 Great, well welcome everyone to our session this afternoon Lessons from the community what I've learned as an open-stack days organizer. My name is Frank days My day job is I run marketing for to Sora. We are the top contributed to the Trove project That's database as a service here at open stack Also this past year. I had the good fortune along with Sharon Zitsman on my panel of organizing the first open-stack days East event in New York City a 500 person event and One of the things that we do I think everyone in this panel is organized at least one open-stack days Ben and has learned a lot from it And we were trying to really share with everyone today the things we all learned and hopefully You can pick up some interesting information just from a Denise Rodolfo who's helped all of us in these events from the foundation standpoint Shout out to Denise and also through your arm sub-maranian who is with the open-stack days in Seattle as well We got pretty crammed in when I was trying to put the proposal in the next thing You know I had seven people on the panel and sure I will be here as a resource as well Throughout this as we look at open-stack days events that really this year was this was probably the year of the open-stack days events 27 events over 12,000 people attended one of these events around the world so including the china one which had over 20 2400 people so pretty amazing amazing array of events that went on so just to quickly to introduce everyone first of all Annie lie open-stack days china event Duchenne Dordovic is filling in for hady Open-stack days ireland We have hana. I'm going to butcher your name sulcova From open-stock days prog That's in the Czech Republic not hungary as I was reminded before classic american geography knowledge there And uh, Sriram who I introduced from open-stack days in seattle Sharon's thisman my part who is organized the open-stack days israel and also partner in crime on the open-stack days east event And martin kiss who has probably managed more open-stack days events than all of us on this panel combined So Not quite that but I was reminded that he was doing open-stack days Events before open-stack days are cool. So that's the good thing to know about So why don't we just jump into the conversation? This is interactive So i'm going to come out to you guys periodically if you have a question Raise your hand in the middle. We want to make this as interactive as possible It's a community event about doing community events. So let's Don't be afraid to ask questions So the first question is and I often ask myself this question a lot while I was in the middle of the planning processes Why why on earth would you do one of these events? You want to start with annie? What was the motivation for you guys to do an event? Well, um, I think number one is to um, you know, uh, promote open-stack in the community And um, and also not for china open source is kind of new So there's a lot of education And we want to use the opportunity to kind of a promote open-stack and then educate the chinese developers and users What open source is about and what open stack is about? That was um our number one goal, uh, but i'm sure for other region might be different but for china Um, it's our first time. So our focus was mostly on Education promotion and also community, you know collaboration Yeah, so our main idea is ireland is we are trying to present ireland as a Sort of a small silicon valley of europe Uh, and on the other hand and we do have relatively big open stack Community meetup community, which is almost 600 members now on the other hand We don't know much about that community. So that was our main idea To uh to see our community on one side and to meet the community and on the other side To present what we are doing in ireland in sense of open stack and and generally cloud Cloud as well. So that was the main job. What is why why we entered the the whole thing Okay, so uh in praga in check republic There was a problem that the opposite side that there is a no community So the reason why we decided to Organize the event is to build the open stack community and to extend the awareness about the open source technologies Because we think that's a cool and people should know should know about that. That was the reason Yeah, so my first summit was in boston And it was very long long time ago And it was a so good experience that our goa was that I simply wanted to bring the spirit of the summits into central europe And I think we we definitely reached that goa during the last few years Um, so i'm from televiv And israel is a very technologically advanced country a lot of brilliant developers engineers cloud admins But they're very dispersed. So it was really important for us to kind of bring the community together We ourselves um leading open source project project and kind of Build out the open source community And specifically around open stack find more contributions To the open stack community. We thought that that was a really important driver So um, we wanted to do that and we've actually been doing this for a good four years as well So yeah, it's great. So as we do these events Um That's a question coming back to I think about my own experience with the open stack days east event We did you know, I think this is a part of my day job, right? We were doing an event We did trove centric events the previous two years and then we decided we would do an open stack days event And I had to sell the event to my CEO and to peers in my company This would be important and a valuable experience for us But I wanted to get a sense from the panel. Maybe I'll kind of go back to charon We'll start on this end I mean, what was in it for your company and how did you sort of justify or share or convince people within your company? This was an important endeavor So I think first of all the friends and the networking that we've made being an active part of the open stack community Has been invaluable to the company. Um, let's start with that Just kind of being a part of something that's bigger than you learning about new technologies Integrating collaborating. This is a very important play. There's always the Very important skill set that's lacking. I'm finding really good developers and engineers and so this is one aspect as well But there's been a lot in it in terms of just Kind of connecting to the right opportunities and you know building partnerships and collaborating and Doing a lot more interesting things with our technology as well You don't also want to take that or? Yeah, so so basically what we did it was a real community event So it was not an advantage for a single company We wanted to sell it for the sponsors as a good opportunity to Show up their commitments to the open source and the entire Open stack cloud So basically it was really fantastic that we can do it since the really early days And basically it was very hard to sell it for for this even for the sponsors So it was not so common that they want to Support an open source community because especially in Hungary. We are in a very special situation That most of the companies are just small Departments of larger vendors Great. So how big was the event in budapest? Yeah in budapest I think we start it was not so big so budapest is not Our hunger is not a very huge country We have around 10 million people But for the first event as I remember we had around 250 It was not so bad for star Yeah for brag we decided to have a small event I discussed it with claire because so We didn't know what we can expect. So we decided for the 150 people But The people really was really excited of this event. So for next year We will have a second open stack day and it will I hope so it will be much more bigger And from the community point of view In prak it was the difficult so I All the people in company was a really enthusiastic about the organizing But the other companies who likes open stack they want to be a sponsors But not so active in the community. So we actually prepare everything as a tcp cloud or as a company Was as a organizer was open stack foundation and try to attract other people But when you were organizing this event and I made all three of you guys Were you organizing it on Day, you know during your day job as a part of your day job Or is this something you did on nights and weekends? It's on nights and weekends. Okay. Okay, interesting Martin same thing for you nights and weekends or No, I basically Have a very flexible work environment. So I can do it very very freely, but At some time even sleeping Dreaming about this event Oh, I had those dreams. I think it is a very long process because you need to arrange everything How about in ireland in terms of organizing the event? Was it Done as a part of your day job or was it something that you did sort of nights and weekends on the spare time? We from our own perspective We are small consultancy company and it's it was nature move for us to to be a part of this kind of community But I must say that we had actually phenomenal response And it was not hard sell at all to sponsor send the and To community to help us organize the the whole event The people that that were co-organizers Mostly we've done it all as as a part of daily job On the sponsoring side, we believe it or not. We had to turn away some sponsors. We didn't need that much of money So it wasn't hard sell at all. It wasn't hard sell at all to We actually we actually set some money aside for we set some money aside for next year Yeah, so it wasn't it wasn't hard to sell at all In terms of size, we didn't know what to expect and we we started with 120 designed I mean took the venue for 120 people We sold out everything. I mean all 120 place places we at the end and then And then the whole nightmare started when when I had a call from lady from hp saying Look, we have a bus of people coming to your event. Can you send the same voice for tickets? Literally like that. So at the end we we ended up with Squeezing somehow or something around 170 people. So the response was phenomenal both from sponsors and from people Coming in and it was really great experience. Let me let me ask any on this next In general just on that On the other side because it's a bit of a double-edged sword. Yeah, you're asking if you know if you're doing it during your day job I just want to you know Say that it is something that you need to be all in on it's not something that you can do halfway So it isn't just your day job It's nights and weekends and it's everything but you have to be deeply committed to doing it Because it is something that is resource intensive But it's really a great great feeling when you get it together and you're part of something That's larger than you and you see that you're the one that brought out the community brought people together Building conversations around open source around something that you deeply believe in so be aware that there is There is an investment and it's not and you do have to have the mandate I think from your job in order to be able to do it because it's not something that It is something you have to be all in on But i'm sure that just the business value and all the values around building this community sell themselves So if you are interested there are ways to convince Your organizations that it is something that they should be invested in. Yeah, so let me shift questions here for a second Obviously we so we've kind of moved over to finances right because that's always the big question I imagine that most everyone who's it was the scariest thing for me I mean, I know we did the open stack days east event. I had to sign a contract for $150,000 for the venue And before we had even sold the sponsorship or we'd sold like one sponsorship and no tickets So, I mean that should give a shout out to plum grid for that. What's that? We should give a shout out to plum grid and well gigaspaces into sort of the three of us kind of led the way But you know someone has to sign sign that contract depending on what space you have. I mean, how did it work for you guys? I mean a 2,500 2,400 person events How did you work out the finance in three months? I mean, yeah, I can't imagine the finance person when you went to that person. I had this vision for an event I need to sign for a 25 Yeah, China is a huge market. It's the first time we're going to open stack day event And it's a very complex market, too So we actually and then we had three months to prepare So we actually had to set some ground rule in the beginning So we don't get into a chaotic situation because people It's still it's something education people need to understand opens that day is a community event It's not a different from you know other like Other conferences. They are more commercial. This is more for community education collaboration promotion of open source So we actually made a ground rule that you know the organizers are volunteers This is a grassroots effort and you don't represent companies and companies get visibility by sponsorship only So even if you're a volunteer, it doesn't give you the right to be on stage and talk about your company So we made that ground rule. So all the volunteers or really volunteers and because of that We will use our personal time So we're not going to get like big kudo from our boss say, oh, yeah, you did this, right? But we do this truly for the benefit of the community so for me because it was only three months and So we we had to do like things like in a very It was a last-minute thing So but we didn't have any company who is willing to write a big check up front, right? And because but at the same time we have to secure a venue because we're thinking we might have A couple thousand people because we try to use Japan as a benchmark And we're thinking about Japan. They always have a thousand people a couple few thousand people So we use that as a benchmark So we had to get a large conference room secured But we didn't have any company who's willing to write that check because what if we don't sell all the seeds And we don't sell sponsorship, but then we already got the venue. What do we do? So we actually found this worked out really well for us We found a media company and we invite them to be a volunteer as well So you come in and they they had some understanding of open stack And they come in and you work with us and in exchange you will get some visibility because you were part of the you know volunteering team and so we got lucky we found this company and So they they were willing to write up this check And then because we feel like this is a community thing and the rest of us We worked very hard to get all the sponsorships to make sure that they don't lose money in the end And so they wrote this check secure the venue at the China's largest conference center You know national conference center in Beijing So we got really lucky we have the first class venue and this media company wrote a check to secure And then you know we we came up with this event plan and the sponsorship plan and then immediately We we saw the sponsorship so fast. I mean there's more people wanting to sponsor. I mean in the end we got all this We were able to sell all the sponsorships in probably Three weeks. So it's a different market. China is a little bit different Duchen so your your event was probably on the opposite end of the spectrum, right small consulting company More even more of a grassroots. How big was the event? Uh, we started it was around 170 people 170 people. I mean when you built your financial plan How did you? You know secure venue, you know build the financial model that you end up with a surplus That's great, but there must have been a point in all our planning process Where you got to put the money out for the venue you got to commit to food You know the spending goes like this and then the sponsorships come in and you get back to break even Who backstopped your event who guaranteed, you know the event? Yes, so well, we've been in good position because first of all A foundation have helped us a lot opens tech foundation So that was the big very big help for to start with both with some finance, but also with knowledge how to do things then it's The the other backers the other The hey the who is not here. She is from from intel. So intel was great help. So we We had some some of a good background to put it that way. So we had a couple of big companies We had some money And the costs are not that high At least in ireland. So of course venue costs a lot, but it's it's not significant It wouldn't be significant loss even if we even if you missed for for a large amount of of of numbers So we we just like started and and We hoped for the best to put it that way So can I go off the board here to Seattle because I know you've done your event twice already and you've done it And you do it at w hotel Oh, sorry, go ahead So thank you. So I'm sure I'm missing from Seattle, right? So I did it twice and we started a little Small we wanted we targeted 150 attendees the first year But we oversold and we got over 175 and the second year we wanted to target 175 We oversold we got I mean we got sold out and we got 200 We changed the venues We had a smaller venue kind of a niche kind of a high-end venue for the first one And someone had a feedback saying that this doesn't sound like an open source kind of even it's kind of high-end But then we wanted to get a larger events and went to the w hotel The the risk was like, you know, I'm we are a small company and There was always a possibility of losing money So what my take was, you know, it might sound kind of Go with the intent that is you are doing for the community There's always a possibility of losing money. That's that's the reality being an event organizer But however, you know in both cases, I didn't have to end up. I mean, we didn't have to lose money We we broke even and we even made some like, you know extra cash so the the the point I'm trying to make here is This events this this kind of events you're doing for the community The sponsors might have you know different aspirations like like no, they want to show their support However, they want to have a marketing something value out of it, right? So that's their goal But as an organizer, you cannot have the goal You need to you are doing it for the community and be prepared to take that risk Like be be be prepared to lose money on that But I don't think you will lose money out of it. You will definitely like, you know, um, yeah Call it as a point so I think we've done we've done about four Four in India in India and we've gone from like 100 people to 700 this time. Wow The biggest problem we faced was there is a sweet spot where Going to a hotel with catering pre provided is Financially viable and then once you cross to 50 300 It just becomes impossible to match those the venues are very expended We had that same challenge in New York the the cost of a 200 There's a cat large number of venues that will get you to like 150 or 200 people You get to that next strata. It's very difficult, right? So this time we got a hall with around 900 seats and we only had 700 attendees But we were only targeting 600 we oversold But it looked like we had undersold because there was like 200 spaces Yeah, but we couldn't actually do 900 because the catering costs were Kind of shooting shooting out, right? Because not a lot of caterers will come and say, all right, we'll do a thousand covers On say five percent deposit like it's just it just doesn't happen So there is a sweet spot where you got a look look for the payment cycles from sponsors might be 90 days might be 120 days And when you have to make the payment, right? So balancing that is a Is a juggling act, but in your case, I mean say I hate to say say you came up short, right? I mean who was ultimately on the hook who signed the contract with the theater? Sorry, I did personally personally. Yeah. So I mean that's always a risk Yeah, but I've I've done four of these. I know I mean the way I price the tickets and the way It happens. I mean at the end of the day, I knew I wouldn't have a shortfall. Yeah, that's not an issue Uh It's it's just making sure that the people who attend have the right Resources, right? You don't want people to sit sit. They're hungry or not have decent food, right? So My experience from prak is that You should start with a simple analysis So what I did that I know the number of people who will be at the event And then I said Main parts of the expense. So it was the waning for the rent It was the catering because people love eating and it was the sounds and like production And then I add some small expensive what I need for the promotion for the swag So I did a list and then I know that how much money I need the from the sponsors and then I started to calculate it Did but the reality of the situation is that the room and the food are what 80 Some 80 to 90 of all your expenses, right? I can yeah, okay, so we've uh, I've been doing it for a few years And we started small we started, uh, you know in a humble kind of setting there different kinds of ways to to find Ways to you know, lower the costs. We've historically worked with universities We've found venue sponsors that we have big organizations in israel like hp and microsoft and red hat who have their own Auditoriums and who are willing to be the venue sponsor. Sometimes this includes food Sometimes this doesn't include food and they get a higher level sponsorship For doing this. So these are ways maybe to downsize the risks, you know signing on a major venue Maybe you have a community You know sponsor who's willing to provide a space who's willing to provide some aspect of the food Something that will help you budget-wise. So you don't take as big of a risk To to work with universities possibly You know provide free entrance to students things like that and then they'll offer you an auditorium within University, we've done things like that historically and and claire can vouch for our historical, you know We've had this evolution of going from smaller scale events and having you know Full-affle at events to having you know better catering and better venues So as soon as the event starts to drive itself and you build a community and you and you have really good content And you show that the event is you know worthwhile the sponsors will come But if you're starting small then start trying to work with you know Like venue sponsors community sponsors university sponsors that can help you with the larger parts of the budget So let me ask you a different part of the budget question. Oh, sorry. Do we have a question? Yeah, I just wanted to you asked earlier About who in the end phase Yeah, I just want to share how we did this in germany for the last two great Yeah, please do when we took this out of corporate sponsorship So we now run it as a community event only although we do have their jobs But it's run from a community and the initial event, but she had to cover We went into risk with personal funds. So we had to the there's a there's a gap to you get the money Right, and and you pay the venue, right? So we we took out alone And uh, I never needed it Uh, but it was uh, the risk was with the with the with the group The group but who signed the loan paper? I guess the We incorporated as a as a oh, okay. That's interesting and um, and it's Sounds much bigger than it is under german law And so the the president signed It's like Yes, I can also saying that I've seen um, well at least this has been done in israel where um, they've crowd sourced From the community, you know a smaller fee Where they asked in advance for smaller developer events, you know every developer, you know contribute five ten dollars And and this has worked sometimes for smaller events, obviously But that's also an option. You can also try and crowdsource the funds from the community if they really believe in the event Yeah, just uh in france. We do as in german. It seems says we have a non-profit organization legal organization that is independent of The different companies who are sponsors and it's this organization that signs the contract with the venue and that Unders all the money collects the money from the sponsors and pays the the venue So in the end it's still individuals who are responsible for In case there is an issue if we don't have enough sponsors to indict case the president it's a run but but well at least The organization is really independent of any specific company And it's maybe it's a a risk as well because if it fails We have no company who will pay for us. So we are so you stiff the venue now. I'm just kidding So One thing that we we did and we found success was you know, there are venues which you don't have to pay a friend It's not always possible But there are at least in seattle. We were able to find it right you they might have like a credit card plan for instance or some kind of Plans they have where you you have to pay a part of your Estimated budget as a as a deposit like 10% for instance Which is more affordable than your estimated budget 50k or 100k right and then And then you have a time of like 30 days or 45 days after the receipt And that kind of really works well when when you're dealing with larger sponsors who have net 30 or net 45 days So you won't get the money in until the event has happened and 30 days have passed the event, right? So so always look for those there are venues that are available Maybe not in your city but look for them out and then if they're available make use of that Yeah, and there's also opportunities if you think about venues and I discovered this we had signed in Times Square in New York City It's probably one of the highest rent places you could do an event and that ended up being ridiculously expensive But as we get after I signed the contract I had one sponsor say gee we have a 300 person space They would have given us in New York like a 10 block south for free If we but we would we're going for a bigger event The point is that if you were determined in year one not to take big financial risk if you can find A university or a company that has a space that they'll lend let you use for free that Getting rid of that venue cost. That's 60 to 70 percent of your budget is the venue If you can eliminate that cost that then the only risk you have is food which is Can also Last year there was a docker Okay So you have to now offer something more to the stops Right, so we are next next week. We are thinking of doing like Anton training upstream training right at the India day for people who can't come to the summit, but to do that We can't now just go to an event that has seeds. Yeah Breakout rooms and yeah So the scope has kind of expanded just to remain competitive because there's so much of the stuff going on every every weekend Yeah, it's it's we have to take on more But it's just difficult to find a model that must scale. So let me ask a different slightly different question This is the question that we all face when we're planning these events is is pricing And you know, I know Denise had to give me some good guidance around tickets I know the foundation was encouraging us to keep the tickets cheap But then you have to build about you need to you start to build like I have these costs and then I have Revenue and then I've got to kind of make sure the two meet in the middle Martin, can you share a little bit about, you know, you're how you got to, you know, where you got you've done a few of these Yeah, exactly. I think we definitely tried different Business models for tickets. So in one year we we got some minimal fee in the other we tried the free tickets model But it is a really cultural thing because in central europe, if someone is not paying for a ticket Then it have a higher chance that they are not showing up. Yeah, that's that's universal. I think but yeah, but but at the other end If if we need to ask money for the ticket that we need to be compliant with the local laws And in hunger, we have the highest value added tax in the entire europe How much does that work out 27 percent? How much is it 27 percent? Wow So it's it's really a pain and we need to give invoices so need to solve the invoicing And it is we usually using even bright for registration to lose your five points. Yeah 5 to integrate with So how about sponsorship pricing? How did you get to what you priced your sponsorships at for your event? Yeah, basically for sponsorship. I think we are in a very good position Because we can estimate the cost And we are trying To divide the costs between the different sponsorship packages Okay We in in ireland the the event was not it was excused from vat because it's sort of an educational event So we didn't have to charge the vat. So that's definitely something that you should ask in your country Can you be excused from from vat for educational purposes? Uh We I think that we priced our I was scared because we had to price tickets relatively high And I was scared that it is going to turn people away, especially because it is the first The first event but at the end it worked fine. As I said, we we oversold oversold the ticket But speaking of of money, uh, generally, uh, I think that it's it's very valuable to have sponsors not only for money But there's there are a lot of things that that that needs to be done And we are all part of the community. So I am not professional. I'm I'm it guy I'm not someone who organizes the events on daily basis. So you need to do marketing. You need to You need to invite people you need to do a lot of things that you generally don't know how So that's why I think it's very valuable to have uh to have uh sponsors not only to Give you money but also to provide you their own network. Believe it or not We had a minister from government visiting our our event. So it was Organized in that way. So and that's something Mainly thanked thanks to to to sponsors and their network. So in a give me a sense in china I mean when you built your financial model for your event, how did you come up with price of sponsorships price of tickets things like that? Yeah, I think I think first you need to understand your market your region, right? So at that point we we we knew there's a pent up demand for Open stack day because we never had one and we never even had an open stack summit in china At the same time china has got the number two highest number of developers open stack developers So we know we can sell sponsorships and So and our goal is to get as many people in as possible So everybody because not many people in china, especially Developers can travel and also sometimes getting visa for them in a foreign country. It's very challenging So our goal is to be inclusive You know, we want to make sure that they can get to the event easily So in that case we decided to put the burden on sponsorships, right? So our event our ticket was only like 60 or I think 60 usd US dollars, it's very cheap And and then we also had, you know lunch too, but we did have we had About 30 plus sponsorship. We have diamond sponsorship, you know Diamond gold silver, you know tears sponsorship And then we sell all kinds of stuff water bottle Sponsorship and in china. This is funny. This is where we it's apparently this is common in china You can sell put a company's logo in the back of a chair of the seat And you can sell that as a sponsorship because why Companies buy that because when they take pictures from the back They see their logos everywhere and we charge a lot for that That's a good idea And then and then but then the other company wanted that too We're like, okay, we'll divide the room into half and half So in that case it doesn't look like it's a one company's event Right because we don't want people to think this is one company's dominated event But at the same time we we need the sponsorship money, right? So in the end we decided to have like three options for three companies to buy that thing And so we do have high price items for for that, you know for more visibility And you just have to be creative sell whatever you can sell So the so the question is two philosophies Let me just ask one more question and I'll take the question back There's two philosophies about pricing right there's Keep it cheap and sell a lot of it Or there's you know price at high because I have my second my day job is I run marketing for a company that gets solicited by People like you guys we've got events that want its sponsors, right? You know, I that's one role is my day job I see them come across and then there's my other role managing an open stack day's events How do you I guess this question Sharon? How do you balance the Do you go cheap cheap and cheerful and try and sell out or do you go, you know high value because I mean look I mean it's I want to say what was it 175 or $200,000 for those four big booths on the floor downstairs I mean there is a precedent in the community for higher price stuff as well And what's the right way to find that balance? So first and foremost what But Hannah said so she so you have to reverse engineer your budget We're not looking to make any profit. We're looking to break even So that's first and foremost. So based on the amount of money that we need to bring in We historically actually didn't want to charge for tickets But we found the same thing with Martin that if somebody doesn't pay for their ticket They respect the event less and we had more no shows So our fee in a sense is what we call a seriousness fee It's it's a phrase in Hebrew just to make sure that people will show up We want to obviously attract, you know, early people will we want to give them the Incentive of buying early tickets. So we have the earlier early bird pricing But we found in Israel at least because they're procrastinators And then you also have to give the venue, you know an estimate of the amount of people that are coming things like that We decided to have a late Late a fee in that we added like a sort of look for a We're convenience charge. Yes an extra charge. We created an extra charge for late fees Because we found that people would like or would sell out in the last week And we wanted to incentivize people to buy tickets earlier. So we created all kinds of you know Discounts things like that throughout, you know, the selling period We had the early bird we had discounts And then we also have a late charge fees that people in the last week Don't you know purchase the the large bulk of the tickets We wanted to make sure people buy tickets earlier. So we have a really good estimate And based on the amount of tickets that we know we're likely going to sell We priced this sponsorship in you know the same manner and then we also create all kinds of add-ons To enable people to you know, if they want a higher visibility of sponsorship So we enable them to you know, take a podcast or a meet up And that's something that we have the luxury to do because we run those kinds of community initiatives of small But we try to keep it as low as possible based on the budget that we think that we're going to be So we had a question in the back. Let's bring it in That was the next question. I was just going to ask you want to go ahead Yeah, good good question. How can we talk can we talk? Before you answer the question, I had one point about these sponsors. So so the way that I see what it's like, you know When you plan your uh budgeting say like you have 100 k for instance, right? Like try to get that 100 k most of it from your sponsors Like your bulk sponsors like platinum cut paper center like three or four gold sponsors And uh, I would not expect to cover a lot of a lot of the expenses through the tickets The ticketing is primarily like you know, like the seriousness fee right say like 10 percent try to get the 10 percent of the You're budgeting to the tickets That's think like more like an overflow if at all right and and be prepared to give away half of it Like you know, for instance, we had a diversity scholarships So to encourage more participation, right those kind of things if you if you uh plan for that one You have the more liberty of like, you know encouraging more participation giving scholarship for students or things like that Or invited speakers things like that, right? So plan to cover your budget or vast majority of your through your bulk sponsors That way like, you know, your your bases are covered and then try to have the add-ons like your cocktail sponsors or your lunch sponsors Or like, you know, the chair sponsor or something like that. Those are all like think like, you know, your surplus So that that way like that would that really worked out well and uh, the other thing about the um Sponsorships that my my personal uh favorite is like, you know Give the opportunity to the startups in the community Like, you know It is good to give them visibility as good as like a silver sponsor for instance Obviously, like you cannot give the same visibility as the platinum But try to give like like try to charge them very little like for instance The platinum was 15k for instance for us and the startup was like 2k However, like the the the startup sponsors got the same blogging opportunity video interview opportunity Small says logo Not the largest logo, but small says logo on that. So that kind of encourages the the smaller sponsors But your your base is still covered. So that that think think like that So I don't mean to catch up. I got like one last question here because we're coming right up against of your time The question is how do we get speakers? We talked about money, which is always important But you want to start down with about handed you want to give us a sense of how you yeah, sure. So, um In prak we decided to have a keynotes and For luckily we have open stack foundation there. So For the speakers for the keynotes, we have the open stack foundation Mark earlier and then we want to have some more technical presentations So we had on the website called for presentation and we had the really technical presentation and because of budget We offer for the sponsors to have Speakers there, but there was the really requirement not to do when their presentation and I'm really happy that they understand And they the presentation was really professional and no vendors. So Yes, you are the community. So you need to have no when their presentation Any can you share how you ended up? So I think it has to be a balance We definitely need some representation from you know The top experts and then leadership from the foundation because people in for example in china, right? They want to especially the ones who has never been to the summit. They want to really meet those top leaders So it's important that you know people we come to the summit we build that one network And and try to entice them to come to your region and speak especially those ptls or tcs And sometimes board directors to our foundation staff And but at the same time I do think it's important to also have your regional experts There and regional customers like for our keynote We make sure that we have customer cases because people want to hear from customers directly not from vendors So it's a balance. So we we actually had you know pretty good especially for the keynote the first morning of the event We had leadership from the foundation and then also Customer senior level customers great. I'm we're going to yank off the stage in just a moment Make one comment there that I think that the open stack foundation has taken huge strides and assisting in this Matter and they've created the speaker bureau Which is a lot of the higher profile open stack speakers and the people that are willing to travel and the places They're willing to travel to historically used to have to see those sponsors or those speakers yourself So they facilitated that they made it a lot easier The open stack foundation folks oftentimes come to many of the day events around the world they Rearrange their schedules and they make it work and they really try to support all of the events So you have a really really good resource in the foundation. I really am giving you guys a shout out I think guys are wonderful You've done a lot over the course of the years to add support and help make them work make the events work So definitely speak to the foundation if you're looking to put together a day event They will help you they will help you connect to people that want to come out They've done that with us historically before the speaker bureau. They told us okay This person is interested that person is interested So let's do this. Let's just last because we're five minutes over. So Yeah, last last one I agreed here. So it's it's a very good thing to have a balance between vendors and their own talks and and community What our driving motive was to represent Ireland what is happening in Ireland regarding to open stack What what I was doing and what my colleagues or co-organized group that we actually found people So we know the community. We know what is going on. So I was phoning people I was sending emails tweets and asking and look we have the event Put your talk up there so we can see what you're doing Great. Thanks. Well, everybody. Thank you for joining us. If you have any questions I think the group of us are going to be hanging around here or over We're all certainly all available through the regular there's the mailing list. There's the community mailing list You can ask questions there. Denise connects everybody as well Definitely get involved There's the open stack slack and the facebook group and a bunch of places that people are trying to connect and Collaborate and communicate and there are a lot of really good resources out there that will want to help you And just a shout out to Hannah and Haiti who are doing a book an e-book Awesome. Just a quick yeah, we expect that the guide will be issue in november Yeah And all these questions you have there are we hope that we answered I had a chance to I had a chance to preview and it's pretty excellent and exhaustive I think it's like 70 pages. Sure And thanks to two foundation I know that foundation is very adamant about using the logo, but it was painted green for ireland. Yeah