Simplifying Byteconf React
We’re about two months out from Byteconf React, and I have a couple announcements today around simplifying the conference and making sure that it’s a great event.
The most important bit: we’re cutting the 2nd day of Byteconf React, and making it a one-day event.
I’m a big fan of being honest about this kind of thing, and the truth is this: we haven’t landed enough sponsorships to do a two-day conference.
Byteconf has no track record. It’s hard to sell a company on spending $5k to fund a conference with no prior attendee numbers, a new audience, and no previous sponsors to give testimonials or feedback. We’ll get there in the future, but it’s hard to get sponsors onboard with Byteconf without having any prior events to point to.
That leads to the second update — the part that I’m bummed about: we’re going to be reducing the number of speakers, and changing our policy around paying speakers.
For this iteration of Byteconf React, we’re going to be cutting the upfront payment for our non-keynote speakers. Simply put, we’re a little scrappier of a conference than we originally intended. We want to be able to pay all of our speakers, but we’re not quite there yet!
It’s easier to iterate from a small conference into a large event series than it is to start as a large, successful company from the get-go — I fully expect that Byteconf React can be a big, two-day event in a couple years, but it may have been a bit over-optimistic for our first conference.
With the conference format changing, I want to address a couple parts of the conference piece-by-piece, so the community knows where we stand:
The schedule
Cutting the second day of the conference means that the number of speaking slots has been reduced. There were many excellent proposals submitted to the Call for Papers — we’ll be in touch with those speakers who submitted great talks that we couldn’t quite fit in the conference. We’d love to have them back at another event!
To allow room for as many submissions from our Call for Papers to make it into the conf as we can, we’ll be changing the “keynote” schedule to one morning and one evening slot. Unfortunately, this means that we’ll be losing two of our announced speakers — Tyler McGinnis and Ken Wheeler. I’m still super thrilled to have Kent C. Dodds and Tracy Lee as the keynote speakers for the conference, and I know that you’ll have a great time hearing their talks and learning from them.
The format of the conference is now super simple: one day, one track. It’s easy to understand, easy to produce, and easy to attend.
Sponsorships
At the end of June, after some feedback from sponsors, we cut the prices of our sponsorship by about 1/3. As I said above, it’s possible that this still wasn’t a big enough change! Byteconf is very new, with no track record, and so we need to rethink our sponsorship approach.
The new approach is this: we’re looking for one “Platinum” sponsor, and three “Gold” sponsors. We’re also seeking a number of “community partners”: more on that in a minute.
The “Platinum” sponsorship will be the top billing for the event — Byteconf React will be “powered by $Company” (or whatever verbiage the sponsor prefers), and we’ll save a speaking slot if you want to have an engineer from your team give a presentation. It could be on your framework or SDK (demoing a product), or just to talk about something they find interesting.
The “Gold” sponsors will be given a five minute slot during the conference to do whatever they want with. It could be a demo of your product/framework, a video about what it’s like to work at your company (if you’re hiring), or whatever you think is best! We think that an online-only, streaming conference is a really compelling format, and we’re open to whatever innovative ideas you have around sharing what your company is up to.
Finally, we’re looking for community partners to help spread the word about the conference! We’ll share your info on social media, and in any materials around the conference (on the “about” section of our Twitch stream and on the website). We’re particularly excited about this concept if you’re interested in providing a “swag bag” for our attendees: for instance, if you want to give away a few coupons or credits for your product in the chat, or on social media, we’d love to partner up.
If these sponsorship tiers or becoming a community partner sounds like they’d be a good fit for your company or product, please get in touch! We’re hoping to have sponsorships locked in by August 1st. Community partnership spots will be free, but we can only have a few slots before it gets too overwhelming, so get in touch ASAP if you’re interested!
A positive realization out of these changes is that it’s easier to iterate on the format of the conference, and to produce more events. I expect that 2019 will be host to a number of Byteconf events, not just in the React or JavaScript spaces, but across programming in general. In particular, I’m extremely interested in putting on Byteconf Ruby, and Byteconf Swift — if those topics interest you, and you want to help guide the vision of both events in 2019, please get in touch on Twitter! I’d love to start planning early :)
To be frank, I’m bummed to have to cut scope on the conference. Pivoting or changing your plans is tough, and it’s hard for this to not feel like a bit of a failure on my part. That being said, I’m more optimistic about the conference than ever. Our community is growing, and many of the people I’ve talked to on Twitter or in our newsletter are super stoked for the conference. I’m really excited too :) hope to see you there!
Byteconf React is a free React/JavaScript conference, streamed on Twitch. Join us on August 31, 2018 to hear from the best React developers and teachers from around the world. Join our mailing list and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date!
