If you want to build a local group of builders, go to Community incubator. If you’re planning an event and want PostHog to be involved, go to Community events
We’re 100% remote and set up to work asynchronously–but there's a real benefit in getting together in real life. Still, we’re figuring out how to do events "the PostHog way."
For us to be involved the event has to be relevant to our ICP. We prefer not to be a small fish in a big pond, so we pass on big conferences. We prefer pull over push, so we avoid booths, badge-scanning, buying attendee lists, paying to speak, webinars, and dinners.
The event formats we get involved in (and organize ourselves) fall into one of these:
- Hands-on gatherings that help our customers build faster and better for their customers
- Experiences that allow engineers and founders to flex and grow their skillset
- Getting product engineers together to identify problems and build solutions for users
- AFK time such as a fun activity, some sightseeing, or just spending time together
Community incubator
Where we connect builders around the world by helping them incubate micro-communities that gather for weekly co-working sessions. As we know from our own sprints, offsites, and hackathons, we can build a whole lot when we gather in person.
We have already seen how this format makes a higher impact on communities of builders because of the velocity built over weeks of communal work, collaboration, and creativity.
Geographies
The pilot program is starting in tech hubs in North America, UK, and EU outside major capitals (examples include Detroit, Krakow, Guadalajara, and Manchester). After the pilot group, we'll expand to more cities encompassed by other regions and continents.
Co-working structure
The focus is on recurring weekly gatherings with small groups of ~10 people.
Gatherings can take place during weekday evenings or weekends and go for about 3 hours. A suggested format is to have time for intros, at least 2-2.5 hours for working, and demos to close. Outside co-working, the group is encouraged to get together for an AFK activity such as a walk, bike ride, hike, or local sightseeing.
Venues
The ideal venues for the community incubator are free-to-use spaces conducive to a group comfortably working (accessible, quiet, Wi-Fi-enabled.) If you have a venue and want to host a community of builders once per week, reach out directly.
Community events
Community events are in real life (IRL) manifestations of our mission organized by enthusiastic partners and customers. They usually originate when someone has identified an interesting topic for an event to help people move faster, smarter, and more together.
If you have a topic or gap you've identified but are unsure of format, here are some ideas:
- Structure: participatory > nonparticipatory, bottoms-up > top down, unconference > conference, demos > pitches.
- Curation: Get fewer people but the right people to the event. Prioritise this alongside the content. This extends to speakers, co-hosts, and attendees.
- Atmosphere foster a welcoming environment where everyone can succeed.
In our high trust environment, we expect organizers who initiate events to fully own them.
What community events are not for:
- Forcing PostHog or any other product into conversations with people
- Watching or planning things rather than doing them
- Just networking for the sake of chit chat
Formulating a purpose and structure
An impactful event follows the principles of user-driven development which stems from user problems or requests. Who is the user for your community event? The user can be your actual customers, fellow founders, local engineers or any other collection(s) of people. Talk to them first to validate if the event is worth your time.
We use GitHub for everything at PostHog. When you’re ready to organize an event, create a GitHub issue using this template and assign it to Daniel Zaltsman. Prioritize progress (on which you can build) over perfection.
Put real effort into this first step. Defining the "what, why and how" of an event beforehand will pay off on event day. Let our shared values guide you. Don’t submit until your answer to “Would I attend this?” is a clear “yes.”
Getting support
We support community events in a handful of ways.
Speakers: Want a speaker in our ecosystem (team PostHog, customers, partners)? We’ll try our best. When considering speakers, avoid:
- Corporate speak aficionados spewing tedious enterprise marketing nonsense
- People LARPing (live action role-playing) as executives
- Loudest person pretending to know more than they do
Content: If your speaker(s) are unsure of what to talk about, consider going back to the purpose of the event. Otherwise, we have plenty of material for your inspiration.
Merch: We use the store merch processes to handle distribution of PostHog-branded merch. We tend to be generous with merch for community events. Outline what you had in mind in the issue.
Co-promotion: Most of the time the help requested is in the form of promotion. As a general rule, we don't promote events we aren't supporting or co-hosting ourselves. We decide when to repost community events on our social media channels and email on a case by case basis.
Venue and catering: Identify the vendors and costs and include them in the GitHub issue. If the event will not be possible without monetary support, make that clear. We may support the cost of venue, food, or beverages but require the paper napkin math.
Feedback: You’ll learn more by doing than planning so don’t worry about having every detail complete before submitting for feedback from our team.
Branding it
Our brand is a reflection of us and how we’re experienced by others, including events.
Words: Naming products is hard. Same goes for naming events. As a prerequisite, read our primer on writing for developers. Try your best to come up with event names that communicate the 'what?' and will attract the 'who?' And again, ask yourself if you would be interested in this event based on the title.
Pictures: Every event is improved with a flyer or poster that showcases the essence of the experience. We keep a comprehensive list of brand assets and guidelines on the brand assets page. Share your assets and we’ll give feedback. Depending on the scale and timing of the event, our team may be able to help with branding as well.
Follow-ups
Community events are better when organizers share what happened, what you learned, and any follow-up actions. We value feedback and expect the same from event organizers. In addition to what you learned and feedback from attendees, we will share any photos, videos, quotes, data points with our team.
Sponsoring external events
We sometimes get asked by other companies or people if we are interested in sponsoring their events - these can range from small to extremely large. We don't do these at the moment because they are a poor return on investment, though we always encourage team members to speak at these if there is an opportunity to, and we can support you with budget, social posts, merch etc. Ask in the #team-brand-vibes channel.
Sponsoring student organizations
Sometimes students at varying universities ask us if we are interested in sponsoring their career fairs, hackathons, or other student-led initiatives. We don't currently participate in these. Although we don't use specific years of experience as a qualifier for hiring, we rarely hire students straight out of school. If there is a custom partnership you have in mind or it involves an existing employee's alma-mater, ask in the #team-brand-vibes channel.