Whenever I am involved in organizing a conference, I write a “This was …” article. This November we again ran our annual conference “Experts Live Europe” in Prague. We had a great time spending some days with the European Microsoft community!
Goals
Our goals when we started this conference journey was very simple.
We are attending conferences throughout the year, some of them are awesome, some not so much. We wanted to have a premium conference that brings together the best we have seen out there, a conference we would be happy to attend ourselves. That said, we try to improve every year and bring in new ideas. And we listen to the attendee feedback and try to respect that input as well.
Another important goal is to have a conference with a real community feeling. No matter if you are an attendee, expert, sponsor, apprentice, geek, master or anything else: we are one community where everyone is equally respected. Every year we have lots of returning community members and it really gives everyone this feeling coming back to a big family get-together. That’s epic.
Last but not least: there is a small team behind this conference that is part of the community, that lives the community dream. We dont work with any marketing agency to plan and run this. It’s just our team that is behind this with passion and heart.
Facts
Let’s start with some conference facts.
- Experts Live Europe 2019
- November 20-22 2019
- Prague, Czechia
- Prague Congress Center, PCC
- 400+ people from 30 different countries
- 47 top experts/speakers from all across the globe
- 12 sponsors
- 1 welcome note
- 1 keynote
- 4 pre-conference tracks
- 72 breakout sessions
- 5 Experts Exchanges
- Woman in Tech Exchange
- Experts Live TV (Interviews)
- Attendee networking party with show acts
- VIP party in the cloud
- Closing drinks & sponsor raffles
Experts & Sessions
To have a good conference you need top speakers that are delivering top sessions. Thanks to our community network, we are connected with the best of the best experts out there. So once the call for papers was opened for Experts Live Europe 2019, we received a crazy amount of session proposals. Interested in some facts?
- 100 session submissions received in the first 2 days
- 489 session submissions received in total
- 206 unique speakers submitted proposals
- 2.4 session proposals were submitted per speaker (average)
- 78 unique sessions accepted
- 47 unique speakers accepted
- From 17 different coutries
- 33 Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)
- Travel distances
- Furthest ~8000km
- Closest ~10km
First, these numbers show that it’s a pretty tough job to make session and experts selections. And I can tell you that it broke our hearts to decline so many sessions and send away top speakers for this year’s conference. But if you are a speaker these numbers should not disencourage you, but be a motivation to make it back to the lineup next year!
Sponsors
As I already mentioned in the intro section of this post, we want Experts Live Europe to be a premium event where everyone feels comfortable. Beside bringing in top experts from across the globe that also means we want to have premium food & beverages, top venue service, great networking parties and more. This is only possible because the support of our awesome sponsors. And of course they also add much value to the show by presenting their solutions in the expo hall, by delivering their sponsor sessions and (not to forget) with nice giveaways!
VIP Party
This year we offered a special, limited VIP conference pass that gave pass holders access to the VIP party. The party was limited to 180 people and it was a great opportunity to get in contact with experts, sponsors, staff and other VIP pass holders. The party was held during the pre-conference day in one of Pragues best clubs, the Cloud 9 at the Hilton.
- Top location in Prague
- Top floor club & lounge with nice view over the city
- Premium dinner
- Unlimited drinks
If you attend our conference next year, make sure you don’t miss this party!
Networking Party
The regular conference networking party was held in the expo hall on day 1. Great food, conversations and lots of fun was the motto. And we had some nice showacts to drive the party!
- Premium food & beverages
- The Apples rock band
- Dragon breath desert
- Photo booth
- Maro Kart Challenge
Feedback & Experts Live Europe 2020
The feedback we received was again overwhelming, for the overall conference experience as well as the sessions and speakers. And also because of the host city of the conference, Prague.
It’s still a bit too early to announce the plans for Experts Live Europe 2020, but I can already tell you that we started working on next year’s show. So stay tuned, follow us on the social channels and check out our web site from time to time!
- Facebook (all conference pictures available)
- Website (register for the newsletter to not miss anything)
Team
To close this post I want to reveal what “we” and “us” in this post refers to. We are a small team of just two people that organizes Experts Live Europe, Isidora and myself. Beside that we are also involved in several other events and conferences that we assist with our community and event management expertise.
Working on Experts Live Europe is lots of hard work, but also lots of fun. We love what we do and are happy to be back with new ideas and also a big surprise next year, so stay tuned! Until then: Thanks everyone who was part of this year’s show. Community rocks!
Cheers
Marcel
marcelzehner.ch 