Glasgow Tech Christmas Party 2017 — Behind the Scenes

Calm before the storm

On Friday 8th 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 (compared with 2016’s event):

Tickets

• 120 (+40)— capacity of venue
• 72 (-8) tickets allocated
• 56 (-17) people checked in on the night
• 7 (+7) tickets allocated on the door

Sponsors

• 4 (+/- 0) sponsors (thanks again to Streamba Ltd, Burness Paull, BJSS and Cathcart Associates!)
• £2280 (+£980) provided by sponsors

Main Costs

• £2085 (+£1595)— Cost of food
• £665 (+£15)—Bar bill (including welcome drink, 1 voucher + gratuity)
• £80 (+£80) — Twitter ads

Remaining funds: -£24.49

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

Goal

This year, the event set out to achieve one main goal — bring together a wider group of people. While it’s been great to see faces returning each year, it’s always good to see some new faces and hear some other points of view.

Venue

This year, when looking for a suitable venue, it was decided to make a couple of changes:

• Look for a venue that was available on a Friday evening, to try and make it easier for more people to attend
• Look for a venue that could fit more than 80 people, given the fact that last year’s event sold out a week before
• Start looking for a venue much earlier, to avoid the issues faced last year with finding a suitable venue that was still available

Unfortunately, this backfired for a number of reasons:

• Venues are more expensive on Friday evenings
• There are much fewer venues that can cater for more than 80 people
• Many companies host their own Christmas parties on a Friday evening in December, resulting in the chosen date clashing with a number of other Christmas parties of large companies in Glasgow

In the end, Waxy O’Connor’s was chosen due to it’s good central location, high capacity (120 people) and the fact that it is used occasionally by some meetups in Glasgow.

The bar staff were very helpful on the night and the food was pretty good, with the venue catering for all the dietary requirements mentioned by those attending. Despite this, the choice of venue did backfire for a number of reasons:

• The area booked was not easy to find (could have done a better job at investigating this before hand)
• Despite booking the event under “Glasgow Tech Christmas Party”, the venue put up signs saying “Defining Technology Ltd”, which did not help with the first point
• The area booked contained the only toilet on that floor, resulting in a lot of through-traffic from other parties
• The food for this event was ridiculously expensive, at over 4 times the cost of the food for the previous event
• Welcome drinks were paid for, but were put in a place where people didn’t really notice them
• While a bigger venue was chosen, due to the chosen Friday clashing with a number of other Christmas parties, the event actually sold less tickets than the previous event

Another point worth highlighting was that, despite everyone being given a drinks token, many people did not use them. It is worth considering whether drinks tokens are worth the hassle for any future event.

Tickets

Quantity sold over time

Sales channels (Eventbrite Channels represent complimentary tickets)

Quantity sold per day

For this event, tickets were made available on 13th October, which looking at it now seems ridiculously early. The last event only made tickets available on 2nd November.

While it might seem that having more time would make things easier, what it actually results in is promotion fatigue. Promoting an event is a marathon not a sprint, starting the promotion too early means that there’s no energy to promote in the days leading up to the event, when it is most important. I also started an on-site contract just before the day of the event, which didn’t help with the final push.

Due to a limitation in the time I had available and a want to try and automate the promotion of the event, I decided to try Twitter ads this year. With a budget of £80, the ads were started on the 19th November and ramped up to the day of the event. While this resulted in a total of 7,383 impressions, that only generated 90 clicks, at a cost of £0.89 per click. Your mileage may vary, but this isn’t something I would likely use again for a community event.

On the day of the event, I made a mistake in forgetting to allow eventbrite ticket sales up until after the event. This meant that some people who wanted tickets on the day couldn’t get them. Unsure of why this was the case, a tweet was sent out saying to people that they could pay on the door. This turned out to be a poor choice, as I had no means of providing change. In the end, those that turned up on the night were asked to make a charitable donation, with £20 that was provided on the night being donated to the Social Bite charity.

Sponsorship

The sponsorship tiers were largely similar to last year’s, except the number of tickets for each tier was reduced and the prices were changed to be exclusive of VAT.

While the event continued to be supported by a number of last year’s sponsors, some did get a custom sponsorship amount as they didn’t see the value in some of the perks of each tier. Saying that, we did have more sponsors opt for higher tiers than for last year’s event.

This event was heavily reliant on sponsorship, due to the much higher venue costs. While the event wouldn’t have been the same without the support of the sponsors, for the next event, one of the main aims should be to focus on simplicity — reduce the costs, reduce the reliance on sponsors.

Points for Next Year

One person on the night summed it up pretty well—it’s better to have 80 people and have 60 of them find it beneficial, than have 120 people and have 70 of them find it beneficial. The event needs to get back to being a simple get together of Glasgow’s tech community at the end of the year, to meet friends, old and new. Losing sight of that is what ultimately resulted in the small loss made by this event.

On that note, here are a few things to be considered before any future event:

• Stick to mid week (cheaper, less clashes)
• Make tickets available 4 weeks before the event — any earlier means there is no energy to promote it in the days running up to the event
• Pick a venue with food costs more inline with previous years (if that means restricting numbers to ≤80, fine)
• Offer food plus 1 drink — keep it simple (and cheaper)
• Stay away from twitter ads
• Order less food? Maybe switch to a limited sit down meal, followed by just booking a bar area? Or just book a bar area?
• Don’t take tickets on the door (but don’t let ticket sales end until after the event…)
• Rethink sponsorship levels (some comments this year about them being a bit high)

Thanks

A big thank you to all that helped with this event, in particular:

• Shaun McWhinnie for designing the sponsorship pack this year
• 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