 director of the Drupal Association and I just want to thank all of you sponsors for supporting DrupalCon Amsterdam. We're really excited to have this special event with you and we want to make sure you get the most out of your investment which is why we're hosting this webinar today that can give you some pro tips on how to do that. So you know when you think about sponsoring you want to really have clarity on your goals. Why are you sponsoring and what are you trying to get out of this investment? We find many companies are there for various reasons. One is that they're there to get sales leads. Another reason is for business development maybe partnerships. A lot of people come to recruit talent and also people go to really raise their profile within the community to be seen as community leaders as well as thought leaders and so today we'll talk about these different types of goals and ways that you can you know prepare and take advantage of DrupalCon to to really achieve these kinds of goals. So whatever your goal is there are five steps to success. One is you want to be proactive. Definitely don't want to just sit in your booth and wait for people to come to you. There's a lot that you can do leading up to the event and during the event we'll talk about that and you want to make sure before you go into the event that you define your goal and the message you want everyone in your company to be pushing out during their time at the event and as they say you really can't manage unless you measure it and so we want to make sure that not only do you have your goals and your messages in place but you have a way to measure that to see if you achieve what you're looking to achieve and as you're looking to get that message out you want to look at all your different channels. Where can you really push that message out and talk to different kinds of potential clients or partners or potential talent and we'll go through a couple channels that we know are available to you through DrupalCon as well as some things that you might want to consider within your own organization and then once you put all these things together of course you're going to be very successful and we want to make sure that you go there to celebrate your success as well and we have a VIP happy hour, Dries will be there along with the board and association staff and all of the sponsors and supporters. It's a great networking event. It's going to be Wednesday October 1st from 1730 to 1900. It's going to be at the Rye. They have this beach that faces the canal. It's really great. It's a great space so we're going to have a lot of fun there and so I just want to make sure that gets on your calendar because celebrating success and networking is certainly an important thing. Okay so here are some things to think about again regardless of your goal but you want to be knowing you want to really raise your profile before during and after the event. So before the event you want to think about who's in your database. It might be your existing clients, your prospective clients, maybe some lost leads even and of course you have your followers of your newsletter and your blogs and your social media and so you have all these channels to leverage and you really can reach out to them before the event and let them know you're going to be a Drupal Khan. You're there to support and sponsor and this is a chance for you to educate them what a Drupal Khan is. They may not know. They may not realize that maybe it's a client that just doesn't know that there's this whole community behind the software that they invested in and so you can use this opportunity to even invite them to meet you. You have sponsored tickets as part of your sponsor package or I should say you have Drupal Khan tickets as part of your sponsor package. If you're not going to use them all to get your employees in, feel free to raffle that out. It's a great way just to get some excitement going within your own client base, prospect base and of course you can use your channels blogs and social media and of course you can always just pick up the phone and call people. Sometimes even I forget that the phone is still a viable option. Okay so one thing to know if you're using social media to get the word out you want to use Drupal Khan EUR and of course you can use at Drupal if you want to expand to the greater Drupal community but these are just some hashtags that you should also know about. So these are some things you can do before during the event you want to really have your brand out there and one way I've seen companies achieve this really well and still fit into the community norms is to wear your branded company t-shirt and it's really kind of neat to see a wave of people and then be able to see you know your your branded colors and logos on the employees as they're walking around and especially if they're speaking at a session or giving a training of course you want them to wear that company t-shirt to get that brand out there and be seen as that thought leader and of course make sure everyone has business cards even developers you know you're spending a lot of money to get your staff there and even if they're going for educational purposes they're still there representing your company and they're still going to be talking to people that perhaps you want to recruit or might be potential clients so go ahead and make them those business cards and arm everyone to be ready to network and of course with that whole team you want to coach them on the message that you're really trying to push out during that week and let them know what the goals are and it's okay to give people goals hey when you know if you're at a community party if you're at the birds of a feather you're going to be talking with people I want you to talk to 10 people about this job opening or about hey talk to them about this case study that we have and let them know like educate a couple people of some of our expertise maybe you want to highlight a module that you have an integration because everyone's there and talking so you might as well make sure you get investment out of everyone that you're sending to the event during the event you can raise your profile digitally some people will have a communications staff member there or they'll delegate to someone who's maybe not a communications person on staff but can act as your communicator during the event and they will write blogs maybe they'll go to sessions throughout the day and at the end of each day they will write a blog is some really significant things that they saw and they heard and get those out every day or if that's too much kind of a roundup at the end of the event also you will have lots of people going into sessions and going to the keynotes or going to the special events and it's great to tweet what you've heard and let people follow you you know you can be the eyes and ears if someone's over in the case studies track well maybe you're over in the developer track and people just can't get to everything so you can get a lot of followers that way so I mentioned a lot about the sessions in the keynotes but there's lots of other things happening where you can send staff to and kind of get expand your surface area throughout the event one thing to consider the birds of a feather and these happen during the sessions they are not presentations they are topics that people put up on a board and anyone who's interested in that topic goes into a room at that designated time and you discuss so maybe just maybe you are a company that serves the nonprofit space and you will want to either go ahead and and sign up above to get people to talk about nonprofit issues and you can go there and talk with people you could be a thought leader it's a great way to network and share ideas but you just never know who you might meet in these birds of a feather sessions same thing if sometimes you'll see these birds of a feather talk about how do we do Drupal with CRM or how do we how do we do Drupal with different kinds of technologies and so if you're a technology company or hosting company feel free to put a topic that's related to you and Drupal and and people will come and I think you'll see that you'll have a lot of education to share also make sure you go to what I just called generically as special events these range from Monday's community summit the business summit really for web development agencies there's all those community events at night that range from a trivia night on Thursday companies are hosting parties to the night definitely make sure your staff's going out there and wearing those branded t-shirts because they can really do some networking there you just never know who you run into and then of course during the event if you have a booth in the exhibit hall this is a great chance to really hone that message and make sure it's crystal clear what you're trying to get across and there's a lot of things you can do to attract people to your booth you can do raffles you can do demos you can do fun things they come and get your picture taken with this really interesting backdrop you know I've seen all kinds of things that really dress up a booth and bring people in the most important thing is to really know what you're trying to achieve at your booth and make sure it's crystal clear to anyone who's walking by and of course anyone that you talk to at your booth make sure you're collecting cards that way you can follow up with them and so you there's all these different ways to connect with people throughout the event and hopefully you're connecting business cards taking notes on the cards about what you know what they're interested in and you want to make sure that you follow up with them right away we recommend 48 hours from the event you know so that week right after Drupal con you really want something out there to all these contacts and I don't know about you I'm usually drop dead exhausted after a Drupal con and so what we do is we set up our communications before Drupal con and that way we just put the contacts right in there afterwards and we send out a follow-up message it's kind of automated so if that works for you I highly recommend it definitely helps things along and yeah and these are just some general tips that I really recommend that you follow regardless of what your goals and messages are so if you're going because you're looking for sales or prospective clients I should say we have a few tips I wanted to share with you one is if you go to the Drupal con Amsterdam site and I have the URL here you can you can see a list of everyone who's attending attendees opt-in to share their profile and you see them individually each individual profile and you're able to click on that to find out who they are and also you can contact them directly and so if you are someone let's say who's recruiting for talent and you're looking for a developer in a certain region or the certain specialty you can go through the tending profile I will admit it's a little tedious because it's one at a time but it's really worth the effort because you can before the event find people that you really want to talk to and you can contact them directly and this is a chance to set up a meeting and make sure your communication really shows that you're you know a human that really wants to engage with them so don't make it spammy you're not selling anything it just really won't resonate with the community that way and we also just want to make sure that doesn't come off as a spam email and it's also really important that you don't use any web crawler software to grab the attendee list and get emails because well that spam and that is something that the community reacts to pretty badly so you know we just really want to make sure you know the right way to approach attendees with your communications if they feel that it's spammy they will shut down you won't get the results that you want but we know that you are really savvy and wouldn't do that and and so when you reach out go ahead and start setting up meetings with people before you get on site and you should have a goal of how many sales meetings or recruitment meetings you want to have that week think about how many good conversations you want to have out of those meetings and also think about how many business cards you want to collect that's a good goal to have as well so I talked about birds of a feather already again it's a great way to find new clients so whether you want to talk about your technology or your hosting service or the success you've had as a web development agency in a special niche feel free to attend these birds of a feathers or even make sure that when the schedule is announced that it's open to put your topic on there it's a great way to attract people in of like mind and educate them and out of there you could probably get some potential clients and again the social events are a great way just to keep meeting all the people at this at this event so you I'm sure have an existing pipeline of prospective clients that you want to keep won't keep them as warm leads and Drupal con is a sales tool to help you do that so perhaps you've talked with a company who said well I'm interested in working with you but not until January or maybe you already have a client but you're working with them at a departmental basis and you would like to expand your footprint in that client and get into more departments or maybe you even have some lost deals that you think maybe I could win them back you know you really want to look at that database of clients and you know Drupal con gives you a reason to talk to them again so you can use your newsletters or your social media all those different channels we talked about and some messages that you can have for them are you know come and see us we have a booth we'd love to talk to you about Drupal con and again remember these people may not know what Drupal con really is all about and the power of it and why they should attend so you can invite them in if you have extra passes please use that for your clients and potential clients if they can only come for one day we do offer a one-day pass for 99 euro and you know maybe as a doing business you would like to just buy them a pass and invite them in it's really important that when you invite them in that you really show them that you are you know a leader in the Drupal community that you really know the ins and outs take them to different sessions take them to the keynotes of course have them to your booth sit down and have lunch with them and even if you're new to the community maybe you're someone who's a you know a software company that sponsoring or hosting company that sponsoring you don't really get involved at such a deep level in the Drupal community we can help you come up with ways to really show that kind of leadership and you know if you have questions just let us know we're here to help you some other things that we've seen that really work is if you've invited someone to attend Drupal con one of your clients and prospective clients you can host a dinner and bring them all together let your prospects meet your clients your clients can sell you probably better than you can so this is a great chance to really make that connection happen and of course you know you can keep sending out communications before and after this event to this audience and educate them and and really bring them into the fold and let them see that you really know Drupal so there's another aspect to sales which is more in line with business development and you can get a lot of leads through partnerships so if you're a web development agency you know there's just you might want to really look at who you can partner with and there's a couple ways you can do this you know there's other web development agencies that are have you know possibly getting a lot of leads at the time but they don't have the bench to handle it all and we never want leads to die in the vine so I see a lot of companies come together informing partnerships for example I've seen companies that are let's say the only want mid-sized clients and they've been getting a lot of companies are potential deals that just don't fit that profile so they'll partner with another Drupal shop that specializes let's say in your small smaller size business and they'll pass those leads and vice versa so you can look for those kinds of partnerships I call it the lead load balancing partnership you might even find a company that needs a special needs a specialty perhaps you're a specialist in security as an example or a specialist in custom integrations so you might find a company that doesn't have that skill set and you can partner there and now they can you can both go to market with a more robust services offering so that's one kind of partnership to think about if you are a technology company as you know if you have software offering or you have a hosting service you're going to want to partner as well because if you think about it the web development agencies are the ones that are really building for clients and picking technology and you want to be top of mind when they are building so for example if you are a CRM you you know you want to talk with companies and let them know hey we have this integration we are we're getting ready for Drupal 8 we have these kinds of clients maybe we can go to market together maybe we can you know invest in some joint sales so so that's one way to go and if you're a hosting company perhaps you have a dedicated managed or enterprise level service you might want to reach out to web development agencies that have clients that need these kinds of services and also talk about going to market together so what I recommend with all these different kinds of partnerships that you can have look at the sponsor list and you can look at the companies who are attending the attending profile the attendee profile also let you know the kinds of companies that will be there that are not sponsoring and I recommend that you reach out and you set up meetings beforehand this is a really great avenue for developing leads over time if you're a web development agency I want to just point out that one great networking opportunity is the business summit which is an all-day event on Monday and it's 199 euro so the purpose of this event is really to bring the leaders and owners of web development agencies together it's a what we call a sacred space everyone who's attending brings up their business challenges and we look at all the common challenges and then we break into groups and people discuss the challenges and the solutions that they have and we have mentors in there as well to help bring this conversation along and take it to a level of you know where you're really reaching some solutions that you can bring home and I recommend this not only because it can really help level up some of the challenges you know really solve some those challenges that you're having maybe it's growing the organization or recruiting talent but you are really in a position to do some great networking and business development there too again the VIP happy hour that happens Wednesday that is a chance to network with your fellow sponsors also we have a really big and growing supporter base for the Drupal Association so these are also companies web development agencies hosting companies software companies that are supporting the Drupal Association directly and all those funds are actually going towards Drupal.org improvements so we invite this all of these both of these groups together and again is a great time to network one other point throughout the week to take into consideration is that you might have people going to sessions you might have people staffing your booth but you really want to have one person at all time designated to networking the hallway track is what we call it you know walking around the exhibit hall and talking to other sponsors someone that's going to the birds of a feather people that are going to the parties and so just be be mindful of who that person could be so you're not always tied up in your sessions and at your booth so that was partnerships I'd like to shift over to something that's less about sales goals and more about talent I know we're all looking to hire and I'm really excited to announce that we are launching Drupal jobs which would be a professional grade job board right now the community has on groups dot Drupal dot org slash jobs a service that lets you post jobs but you can't search resumes you can't filter by job type or our level of skill you also that you know what we have right now for the community doesn't allow you to target within a geography so we built this professional grade Drupal jobs board that will really address all those talent recruitment needs and I'm really excited that you'll be able to post your jobs in there during Drupal con and we'll be sending you more information on that soon so that's one of the ways that we're going to help you with your talent recruitment is then you get into that job board early on and and we'll be doing a lot of promotion to that job board before during and after Drupal con so I go definitely see a nice bump from that if you have a booth again you want to make sure your messaging is really clear have a big sign that says we're hiring and make sure you have printouts of your job postings that way as you're talking to people you can hand them out and really make that top of mind as people come to your booth again you have the attendee profile go ahead and come through that you're going to see that there's just a ton of talent at Drupal con and perhaps some of them would like to work for you you know I talked about your booth and having the job postings printed out I also recommend that you have a business card that highlights your jobs maybe has the URL to your page that has your job listings this way you have a really solid message on your business cards that you're handing out so as you have employees going around and talking to people make sure that this is on the their business card and the other thing too is find ways during the conference to highlight how amazing your company is to work for we we definitely know that salary does matter but people are really making choices and staying at companies because of a company culture they're looking for a work-life balance they're looking to have fun they're looking to learn and be challenged and have really exciting job opportunities and to grow their career and so there's a lot of ways that you can have your company shine and and and highlight what that would be like if they joined your company and so as you are going through the week and doing things with your team maybe you're having team dinners or you're having fun at the booth take pictures of that and tweet it out and highlight that you have jobs and come work for this great company and of course you can blog about that and really continue to highlight your culture and then the job opportunities and the really great people that you're meeting and remind people to come and meet you at your booth or to set up a meeting with you so you know Drupal Khan is just a really targeted way of finding some great talent in the community other people have goals that are more about brand awareness getting being seen as a community leader and also being seen as a thought leader and there's ways to achieve this as well let me just talk about community leadership so community leadership really is being seen as someone who maybe is helping a user group come together and grow so that could be camps and meetups it can also be your community leader from a technical perspective so perhaps you have some specialties and you've created modules to give people new features and so that's a great way of being a leader other ways there's just how you're supporting the community from a membership a supported or supporter standpoint so if you're supporting the Drupal Association and helping us siphon those funds right towards Drupal.org improvements go ahead and you know let people know that you're a community leader that way too because we could not be improving the community home without those funds and so if you have a booth make sure you're highlighting those kinds of messages and you know let them know like hey we have these modules you know you want to get traction on those modules they might need some education about how to use them and people might want to know well what is this supporting partner what does it mean to be a supporter and let them know you know right there at your booth that you know we're actually going to give everyone some signs that they can put in their booth so that way if anyone asks you can say yes I am helping to improve Drupal.org and this is my contribution lots of ways that you can highlight your community leadership. Again we have an event called the community summit it's all day Monday and this is when community leaders come together structured similar to the business summit but camp organizers, meet-up organizers, group organizers they come together they talk about know where can we really help bring the community together help strengthen skills in the community how can we grow the community in a smart way and how are we doing that today and how can we do that better and then they work together you know they kind of identify some of the top things and they come together and they do sprints around that and you can join this event it's free and it is a great way to get together with like-minds and show some leadership there and help even guide the sprints and come out some really great things for the community to use all over the globe. Again the birds of a feather is a great way to show leadership even I didn't really touch on thought leadership thought leadership might just be a matter of you know it well could be anything it could be a technical thought leadership visionary leadership leadership on hey how this is how we are going about and getting new clients are pushing into the enterprise and showing others how to do that as well so birds of a feather are a great way to show that thought leadership so you know don't be shy when we announce the birds of a feather calendar is open put some topics on there and really shine really be someone who can educate others of course you can show your community and thought leadership through your digital presence so again through blogs and tweets and in sharing pictures you can really highlight some some things that you're hearing and seeing throughout Drupalcon that you think are really visionary or really impactful for the community to know and and share those from a technical standpoint we really encourage you to attend or to send your staff to the contribution sprint on Friday and this is where we're going to be sprinting on Drupal 8 as well as other areas such as documentation there's lots of ways to contribute during these sprints and you can really be a leader here and help move the needle again contribution sprints are Friday but if you are someone or your staff is someone who really loves coming together and sprinting we do have what we call extended sprints they are the Saturday and Sunday before and after Drupalcon so those are for the real die-hards that have lots and lots of energy and can do this for 10 days lastly another way that you can highlight yourself as a community leader is attending the Drupal Association board meeting and that's Wednesday during lunch it will be on the schedule and we encourage you to come and hear us report out what we're working on the Drupal Association to support the community we give progress reports and we also have an open Q&A and so it's a great time for you to ask questions and better understand what the Drupal Association is doing for the community and we encourage you to share that news with your local community and kind of push that message out further so more people can know what we're doing but you get to be seen in your local community is the is the one who's really leading and sharing it also provides free lunch so you get to avoid all of the long lunch lines and so that's another reason we think you should attend the Drupal Association board meeting so we've covered a lot of different goals that organizations have for sponsoring DrupalCon and shared our pro tips and some things I just wanted to highlight is just networking a lot of that what you're going to do regardless of your goal is networking and sometimes this is you know it's easier for some than others and so I just want to cover some things that when you're out and about this is these are some pro tips that you can use you can share with your team to use the one thing is bring plenty of business cards you can ever have too many make sure it's got that message on there that you really want to push out have everyone on your team ready to give that elevator pitch they really know that message is whether it's talent recruitment or sharing some expertise that you have in your organization and make sure everyone's just ready to have that at the tip of their tongue and ready to say one thing also about DrupalCon is it's a family reunion and we tend to gravitate towards the people we know and we know a lot of people but there's still a ton of people out there that are new we have a really strong base of attendees that are relatively new to the community so make sure you look for them and I know I actually I come off as an extrovert but I'm really an introvert so sometimes it's hard to go up to someone who I don't know at all and I have found that if you have a simple introduction it works miracles so just try something like hi I haven't met you yet and my name is Megan it's amazing you just start up a conversation they're usually pretty thankful that you reached out and so you know when you're looking around try to find those people that are kind of standing by themselves or just like with one or two people and and just reach out and and and just introduce yourself and also introduce them to other people and they really can start seeing you as a as a leader in the community that way too and just keep in mind you're not there to sell anything that usually scares people off just establish a relationship ask them questions the one question I find to be most helpful is so why did you come to Drupalcon and they'll start telling you things and you might have some follow-up questions and next thing you know maybe they're here because they're you know they have a company they really want to understand you know should I go this way or that way when I build a website for them and you might say oh you know we've been finding this and that and once you come to my booth like we could we could talk some more I think I can help you or if you can't oh I know someone who can help you and they'll be really grateful and think of you the next time they might need to work with you and of course you have all those business cards so when you're talking with someone you can personalize it just you know write a little note on there about what you talked about and hand it to them and and also keep track of the conversations that you're having when you receive their business card that way you know you can personalize your follow-up with them it is just some simple simple things about networking and this will be a big part of of your week so just wanted to share those tips and that really concludes the the advice that we have on how to maximize your investment just to recap just be really proactive start now I know most of you are on vacation so when you come back and maybe September you can really start bringing your team together and talking about what the goal is with the messages that you're getting out coach everyone have them come together think about the brand that you want to push out what you know maybe can print up some t-shirts really fast and start your communication through all of your channels think about those lost leads your prospective customers even the existing customers you want to do more business with and all the ways you can reach out to them and don't forget the all the attendees that you can find on the Drupalcon site and again just make sure you're you do that in a really sensitive way so they don't feel that they are being spammed just really talk to them like a human you know not like a salesperson and you'll you'll get some good reactions I'm sure and then again I can't say it enough don't forget to have fun Drupalcon is certainly a family reunion it's a lot of fun it's a time to get together and celebrate all the great things that you've done foreign with Drupal so put it on your calendar and we're gonna send you a calendar invite you but the VIP happy hour is Wednesday and we're really excited to see all of you at Drupalcon Amsterdam and we want to do everything we can to make sure you have great success so if you have any questions please you can reach out to me I know you're all working closely with Rachel for reason who is our fulfillment coordinator she can field your questions and your sales reps Johanna and Don are also great resources and can help you so don't be afraid to reach out ask questions we're happy to give some coaching and whatever you need for success we're here for you so hopefully this webcast on maximizing your investment was helpful and we certainly just look forward to spending some time with you at the end of September in Amsterdam so thanks for your time and have a great day actually I'm just gonna look at questions I always forget the questions Rachel were there any questions that I might have missed there was one question about when the birds of a feather submission will be open I'm not sure of the exact date but I will find out and follow up with an email after this there was a Drupal con newsletter that went out this morning and those announcements are always covered in that so if you're what didn't receive an e-newsletter this morning I would recommend signing up for that and if you have registered for Drupal con you should be getting those unless you opted out right and usually it's announced just a few weeks before Drupal con so we will yeah we'll definitely be announcing that and on through social media as well so just keep an eye out for that if you're not signed up let me know we can help you make sure you get the news are there any other questions if you have questions you can just type them into the control panel there's a question about whether we'll send out the slides and we are recording this and we'll be posting it on our YouTube channel so that will be posted on the sponsor page the event kit page of the Amsterdam website so if you want to direct any of your colleagues to this presentation you can send them there and they can watch the video