Case Study: Podcamp Hawaii18 Jul 2009
In 2008 I organized the first Podcamp and Wordcamp events here in Hawaii. With only a few months to organize this and virtually no budget, we succeeded at having over 400 attendees from as far away as The Netherlands and thousands more who joined us via the live video stream and live Twitter stream we produced on both days.
We did not use any traditional PR or marketing (see above for our zero starting budget) and we wanted to prove the case for social media marketing.
You can read the full details of the event wrap up here, and a few sponsor testimonials here.
Here are a few accomplishments:
- We raised $21,562 in cash sponsorships. (Our cash outlay expenses were $19,887; we have a small reserve to seed potential future unconference events.)
- We raised $44,961 in-kind sponsorships.
- We had over 400 people attend the live event.
- We live video streamed our event both days, adding thousands more virtual attendees, who participated in two-way conversations via the chat room.
- Our tag, “pch08” was the #2 tag in the world for that weekend on Twitter and Flickr. (This represents thousands of mentions on those two web sites, not to mention on countless other sites.)
- We had visitors from throughout Hawaii, the US mainland, and as far away as The Netherlands.
- We had generous local and mainland sponsors who actively participated. Johnson & Johnson, Viddler, and Blip.tv all sent staff to attend and speak at our event. (Each and every one of them has a custom page on this site. Please go check them out!)
- We brought the community together across newbies and bona fide techies, education and government, tourism and small business.
- We all worked together as peers – speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and attendees. The collaborations were amazing, business deals were initiated, learning was through the roof, and as a result dozens of Hawaii companies and government agencies are now using Twitter, blogging and sponsoring bloggers, and we have launched a Hawaii Chapter of the Social Media Club.
- We walked our talk – just look at all the features and social networking on this blog!
