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From Conference to Community: Marketing a 15,000-Attendee Event

WeMarketers Podcast · 2025-12-23 · 36 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

60 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density12 / 20
Originality10 / 20
Guest Caliber14 / 20
Specificity & Evidence13 / 20
Conversational Craft11 / 20

We Are Developers runs Europe's largest developer community event, scaling from 5,000 attendees to over 15,000 in three years. Ivana explains how she positioned the HR Leaders Summit as a bridge between developers and HR/employer branding professionals, addressing emerging developer interests in career development, mental health, and internal mobility. The marketing challenge extends far beyond the three-day conference: capturing 500 30-minute sessions requires a systematic content recycling strategy. Ivana's team converts recordings into written articles, white papers, video snippets for social media, and podcast content (Coffee with Developers and Cappuccino with HR) to maintain momentum year-round. Between events, they run weekly live shows, webinars, and HR meetups featuring previous speakers. Her core insight: treat the conference as a content generator and community touchpoint, not a standalone event. On logistics, Ivana emphasizes pre-event preparation to avoid scheduling during the event itself, flexibility when problems arise (she famously told a speaker she'd "fix the weather" during rain), and letting speakers feel your calm. Speaker curation begins audience-first - identifying developer pain points like talent acquisition and retention - then finding thought leaders via LinkedIn research and community networks to fill those gaps. She works collaboratively with speakers to refine topics and find uncovered niches rather than imposing rigid agendas.

Key takeaways

  • →Content recycling is essential post-event: repurpose 500+ session recordings into articles, white papers, video snippets, and podcast content to sustain engagement for six months until next year's announcements.
  • →Start event logistics preparation months ahead so you're only troubleshooting on-site; pre-schedule social media, confirm speaker logistics, and coordinate all touchpoints before the event begins.
  • →Build speaker agendas audience-first by researching developer/attendee pain points, then find thought leaders via LinkedIn and community networks who can address those specific gaps.
  • →Maintain speaker relationships through collaborative formats (podcasts, articles, webinars) between events to keep speakers engaged and maintain community momentum year-round.
  • →Your calm demeanor during crisis moments (weather delays, scheduling conflicts) directly influences how speakers and teams respond; inner stress doesn't need to be visible.

In this episode

  1. 1We Are Developers: 10-Year Community Growth Story
  2. 2Building the HR Leaders Summit Bridge Between Tech and HR Audiences
  3. 3Marketing Strategy and Event Organization Structure
  4. 4Post-Event Content Recycling and Long-Term Audience Engagement
  5. 5Keeping Momentum Throughout the Year with Multiple Touchpoints
  6. 6Event Logistics and Team Coordination Lessons
  7. 7Speaker Curation and Audience-Centric Program Building
  8. 8Handling On-Site Challenges and Speaker Management

Mentioned

We Are DevelopersHR Leaders SummitWe Are Developers World CongressIvana SpiridovanovichAndrewDanLeandroWeMarketers PodcastLinkedInMetaYouTube

Guests

Ivana Spiridovanovich

Topics in this episode

Talent acquisitionEmployee brandinginternal mobilityWe Are Developers World CongressHR Leaders SummitDeveloper community engagementContent recycling strategySpeaker curationMental health in techPodcast series (Coffee with Developers, Cappuccino with HR)

Questions this episode answers

How do you maintain engagement with event attendees throughout the year when the conference only runs 3 days?

We Are Developers recycles 500+ session recordings into articles, white papers, video snippets for social media, and two podcast series (Coffee with Developers and Cappuccino with HR). They also run weekly live shows, webinars, and HR meetups throughout the year, plus an AI platform to scrape thousands of hours of historical content for evergreen re-promotion.

How should you approach speaker curation if you're not a domain expert in the topic area?

Take an audience-centric approach by researching attendee needs and pain points first, then find thought leaders on LinkedIn and in community networks who address those gaps. Work collaboratively with speakers to refine topics and identify uncovered niches rather than assigning rigid topics.

What should you prioritize during an event to avoid chaos when the conference starts?

Have everything ready before the event that you can prepare in advance - schedule social media posts, confirm speaker logistics, coordinate team responsibilities - so you're only troubleshooting during the event. Trying to handle tasks like scheduling posts during the event will overwhelm you.

How do you get speaker confirmations and topic details when they're postponing due to summer breaks or holidays?

Invite confirmed speakers to collaborate on intermediate formats before the main event, such as writing teaser articles, creating podcast episodes, or developing social media snippets for their session. This keeps them engaged and produces content while they finalize their presentation.

What's the strategy for connecting HR/employer branding professionals with developers at a developer-focused conference?

Identify overlapping interests: developers increasingly seek career development, mental health support, and internal mobility opportunities, while HR professionals want to recruit and retain technical talent. Create a dedicated summit track that positions HR/employer branding professionals as a resource for these developer needs.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

12 / 20

The episode contains moderately useful operational insights about event marketing, particularly around content repurposing and speaker curation strategies. However, much of the content is either relatively obvious (have a good team, plan ahead, be flexible) or lacks sufficient depth to teach a B2B operator something genuinely novel. The advice on LinkedIn outreach and manual speaker prospecting is practical but not particularly sophisticated.

we basically within only three days were able to collect over 500 sessions and each session is like 30 minutes long. So the content is there, right? But then how do we bring it to people? Because no one will start scrolling on our website and just watching the 500 hours.
what we did is basically um, recycle all the recordings and all the sessions and create first of all written formats of them...and then create snippets out of them and kind of look for key moments.

Originality

10 / 20

While the content repurposing strategy (500 sessions → articles, snippets, white papers) is sensible, it's not particularly novel or counterintuitive. The speaker curation approach of starting with audience needs and working backward to speakers is sound but represents standard best practice rather than original thinking. The LinkedIn outreach methodology, while practical, is conventional B2B marketing advice.

So I kind of started writing it down and then I was like, okay, so if we talk about talent acquisition, do we only talk about sourcing? And I was like, okay, but sourcing is nice. But what happens after sourcing?
Reaching out to people through LinkedIn, for example, just, I started manually, I just went through LinkedIn, added people that might be interesting for the event I was organizing

Guest Caliber

14 / 20

Ivana is a legitimate B2B marketing practitioner managing a major event (15,000 attendees) and has genuine operational responsibility for speaker curation, content strategy, and audience engagement. She brings real hands-on experience rather than theoretical frameworks. However, she joined the organization only two years ago and operates in a specific niche (developer events/HR integration), limiting broader applicability.

I actually Joined the company only two years ago. But um, the story goes back 10 years ago where basically our founders, who um, themselves come from a developer background
I'm in B2B marketing and all the activities related to the audience of HR and employer branding, it's potential customers.

Specificity & Evidence

13 / 20

The episode contains concrete numbers (15,000 developers, 500 sessions, growth from 5,000 to 15,000 over time) and specific tactical examples (AI platform scraping content, 70 people at final HR meetup vs. 7 at first, speaker recruitment via LinkedIn). However, there's limited hard data on outcomes, conversion rates, or measurable impact. Most specificity is descriptive rather than evidential (no ROI, engagement metrics, or performance benchmarks).

We started with 5,000 developers, and then after two years we had 10,000. And this year we actually had more than 15,000 developers on site. Within only three days. We're able to collect over 500 sessions and each session is like 30 minute long.
the last one had 70. So it helps build up.

Conversational Craft

11 / 20

The host (Speaker A) asks reasonable opening questions but rarely follows up with probing or pushback. Questions are largely open-ended invitations for the guest to share stories rather than pointed inquiries that challenge assumptions or extract deeper insights. There's minimal tension, disagreement, or skepticism that would deepen understanding. The conversation feels more like a friendly reconnection than a rigorous interview.

Ivana, to kick off our conversation, could you tell our listeners about We Are Developers the story behind it?
It's great, that's great story. And uh, uh, you said that you joined company two years ago...how is marketing organized, uh, within such a big event?

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker B85%
  • Speaker A15%

Most-used words

event29speakers28developers27marketing23events21team19example17audience15started14content14session12side12topic12podcast10sure10linkedin10

Episode notes

What does it really take to turn a large conference into a year-round marketing and community engine ? In this episode of the WeMarketers Podcast , Andrew sits down with Ivana Spiridonovic, B2B Marketing Manager at WeAreDevelopers , to break down how one of Europe’s largest tech events is marketed before, during, and long after the event days are over. This is a practical conversation for marketers who work with events, content, or community and want to get more long-term impact from limited resources.

Full transcript

36 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: Winning is crazy. Your opportunity. Your opportunity. Your opportunity.

Speaker B: We started with 5,000 developers, and then after two years we had 10,000. And this year we actually had more than 15,000 developers on site. Within only three days. We're able to collect over 500 sessions and each session is like 30 minute long. So the content is there, right? I mean, we have the library, we have the recordings, we have everything on the platform. But. But then how do we bring it to people? Because no one will start scrolling on our website and just watching the 500 hours. You need a good team to have your back because when the event starts, you cannot rely on your calendar anymore because it's only troubleshooting. Everyone needs something. The curse of event management. When everything goes right, people think everything is normal. But if there's one thing that goes wrong, everyone will see it. Marketing can feel lonely because marketing can be segmented into a lot of m specific areas. And then it's often the fact that everyone has their own niche in marketing that they're fulfilling. And with events, I feel like this breaks the stereotype of kind of sitting behind your desk and editing podcast episodes or drafting social media posts.

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the We Marketers Podcast. I'm Andrew and my today's guest is ivana Spiridovanovich, uh, B2B. Marketing manager at VR Developers. Ivana plays a central role in shaping the HR Leaders Summit in Berlin as a part of the We Are Developers Congress, uh, I think Europe's largest and uh, arguably maybe the world's largest conference for developers. She coordinates more than 60 speakers and over 1,000 attendees. I first, uh, connected with Ivana when we collaborated before HR Leaders Summit. I was amazed how everything was organized smoothly from things like branding, communications to, um, how event was, um, uh, going live on the spot. And it was a no brainer for me to invite Ivana, uh, for the episode. Ivana, happy to have you today.

Speaker B: Thank you. Andrew, you're so charming. So many compliments in only one minute. Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Speaker A: I was trying too hard to do this to fit in this minute as much as possible. Uh, Ivana, to kick off our conversation, could you tell our listeners about We Are Developers the story behind it? Uh, it's so exciting to hear.

Speaker B: Sure, absolutely. Um, We Are Developers is actually Europe's largest developer community. We have more than 1.7 million developers who are basically interacting within our community. If I am not mistaken, uh, we are actually celebrating 10 years of we Are Developers this year. It's been really exciting. I actually Joined the company only two years ago. But um, the story goes back 10 years ago where basically our founders, who um, themselves come from a developer background, realized that there is a big lack of developer events, especially on the fun educational festival side of things because there is all these conferences focusing on um, attracting marketing people, salespeople. But they realize that there is just nothing out there for developers where they can celebrate knowledge, network with each other and just have a great time with each other. So, so basically we're developers gathered up and they said okay, we're going to do a community. And how every starts, it starts with meetups, it starts with smaller in person events. And that's what uh, they did here actually here in Vienna, that's where we're based, uh, in Austria. And so the first couple of meetups and events with like a couple hundred people took place here in Vienna, in Hofburg. And then it started to scale. More and more people wanted to join. Um, and specifically um, Berlin was a very attractive city just because there's a, a lot of tech people out there. So five years ago uh, we actually decided to give it a try in Berlin. And ever since we've been there each year, each summer and uh, it kept growing every year. So we started with 5,000 developers and then after two years we had 10,000 and this year we actually had more than 15,000 developers on site. And um, yeah, that's what we represent. Community and just learning from each other and trying to build a network where basically developers can grow together and then trying to connect those developers also with companies so they can not only look also for jobs there, but also have a long term relationships with great employers.

Speaker A: That's great, that's great story. And uh, uh, you said that you joined company two years ago. Uh, I think uh, the conference was pretty big uh, at the moment. How just in a nutshell, how is marketing organized, uh, within such a big event?

Speaker B: That's a great question. So marketing, I mean you know how it is to stereotype marketing does everything the light touches. Um, it's very similar especially in a company like we are developers, we work very closely with the events team, but also the sales team because we're basically creating touch points with the audience. So how does marketing play here in the events part? Um, basically we created the HR Leaders Summit which combines directly with the World Congress. Um, and here the idea was to create a touchpoint with HR people, employer branding people. Because we saw firsthand that there was an increasing demand from the developer side. They've been more and More interested in career development opportunities. But also we do a survey each year where we kind of ask what is most important to developers. And we saw an increase in the last four years when it comes to mental health and just uh, wanting to also upscale within your own company internal mobility opportunities. Um, they're kind of just trying to connect with HR people and so we saw this demand firsthand and kind of um, our team kind of reached out to the marketing and they said hey, we need to figure out a way how we can combine HR with the tech people because there's obviously a demand from the developer side to actually connect with this type of audience so they can grow. But we also know from the tech market that HR employer branding specialists are actually seeking ways to better connect with developers. So, so we figured this would be an amazing opportunity and then we created basically the HR leaders Summit around it and the marketing team is here to basically first of all kind of invite people and also explain this bridge of both the HR and tech side also selling tickets. So the tickets are something that we do within the marketing but also sales spectrum. And then long term we also focus on positioning the, we a developer's brand on both sides of the event and kind of really create this bridge to create this ecosystem between both sides.

Speaker A: It's ah, such a great thing that you found this opportunity ah, to connect both audiences from different worlds.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: You are hosting uh, we are Developers once a year. It's a big event. Uh, it requires uh, a lot of resources, um, and so on. But what happens when event ends? Uh, how do you stay in touch with your audience? What are the main touch points and approaches?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. So um, we always have to keep in mind that the uh, WEA Developers World Congress is just three days a year and that's something we actually talked about a lot internally. Like how can we keep the momentum throughout the entire year? The, the really cool thing about events is that right after the event or leading up to an event, there's just general hype that creates on social media, in community forums. Like everyone's just excited because it's an experience you can talk about, you can kind of relive and it lives very organically one or two months before, one or two months after the event. But then there's obviously this kind of wave that settles back in and then what happens. And, and uh, we actually have been working on this a lot at we are Developers, especially in the marketing team and together with Devrel as well where we kind of um, Are trying to find a way to recycle the entire content that we had. I mean we basically within only three days were able to collect over 500 sessions. And each session is like 30 minutes long. So the content is there, right? I mean we have the library, we have the recordings, we have everything on the platform. But then how do we bring it to people? Because no one will start scrolling on our website, just watching the 500 hours. So what we did is basically um, recycle all the recordings and all the sessions and create first of all written formats of them. So be it a written article. And then for example, depending of your resources, you can either just transcribe it and take it as it is and then fine tune it, for example with AI and then you have a written format that you can shoot out and have articles live on your website or you could be writing white papers. This gives you again a gated content if you want to collect leads. Great opportunity to kind of reconnect again with the audience. But what we do a lot is actually video content because we want to fuel our social media engine with it. So what we did is actually recycle a lot of the sessions, kind of re edit them and create snippets out of them and kind of look for key moments. And we have an amazing um, videographer and editor in our team, Dan. Hi Dan. Um, he's doing amazing work and he's actually, actually the brilliant mind who creates hundreds of snippets out of these um, basically sessions. And then the, the golden nugget is basically to share it, but also make sure to tag the people, the companies and make sure this goes out for the next six months because the content is there and then you just recycle and you share. And as soon as people are involved, people love to watch other people, especially experts, because we have a lot of amazing speakers also who joined us. So this is the perfect opportunity to kind of keep the momentum and it kind of helps us to continue this um, hype phase up until like February, March. And then we already start with 20, 26 announcements and kind of warming people up for the next event. And then we come up with new contents like announcements was joining. So I would say this is like the best strategy to go to um, if you want to keep this long term momentum from a content perspective. But then one thing I want to add here as well is also this community engagement. I mean there was a lot of people on site and it's a shame to only talk to those people and to that community once a year. So we also try to engage with the community through smaller events, be it virtual or in person. So for example, for the developer side we have like weekly live shows where our dev team is kind of inviting everyone to join the conversation. It's very tech specific but also obviously recycling some insights from M, the World Congress. And then on the oh our side we are now ramping up a new webinar format that we want to do and HR meetups. We've been doing that for the last couple of months. So we kind of reconnecting the audience and making sure that we engage and we do that with the audience but also with the speakers. So for all these sessions we kind of reach out again to the speakers that we've had on the stages to invite them to those live formats or even to podcasts because we have two podcast formats. Coffee with developers for the dev side, cappuccino with HR for the HR side. Here we try to keep as much momentum as possible by just keeping in touch with people and continuing to build that relationship because ultimately that's what the events are about. To make sure that we build a long term way of being meaningful. And we do that by repeating just

Speaker A: the communication event is a content ah, generator and of course networking generator and then you utilize throughout the year um, all this content. It's a, uh, it's, it's a great strategy.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we have to, there's so much content and it's a shame because we actually also, I think it was the first edition we weren't um, as on um point with the strategy as we're now of course because every company is growing and just so many hours kind of got lost in promotion because we just didn't have that pipeline yet. So it's really great to see that now we, we can recycle everything. And our dev team is actually also working on an AI um platform who can actually scrape the entire history of all the events which is like thousands of hours of content. So it will help again to recycle like old material which is still very relevant because in tech there's always something that kind of comes back and then it, it gets modernized but there's still some essentials that stay relevant. So this will also be a great opportunity to kind of keep the momentum of I would say World Congress 2022 for example.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great having such a platform like ah, your personal developers, YouTube, something like that.

Speaker B: Exactly, yeah.

Speaker A: With such big events, when you participate in such a huge project, um, there is a Lot of learnings, uh, what are the main learnings for you?

Speaker B: So there's a lot of angles to it. I would say from an event logistics perspective. This was my first event, like really first event. Before that, I've only organized smaller meetups with like 50 people in Vienna on the corner of the office. So it was very, very student friendly with pizza and beer and very chill environment. But this was like serious because we had like a lot of C level people coming. We had professional speakers coming, so it was definitely something else. But when it comes to the events logistics, I think my biggest lessons learned is you need a good team to have your back because when the event starts, you cannot rely on your calendar anymore because it's only troubleshooting. Everyone needs something. Speakers want to meet you because you've been in contact with speakers the entire year. They want to talk to you, they want to coordinate with you. I mean, you also remember it wasn't so easy to find me because I was all over the place. Um, and it was really nice to have a really great team behind my back who I could just call and say, hey, I can make this. Can you do it? Um, especially because I also had to coordinate, for example, that the speakers were at the right stages. Then I also had to coordinate the social media team. Not only live, um, coverage, but also like in the back posts on LinkedIn and other channels like Meta, for example. And then at the same time we also had a booth and with our brandings and stuff and had to make sure that the activities are working well. Because in the end, I mean, I'm in B2B marketing and all the activities related to the audience of HR and employer branding, it's potential customers. So I need to figure out a way how to engage with these potential prospects. So I also had to make sure that the sales team is covered with everything they needed. So basically there's a lot of things that add up. So lessons learned, number one, when it comes to events logistics, have everything ready that you can have ready before the event. So you only do troubleshooting because if you need to start scheduling social media posts, it's game over. And then, um, for speaker curation, for example, because I was responsible, uh, for the program of the event as well, I think my biggest lessons learned is actually to take a very, um, audience centric approach. So the way I did it, because honestly I'm not an expert in employee branding hr. I mean, my knowledge comes from just following speakers, following the trends to keep up with the audience, because I also create the podcast. So I need to be ahead of things. But I'm not an expert. I don't have 20 years of experience in the field. So it's kind of to create the agenda the way you would think. Um, it would be ideal for the audience and then starting to find speakers that kind of COVID those topics and then just interact with speakers and see if uh, what they're bringing to the table and have a very honest conversation about it. And for me, the speaker, um, curation and the program building was very positively, um, well, it was very refreshing because I, it was a very eye to eye level experience. Even though some people were experts in the field. They asked me, what do you think the audience wants to hear? And then we kind of drafted the topic together or if I already suggested that one niche topic was taken by someone else, they were very open to feedback and we kind of found a way to fine tune the sessions to someone something else to kind of give more momentum to them as well and make their session unique. So this is one lessons learned is to kind of continue this approach. Kind of very humble and just authentic and people kind of mirror that behavior. And that was very nice. Um, and then yeah, of course scheduling gets messy. Try to be as much flexible as we can. Um, we. One thing that was a personal challenge is when it started raining and we had one outdoor stage. And I remember, ah, one of the speakers came up to me and she was like, yeah, uh, what are we doing? And I was like, I'm trying to fix the weather. I will fix the weather. And basically the rain stopped, thank God. And uh, one of the speakers had to kind of um, move the session to the next day. But we found a way. So just try to be flexible. And I think the main lessons learned here is the speakers react to the way you react to the situation. So if you're calm, then the speaker is calm. And so that was for me very important because inner in me I was completely freaking out. But I had to keep.

Speaker A: I can, I can imagine. I can imagine. M. Yeah, you didn't plan that, uh, you didn't plan what to do if rain starts, right?

Speaker B: I, I personally didn't. I know I have an events team that has a plan B, but I personally didn't for, for that stage. I also wasn't prepared for the rain because it only said that it would be a bit like cloudy and I was very optimistic that there would be no rain. So. Yeah,

Speaker A: yeah, but, but, but great how you handled, handled this, uh, everything on my side. For example, as A, um, uh, as an attendee, yeah, I noticed that, uh, Leandro's session was, uh, postponed to the next day. But that was no problem. Like I understood, okay, that is rain. I didn't think something like, oh, they didn't think through these and uh, or something like that. It was absolutely okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. Leandro was also the most chill person ever. He really kudos to him. I was freaking out because I was scared that he would, would not be as happy because obviously you expect the session, you are ready speakers come for this moment. But he was so nice about it and so flexible and he was even double booked because the next day he was actually supposed moderate as well. So we figured out a way to kind of bring him from moderation to his session back to moderation. I was following him to make sure I don't lose him, but it was great. He's a great guy.

Speaker A: In terms of agenda, uh, how do you drive the content for the agenda? Is it, um, m. More like driven on your side that you want, for example, some directions and give speakers, um, the directions or it more. More driven, uh, by speakers or both?

Speaker B: M. I try to make it audience relevant and with that in mind, because obviously the World Congress has been around for longer than the HR Leaders Summit. And the reason why we have the HR Leaders Summit is also to kind of combine them with the tech audience. I started with developers as the main audience and I realized that the interest was within HR topics, within talent acquisition topics, and within employer branding topics because they wanted to talk about recruiting, retention, internal mobility, upskilling, mental health. So kind of these were the three pillars that were interesting to them. And this covers a lot of topics. So I kind of started writing it down and then I was like, okay, so if we talk about talent acquisition, do we only talk about sourcing? And I was like, okay, but sourcing is nice. But what happens after sourcing? Because a lot of companies are actually struggling with retention. So I need to cover that as well. Okay, but if we're talking about sourcing, this means that, uh, developers or even HR people are actually looking for a person relevant for an open position. Developers are looking for a role, but why would someone apply to a company they don't know about? And this is where employee branding comes in. So, okay, how can we build employee branding? Okay, it leans into, um, talent acquisition. And then on the other side we have HR topics, people topics, um, that are related to mental health, well being, um, career development, for example, and things like this. So I had all these topics in my mind And I just started to cluster. I did a MYO board, very classic, just writing things down on sticky notes. And I started clustering around. And then I realized, okay, we need to cover as much ground as we can. And from this I started searching for speakers. And here we had two strategies. We had our official call for speakers, which was just, um, you know, the official, um, way of applying as a speaker, which is online. So some speakers kind of reached out to us. But then I also did some direct outreaches where m. Specifically at a topic. I was just looking through LinkedIn, who in my opinion would be a thought leader in that area, and then started following their newsletter and kind of seeing, okay, what kind of podcasts are they in? And then kind of clustered it into, into segments. And then obviously through research you fall into certain communities. There's a really strong ta, uh, community, for example, in Amsterdam. And so I started to find links between people and that's how basically the speaker decision started together with the topic and then together with the speakers. We then specifically narrowed down the topic. So if there was a person who was, for example, um, specialized in sourcing and they wanted to bring an AI topic to it, I would then talk to them and say, okay, we already have AI sourcing in this and this and this area. And then the person would say, the speaker would say, okay, but I want to focus on that human level. And I was like, okay, this is a niche we haven't explored yet. Let's take it. And then I build the rest from that. So basically that's how I approached it. And then the more sessions that got confirmed, the more gaps I started closing. And then I knew specifically where else

Speaker A: to go when we have confirmation from speakers. So they can confirm, for example, eight months in advance or something like that. Yeah, but then it's a problem to get from them something specific like topic. And uh, for, for us, for us it's a niche. So we start, uh, following up. Hey, do you have topic? But they, okay, I will do this after, after summer, after holidays or some, something like that. Postponing this. What's your experience? How do you overcome this?

Speaker B: Good question. Um, I would say follow ups is definitely the right start. Um, perhaps what I, what I do, for example, um, what could help is maybe invite those speakers to, um, another type of format before they join the actual event you invite them to. It doesn't have to be a podcast. It can be a podcast, but maybe it could also be a collaborative article. I did that with ah, Speaker Duo, where they kind of had their specialty. And we suggested that they could write an article to kind of tease their session. This also helped a lot. Maybe you could argue with. If you share the content already with us, we can create teasers with you and then also kind of try to reach out and create snippets, for example, give them templates they can use and maybe work with them through the topic, um, to actually be able to promote their session better because you have the topic in advance rather than if they don't. If you don't have the topic, then you can promote the session in advance. This usually gives the speaker a good incentive to send it to you earlier just because they want the extra promotion. We do that with all the speakers, actually, and it's a good incentive. And we actually have speakers also knocking. I want to go earlier than was planned and stuff, so this helps. Um, one other thing that I would suggest maybe is to, um, research what the person is specialized in and then send over suggestions. That's what I do with some of the, uh, podcast speakers when I kind of reach out with an invitation. Hey, do you want to join the podcast? And then I, um, don't want to make the guest having to do a lot of effort without them having already confirmed. So I suggest some topics based on their LinkedIn profile or stuff that they post. And then usually this is a good kind of icebreaker because you kind of take tasks from them and you can also shape it in the direction that you want it. And it's actually a good win, win.

Speaker A: Uh, we've already discussed a lot about details. Let's move on a high level and just, uh, have some fun. What excites you about working, uh, on events? Oh,

Speaker B: I think the fact that you get out there, I think that's the most important, uh, well, the most interesting part for me. It's kind of. I, I've been working in marketing now for eight years. I mean, before I joined, we're developers, I was in a smaller team, and we're only two, three people in the marketing team. Now we're a couple people more. Um, but sometimes marketing can feel lonely because marketing can be segmented into a lot of specific areas. And then it's often the fact that everyone has their own niche in marketing that they're fulfilling. So we have B2C marketing, we have B2B marketing. Maybe one person specializes in B2B events, and then it can get lonely very quickly. And with events, I feel like this breaks the stereotype of kind of sitting behind your desk and editing podcast episodes or Drafting social media posts. So I think this for me is what really gives me a, um, lot of fun to go to work and this adrenaline of kind of being around people and also meeting people you work with. So what I recent. Well, I, What I most enjoyed from the HR Leader summit was actually meeting first all the podcast guests we had at Cappuccino with hr, because I've only interacted with them virtually, but then also meeting new speakers that I've only reached out through email. Um, so, yeah, I think it's the, uh, seeing people and being around people what excites me most about event management. Actually.

Speaker A: I think you noticed such a brilliant, subtle and precise thing about this. Uh, I mean, feeling lonely for marketers within organization, because I feel absolutely the same thing. And, uh, now you, uh, put my thoughts in a, in a structure. When someone will ask me, I will reply in your words. I will use this as a copyright.

Speaker B: I'm glad I could phrase it well. I'm sorry we feel this way.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I can fully relate. It's a great, It's a great way to, um, to, to, to connect and to feel, to feel connected, uh, with the world for marketers and on the other side, uh, what was, what's the most tough thing for you? Uh, when you was working, uh, on this big project and continue working there?

Speaker B: I think the toughest thing, it's actually something my friend told me because she works in event management and actually left industry. Um, she told me the curse of event management. When everything goes right, people think everything is normal. But if there's one thing that goes wrong, everyone will see it. And I think that's the toughest part of working in that field. It's like you have to make sure everything runs smoothly. And there's always something that doesn't. And it can be something that you can't even affect, like the weather. M. But for you, in that moment, it's the biggest thing and it actually makes something worse than if it was good weather. So I think for me, this is the toughest part, that I just can't be in control of the whole thing. And no matter how hard you try, there will probably be one thing that will still make the event less, look less good than what you initially intended. And that's something that I don't have in marketing. In marketing, I can plan every bullet point, every word, and it's the cleanest outreach. Um, so, yeah, that's tough.

Speaker A: And with the events, it can be. Even if you did everything, uh, perfectly, uh, Then when you ask someone, okay, what, what could we improve? For example? And they start thinking like, oh, maybe that red could be not so red or something like that. I mean such a small things. And there is um.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mean we had the same at uh, our event. I mean there obviously was some amazing feedback, but there was also some, I mean that's not, call it negative feedback. I would say it's constructive feedback. But we actually had a good chunk of audience that said they are looking forward to next year, that maybe there's more in depth sessions because some topics were more scratching the surface. And this is something that I had a challenge with also when I was drafting the agenda because how do you make an agenda where you actually attract junior level, mid level, senior level people, but then also hr, employee branding people, but also tech people. So there's always going to be someone who is missing something or maybe that uh, this one session is in parallel with another session that is just as interesting and then it's just something that you can't uh, control. But I think that our events team in house here is amazing in supporting, well in this case myself, where they have a lot of experience in doing the conference now for 10 years that um, we can take everything the way it was written, we can always improve but there will always be um, a percentage of people who will expect something else or something different. Um, that's just the way it is. I mean with 15,000 people, how can it be like that?

Speaker A: Yeah. And you have such an amazing team. You're like on the same wave, uh, within your team. It's, this is something that really stood apart for me. As a last question, uh, what uh, will be one piece of advice from you to someone, um, just starting, um, uh, organizing, promoting events and um, or already doing this but want to, who wants to improve?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think for me the biggest lessons learned and that would be the advice especially if you have a tight budget because if you're just starting off, you don't get a lot of budget. You have to work with basically nothing because you need to prove it works even though you don't have a budget. Um, organic measures I think are the most effective. What I, uh, what do I mean by that? Reaching out to people through LinkedIn, for example, just, I started manually, I just went through LinkedIn, added people that might be interesting for the event I was organizing, added them, waited until they accepted me. One or two days later I reached out to them. Hey, we have this event. Would you like to join? No strings attached. Let Me know if you're interested. I actually got so many replies just by doing that. Um, so I think for me this was the most effective thing. And then if you can, on top of that, also nurture. So I was using my own LinkedIn to do the outreach because I wanted people that I talked to that they related the event directly to me so that also when they meet me on site they have this personal connection because then it just bonds there. It creates a long, better bond. And so, um, I did that with so hundreds and maybe even thousands of people just reached out, wrote a very authentic message. I got so many replies and I think this, this really went a long way. And then once, once this starts working, you can always automate. But I think that um, the experiment here, if you don't have the budget, is really good. If you, if you just do it manually and start uh, reaching out to people and then if you want to go a step further. That's what I wanted to say, but I lost my train of thought. Um, always fine tune your own LinkedIn profile if you do the outreach. So make it. Just don't have to post every day. I don't do that. I honestly don't have currently time to do that. But I do post here and there relevant content related to the events that I'm organizing just to give also context to my Persona, to the potential guests I want to have there. And this worked really nicely. It helped me build up the HR meetups that we've had in Vienna. Uh, we had the first meetup, had seven people come, the last one had 70. So it helps build up. Yeah. And I didn't do anything else for the HR Leaders Summit. I just reached out to people in Berlin, invited people them to the event, shared the agenda and I did the same when I scouted speakers, I just reached out and I was like, hey, do you want to join the event? I think you have a great topic. Here's my suggestion. Let me know if you want to collaborate. This works really well.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Congratulations on the successful meetup.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you, Ivana. Uh, uh, that was great, uh, to reconnect with you today and to hear uh, insights from you. What is the best way for m our listeners to connect with you?

Speaker B: I think the best way is actually LinkedIn. I spend half of my day there because I also managed the weird developer's LinkedIn profile. So definitely, um, if we can, I will gladly drop them in, uh, my URL LinkedIn in the show notes and you can always connect with me.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I will add everything. Ivana, thanks a lot for joining me today. Have a great, uh, rest of the day and bye. Bye.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Bye.

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