Glasgow Tech Christmas Party 2016 — Behind the Scenes

Calm before the storm

On Wednesday 7th December, people from all over Glasgow’s digital community came together to meet friends, old and new, at the end of what has been a great year for the Scottish tech industry. For those that are interested, this post will give a bit more detail about what went on behind the scenes to put on the event.

Numbers

First off, lets look at some numbers:

Tickets

• 80 — capacity of venue
• 80 tickets allocated
• 73 people checked in on the night
• 3rd December— date that the original batch of 70 tickets sold out

Sponsors

• 4 sponsors (thanks again to Streamba Ltd, Grant Thornton, Burness Paull and Cathcart Associates!)
• £1300 provided by sponsors

Venue Costs

• £490 — Cost of food
• £650— Drinks vouchers used

Donations to The Mental Health Foundation

• £391.36 — Remaining funds
• £45 — Funds collected on the night

A more detailed breakdown of the finances for the event can be found here.

Venue

For the last couple of years the event has been at The Raven, home to many meetups within the Glasgow tech community. In previous years (and this year), they have been very accommodating and helpful in the run up to and on the night of the event.

I started talking to others around the 13th October about the possibility of organising the Glasgow Tech Christmas Party. We set our sights on organising the event on a Friday or Saturday evening this year, so as to make it easier for people to attend without worrying about sore heads at work the next morning. We also wanted to investigate options at venues other than The Raven.

As it turns out, 13th October is actually quite late to be talking to venues about a Christmas party for 70–80 people... Of the venues that we spoke to, most didn’t have any weekend availability in December or charged a premium for it. Also, food at many of the venues was much more than the price offered by The Raven.

Given that there was no upfront cost, it was known by many who attended meetups held there and the cost of food could be covered by money from ticket sales if necessary, The Raven was chosen as the best venue option.

Tickets

When organising an event, one of the most painful aspects for me is ticket sales. Will people buy tickets? Do people know about the event? Will they be put off by the cost of a ticket?

Gross ticket sales over time

It’s probably not surprising that, as the graph above shows, ticket sales started off pretty slow — there are often people who know straight away that they can attend an event and so buy their ticket early, but most will tend to wait, often until the last minute.

Ticket sales were rather sporadic in the weeks before the event, as can be seen below. It was a welcome surprise when the first 70 tickets sold out on 3rd December and when the last 10 tickets were allocated to those on the waiting list before the event started.

Gross ticket sales per day

There were a few tactics used to encourage ticket sales. Myself and others in the community tweeted almost every other day about the event in the month running up to it.

An email was also sent out to previous attendees, which only resulted in 2 ticket sales. So, probably not one of the best channels to use for future events.

Sponsorship

In previous years, those attending the event have paid £10 (+ Eventbrite fees) for a ticket and then been given back some or all of their ticket price in drink vouchers on the night.

We decided to do the same again this year, which meant raising sponsorship to cover all the other costs associated with the event (decorations, food, etc).

A sponsorship pack was created with a number of sponsorship levels, including tickets to attend the event and also perks like being able to put out promotional material and having their company logo shown on the drink vouchers. A blog post was also released a week before the event to let attendees know more about the sponsors and to help encourage ticket sales.

After cold emailing many companies involved in the tech community in Glasgow and making little progress, it is largely thanks to introductions made by Michael Hayes of AddJam that we managed to get sponsorship from Streamba Ltd, Grant Thornton, Burness Paull and Cathcart Associates (thanks again!).

Thanks to our sponsors, we were able to cover all the costs of the event and still donate a total of £436.36 to The Mental Health Foundation.

Points for Next Year

While the event was largely a success, there’s a few things I’d do differently if organising the event next year:

• Drink vouchers — Those attending the event this year generally seemed to feel that £10 for a community event, with a glass of wine and buffet, was good value. I’d probably reconsider giving drink vouchers out at any future event.
• Venue — While The Raven were very accommodating, they became the limiting factor in the number of tickets we could sell. I’d suggest talking to other, larger venues before October, to try and get a Friday or Saturday booking.
• Promotion — While the event was largely well attended by people from a range of companies, there was noticeably little turn out from some of the larger companies in the Glasgow digital sector (MadeBrave, SkyScanner, JP Morgan, etc). In future, I’d look at trying to get someone within these organisations to spread the word about the event, encouraging people to attend and engage with others in the same industry as them.
• Sponsorship Levels — Levels above the basic sponsorship level provided far too many tickets. In future I would cut this back to a maximum of 5 tickets for a sponsorship level.
• Summer Event — It seems like once a year is a bit infrequent, maybe it’s worth having a summer event to bring the community together?

Thanks

The Glasgow Tech Christmas Party 2016 was a huge success, but there are a few people I’d like to thank for their support in organising the event:

• Michael Hayes was always asking how things were going in the month before the event, offering advice and helping with introductions with potential sponsors
• Aaron Bassett helped with putting together the sponsorship pack and looking at alternative venues
• Zoltan Komives helped with deciding on the sponsorship levels and on the night with checking people in as they arrived
• You! The event is all about bringing people in the community together, so it wouldn’t have been the same without all those that attended