over being in the shadow of the competitor or something like that. We want to avoid every friction, but this is also because we are working with a very good production company which allows us to think about it because they are paid for that and they are full-time on the project. We couldn’t do it just by being volunteers. That’s not possible at all.

Jon (42:26):
It’s a difficult position to, because sponsorship is just about getting the money right and then making sure the sponsors have a good time. But then you have to think about how you’re going to work with the production company, a really good production company that understands the space they’re operating in. And we’re not just talking about a guy that comes in, but a proper production company that’s used that specific space in the past that knows how to run event attack event especially would help you avoid a lot of these pitfalls. It’s very likely that good discussions we sign up and so on that event space just decided that, oops, sorry we didn’t tell you about electricity costs, but here it is. And suddenly the Workcamp team is slept at that and being non-professionals, we’re not going to have a checklist that says watch out for the electricity, is it going to be a singles point or they going to give you an extension plug and all this and then are they going to charge you a meter?

(43:26):
You, is it going to be tall enough for you to hang something else and so on. So if you have a really good production company, they won your listings and you’re able to give a heads up to the sponsors and it’s not even about paying for electricity. When we did work in Asia, the first thing we told them was this, you get the space, you get the protection of the floor, everything else, okay, sorry, we’ll give you electricity, we give you a plug, but everything else you pay for, you build the booth, you bring in the rental pieces, we give you the vendor to top to everything else you pay for. And that very clear direction of what we were going to provide and what was not being provided helped them plan. And this is one of the things, learning a little bit from what we’ve seen across work cams, that’s always going to be difficulties.

(44:17):
So one of the things that we’re trying to do for this year or next year, sorry for working measure is I’ve got a three months set up, it’s a three three thing, but the first three means we are going to be three months earlier in informing all of our stakeholders, attendees, sponsors, volunteers, all the organizers, anyone that’s involved. This is the plan as we know right now it might involve we’ve got a skeleton design of the schedule, this is how we think we’re going to do the sponsor book. This is how tall we think it’s maximum going to go. We might sell add-ons to say, hey, if you buy this add on, you can get a toler booth if you want to, but it’s going to be their choice to pick it up. So all of this we’re going to give them three months earlier so that it’s got ample time to decide how they’re going to engage in this setup.

(45:09):
And for me, while I want to avoid the friction, I want to be able to say it has some friendly love and community spirit here. I also want to be very clear that in the end there is some levels of competition running there and we can make it a healthy one if we give this information upfront to everyone and you choose exactly how much you want to invest in that space. You choose exactly how much you want to spend time in. I think that’s the difference of what you might see if you go to a certain world and you were only given three to four weeks of time to know what’s going on. If you were given three months before you’ll be able to save a lot of money, you’ll be able to come of great advance. You’ll be able to engage people well

Jason (45:55):
Yeah, if you are transparent with your sponsors, there is no way there will be a drama after that or is not easy because a production company work, you need a few years to connect well with your production company. For example, production pool working for w c is working for us since, I dunno, five, six edition maybe since Belgrade I think. And now they are not a provider anymore. They are partner member of the team. They are not organizers but they act like it. So when they are saying to us, okay, we have got this problem how to fix it, this is solution A, solution B, do you have another solution? And if not, which one do you want to decide on? And you need to trust your provider and you need to give them space and give them clear direction of what your event is like.

(47:05):
Because now they know how the WordPress community works, they know how to act with us and they know what we need from us, from them. Sorry. And so that’s easier, but this is not something that you can just do with a new production pool every year that’s not working. You need to build a relationship with them also. And for the sponsors, that’s very interesting because it helps sells, provide clear information to the sponsors. We say to them, we need a package with everything included. And they said, okay, this is all the prices that you need to calculate to give the final sponsorship levels prices to the sponsors in your call for sponsor for example, and this is why all prices goes from 2.5 k euros to 80 Ks. That’s a range because you don’t have the same for SMBs, you just have a table with two chairs and monitor that’s whole essentially for the super means that’s totally different. So that’s the top level in Europe and you’ve got a lot more than just a two chairs and then monitor and a table, that’s for sure. But you don’t have to think about the heightened prices for example, that’s all included. Then it’s a strategy. You can say, okay, if you want, I dunno, a mini fridge, if you want a popup machine, you will have to pay this price or you will have to contact the vendor and pay them directly. That’s okay if it’s transparent enough.

Marcus (49:10):
We’ve come out of Covid and we’ve had our celebrations, folks have not questioned sponsorship. It made sense to share with everyone that we’re still a part of the community. That’s been the case for a couple of years now. So with that, and I’m not an economist globally, but I know that the US economy, especially in tech, has suffered a little bit in the last year. And so we’re facing those challenges as well along with wrangling production companies, wrangling sponsors and all of that. At the risk of scaring people away, that’s a lot to deal with. How could people get involved that are interested in helping you all out, whether that’s at the flagship level, at the local level, I mean we’ve talked mostly flagship because that’s the ones that you guys are most involved with. But I know that the local camps are having similar struggles and having to figure all that stuff out. So I guess what’s the best way for folks that are listening to this and saying, I think I can help out here, how can they get involved?

Jon (50:18):
Yeah, I think does not disturb anyone deciding how they want to contribute towards the WordPress community. You want to help you come in and I think if there’s anything that could help us the most, and I think this has been brought up across the podcast, right? It’s difficult for smaller companies to understand why they need to be sponsoring and the kind of returns they might be getting. So I think anyone that comes from that space and is able to say, I’m going to spend my time engaging the smaller companies and help them realize that this is a good space to actually start your WordPress journey in, I love that. If that’s anything I want to be getting into my team right now, that’s what I want to be focusing on. Because I mean, put it this way, the GoDaddy is the element mentors and all the big sponsors, the Googlers and so on, we kind of just know each other.

(51:12):
We send a text and say yeah, let’s get this done. But really what we want are the smaller companies come in and to the point, I think when we did work in Asia last year, I think Kelly was talking a little bit about the pricing around it being two K ish, I can’t remember the exact number, but we actually spent most of the money building the boost for them. They were a special category whereby we took the money, we used it most of it into building the booth of them, whereas the rest of the sponsors had to put their own booth. So these startups, these smaller companies where they’re getting a taste where they find it difficult to actually do more, we want to help more. So anyone that can come to the space and engage these players more that can tell us who they are and if they just say, Hey, I want to join a team, I would love to talk to them

Jason (52:05):
How to convince them to sponsor or to get engaged. So first something to be clear, we don’t make any money on you. For Europe for example, we need a 1 million Euros budget to, I dunno, to rent the place to pay the production pool company to live streaming thing and so on to have food. So as soon as you are in the world camp, you don’t have to pay for anything. Food is included, beverages are included, everything is free on the world camps. So that’s a major difference with over events also, you don’t just have to pay for your transportation and your recommendation, of course that’s on you. But for the rest, as soon as you are in the world camps, it’s free and everyone gets the same. There is no premium things, et cetera. So that’s maybe something to say. Then I will say be smarter if you are a small company, why not having a partnership with a biggest company and going to their booth together to join forces.

(53:33):
If you are, I don’t know, developing something for WooCommerce, just contact them if you know them and maybe they will have a big booth at the next edition and you could be on their booth talking with people. I dunno, that’s an idea. There are proactive sponsors and there are some that are a bit passive if I may say. And just think about it, why spending so much money to go there, adding a booth, you could be there and be with another partner and I dunno, talk with the sponsors team to have a joint booth together. I don’t know, that’s not something that is happening at the moment, but it could be a thing in the future because of the economic, because of the sustainability that we talk about. Why I think so much both, you could join someone else and share the prices.

(54:44):
There are a lot of things to think about. We are offering a perimeter for the sponsors to be at what comes, but then into this scope we could think about new things. There are companies merging together that now needs a joint booth for example, new fold or others. This is something to talk about, but it has to be at a higher level with the community team sometimes. So it should be a bit anticipated. We cannot do it in the last minute. So there are other things to do, that’s for sure. And to lower your marketing budget and even budget because sending your whole crew to an event is very expensive. And then paying for swags, paying for your booth, paying for other things like that, it’s a lot of money in the end. So yeah, the idea is not to oversell things. And we are not a sales team by the way, but we are a sponsors team. We are there to help. That’s the difference I guess with a commercial approach.

Katie (56:06):
Yeah, well that’s really interesting. And I like thinking about the future of sponsorships. There’s also been talk of things like maybe community booths. Like Bob suddenly got one, which was I think someone didn’t get a visa or wasn’t able to attend. And so he did do the WOO booth, which was really good and had some really great spontaneous interviews, including a Spanish language one. And it’s interesting to think about the different direction that sponsorships can go in the future. So yeah, this has been brilliant and thanks very much. You’ve been fantastic guests and it’s been really interesting to get an insight into what happens in terms of organizing the sponsorship side of things as well as being a sponsor. So thank you very much to everybody. Thanks

Speaker 5 (56:50):
Everyone. Thank you.