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| Advisory Board Meeting | Board's Meeting Notes | single | Advisory Board Meeting Notes - 18 Mar 2025 | false |
Meeting Notes - 18 Mar 2025
AGENDA:
No agenda set, first meeting
DISCUSSION ITEMS
- Handmade Boston (HMB): Aug 1-2 (Fri-Sat)
- Sister conference to Seattle
- No more online track: No more online tickets or Twitch stream for Boston
- Goal is to become the "fully offline" counterpart
- Return to original technical lectures format (sans homework)
- Boston should have job booth rentals too
2025 Target: Two-hundred in-person attendees. We're still in the growth and experimentation stage.
Founder's Note: It wasn't until the third HMS that we found the perfect business model. This will now be our third HMB, following same trajectory.
- Handmade Seattle (HMS): Dec 5-7 (Fri-Sun)
- Flagship Conference
- Fully-Hybrid: Physical track and online track like always
- The formula's already perfected, just need to focus on ticket sales
2025 Target: Four-hundred in-person attendees. The closest we got to selling all in-person tickets was Fall 2023, with 97% of all tickets sold (right before mass layoffs hit hard.)
Founder's note: A general phenomenon is that once you pack a venue (typically a 400-seat theater) you'll see exponential growth the following year, exploding to say one thousand ticket holders, then an order of magnitude after that. See PyCon, VidCon, etc.
- Ticket Sales
- Early bird sale begins sometime in the Spring (with 20% discount)
- Once we start ticket sales we will use the newsletter to request community submissions
Q: Are board members allowed to submit their own talks or demos?
A: We've decided no, but we'll revisit the question (and its ethics) next year.
- Weekend Conferences
Board is pleased with the new conference dates. They agreed hosting conferences over the weekend gives attendance a massive boost (even though venue rental is more expensive. Risk is worth it.)
- Revolt Chat
- Board agreed Revolt is a substantial improvement over Element/Matrix for the conference live chat
- Board wondered whether we should support Discord as another private chat server, in a bid to expand audience
- Founder noted a third of our ticket holders are anti-Discord and privacy-conscious
Finally, the board recommended a survey to previous ticket holders.
- Voting on Talk/Demo Submissions
- Matt Nite simply used a Google Form for Software You Can Love
- It's best if the founder says "please read these submissions by the next meeting, and add your own notes"
- Source speaker candidates from meetup hosts
- Generally receive more feedback from meetup hosts on conference content
We've agreed to create a dedicated email address for receiving submissions
- Hard Deadlines to Commit to Present at HMB/HMS
- Gradually add penalties if deadlines are not met
- Ensure all speakers sign agreement. No exceptions
- Conference Agendas
- Get the agendas up as early as possible
- It's okay to massage the schedule around throughout the year
- It's okay to let speakers massage their talk title and description even if it's already on the website
ACTION ITEMS
- Founder to meet with meetup hosts before the next board meeting
- Create HMC email address for community submissions
- Create webpage explaining how to enter submissions. WITH DEADLINES
- Discord integration for submissions: allows live thread discussions among board members
- Make sure Jim (1st speaker for HMB) is on our website by the next meeting
- Make sure Taylor (1st speaker for HMS) is on our website by the next meeting
- Determine how many open slots we have for each conference
Founder's note: Last item depends on venue and the available hours their rental affords us, which is being negotiated. As an estimate, I will offer figures to the board from previous years.
NEXT MEETING
Date: 16 April 2025 1600-0500 (US/Pacific)