I don’t usually get involved in Movember, at least not in terms of growing, I will never shave my beard! However, I always give what I can to the cause. This is year is no exception and I’m lucky enough to be working with an AWESOME group of people to help pull it off!

As most of you know by now MEGA Bloks is my new home. I’ve had the opportunity to get involved in and organize a ton of great events, contests, etc, and this is no exception. I’m super stoked that MEGA Bloks and Twist Image have joined forces to do something really cool for Movember to help raise awareness. Check out the official post over on the Mega Bloks blog to find out what crazy mo-ness we’ve been up to over the past few days and what you can expect top still see and get involved in.

Yes, I know, I’ve said very little in this post, you’ll just have to keep reading on ;{)

Plotting ...

It was great to spend a weekend geeking out with the Toronto WordPress community. What was even more fun was being able to explore Toronto and attend WordCamp with a bunch of Montreal’ers, it was like a WCMTL reunion. There were a bunch of speakers on the bill from Montreal, @jeremyclarke @ggiiaa @zoonini @SandySidhu @lieslbarrell @cafenoirdesign, not including a handful of Montreal’ers that made the trek out to Toronto to attend the WordCamp, the Rennicks ( @andrea_r, @wpmuguru) and of course Big Al!

It was truly a blast hanging out with everybody, meeting new people from the community, bumping into old friends, and seeing family.

What made it successful

• Venue -George Brown St. James Campus . Big comfy rooms, plugs at every seat, good lighting, and big screens.
• Location – Downtown Toronto, near hotels, shopping, food, bars, transportation, and more …
• Speakers – An exceptional list of speakers from all over tNorth America! It was also nice to see some familiar faces.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for!
• After Party – Hernandos was a cool Mexican resto/bar in the St. Lawrence Market area. It is also now the birth place of DirtyGoogle!

If you missed my presentation you can check it out here.

Some magic moment

With so many great people you can imagine how many “Magic Moments” there were, however the most re-memorable experience for me was the birth of DirtyGoogle, thanks to a girl in a mustache at a Mexican bar and to all the founding members, you know who you are

DirtyGoogle Founding Members

… and finally … BIG THANKS to the organizers (Al Davis, Craig Taylor, Andy McIlwain)for all the hard work they put in and congrats on a successful WordCamp!

See you all next year!

I’m super stoked to be heading to BlizzCon this year. Sine I joined Mega Bloks as their Senior Community Manager I’ve had the opportunity to work on a lot of cool projects and co-organize on some cool events. Last week I was in New York for Comic Con which was an incredible experience and a really cool conference.

This week I get to head out to Anaheim, CA for BlizzCon. This is going to be an AWESOME event! While their I will be helping manage the Mega Bloks booth as well as take care of our community outreach, demo some really cool new product lines for Starcraft and WoW, and run a twitter contest code named “Channel your Inner Thrall“.

I can’t wait to get my geek on in the sun and hopefully have some time to check out disneyland.

Once again digibomb is reinventing himself!

As many of you already know I’m no longer with Vanilla. You also probably know about my side project PressWork. What you don’t know is that I was recently offered an amazing job as Senior Community Manager at Mega Brands. If you are not familiar with Mega Brands you will be familiar with Mega Bloks, one of Canada’s largest toy companies. If you’re  parent like me, then you know that Mega Bloks are a household name and your kids probably play with them all the time.

As Senior Community Manager I will be responsible for many things, including social strategies, online community building, and most importantly managing and organizing events, meetups, and more. This is really the perfect job for me and I couldn’t be more excited to join an amazing team of people and an outstanding company whose product is already such a big part of my life.

This will be my first stab at tech for non tech. I’m looking forward to the challenge of bringing my expertise to an off the shelf product instead of a digital one.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting more about my adventures at Mega Brands and make sure to follow us on twitter @megabloks to see what we’re up to. Over the next few weeks I will be attending and helping coordinate our brand an presence at ComiCon New York and BlizzCon Anaheim. If you a fan of Mega Bloks or into Halo, Starcraft, and WoW collectibles and building make sure you check out what we’re doing in these areas over the next few months, and if you’re going to be at ComiCon or BlizzCon come by the booth and say hello!

People always ask me “Why do you it? It’s a lot of work with no return!” This is almost half true. It is a lot of work, tremendously time consuming, costly (even with sponsors), and very difficult to balance with a family and full time job. But, the return is HUGE! You have the opportunity to make an impact on your community and you get to work with some really awesome people.

With WordCamp the return is even greater for me. I’ve been a WordPress designer, developer, and “evangelist” for over 5 years. WordPress has paid my bills, put food on my table, help support my family, and most importantly giving me the opportunity to meet some exceptional people and develop long lasting friendships.

This years WordCamp was a massive success. We, Jeremy Clarke, Shannon Smith, Carl Alexandre, and myself, the organizers could not be happier with how everything turned out. We had an incredible lineup of speakers from all over the world in two languages, generous sponsors that not only helped make this event possible but even took part in helping out during the event and actively participated in talks.

There’s more! The creators of WordPress, Automattic, set up a “Happiness Bar” staffed with employees. This was a great opportunity for attendees to get questions answered from the masters themselves one on one, or just hangout when not attending a talk. To top it all off Matt Mullenweg was our keynote speaker and was also available to answer questions and hangout with attendees.

It was also cool to run the first ever “WordPress Hackfest“, in Montreal, organized by Stephane Daury, Andrew Nacin, and Carl Alexandre. The Montreal WordPress community came together to jointly work on WordPress core tickets and submit patches to help put Montreal on the WordPress map in style.

What made it successful

• Venue -UQAM’s Cœur des sciences.
• Location – Downtown Montreal, near hotels, shopping, food, bars, transportation, and more …
• Speakers – An exceptional list of speakers from all over the world! It was also nice to see some familiar faces.
• Keynote – Matt Mullenweg held a town hall on day 2. Interesting to note, that during Matt’s talk WordPress hit 50 million sites!
• WordPress Happiness Bar – Experts from Autommatic hang around and help attendees with any questions they have.
• WordPress Hackfest – The Montreal WP community came together to jointly work on WordPress Core tickets.
• Food – St. Viateur bagels every morning and Woo Themes sponsored Starbucks coffee. Catered lunch on day and pizza lunch on day 2.
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for!
• After Party – Free beer! Telus sponsored and AMAZING after party at the St. Sulpice where both myself and Big Al (Al Davis Telus sponsor) ran the bar, our drinks “the Caribbean digibomb” was a HUGE success and even trended on twitter.
• Ice Cream – Microsoft Web Matrix sponsored and Ice Cream on day 1. Who doesn’t love a  tasty cold treat on a hot day

Some magic moments

For me every moment was magical It was truly flattering to see so many people, over 300, come out and support WordCamp Montreal this year. I feel truly honored to be a part of a such strong local community and amazing global community of passionate, vocal, motivated, and happy WordPress users. This was a year not forget and next year will be epic!

See you all next year!

Photo Creds: Elida Arizza

Preamble

I’ve been organizing events for many years, big and small. I know how much work is involved in running a large conference with 500+ attendees or putting together a small meetup with 10 people. Either way, it takes time and dedication to ensure success.

Over the years I have organized many successful events and had a few failures along the way, it’s par for the course. I’ve learned many valuable lessons from each experience, and thus many people have asked why and how I do it? These are not easy questions to answer.

This post is part of a collection of posts mostly tips, advice, and some rants about organizing an event. I should mention that these posts are in no particular order, they are not aimed at any one or any organization in particular, and are solely my opinions from my experiences. I am not an expert, just a dedicated and passionate community leader and organizer.

This is your opportunity to ask me anything about organizing an event, give me feedback or criticism (I don’t mind), or add your thoughts and advice to any giving question. This should be an interesting experiment on a somewhat controversial topic for those of us in the event organizing game!

Posts in this collection so far:

• Check the Dates
• Budgeting

So let’s begin!

In this post I want to discuss, what I consider, the most important aspect of the pre-planning an event, budgeting!

In the inaugural post of “Things to Consider When planning an Event” we discussed the importance of checking the dates. Checking your dates is essential, but without a budget and plan to meet that budget there will be no dates check.

I often get asked by new organizes, volunteers, and sometimes sponsors, what criteria I use to determine the budget of an event. Most people who attend a successful event don’t realize how much work, time and money it takes to pull it off. I have seen many events fail because of an inaccurate budget.  It’s great to be enthusiastic about planning an event, and even better if there is interest from sponsors, however, before you ask for or accept any financial backing make sure you sit down with your team and produce a document outlining everything you will need to pay for from pencils to venue. It’s very easy to get caught up in the excitement and forget a make or break item.

I like to use google docs for this and create a very simple spreadsheet. I break it down into two areas Expenses vs. Revenue.

Expenses can be broken down into three basic sections: Venue, Food, and Swag. That being said, every event is unique and you can add to this list based on your needs. For each section you should determine your estimated cost vs. your actual cost.

For example, to determine roughly what you are going to spend on a venue you need to

1. Make a rough estimate of how many people you expect to attend, this is your goal. Tip: Always pad this number (better to have extra space instead of turning people away or having them packed in uncomfortably).
2. Make a list of local venues, contact them and get quotes. Tip: Make sure to ask what is offered/included, e.g., chairs, AV equipment, WiFi, etc.

Here’s a sample google doc illustrating venue expenses.

To help you get started, here is a basic list of expenses:

Venue

• Rooms
• AV
• WiFi
• Technician
• Chairs & Tables

Food

• Coffee & other breakfast items in the morning (each day)
• Catered lunch (each day)
• A desert table
• After parties – alcohol & food
• Speaker/Sponsor dinner

Swag

• Tees
• Stickers
• Gifts for speakers
• Prizes

Misc.

• Lanyards
• Badges
• Posters around the event space
• Printed schedules

Remember this is just a basic list, you could easily end up doubling this depending on the size and scope of your event.

Revenue on the other hand is easier to break down.

• Ticket sales
• Sponsors

You could add to this list as well.

Budgeting is never easy and takes a lot of work. I recommend you start by getting a basic list together, then go over it with your team. If you’re organizing without a team, make sure you have someone else look over it and make sure you haven’t forgot anything.

I also have to give thanks to @CafeNoirDesign, who is one of the co-organizers with me for WordCamp Montreal, she is responsible for majority of our budget and has taught me a lot. In fact, I could not have written this post without her

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have any other suggestions for checking dates?

If you have a question about organizing an event or a specific event topic you would like me to discuss please send all suggestions to dropit(@)dropthedigibomb(dot)com I will be more than happy to help