During the contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/., we revisited the conversation we had at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Asia earlier this year. The focus this time was on the global sponsorship program.

ROI for sponsors

The conversation started on the ROI of sponsoring WordCamps, and specifically the global sponsorship program. Various companies have different ways of calculating this. Some do that through the social exposure around events, others focus on newsletter signups. However, we’re all aware that most WordCamps are not the place for direct ROI. And everyone has mostly been able to convey that message to their upper managements.

Yet, showing ROI to upper management remains an unsolved problem. We know in our hearts that the exposure we get at events leads to a better public perception of our brands, but we all continue to struggle to quantify that.

How can WordCamps help?

Metrics

One of the things that would help sponsors, besides getting easier access to attendee data, is having more reliable metrics. How many tickets have been sold? How many people checked in? How many attendees did each talk have?

Consider better sponsoring offers

From tracking, we know that logos aren’t converting at all. Just placing a logo isn’t going to convince a potential customer to click. Therefore, logo placement on the website is not a real benefit to sponsors. Other things might be, for example, time on stage, or having a specific track or (side-)event named after them. Get creative. Come up with an amazing idea for your sponsors, please!

Lead time

WordCamps are oftentimes organized in a few months. Especially for larger brands, the time needed to design a booth is often over 6 weeks – after signing the contract and getting all the information (e.g. exact booth sizes). Also, deciding who attends an event on behalf of a company is usually done after the speakers are selected, as that influences who can come. If the time between that decision and the event is short, it hurts the quality of the talks, and it hurts financially for sponsors who now have to book their transportation last-minute.
Extending the lead time on sponsorships would be a big time- and money-saver.

Critically look at your budget

Sponsorships have gotten quite a bit more expensive in the last couple of years. At the same time, events have been cancelled or downsized significantly in that same period. We may need to reconsider how we’re spending our sponsors’ money. Are we doing the best we can to keep our events affordable, for everyone?

Regional vs global sponsorships

In the past, we had regional sponsorships as well. Both have pros and cons. Overall, we concluded that having the global sponsorship -for now- is most beneficial, although it may need a new approach.

Should global sponsors be more global?

Currently, global sponsors get most of their ROI from local events promoting them. In our discussion, we talked about the pros and cons of the current situation. One of the suggestions discussed was to offer more global visibility to global sponsors. For example through the WordPress admin and on the .org website instead of including top-tier local sponsorships.

Create global sponsor SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel with up to 3 reps per global sponsor

This idea was floated and seems easy to implement. The benefit would be that it allows more direct comms with the global sponsors, and amongst them.

=====
This meeting was attended by: @peiraisotta, @raquelandefeld, @dtsears, @sarahglenn, @sunsand187, @awarner20, @matteospi, and @tacoverdo.