Brian Proffitt is the Senior Manager of Community Outreach at Red Hat’s OSPO. In this episode, we connect at the Open Source Summit EU to discuss how Brian uses events to drive both lead generation and community-building efforts. Throughout our conversation, Brian describes how measuring the ROI of an event can be tricky and why it’s important to look at events as a long game strategy. We also discuss why events provide some of the most valuable feedback when testing your positioning and messaging, and what can be done to increase the odds that your events are successful and produce good outcomes.

Highlights:

• I introduce Brian, who is the Senior Manager of Community Outreach at Red Hat’s OSPO as he joins me at the Open Source Summit EU (00:28)
• How Brian categorizes the different types of events he attends and hosts (01:55)
• The primary metric and objective for lead gen events, and what can be done to increase the odds that your lead gen events bear fruit (05:18)
• Why events are such a valuable part of testing your positioning and messaging (09:14)
• Brian delves into the value of community events and what the ROI for those looks like (12:50)
• The strategy Brian employs for getting the most out of community events when ROI can be difficult to measure (15:40)
• Brian shares why he feels that events are more of a long game strategy (23:24)
• The advice that Brian would give to an open-source founder or start-up that is looking to get the most out of their events strategy (25:28)
• The best ways to learn more and connect with Brian (31:34)

Links:

Brian

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianproffitt/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTechScribe
• Company: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/channel/red-hat-open-source-program-office