Interview with Cindy Sprague a lead organizer with GOTO Chicago 2014

Hi, it’s Mike with UGtastic. I’m here at GOTO Conf 2014. I ‘m sitting here with Cindy Sprague, who helps with GOTO Conf. And help is a big word. She’s been involved in helping to decide the location, the finally deciding on Chicago, and all that forward searching, scouting for locations, and then a lot of other stuff that’s involved. And I just want to say thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. Certainly. So what does helping mean? In the beginning, it was finding a venue that would actually take us because Chicago is very much a convention town. Right. So all the hotels are used to saying, well, if you ‘re going to stay with us, you have to guarantee that every… Attendee will book a room and they want a huge financial guarantee right up front. That’s not our model. Our model is to appeal to the local community. We do have people coming in from as far away as Poland. I met someone just yesterday. But mostly this is for the local community. So, you know, we’re here in year two and we’re back at the Drake Hotel. You know, when you were looking back… Now, let’s see, over two years ago, three years ago now, and coming and talking to the hotels, what was finally brought you and what was some of the criteria you used to decide on going with the Drake in particular? Well, all the rest of the hotels said, you know, this is our model financially and put up or shut up. So we looked at a number of other venues trying to find some place that would fit because we like to have enough space. We like to have, you know, great catering as well as the ability to interact with speakers for all of the attendees. This hotel had a recent acquisition of a new sales manager came in and I approached her and said, so, you know , we spend a lot of money on catering because everybody wants to have a good time and they’ll stay in and coffee and soda and all that, all that stuff. And they, the conversations in the hall are just as important. As the conversations in the, or the sessions, the providers , right? So they were actually willing to be flexible. They went to management and said, so let’s look at something different and let’s try this. So kind of the lesson I’m taking from that is if you ‘re looking at a, at a location, don’t just take that first one. You’re going to have to go in there and dig. And I think I looked at 20 hotels as well as a couple of public venues around the city. So, yeah, so that was probably a lot of footwork right there. Yes. Lots of emails, lots of phone calls. But to go to the other aspect of it, from, from the venue to the community, what about the Chicago community? And again, I’m a part of the Chicago community, so I want to hear nice things, but in all seriousness, you ‘ve probably had a lot of choices across the country. What was it about Chicago that, that made it a destination for Goju? Well, it actually came out of a conversation that happened when we were doing consulting and I was in a number of other people and we had a large project here in Chicago and one night over beer, it was, why is there no major software development conference in Chicago when there are all these great tech people and lots of technology companies, but there isn’t a focused software development conference? And that was eight years ago. Okay. So, you know, it was a lot of talking. Thoughts that have come from a long time. From a long time. Yes. And Chicago seems to be, we have a nice technology base here. There’s a diversity of technologies. It’s a really fun place to come. It’s an easy place to get to for speakers because of O’Hare being a central airport. Yeah. So yeah, we have O’Hare and Midway and the metro that comes from all over. I know that’s what I take. For instance, you know , Michael Nygaard, he’s one of our speakers this year. He’s a great, great speaker, but he’s up in Minnesota and he’s like, it’s great to be able to go to a conference where I only have to get on one airplane. Yeah, not too many transfers. It’s pretty direct. Yeah. And it’s actually only maybe a day’s drive from, depending on where he is. Yeah. But so you were looking at Chicago as being kind of ripe for having a major conference. That’s right. And working with the communities, one of the unique things that I got to experience is that you don’t just come in and plant a flag and say, we ‘re going to host a conference. You do some outreach and interaction work with user groups and other local communities. Can you describe how you came, actually also describe how you came to the idea of doing that kind of interaction? Well, this is a conference about software development, but it’s also by software developers. That community is skeptical always about value and they want to know that there’s value. So they don’t believe, you know, a marketing person like me, they want to hear it from a developer. So it just seemed to be a natural outreach to reach out to those developer groups, like all the meetups that are in town. One of the problems of course, is that they are skeptical. So they don’t always answer my emails. When I say we have a network of over a thousand speakers that we’ve vetted and we can pick from them and invite them and they’ll come because we asked them to. Right. And we, so, you know, we like to pair to improve the offerings in the community. With the user groups and provide them with a tech talk evening. Right. So it’s the go-to nights. Go-to nights. Exactly. So I, you know, I will send an email to, you know, all the organizers of a given meetup and say, Hey, you know, we’d love to pair with you. We’ll bring you a speaker and we’ll pay for it. And all we want to do is to be able to, you know, stick up our go-to banner. You know, it’s all about the speaker as opposed to go-to. Yeah. There ‘s definitely a value. Even if you did nothing with that as a user group. Right. But there’s definitely a value. Even if you did nothing with that as a user group. Right. And all we want to do is to be able to, you know, stick up our go-to user group organizer. Even if I did nothing with go-to after that, it’s, it’s a great opportunity to just have somebody come in and bring in a fresh talk, fresh idea that might come from outside of the normal sphere of, of, of local talent. We try to bring you somebody who’s not normally here. Right. Okay. And was that something that you did for the first time with go-to or is that, that does that idea come from previous experience? Like where did that idea to do this kind of outreach come from? Um, the one, the person I know that doesn’t the most in the start of this was, was Dave Thomas. Right. Uh, when he started with Yao, who was the, the kind of the parent company for, for go-to, um, he was doing it in Australia and he’s been doing that in Australia for nine years. Okay. And that worked well there. It works well there. Brought the, brought that concept here. So it seemed to be the natural way to evolve, uh, a conference here. So. So if I’m in a, uh, in a region that it’s, it’s looking at go-to and seeing success here in Chicago. And I think that I’m in, you know, let’s say Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, for example, just cause we talked about Minnesota and, and I’m thinking, you know, we could, we have a tech community that could support a go-to conference and make it financially viable. What are some of the things I need to think about? Um, when I want to reach out to you, like, what would you like to hear that, that would make it so that way it would be financially feasible to bring something like a go-to to your city? Well, if you ‘re going to be in a place that’s hard to get to by an airplane, you better actually, you better have a list of sponsors say that we’re going to help support this. Right. And is it also, uh, being able to present like the, the, the actual community itself? I mean, do you look at all of those things? Okay. For one thing, we, we started talking to all the speakers we knew about, you know, we’re thinking about doing a go-to in Chicago. What do you think? And they were all, oh, Chicago would be great. We’d love to come to Chicago. Right. Because part of it at least is that it’s a great destination and it’s also easy to get to. And speakers, the good speakers are busy and they travel a lot. So, you know, sending them someplace that takes 10 or 12 hours to get to. Yeah. So, so sometimes you’re just, if you’re too far remote, it’s going to be, it’s pretty, it’s kind of hard because that’s one thing that I think is, is missing in, in understanding why these conferences are so expensive. When I, you look at it and I, I know I’ve suffered the sticker shock many times myself at $1,200 for a two day conference. Oh my gosh. I can’t, you know, like fork that out or my company won’t fork that out. But there’s a reason for that, that, that, that dollar, uh, that, that, that price, it’s not, it’s not, uh, just an arbitrary number. Like, uh, last year you were describing that it actually wasn’t even profitable. It was not, we lost money last year. It was an investment. So, yeah. So, but, and then here you are, so yet again, so you still see enough value to keep. We see a future. Okay. Because, you know, um, one of the reasons that we have a long list of speakers is that we do treat them well. And so if we say we’re going to take that money, we’re going to take it. We’re going to take it. We’re going to take care of you. They’re more like, they, they trust us to , to do that and come into a conference. Um, so that takes that relationship that we’ve had. Um, I’m sorry, I’ve lost my train. No, the relationship with the, with the speaker community. Yeah. So that they want to come out. That’s right. And, and be part of the conference. Yeah. Cause that was an interesting aspect is that like, you don’t have a speaker room. No, we don’t. That you , you push the speakers out. Nope. You’re gonna go talk to people. Yes. Well, that’s one of the reasons to put out all the really good food. And you may have noticed it just kept going, right? There was a break in another break and then there was lunch and then there was another break. Right. So, uh, including mimosas to start the morning. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that. I knew I had a long day, so I didn ‘t get to partake. They look delicious. Well, the whole point is to, to get people to stay out in the halls when they’re not in a, in a, in a, listening to a presentation so that you do actually do get to walk out. Yeah. So that you do get to walk out at the end of the day. So that you do actually do get to walk up to Adrian Cockcro ft for instance, and say, and engage him in the conversation, right? Oh, it certainly made my job easier. So, all right. Well, I want to say thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. Thank you very much. And thank you for letting me come and do these interviews as a, as GOTO Conf. They’ve been a lot of fun, two years in a row. Very good. Thanks. Thank you. User groups with lots to say, interviews and more. No way. Sharing great ideas in the tech community. Fascinating conversations, a plethora of information. Find out for yourself today at ugtastic.com.