NERD Summit 2025

Shortlink to this doc: https://bit.ly/nerds25-session

Two main issues for 2025:

  1. Budget
  2. Team

Budget
Revenue:
Sponsors: $12,000 (in 2024, Last Call Media / Kelly was 38% of this)
Ticket Sales: $5,000 (is “pay what you can”, approx 40% of attendees pay)
Total: $17,000
Costs:
Venue: $7,000 (UMass)
Food: $6,000 (includes party, is more than this if lunch is included)
Keynotes: $2,500 (fee and hotel)
Misc: $1,500 (printing, lanyards, etc)
Total: $17,000

Food: $6,000 (includes party, is more than this if lunch is included) Keynotes: $2,500 (fee and hotel) Misc: $1,500 (printing, lanyards, etc)

We barely bring in enough to pay for the costs. It’s a bit scary to know for sure if we will have enough. One solution is to change from two days to one day – this cuts the cost a lot, from around $17,000 to $10,000. One question is how much would this cut ticket revenue?

Team

More team members are needed to spread the load. Rick Hood is stepping off as lead organizer.

Roles/Jobs ([name] is who did it in 2024):

  • Venue + Food - this is combined because UMass does both. This is not a difficult job, the main thing being to nail down dates and rooms (or copy paste from previous year) and to figure out what food to order. [Rick]

    • NOTE: it’s nice to get venue & dates done early

  • Sponsorship - lead sponsorship efforts. [Kelly, Rick, Lisa, Stephen and some others]

  • Newsletter (MailChimp) - more or less monthly for 6-9 months leading up to the event, then once a week in the final month. [Jen]

  • Social Media - LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon – lots of this is good. [Rick]

  • Misc marketing – an example of this is a video interview with Jessica Cobb. [Stephen Cross] Another example is printing and distributing postcards [Rick, Lisa] Another example is reaching out to Meetup groups [Rick, Robert]

  • Content Session selection coordination [Rick]

  • Communication with speakers [Heidi]

  • Keynote coordinator - manage the solicitation and selection of keynote speakers [Rick]

    • NOTE: this process has a long lead time and should start early.

  • Tito (ticketing) [Rick]

  • Name tags - print name tags on blanks via Excel merge to Word. The Excel is downloaded from the Tito attendees list. [Rick]

  • Graphics [Rick]

    • Name tag blanks
    • Program (if we do that again)
    • Posters (11x17)
    • Posters on foam board (24x36)
    • Digital graphics for use in social media and YouTube covers. Each session has one, so this is a lot of graphics. In the past this was done with a Photoshop file with a layer for each speaker headshot then created jpg for each session graphic.
    • Misc signs Printing - getting the printing done (amherstcopy.com) - could be the same person who does the graphics, or not. [Rick]

  • Welcome presentation (Keynote, Powerpoint, etc.) [Rick]

  • Website (Github pages, deployed via git push) [Rick]

  • General website work (front end)

  • Schedule - Google sheet to JSON (back end)

  • Video recording sessions [Rick & Stephen]

    • Make sure equipment is ready to go before the event.
    • Setup equipment on day 1 and monitor, collect USB keys, etc.
    • Have room monitors in place or could be done by 2 people each day, one for each floor.
    • Upload to YouTube, edit if needed.

  • Volunteer coordinator - mainly to keep track of the registration desk and room monitor volunteers.

An absolute minimum size team that is needed is probably 6 people so that more or less no person is doing more than 2 jobs. Ideal would perhaps be 10 people, or even 20 people, where each of those people can take a break on any given year.

Rick is stepping off but can be available throughout 2025 to help answer questions, show people how certain tasks are done and will be creating a “How To” manual.

Until someone picks up the lead organizer role, contact Rick at: rick@nerd.ngo if you have questions or if you want to volunteer for one or more of these jobs or learn more about them.