Reshaping LoopConf: A Fanatically Obsessed Attendee Experience  🔗 **Source:** [Reshaping LoopConf: A Fanatically Obsessed Attendee Experience](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkFVQSlpdOo) [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm Eric Karkovack. Today's episode features a segment from Matt's conversation with LoopConf organizer Brian Richards. Brian stopped by to discuss the evolving economics of event sponsorship and why it led to restructuring LoopConf's funding model. Now, you can catch the entire interview over on our WP Minute Plus channel. Visit the wpminute.com for all the details. How are you reshaping I'll call it LoopConf US versus what you did in the UK. With all things considered that we just talked about with sponsorships, with you having to restructure because you did lose that sponsorship, how are you rethinking it? I know it's a call to action. It's two [00:00:41] It's $2.99 for early bird or $2.49 for early bird right now, and then $3.49 if you miss the early bird timeline and you have to go and purchase full price, which is still super affordable in terms of of events. What are you doing to reshape the event uh learning what you learned from the from the UK and now with this monkey wrench thrown into things here, having to to to pivot? >> Yeah. So, thanks for the question. As I said in my earlier pitch, I want to have like a fanatically obsessed attendee experience here. And so, I am inviting all of prospective attendees to buy their tickets way earlier than they would ever reasonably buy them, 10 months in advance for people who are [00:01:25] getting in right now. And that is to provide that advanced working capital to signal like, okay, enough people want this, I don't have to start having sponsor conversations. The the way that this shift forced it forced my hand gave me the timeline that I've always wanted. Like I've I have long wanted to attempt an attendee-funded, attendee-focused experience. But, historically, it doesn't make any sense because the sponsor conversations have to happen before or by November. That's when they've set their budget for the next year. Anything much earlier than that, like I'm sorry, we're we're too focused on the final quarter of the year. Come talk to me later. And anything much later than November is now too late. They've already figured out where their spend is going. So, you've got like this [00:02:07] sweet window, just like the first couple of weeks of November before Thanksgiving here in the US after Halloween here in the US, where it's like, okay, we're ready to talk about next year. Uh we're interested in talking to you. What what is the deal? And so, I now have 8 weeks before that to see are there enough attendees who want this thing. Buy your ticket now. Tell me that you want this. And enough people do, I don't have to have those conversations in November, and I don't have to invite sponsors to provide funding for the event. There is just enough margin in the ticket price alone to cover the outlay of running the event without sponsors. And that's exactly what I'm going for. I have always been attendee-minded in the way I approach events. And so, I frequently am working [00:02:51] to curate an entire schedule that is playing off of itself to give you the most interesting opportunity for people who do want to sit in sessions and learn from these experts and be excited about who's on stage and what they're talking about. But, I also relish the hallway track and all of the conversations that can only happen when you have the right group of people together. They don't happen online. They don't happen in larger forums. And so, I have intentionally aimed for a smaller audience at LoopConf. So, target is 100 people, up to 200 is where I want to draw the line. Then you could hold up to close to 300, but I think once we pass 200, the the vibe that I'm going for [00:03:35] gets lost. And then smaller than 100, it feels a little too small perceptually. It's still great. And so, I think the real sweet spot is right as you start to get to 150 attendees. Because the group is small enough that you don't have too many different groups and too many different kinds of conversations happening that you can't be aware of and catch up on all of them as you're talking to people. And once you pass 300, like none of us can ever know all of the different kinds of things that are happening at WordCamp US or WordCamp Europe or WordCamp Asia because there's just too many people, too many conversations, too many floating attentions. So, I'm aiming for something that's small on purpose and in addition to curating what I think are going to be truly outstanding talks from some truly impressive people, I have also made personal invitations to equally [00:04:19] impressive people to just be present at the event so that we can have incredible conversations. And and that's most of the pitch is is that you are going to have some transformative conversations. The thing that I realized earlier this week as I was trying to condense this into a smaller package to express quickly and succinctly is that the the conversations that happen at LoopConf and the talks that you can learn from are all designed to expand your capability and perhaps even help you I don't want to say like 10x your skill set because that's such a dumb unrealistic thing. >> Go with it, Brian. Feed into the marketing machine. [00:05:01] >> capable because you were here having these conversations. Not just with like how you use WordPress, but also how you operate more broadly. I have always been friendly to inviting perspectives from outside of our WordPress community because we don't exist in a vacuum. The websites that we're building exist in a sea of websites. The clients that we're helping could go anywhere to get their problem solved. They didn't usually, they're not coming to us because they want WordPress for the fact that it's WordPress. They come to us because they want their problems solved. So, how can we get better at solving those problems more thoroughly? Those are the conversations I'm interested in having. And we happen to be constantly, but also very precisely right now in an uncertain [00:05:48] state with an uncertain future. You mentioned like where is the industry going courtesy of AI? That's playing out in every industry. But also like where is WordPress as a project going? Where is the WordPress community going? Are they leaving? Are they doing other things or what? I, like you, happen to think we will continue to have a thriving WordPress community of the people who are out there doing business. Thriving might even be that strong. There will continue to be people who do incredible things with WordPress potentially forever and can do so profitably for a very long time. So, WordPress won't be gone or even close to being gone in 10 months. I prefer to in all of the things I build not to look at [00:06:31] the bleeding edge, but like the trusted solution. Like like what was great 2 years ago? Is that what people are still doing now? Awesome. Then it will still be good 2 years from now. But also, where are we heading? What is the trajectory? What do we need to like what needs to enter our awareness now? And so, those are the conversations that I invite and encourage and I think are the most valuable. It's not just we're only ever going to use WordPress and nothing else. It's we use WordPress and also we use this thing and also we use this thing or uh we take WordPress and we put it here., Reshaping LoopConf: A Fanatically Obsessed Attendee Experience, Brian Richards (LoopConf organizer), Matt Medeiros (interviewer), Eric Karkovack (intro host), 01m464qc6s8evta3pgyr5nnh0p.