[Marketing] Conference Strategy [Was: Fund Marketing pack for Philippines local chapter]

[Alex Mandel]

On 10/15/2012 07:29 AM, Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) wrote:
> All (sorry this got long),
> 
> So I asked for some help (money) for a previous Conference that just finished up from the OSGeo Marketing committee.  We were able to find local sponsors for everything in the end so it wasn't a big deal that we didn't get anything from marketing at the time.
> 
> So now I'm starting to think ahead as a consequence. We have a few opportunities at some related conferences leading up the FOSS4GNA2013 conference to promote OSGeo and FOSS4G.  We only have a limited amount of sponsorship available (much of which was used in this recent conference) and spreading the available funds out appropriately to gain the biggest bang for the buck is proving a challenge. 
> 
> So some questions (before I ask for money), what's the best approach to promotion that should be taken leading up to these conferences.  I know the local area fairly well and can get the word out to the locals with some sort of budget, but this type of work doesn't seem to be regularly discussed on these lists.  I'm all about getting and introducing new people to FOSS4G myself, but should I (and other conference promoters) be focusing on known attendees instead, especially based on the notion that there is next to nothing available for promotions budgets being considered for conferences (This is a whole other conversation that I will gladly get into if someone want to start up a thread)
> 

I think the org as whole is a promote what you want to promote
mentality. The cohesive portion we have is the templates ready for
printing of materials.

Please do start threads about any of these sub-topics.

> One of these local conferences is coming up on Dec 4-6 that we can get a cut rate on a booth (we have a non-profit willing to step in to get the cut rate and share the booth).  This is not the only conference between now and the FOSS4GNA2013 conference either.  So, on to the asking for money, is the money doled out based on conferences individually, do I need to compile a list, or ??  My immediate thoughts would be to use anything from OSGeo as seeding money, or matching funds for conferences.
> 

Right now we only provide funds to get a local chapter an Exhibition
pack (pop-up banner, table cloth and maybe a few shirts).

Other conferences are considered on a case by case basis, though the
only one we've consistently done as OSGeo is the AAG (10,000 people
moves around the US). We are fairly unlikely to provide funds for local
conferences, though a match system might be useful.

> Anyway, you see where I'm going here.  I'm just trying to elevate the promotions side of things a bit. And being able to reuse materials and booth setups more than once seems like a good investment in promotion resources in my mind, vs doing one offs.  I'll admit, that I'm just getting started on this stuff and trying to figure out a path to future sponsorship drives (Does OSGeo do this type of thing all in the background??), etc.
> 
Sponsorships are tough and completely left to the local groups to figure
out. In fact if you find good sponsors, you might want to encourage them
to sponsor OSGeo as a whole (of which some funds directly help your
chapter) as they would get their logo on the OSGeo website and possibly
on some materials (OSGeo Live) which could give much wider exposure.

> Related to this, where is a good spot to write a up a page about past conferences to promote things, should this be somehow a news item of some sort with a link to the writeup??  I'll admit to being ignorant about where and how we should be selling/announcing the stuff that's already been done but I think it should be captured in some form.  BTW, I don't have a problem with just going and adding to feeds and such (once I figure the process out) but I think a list of what could/should be done on a per event basis might be good, does this exist somewhere?
> 
OSGeo wiki under your local chapter activities. You can also tag the
pages with the Events and Marketing category tags. That's at least how
the California chapter does it. For large events we make wiki pages for
each and link them to our chapter.


> Thanks
> 
> Bobb
> 

Thanks,
Alex