UbuCon Asia - Rough new organizer guide

Transcript

1. UbuCon Asia Welcome to the team! and hell
2. Index Timeline Dates & Venue & Registration Sponsorship & Finances Content & Social events Travel support (Accommodation, Visas, Travel grant, Travel guide) Logistics
3. Timeline (2025) - by late November - Announce next location + Confirm venue and date + Open 2025 website - Nov - Dec Start contacting potential sponsors - Jan - Open registration (early bird) - Feb (or March) - Open CFP (4 weeks + 2 weeks extension if needed), Start acquiring accommodation for sponsored guests, Open Travel grant and visa letter form. - June (or July) - Publish final timetable, Social event info, Sent travel grant results. - August - Make sure all logistic stuff already paid and everyone’s travel also arranged already.
4. Timeline (2025) - 1 week before event: Set up venue, Make sure all logistics stuff are in place. - During event: On-site sync meeting - After event - Attendee statistics (Check-ins, demographics, popular sessions and more) - Handle outstanding payments - Sponsor follow-ups after the event - Travel grant reimbursements - Video editing
5. Dates, Venue, Registration Dates: Mid or Late Q3 (2 days of conference + day trip) - With enough gap with Ubuntu Summit, some country level UbuCons (UbuCon Korea, Mini UbuCon Malaysia and so on…) as well as other big global events in Asia such as FOSSASIA, COSCUP and few more. Venue: Cheap and accessible that can accommodate 300 participants with main hall, 2-3 breakout session rooms, reception(for registration, merch distribution and more), sponsor booth space and more. Registration: Either Indico+Open Collective or Local event registration platform. As we also raise funding with registration fee, registration platform must support both local payment method as well as International payment method(VISA card and MasterCard online payment at least!)
6. Sponsorship We go through: Confirm venue and date -> Draft prospectus -> Send out to sponsors -> If they joining, Handle contract or issue invoice through our fiscal host (Open Source Collective) or if it’s in-kind, ask them to pay to vendors directly and get things delivered to the venue. Cash: We use our standard pricing table. + A bit of benefit adjustment depending on their needs. (e.g. If they choose package with booth but can’t run it so want some adjustment, we can consider offering sponsored session instead) In-kind: Sponsoring something other than cash. Venue, Merch(T-shirts, stickers, tote bags, books and more), Meals, Snacks and beverages, Conference dinner, Day Trip. Benefits are offered based on the value converted to cash amount.
7. Intl sponsors & Local sponsors Intl sponsors: Business, organization or individuals with their primary address NOT in the hosting country. Local sponsors: Business, organization or individuals with their primary address in the hosting country. In principle, Funds from Intl sponsors are received by global team’s fiscal sponsor (currently Open Source Collective). And Fund from Local sponsors are received by local fiscal sponsors. (Local Non-profit legal entity, Local event agency or other Local business that can hold money on behalf in the hosting country)
8. Sponsorship - It’s a Sales deal rather a donation Some business indeed sponsors with donation purpose with their pure support to the community. But this is really rare unless the business owner or executives is really deeply in to us. Most sponsorship comes from their marketing budget. So marketing team decides if they are going to sponsor us. Common strategy for this - “Rather wasting marketing expense on Google Ads, Meta Ads then reach someone not interested in you… We have highly motivated and targeted 300+ audience with specific backgrounds you want. Why don’t you sponsor our event then closely connect with our audience and get quality leads? Most of them are likely interested about your services, products as well as talent acquisition. It will be also a lot more affordable compared to Online Ads.”
9. Numbers and proof are important to convenience sponsors Since sponsorship is a sales deal with marketing person from them, We’ll need to provide statistics to drive some decisions from them. For that, we’ll also need to know our audience with good data. - How many registration and how many actual check-in? - So that they can know if they actually got expected number of brand exposures. - Demographics (Participants by nationality, profession, experiences) - Local sponsors likely interested in local attendees while Intl sponsors are mostly not. - Some sponsors might prefer students if they want to hire associates. But some sponsors might want to meet people with specific job if they want to hire experienced engineers. - Some wants to meet SW Engineers, While some wants SRE/DevOps and other wants AI/ML researchers. - rather random ordinary FOSS users.
10. Sponsor outreach timing is also important Most Intl sponsors already decides which events to sponsor or how much to spend on event sponsorship on late previous year (Sponsorship for events on Year N, Decided Q3 or Q4 of Year N-1) - So It’s important to reach out as early as possible. This could be also similar for local sponsors. To give any proposition to sponsors, At least we need to have key details(dates, venue, participants scale) + sponsorship pricing and benefits confirmed. This is why we try to select location and confirm venue earliest possible. As well as start to use standard sponsorship pricing.
11. Finance 1. Rough budgeting based on estimated expense from bid 2. Make numbers accurate - Get quotes from vendors, Receive travel grant application and more. 3. Adjust budget based on numbers we got. 4. Confirm expense plan 5. Get Invoices then make payments 6. Work with finance report after all event finance finished
12. Pay to vendors from Open Source Collective Submit expense on this profile: https://opencollective.com/ubucon-asia/events/ubucon-asia-2025-bd8cda5f Either submit under your profile with vendor’s payment method information Or invite vendor to enter payment method OSC is the US entity. Wire transfer from the US to somewhere in Asia takes 1-2 weeks or more. Don’t push global team to approve expense few days before event. Make sure to have everything submitted at least 2-3 weeks in advance from event. (Best is 4 weeks or more in advance)
13. Content Conference - Talk (+Keynote) (30-50min) - Workshop (90min) - BoF (50-90min) - Lightning talk (5min) - Session topics: https://events.canonical.com/event/127/program Social events - Conference dinner (Usually Day 1 evening) - Day trip (Either full day or half day)
14. CFP Through Indico https://events.canonical.com/event/127/abstracts/ Submission period: 4-6 Weeks + 2-3 Weeks extension if needed CFP Need to be closed 3 month in advance Reviewing session proposal: - Review deadline: 2-3 weeks after CFP deadline. - Don’t start reviewing after CFP closed. Start reviewing once any proposal received during submission period. So that we can send out review result then publish timetable on time. - Note: DO NOT CLICK “JUDGE” BUTTON - It’s for sending proposal acceptance/rejection notification.
15. Session proposal review Put score + Leave comments
16. Session proposal review Put score + Leave comments
17. Leaving feedback for submitter and internal comments Internal comment Feedback Click for comment
18. Social event When it comes to “Social event” - It’s usually one of these - Conference dinner (Recommended to schedule at Day 1 evening) - Day Trip (Right next day after the conference)
19. Conference dinner • Official dinner organized by the organizer: organizer(both local+global team), speakers, volunteers, sponsors, patrons(who donated large enough amount) + a few normal attendees participates. • Recommended to book restaurant (or party space + catering) at least 2-3 weeks in advance. Usually 30-50 people joins. Depending on budget, 100 people sometimes. • Separate registration for conference dinner should be arranged and closed 3-5 hours before the dinner to check participant list. ◦ Free registration for Organizer, Volunteers, Speakers, Patrons and a few people from sponsors. ◦ Paid registration for rest of attendees who willing to join the event.
20. Day Trip Usually organized right after the conference days with 30-50 participants. Either full day (morning-evening) or half day (lunch-evening) schedule with lunch already arranged depending on budget availability. Recommended to arranged separate registration in advance. with deadline 1-5 days before the conference with registration fee for joining trip. If you want self-paid activity rather all registration fee paid in advance, make sure to announce how much and what kind of payment methods people should prepare. - On website.
21. Travel support Accommodation - Book large number of rooms with some discounts in advance, then allocate guests on room. For saving budget, shared room option is usually considered. (2 people in 1 room) - For attendees with travel not sponsored by us, we can resell room not allocated yet or ask hotel for some discounts for such attendees Visa invitation - Providing Visa invitation letter is done by local team - since visa letters are required to be written under name of organization with address in hosting country. - Global team usually help with some background check before visa process.
22. Travel grant & Travel guide Travel grant - Application - Review - Budgeting - Send out result - Reimbursement after event. - No reimbursement before the event. Only reimburse with people approved and showed up at venue. - All people needing travel grant subject to submit travel grant application. Including people who submitted session proposal. As submitting session proposal does not travel grant application already applied automatically. - We have our own process for this. please check. https://docs.ubucon.asia/travel-support/travel-grant/
23. Travel guide Travel information needs to be published at least 1-2 month before the event. - Venue info & Floor plan and more https://2025.ubucon.asia/venue-and-travel/venue-and-safety/ - Visa info https://2025.ubucon.asia/venue-and-travel/visas-and-other-travel-requirement s/ - Nearby accommodations info https://2025.ubucon.asia/venue-and-travel/accommodations/ - Travel route info https://2025.ubucon.asia/venue-and-travel/accommodations/ - Tour guide https://2025.ubucon.asia/venue-and-travel/explore-city/
24. Logistics Please make sure to place order for all logistics stuff (banners, merch, foods, equipments and more) at least a month in advance (including payment) Banners: Do a site visit first, decide where to place banner and check sizes, what kind of banner to install. Mostly, you can get quotes for banner based on types and sizes but without design. Then work with design and place order. Merch: Don’t wait for last minute registration then place order. Just place order based on available registration data + some additional registration that might made later. You can make announcement that merch is no longer guaranteed as order had been placed.
25. Some on-boarding we need to do today - GitHub Organization setup - Make sure to accept invitation - Google Drive - Will need your gmail - Indico - For content team - Launchpad - For reviewing travel grant application - Role signup
26. Matrix rooms under #ubucon-asia:ubuntu.com space Rooms with shields🛡 are private room. Rooms with globe🌐 or no emoji are public rooms. - Main discussion: 🌐UbuCon Asia Committee or 🛡UCA25 Committee - By teams: - 🛡UCA Sponsorship & Finances - 🛡UCA Content - 🛡UCA Travel & Visa support - Public rooms bu topics: - UbuCon Asia (General discussion) - UbuCon Asia Speakers (For communicating with proposal submitters and speakers) - UbuCon Asia Travel (For travel questions)