Last night on the #dradcast (watch it here) we talked about the PressNomics Experience. A central theme to the success of the event were the people.

Last year we sent out some invitations to specific people in the WordPress ecosystem formally requesting their attendance. While the event is open to all WordPress-centric business owners, we feel it is important to try to ensure specific people are in attendance: Those that are actively shaping and driving the Economy around WordPress.

Canada, the UK, Australia, Tasmania, Norway, India, and South Africa were all represented last year giving PressNomics an international feel. About 50 of invitations for this year are heading across the US and to the far corners of the world tomorrow after I pay a visit to the post office. Please check your postbox next week and consider attending.

We welcome all business owners in the WordPress ecosystem to attend PressNomics. Be sure to snag a ticket when they go on sale June 10th, 10am PST.

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PressNomics 2 will be held October 17-19 2013 in Phoenix Arizona – Early Bird Tickets go on sale June 10th 2013 at 10AM PST. Add your email to the form on the homepage for a friendly reminder to order your tickets.

What did you miss last year?

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The idea of PressNomics is simple: Get the movers and shakers of the WordPress economy in the same physical place and bring in amazing business focused speakers to share their experience, add in some ample social time and see what happens.

PressNomics 1 was pretty epic (Archive) and we think we can pull off another winner for v2. Add your email here to be notified as we begin sharing details over the coming weeks/months.

In case you were wondering PressNomics is brought to you by the fine folks at Pagely.

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So we did it, it happened. No one died. However, I think some people’s minds are still in pieces strewn across the back of the ballroom after many of the speaker’s sessions. Including my own. And I feel the Woocrew rightly should be paying for dialysis for a few attendees they bought rounds for.

PressNomics 1.0 is in the books. We throughly hope you all enjoyed yourself and extracted value from the time spent visting with us and your peers in Chandler, Arizona.

A few points of interest and personal take-aways from Sally and I.

• 5 speakers were cycled in within 3 weeks of the event, Joshua Ziering filling in for Ortiz that very morning. For the most part no one noticed as all our speakers brought their A game.
• $5,126 was donated to St Judes Childrens Research Hospital. Being new parents ourselves, and being fortunate that Ethan is healthy, we chose St Judes as a Charity for a pretty simple reasons: Most of us are healthy which allowed us the opportunities that got us where we are today. Not every parent or child is as lucky as we are, in terms of health or financial situation.  If you recall Sally left the stage and asked me to present the check as she was already emotional about achieving the $5k goal we set and did not want to bring the whole audience to tears along with her.
• We had speaking notes on all sorts of things, like thanking the community sponsors by name, going into depth on why we chose St Judes, my thoughts on what PressNomics meant and why we were all there. Sally and I were so exhausted from the planning, travel, setup, and the excitement we were drawing blanks up there on stage. I think I even forgot to use Cory’s last name when I have known him for 4 years and it was written down right in front me. Next time we will try to sleep more leading up to the event.
• Most of these speakers are personal friends and mentors of ours.  Every one of them said yes without hesitation, and all flew in on their own dime. To me that is a testament to the value of relationships. I asked for help, my posse responded even when details were sketchy in the early planning stages. Furthermore we chose to share these relationships with all of you so you could gain some of the same benefit we enjoy during our personal talks.
• It was nearly $1000/day for the 2 hours of coffee. WTF right. This was added last minute when Envato became a sponsor.
• We had a kick ass band booked for the Friday night party well before hand. 1 of the lead guys is a pediatric surgeon, he literally saves the lives of kids. About 6 weeks out he confirmed he would not be able to get his 36 hour shift covered and the band could not make it. So we had to find a replacement.. and we did with the help of Sean Tierney find another kick ass band. This time a 6 person hipster friendly group of rockers that seemed perfect for this crowd. 10 days out they flaked.  So we got this quirky band that on a normal day plays a really awesome set, I witnessed this awesomeness via youtube, but was missing their drummer so they went art-rock on us and gave us that delightful show.
• Our contact at the San Marcos quit a week and a half before the event.
• The router for the internet was stolen the day before. This was very upsetting as the entire time while planning we made it known that internet was a top priority.
• The ice luge never made it to the happy hour. The delivery guy who handled the situation was very unprofessional. He was fired.
• We wished that we would have had the time to talk and join in the fun more with everyone but we were too busy with the event. Now that everyone knows what Pressnonics is, and if we decide to do this again next year, hopefully we’ll get more volunteers.

Positive Feedback

We asked for feedback and we got it. The attendee feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Not just ‘good job’ positive but absolutely gushing with praise. It feels good to score a win. Anyone who has planned an event will tell you there is a lot of uncertainty and doubt leading up to something like this where you put yourself and your brand out there.

Wow. #PressNomics was by far the best WordPress event I’ve ever been to. Talks were inspirational and it was great to meet everyone!

— JR Farr (@jrfarr) November 10, 2012

Goodbye #pressnomics!Hope you’re an annual get-together, best conference in a long, long time. twitter.com/JS_Zao/status/…

— Justin Sainton (@JS_Zao) November 11, 2012

Just got home from #pressnomics –great event, amazing people, and all around kickass-ness!

— WerkPress (@WerkPress) November 11, 2012

Can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed and learned at #pressnomics over the past few days.

— John Hawkins (@vegasgeek) November 10, 2012

#PressNomics was by far the most beneficial, best organized #WordPress event I’ve ever attended. Kudos to @strebel & @bizgirl & team!

— WordPress 101 (@WP101) November 10, 2012

If day 2 of #pressnomics is half as awesome as day 1, it’s still the best conference I’ve been to in a loonng time.

— NatalieMac (@nataliemac) November 9, 2012

#pressnomics is going great so far. If the WiFi were better I probably wouldn’t be getting as much out of the sessions. Moleskins ftw.

— Doug Cone (@nullvariable) November 9, 2012

There are many more just like these…

Critical Feedback

The critical feedback is a welcome reminder to always push for excellence. We wanted to deliver an A+ event and inevitably things get overlooked or issues arise. The critical feedback falls into 3 primary categories.

The Wifi

The Wifi laying an egg was the number 1 complaint. While it is a very valid complaint I have to agree with the way 2 attendees summed it up.

…a lot of people are going to say WIFI. I call bullshit. At the community summit there was almost ZERO tweeting/posting going on because people were staying involved with what was going on in the room. I think there’s a huge value in that.

or

Many people complained about the poor WiFi, but I feel that this was a good thing as there were fewer open laptops and more engaged people actually listening rather than trying to win at live Tweeting.

The value was on stage happening right in front of everyone and in the face to face conversations with peers. If you recall, that was also our motivation for the moleskines. Unplug, put pen to paper, soak in what you are witnessing.

But I digress, never get between a dev and his internet. We get it.

A Perceived Gender Bias

We got a handful of comments about the lack of female speakers. If you were not aware prior we had 2 amazing female speakers booked well in advance. Unfortunately they had to cancel very close to the event, one just days before when it became evident she would not be able to get out of NYC due to Hurricane Sandy.

The VIP Event

So this one came as a genuine surprise to us. The feedback says it was unclear what made someone a VIP in a room full of VIP’s. Peoples feelings were hurt and/or they felt awkward about it.  That is a fair criticism. I think it boils down to a bad name choice and a little lack of clarity. So let us dispel that now.

It technically should have been called ‘An appreciation event for Sponsors, Speakers, a few key WP business leaders, and a few other special guests that helped make this event happen‘. But that is mouthful, so we used the more common term: VIP.  Also, the suite at the Suns game was the VIP Suite. We wanted to do something special to say thank you to the commercial sponsors, the speakers and to recognize a few key people that helped make the event happen either via their evangelism or relationship with one of the sponsors/speakers/organizers. 16 speakers + 6 sponsor representatives + Sally and I + a handful of key WP players + spouses.

Due to our personal connections at the arena we were upgraded to a larger suite for the price of a smaller suite. Regular suites hold 16. Ours held 60. The problem became food and liquor cost which added up quickly. So although we had the room, we didn’t have the budget to feed everyone. We were able to add a few more attendees to the list, and we were also able to include my inlaws who made the 2 hour drive to Phoenix to babysit for us during the event.

It was a budget issue, there simply was only so much money. So if I told you, pre-event, that only you from your team of 3 or 4 could attend, that is why. I would have loved to have all of the woocrew there, but only invited Adii. All of the MOJO crew, but only had room for JR. All the of event espresso crew but only invited Seth. We wanted to invite at least 1 representative from as many of the larger shops as budget would allow. You get the picture.

I take responsibility for poorly communicating the purpose of the event. If you were invited and chose to pass because you felt weird about it, I am sorry for that too because you missed a great experience. We never meant to hurt anyone or make anyone feel less important. VIP now stands for Very Incorrect Phrase.

So the big question. Will there be another one and when?

What started as a late night scotch-fueled skype conversation between Dre and myself ended in a 3 day event that I think everyone would agree was a game winning grand-slam. The distance between those 2 points was immensely vast and Sally moved mountains to make it happen for all of us. She has hinted she is on board for planning 2.0 but the only answer I can give you right now is: stay tuned.

Attendee wrap up posts

• Rebecca Gill
• Tony Perez
• Cory Miller
• David Bisset 

Feel free to pingback to this post other wrap ups.

Thank you again for attending, and thank you to all our sponsors and speakers.

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It’s been a great week at Pressnomics and from every single person of the 150+ people I’ve talked about it, it was an absolute hit. (Thanks to Josh and Sally Strebel and the Pagely gang and sponsors and participants for making it happen.)

In a word, this week has been EPIC.

Very rarely have I had the opportunity to attend an event and say, “I want to meet and talk with all of them.” And that sentiment has been expressed numerous times here.

I’m totally exhausted … but it was worth every minute. And sitting here relaxing (finally) and downloading all I’ve heard and witnessed in the last two or three days, I’ve been consumed with how we keep this momentum and energy going. 

I have four questions (maybe challenges) for those of us in attendance:

1. How do we keep conversations going and growing?

Being in the same room for two days as 150 of your peers is a rare event. How do we stay connected to each other once we get back home and busy again?

Schedule a once a month or quarter Skyle call? Start a private forum? What ideas do you have and who will step up to lead it?

I’ll tell you right here that you could stop reading and just answer this one because the next three questions relate directly back to this one.

If we don’t stay in touch, we’ll lose some momentum, which is OK I guess … but I think the start of something great began here and it’d be a waste if we squandered an opportunity.

2. How do we keep learning from each other?

Again, related to staying in contact with each other in between Pressnomics. But talking with people after the sessions, the speakers provoked conversations and sharing afterward that went deeper.

In particular I enjoyed hearing the stories — both the success and failures and why they happened.

So how do we share the best practices to build our businesses together? And what trends are you seeing in your business and with WordPress?

Garth Koyle from Event Espresso has an excellent idea to do anonymous surveys for benchmarks of what we’re doing.

3. What one thing will you takeaway from this week and apply next week in your business?

It’s all about application. Otherwise, a year from now, we’ll simply say, we got together, had some good talks, met some good people but beyond that, it was a nice time in beautiful Chandler because I didn’t do anything different.

So if this event was a win for you – what has it changed and how are you going to implement it?

This is about next steps and action … also called implementation.

4. What are ways we can collaborate more?

Mark Jaquith challenged us to find collaboration opportunities between companies and people. This is a tough one as we are all focused on building our businesses and our competitive tendencies come into play but I’m eager to hear other people’s thoughts and ideas on it.

5. Where is WordPress going and how do help it keep going farther?

Some of my most productive time here was simply hearing answers to that question.

The fact is … WordPress changed all of our lives. I heard numerous stories of this that were deeply personal and special.

***

So that’s the questions I have for you … post your ideas and action items in the comments and let’s keep the momentum going. – Cory Miller

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Pressnomics WIP 02 from Foster & Flux on Vimeo.

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• Official Hashtag for twitter, instagram, flickr: #pressnomics
• Flickr Group, please add your photos.
• You can track all the social activity on our live homepage.
• Bring your ticket to registration. Even if it is just on your smart phone.  We will be scanning QR codes for badges.
• Registration opens at 8am, programming starts at 9:00.
• Take some time to meet our sponsors in attendance and thank them for their help. Without them this event would not be happening.
• Thank the speakers. Every single one of them volunteered and paid their own way.
• Pace yourself Thursday evening. We have some amazing speakers kicking off Friday’s programming and you want to be clear headed.
• There are some amazing local eatery’s in the plaza south of San Marcos. Grab some friends or make new ones when we break for lunch. There will be appetizers at the Thursday party, and a late night snack at the Friday party.
• Golfers meet at the Hotel course pro-shop at 8:30am Saturday.
• Bowlers meet at the Hotel main lobby at 9:30am Saturday.
• Everyone meet at 3pm Saturday at the Hotel pool for prizes.
• Network and have fun.

Let’s rock and roll.

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To me, there was way more value in the hallway conversations about talking shop and asking questions of other founders. WordCamps are amazing for learning WordPress, meeting new people, and strengthening the community. However, I want to learn more about the business side of it too and I think others do as well.

The concept of PressNomics is simple.

Set the agenda and get the business stakeholders in the same physical space. Bring in speakers that are willing to speak candidly and transparently in how they do business, mix in some sponsors to help pay the bills and some social time to breakdown the competitive barriers.

We can only lead a horse to water.

As an attendee you control the quality of your experience and what you extract from the time you spend at the event mixing with your peers.

Do

• Be present. Put away your laptop and put your phone in your pocket.
• Use a pen and paper to take notes the old fashioned way, your brain absorbs the information better.
• Engage, listen, and soak it in. People as smart or smarter than you, making as much or more in revenues are on stage sharing with you tips on leveling up your business.
• Get out of your comfort zone and meet new people.
• Have an open mind. What works for 1 may or may not work for you. But that fact it works should be proof of its merit.
• Jump in and out of conversations freely. (This is a pro tip for meeting new people and learning as many new and interesting things as possible)
• For all that is holy in the world; Relax. We as entrepreneurs wear our scars of stress as a badge of honor at times.  Have a cocktail, unwind a little bit and enjoy the time.

The post The big Why, and How to ‘do’ PressNomics. A note from an organizer. appeared first on PressNomics.

Details:

• The bus will make multiple round trips between San Marcos and the Bowling Alley {map}. First bus leaves San Marcos at 9:45AM and last bus leaves the Bowling Alley at 1:00-1:15.  It is a 8min ride. Don’t get left or you will be walking.
• Teams will be assigned to Lanes.
• Enter your names into the computer system at the lanes, so we can track scores.
• Prizes for best and worst team/player, strikes, etc. Meet at hotel pool at 3:00pm
• Lunch Provided

Link to teams sheet.

Don’t See your name? Leave a comment below.
Can’t make it? Leave a comment below.

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