checklist-template.md

Event in a Box

Your go-to checklist for sponsoring an event, $COMPANYNAME style.

Having a remote company means you get to work from home (or wherever you choose to call home that day). It also means you have an opportunity to connect with your unique community, and be the face of $COMPANYNAME to those people. You're the person on the ground who knows the local meetups and events, as well as the people who frequent both, and can therefore provide valuable feedback to the rest of the team.

While we often want to have some sort of presence at the events that you come across, we don't always have the time to organize that presence. Here's where you come in! This "Event in a Box" repo will walk you through how you can help organize a $COMPANYNAME presence at local and regional events in your area, as well as what we need from you in exchange.

We can't promise a presence at #alltheshows, but we do want to help you be successful in your area. Just keep in mind that we do have a budget, so we need you to be invested in the event, and to help us decide whether or not it's a good investment for the company. For example, we know that we typically want to be at any DevOpsDays events and regional Linux/Open Source conferences. You know your local area best, so let us know why we should be there and we'll see what we can do.

Without further ado... here's your "Event in a Box."

Pre-approval:

• Check the $COMPANYNAME Technical Conferences Spreadsheet to see if we're already planning on being at the event you're interested in.
• If you don't see it on there, email the event organizers for information on sponsorships: How many ppl are they expecting? What audience are they targeting? How much do the sponsorships cost and what do they include?
• Once you've heard back, fill out this form with all of the basic information, as well as why you feel we should be sponsoring this event (e.g. we're wanting to increase our presence in Vancouver; this is a new show that shows a lot of promise in the DevOps area; we have a lot of potential/customers who will be attending, etc.)
• You'll hear back from us on Friday afternoons, after we've meet to talk through the events we've heard about that week. Take this into account when submitting events -- there needs to be enough lead time for us to process your proposal, and for you to organize our presence there.
• (optional) Submit to the CFP, or post the CFP info in the $COMPANYNAME Hipchat Channel for other local employees.

Post-approval:

minimum T-6 to 8 weeks:

• Go to the Event in a Box repository and create a branch for your event using the following naming convention: yyyy-mm-dd_name-of-event
• Follow up with the conference organizers and let them know which sponsorship package we have decided on.
• Ask the conference organizers for a W-9 (W-8 if it's a non-US conference) and a PDF invoice for our finance team.
• Email our finance department with the W-9 and invoice, noting which conference you're sponsoring, and how much the amount is. cc me so that I have a record of it as well.
• Set a reminder, and check the $COMPANYNAME Technical Conferences Spreadsheet in one week to see if the "Check Number" Field is filled in for your conference. If yes, the invoice has been paid & the check sent. If not, send a reply to your original email asking for an update on when it will be processed.

T-6 weeks:

• Staff the booth -- look first to people in the local area, then move outward if necessary. Make sure you have a good mix of technical and sales folks, depending on the audience.
• Post to /events via the web form.
• Send the posted link to the PR Dept to publicize on Twitter.

T-4 weeks:

• Email $EVENTSCOORDINATOR to order swag. Look at the various swag packages to determine which package you should ask for.

T-2 weeks:

• Write up an email with details about the show and send it around to your team. Here are a few sample emails: ** DevOpsDays DC ** GlueCon

T-1 week:

• Meet with the team to go through your email & answer questions. Talk about why you're wanting to attend, how it's important for the company, and how we can make sure to fulfill the "This" list as a part of our participation in this conference.

Have any questions along the way? Pop into my office hours -- Wednesdays at 11am PT

On Site:

• The first morning of the conference (or the afternoon/evening before, depending on folks' travel schedules), meet up with the full team for breakfast or dinner to reinforce objectives and talk through the plan for the conference.
• Tweet about the event while on the ground -- especially if we're speaking. Include pictures!
• Have a quick daily checkin ~20m before the event opens to touch base re: the day before and see how you can make today even better.
• Collect lead data -- whether that's through business cards, lead scanners, or simply writing down contact info on the back of the Chef resource cards. This is a crucial part of the process.

After the Event:

• Send lead data in a .csv spreadsheet events@ for salesforce import & sales assignment. Be sure to denote if there are any leads we should follow up on ASAP. If we've had a lead scanner or gathered information on a signifcant number of people, work w/ a marketing lead to send out a post-show email with follow-up resources -- office hours, webinar, list of relevant resources, local trainings, etc.
• Schedule a retrospective with your team to discuss what worked, what didn't, what other sponsors were doing that we can implement, etc. The three statements "I liked... I wish... I wonder..." work well to stimulate conversation and keep it going on a positive front.
• Post your notes from the meeting (a paragraph or two is fine) on Yammer so the company is aware of our involvement
• Lastly, update your forked repo one last time to reflect the retrospective and any additional notes on how the sponsorship went so we can reference them down the road when determining whether to sponsor next year.