It’s Saturday a week out and I’m trying to finish up messages for the week. A lot to send this week. Monday messages to the registered and not-registered list, one more lunch reminder, three sponsor email blasts, a big Friday reminder with lots of notes, and a Saturday morning “don’t forget and it’s ok to show up late” message.

I need to write an entire post on the software that runs the event. Lots of small things that would help us, small things I I didn’t know or have time for way back when.

We’ve ended up with relatively few photos of the event from previous years and that has hurt our ability to convey some of the fun/feel of the event. I’ve asked for help from volunteers in getting the photos this year.  The posting plan is still vague. How do we get them all? How do we get them onto Twitter? Appreciate ideas on that. This is where my inner yearn for documentation shows up. We need a Photo Plan! Here’s some of the photos I’ve asked to get done this year:

• every session (speaker and crowd shot)
• all  sponsors with people at their table
• group photo of speakers (what can we do better/different than the last one?)
• prize winners (and prizes)
• end of day crowd/raffle
• Closeups of food and people eating
• check-in
• Plus, the student seminar event
• Facility

Plus some short video interviews with attendees. That gives whoever does marketing next year more stuff to work with. That’s worth a comment. I took marketing this year as a place where I thought I could contribute and make an impact and I think I have. The trick is to convert that to a formula, which means it can’t be me doing it next year. I’ll coach and even write a little, but we need a long term plan. I think I’ll volunteer for volunteer management next year, but that’s a ways out. Where else could I change the game?

Ran across http://addthisevent.com/ recently, I’d like to see more support for adding to calendars in the event tools, something Eventbrite does well.

I’m starting to think about what a marketing team looks like. A team would spread out the work (considerable) and offer training/redundancy. Some roles might be:

• Marketing lead, someone with the vision and accountability
• Writer. Someone that can take various bits and put into words in a way that attendees will read
• Twitter. Maybe. I did a lot of scheduled tweets and while they were canned, not sure it’s worth doing more than that yet (other than event day)
• Group/List Liason. Someone to make sure we get mentions at other groups, key blogs, etc. Takes effort. Not big returns, but worth doing. Can we just do it better?
• Corporate marketing. Still untapped market, trying to do “top down” “sales” here in Orlando. Worth doing?

Needs more thought soon.

Out of time today, so I’ll close with the registration update. 536 right now vs 344 last year. Now to see if check-ins hit the goal of 350+ on site!