In this episode, Allie and Michelle discuss the challenges that come with sponsoring events in WordPress. How much of sponsorship decisions are emotional and how much is business-centric?
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech Podcast, hosted by Michelle Frechette and Allie Nimmons. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database, but with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech overall.
Michelle Frechette:
Hi Allie.
Allie Nimmons:
Hi, Michelle. How are you?
Michelle Frechette:
I’m good. How are you?
Allie Nimmons:
I’m great. It’s awesome to talk to you.
Michelle Frechette:
It’s always so good to talk to you for sure. Well, this week we want to just start with a segment that we’re just going to start doing called good news. So that’s perfect good news, there’s enough bad news in the world.
Allie Nimmons:
Absolutely.
Michelle Frechette:
Let’s just share good news every week. So the weird thing is, people don’t know this, but usually, we see each other as we’re recording with video. And we can’t do that today because I’m not home on my good wifi. But the good news is, I’m in Tennessee spending time with my two youngest brothers who are in high school and getting my dad’s place ready to sell, hopefully we’ll sell that soon. And the view where I’m sitting today right now is a beautiful Watts Bar Lake right out the back of dad’s home office, his beautiful trees, birds, lovely lawn, and a beautiful lake. And if that’s not good news, I don’t know what is.
Allie Nimmons:
That sounds really amazing. You have to take a picture and we can-
Michelle Frechette:
I think Monday I tweeted it. So if anybody wants to see it, I could do that again though because I’ll still be able.
Allie Nimmons:
… Yeah. Tweet it again and I’ll share it from the Underrepresented and Tech account so people can see it when they’re listening to this podcast, it’ll be right there on-
Michelle Frechette:
It’s perfect. I’ll do that.
Allie Nimmons:
… Cool. So I have good news too.
Michelle Frechette:
Tell me.
Allie Nimmons:
This week, we’re recording this on Thursday, so on Monday, I had my very first day as the digital producer for MasterWP, which is super exciting. I’ve been doing my own thing, freelancing contracting, for the past year and two months. And I got a really great offer and I was like, I think it’s time to join a team again. So I’m the digital producer.
Michelle Frechette:
I’m so excited.
Allie Nimmons:
And basically, that means… thank you. I’m going to be in charge of helping out with their new podcast, they’re going to be releasing a podcast. And they already do have some courses that they’ve released and so I’m going to help out with getting those even more amazing than they already are and releasing plenty and plenty more courses in the future with them.
Allie Nimmons:
So if you’re not already following MasterWP, you should go find them and follow them so that you can start seeing some of my work pop up there. Because I have a lot of really fun ideas and I’m really excited to share them with everyone.
Michelle Frechette:
And I’m excited to see them over there. I am blessed to have you as a friend and know a lot of the really cool work that you do. And it’s so exciting to see you doing things in different areas and getting some recognition. And I’m just so happy for you, congratulations.
Allie Nimmons:
Thank you.
Michelle Frechette:
I need to get one of those podcast things where I can push buttons and applause happens. That’ll be … if anybody wants to sponsor that, just ask me for my shipping address.
Allie Nimmons:
Little sound board?
Michelle Frechette:
I’ll make a soundboard and I’ll make sound effects happen. In the meantime, I just go like, I’m proud.
Allie Nimmons:
Well, I’ll insert in some applause in posts for this episode just for funsies. So we don’t really do sound effects and music and stuff, but I’ll insert some of those just for fun. And maybe if we do this as a regular segment like good news at the beginning of the podcast, I’ll pop in a applause for our good news every week.
Michelle Frechette:
I love it.
Allie Nimmons:
Cool. Diving into our actual topic for the day, I wanted to chat with you about sponsorships.
Michelle Frechette:
Yes.
Allie Nimmons:
Sponsorships are such a huge part of our little WordPress economy. In terms of being open source, a lot of our events are run by volunteers. And while WordCamps do typically charge admission for tickets, they’re usually kept very low on purpose so that people will find it more easy to attend. But then that means that those events have to rely on companies for sponsorships to be able to afford the location, food, swag, all of that stuff.
Allie Nimmons:
And I think that there was some conversation recently about the give and take of how much a sponsorship option for a company should be based on the size of the event or how many people will be there, which I totally understand from a business owner perspective. If you’re going to put your money somewhere, you want to have an idea of how that’s going to benefit you. Because if all companies just gave their money away for any reason that they felt like, no company would ever grow or scale, everyone’s company would just collapse.
Allie Nimmons:
But it’s an interesting conundrum in our environment where I feel like, while that thought process is really important, there’s also a thought process of a lot of sponsorships and a lot of the money that flows through our little economy is based on moral and ethical decisions as well. It is morally helpful, I can’t think of the exact right word to sponsor a meet up or a WordCamp because that plays into the long term benefit of the community. It helps people, right?
Michelle Frechette:
Right.
Allie Nimmons:
Just point blank, at the end of the day, it helps people. And that is a valuable thing to put your money toward even if you don’t have a return on that investment necessarily. You’re paying back into the lifeline of the software that your business might depend on.
Michelle Frechette:
Yes, true.
Allie Nimmons:
And so I think that, particularly because recently there have been additional sponsorships that have been … we’ve started inventing this new sponsorship model of sponsoring people to go to events. We have a bunch of companies sponsoring individuals, like I am one, MasterWP is sponsoring my trip to WordCamp US at the end of the year. And I just think it’s really interesting how that has come about, but there is also still the necessity to look at the business side of where your sponsorship or where your investment is going. So I wanted to know what you thought about all that.
Michelle Frechette:
Yeah. I think sponsorships are definitely one of those things that they never, I shouldn’t say never, but they seldom feel fair, if you will, because big companies can afford the top level sponsorships. But that doesn’t always mean that companies that are paying for lesser or lower level sponsorships aren’t also doing well. So it’s like, they’re only sponsoring bronze level, is that company not doing well this year? Or have they just decided that instead of sponsoring the event overall at the gold level, they’re going to sponsor at the bronze level and pay some for more of their own employees to attend or sponsor other people in the community to be there? So I think there’s an interesting way that we look at it and to begin with the level sponsorship and somehow maybe equating it to the success of a company or the market share of that company. So I think that’s one thing that we have to keep in mind when we look at sponsorships.
Michelle Frechette:
But I think you’re right. I think there are ways to think about it ethically and there are ways to think about it from an ROI perspective. I was actually on the Talk Mag Happy Hour Podcast last night with Doc Popular and Chris Wiegman who lost his internet very early on, so it was just a conversation between the two of us. And we talked a little bit about the Five for the Future and that we were talking about the decline of market share that’s been seen the very infinite decimal decline in market share that Joost de Valk talked about with WordPress.
Michelle Frechette:
And one of the questions I had was, and you and I have talked about this before and we’ve had conversations about open source and whether or not people should be paid, but if we’re paying people to move those needles forward, would those needles move forward faster? And would we have more market share because we were making headway in the development of WordPress in a faster way?
Michelle Frechette:
And some of that comes down to that five to the future and what companies are paying employees to do that? How many people are doing it out of the good of their heart. So I think it’s a bigger conversation than just like, WordCamp US costs this much, and WordCamp Europe costs that much. And look, you can sponsor work at McClair and that kind of thing. I think there’s a lot that goes into it when we think about overall sponsorship and the growth of the community.
Allie Nimmons:
Absolutely. So I’ve never really worked in a position or at a company where I was in the room as far as deciding, how much are we going to sponsor? Actually, that’s not true, when I was at WP Buffs, and I was working there as a community manager, I did have some opportunity to decide about what we might sponsor and for how much and things like that. But it was very much like, I could look at the options and I had a budget and I could say, this is what we’re going to do and we’ll do the most that we could possibly do while still not expanding our entire budget all at once.
Allie Nimmons:
And I did make those decisions on a fairly emotional basis of like, I think this is a good event. I look into the people who are organizing it, I look into the work that they’ve done in the past, I look into how the event is being run. And if I think it is something worthwhile to invest in and that’s how I would make my decisions. Have you been in positions where you had to make that decision about determining a sponsorship? And if so, how do you feel like those decisions are made a lot of the time?
Michelle Frechette:
For me personally, I have sponsored a couple of WordCamps from my own brands. Usually, once as a photographer and once as a podcaster for WPCoffee Talk. And both times they were local meet us or not meet us, local WordCamps. And I was part of the organizing team so I knew what the needs were. I knew exactly where the money was and I knew how it was being spent. And that was something that encouraged me to contribute to the success of my own event, if you will. I think one of the things that we have in WordPress is that there really is transparency in the way that WordCamps are run. So if you want to know the budget you can ask, what’s the budget? What’s this money being spent for? Reports are made afterwards after money is spent so you can see how the money was spent and that it’s not just people lining their pockets.
Michelle Frechette:
There was a WordCamp in Toronto several years ago and all of a sudden, Josefa and, who else was … a couple of the higher ups in the WordPress community were suddenly on the guest list and were there because one of the organizers thought he could just charge more for things and split the profit between the organizers.
Allie Nimmons:
What?
Michelle Frechette:
That is not how WordCamps work.
Allie Nimmons:
I had not heard about that.
Michelle Frechette:
Yeah. So I’ll probably Angels, but I did hear about it and I do know it to be true. And that person is not part of the WordPress community anymore, clearly. But it’s those kinds of things, because we work in transparency, that it makes it very easy to spot when things are not working the way that they’re supposed to. And so I feel very confident that whatever the cost of the event, nobody is trying to make money. If there’s money left over from an event, because you do have the budget and sometimes you do end up with a little bit of surplus, that all goes back into funding future WordCamps. So WordCamp Rochester, it’s hard to get the funding to get that thing up on off the ground every year.
Michelle Frechette:
So we do rely heavily on those sponsorships, I’m sorry, to be able to help that little tiny camp along. Whereas, some of the bigger camps, people want to sponsor those because there’s more people attending, it’s a bigger venue, more eyes on the website, et cetera. I don’t know what the right answer is, I just know that the transparency angle of it is definitely helpful. And when people do question like, why does it cost so much to sponsor this event? I think you can ask those questions because somebody’s going to answer you and tell you, this is the breakdown, the venue costs this much. We’re in a year of COVID so there’s extra precautions, that’s going to cost this much. The food is costing this much, this is … we are not doing in a small city like Rochester, we’re doing it in a big city like San Diego. The cost of living is way more in San Diego than it is in Rochester, New York.
Michelle Frechette:
So there’s just so many things. And you can’t apples and oranges between Nashville and St. Louis and Philadelphia and San Diego because they’re just different cities and different times. Eight years ago, it’s a different world in a different economy than it is in 2022.
Allie Nimmons:
Yeah. Do you think that … because I have this very idealistic feeling or view that the more meetups we’re able to have, the more word camps we’re able to have and the more funding we’re able to put into those events in terms of having organizers on hand and having volunteers and having those events be really great, having them be marketed really well. I have this pipeline idea of, the better we’re able to make these events, the more people we’re able to bring into these events. And typically, just by statistics, the more underrepresented people we’re more likely to bring into these events. And these events are totally pipelines and funnels to the community at large. I can’t say how many people I’ve met who work in the WordPress space and have been introduced to WordPress or introduced their job through these events.
Allie Nimmons:
And I wonder what the psychology is or if there’s a wider concept around the theory of charitable spending as a company for those long term goals. Do you feel like because we’re an open source … I feel like if we were an industry of restaurant tours, maybe this wouldn’t be a conversation we’re having. But this is such a unique community that’s based on openness and based off of volunteering and based off of the constant need to bring new people in and stuff like that. I don’t really know where, I just think it’s such an interesting concept. I don’t even particularly have a set question about it, it’s just something I’m interested in as I started seeing those new tweets like, I wonder how much? Do you know what I mean?
Michelle Frechette:
I do. I’m going to guess though that most businesses are all about the ROI. I think that the businesses that really want to see growth and want to see that to action are the ones that are already doing a lot like the Five for the Future idea like Joost has. They’re all in on the Five for the Future, WebDevStudios is all in on the Five for the Future and they have specific days that people are just like, once a month they work on the open source project.
Michelle Frechette:
And maybe they’re sponsoring events also, or they’re not sponsoring events also because that’s how they choose to participate. I don’t know, it’s interesting to think about what that would look like from a charitable venture that doesn’t include also an ROI on their marketing, for example.
Allie Nimmons:
I don’t think this specific information exists, I don’t think anyone has particularly collected it. But I would be really interested to see if there’s any correlation between events that do get frequent, consistent, decent amounts of sponsorship, and the number of people who attend and really enjoy those events and find them to be really useful. I’m not sure what that looks like, but I know from experience, my introduction into the WordPress community was WordCamp Miami. I went to WordCamp Miami three times before I had ever attended any other event.
Allie Nimmons:
And WordCamp Miami is definitely one of the bigger ones as far as the US based WordCamps. I don’t have any insight into how much they’re funded, but in comparison, as far as all the ones I’ve been comparing it to WordCamp Miami, it seems like WordCamp Miami gets a little bit more money or raises a little bit money. I don’t know how that works, there’s just always seems so much bigger, there’s so much more to it than I’ve seen at any other camps.
Allie Nimmons:
And that might be an illusion or that might be that I’m biased because that’s my hometown, but I’ve always felt so moved and inspired going to those events more so than any other state that I’d been to. And it just makes me think like, is there a direct line between the better that we could make these events, the more people we’re going to get to them and the more quality community members and developers and workers and employees and all those things that we’re going to get at the end of the day? Is that a viable way to look at a business investment?
Michelle Frechette:
I think that a lot of that has to do too with who are the speakers that they’ve selected, right?
Allie Nimmons:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette:
So there are those of us who are going for the hallway track and are very honest about the fact that … I will sit down on some talks, I’m not saying I don’t ever sit in on talks, but I’m almost always talking to people in the hallway track and I miss a lot of the actual sessions.
Michelle Frechette:
There are a lot of people that go for the sessions and they want to see those names that they’ve like heard of. And like when Chris Lema was at every event and they wanted to go hear Chris speak and that kind of thing. And so I think there is some synergy sometimes between how much are we going to sponsor based on, are there names that are speaking that are also a draw? So I think there’s a lot of layers in it, is what I’m saying.
Allie Nimmons:
Absolutely. And we’re just two people, we always put out a call in every episode for people to let us know what they think, but I really genuinely want to hear from everyone about, if you make decisions about sponsorships, what goes into making that decision for you? Do you have metrics you look at? So I think everyone looks at the ROI as well as the charitable portion of it. Like, this is giving back into the community. I’m really curious what that percentage is. Is it a 50, 50? Is it a 60, 40? Is it a 90 10? What does that mean for people?
Allie Nimmons:
And I’d love to do a deeper dive too into how sponsorships are structured as well. Because I feel like, just like with any other company, we’re not special, just like any other industry. Bigger, more successful, richer companies tend to be led by white men. And I wonder, as far as the sponsorship levels that are currently being offered, you can pay into however much that big sponsorship level is and get your company all kinds of attention in a booth, in the sponsor area and shout outs and commercials during the live streams and all of that kind of stuff.
Allie Nimmons:
And if I’m a small … well, I am. I am a small black female queer business owner, I can’t afford the kind of sponsorship that Bluehost might pay into. But what should the minimum sponsorship be so that smaller companies that might be led by underrepresented people who are in this growth phase can actually pay into a-
Michelle Frechette:
Participate.
Allie Nimmons:
… Yeah. Participate, pay into an event and get something back that’s worthwhile. Because I’ve seen like, you can be a community sponsor and you can send in $50 and you get nothing really. You get like, not really anything back.
Michelle Frechette:
Mm-hmm. It’s Goodwill at that point and nothing more.
Allie Nimmons:
Exactly. And I wonder, how can we use those sponsorships to help and build up the smaller companies in WordPress and the underrepresented companies in WordPress and give those people more of a leg up into being able to experience that growth and that exposure?
Michelle Frechette:
Yeah, I think you’re right. So if you’re out there and you’re a decision maker and you don’t want to tweet us directly, you can DM us in case you don’t want your secret sauce released to the whole world. But we’d be curious to hear from you about how you make sponsorship decisions.
Allie Nimmons:
Absolutely. I think it’s a really interesting topic for conversation, especially as we’re heading back into in-person events again, we had a break from thinking about this stuff. Well, there were lots of virtual events that people were sponsoring and whatnot, but the cost to sponsor an in-person event obviously is way more.
Allie Nimmons:
And so as we’re ramping back up into that and people are feeling that, last year we spent not a lot on sponsorships and this year it’s looking like a lot more. I’d be really interested to hear how people are feeling about that and-
Michelle Frechette:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Allie Nimmons:
… Where everyone’s at with that. Cool. Well, thank you for joining me for this rumbly like, not very… just every once in a while-
Michelle Frechette:
Thank you for joining us.
Allie Nimmons:
… Yeah. I get something stuck in my brain that I’m like, I’m interested in this, but I don’t exactly know the right questions to ask. So thanks for-
Michelle Frechette:
Yeah.
Allie Nimmons:
… Anyone who stuck with us through this whole thing, thank you for sticking with us.
Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely. We’ll see you next week.
Allie Nimmons:
We’ll see you next week everyone. Bye, bye.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
LearnDash. LearnDash is taking cutting edge e-Learning methodology and infusing it into WordPress. More than just a plugin, LearnDash is trusted to power the learning programs for major universities, small to mid-size companies, startups, entrepreneurs, and bloggers worldwide. If you’re interested in sponsoring an episode using our database or just want to say hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com. See you next week.