# Non Fungible Tickets The NFT movement got one thing right - people want digital art that signals their membership of an in-group, and to feed our [status vanity](https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service). Vercel realized this early on, beginning with [backendlessConf_ in 2019](https://vercel.com/blog/our-first-online-conference) and then [pioneering the ticket format](https://twitter.com/leeerob/status/1298732122782535684) with Nextjs Conf in 2020 and then [Next.js Conf Special Edition](https://vercel.com/blog/nextjs-special-event-recap) and [Next.js Conf](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1436358607373697024) in 2021. %[https://twitter.com/vercel/status/1300469124397580288] Here are the publicly reported registration numbers for each conference: - 2019: [3,888](https://vercel.com/blog/our-first-online-conference) - Dec 2020: between [70,000](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1320720460649095168) and [82,000+](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1348439907052605444) - June 2021: [over 65,000](https://vercel.com/blog/nextjs-special-event-recap) for a "Special Edition" - Oct 2021: [at least 70,000](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1452665369248759809) Registration for 2022 has just started today, with another new ticket visual: %[https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1565736023362916352] *the conference page itself being a [moderately successful](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32692590) Show HN [for 5 hours](https://hnrankings.info/32692590/), with [2 designers and Dall-E](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1565793629582422017)* Contrast this to the usual signup flow of other conferences, where you either have to provide enough info to get Pentagon clearance: ![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1662153878900/2BuMaLWqq.png align="left") Or the post-signup flow thanks you but gives you no incentive whatsoever to spread the word: ![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1662153950505/7zCl37fCv.png align="left") You've seen a billion of these. They are leftovers from the days of in-person conferences, when marginal cost was not zero, ticket price wasn't free, and therefore word of mouth and virality/FOMO got you less far than pimping out your speakers and buying ads. ## Step 1: Vanity, thy name is Registrations I often think of [devrel metrics](https://www.swyx.io/measuring-devrel) as coming in pairs: a Vanity number, and an Honesty number. It may be easy to goose one up but the other keeps you honest. For every Subscribers/Followers count there is a Watch Time. For every Unique views there is a Click Through Rate. And so on. The increasingly beautiful tickets, with their embedded ticket number subtly hinting at the number of signups AND a person's place in the queue, take advantage of a unique asymmetry for online conferences: **Registrations are all you need.** - **Big numbers** is all anyone - sponsors, speakers, investors, *even other attendees* - cares about - **Registrations** are the biggest numbers of any conference (being top of funnel). Yes, you do care about other metrics: live attendance, and async viewership, and leads, and all that other stuff. But they are: 1. correlated with Registrations 2. smaller than Registrations (less interesting to brag) 3. harder to measure (do you want peak or average? within what window?) Keep it simple. **Registrations.** The **Non Fungible Ticket** strategy recognizes that **building hype for a conference** is as important as the content for the conference itself, in terms of tangible business impact. How do you spread word of mouth like wildfire? People like sharing art. People **love** sharing *personal* art. ## Step 2: Go Overboard on Design Put the attendee on the ticket. Face, name, github handle. People are most interested in themselves. %[https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1298255878529773571] *Bonus: make custom avatars for each speaker like [React Advanced](https://twitter.com/search?q=reactadvanced%20avatar&src=typed_query).* Make tickets that employees brag about *without being forced to*: %[https://twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/1565745046707650567] Add easter eggs that aren't lame: %[https://twitter.com/steventey/status/1565739260312952833] Followup with a call to action on email in case they missed it: ![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1662166471233/KIY4gsZZN.png align="left") Usually, conference websites are outsourced to a contractor, or left in the hands of 1-2 designer-developers. Vercel's conf landing page took [14+2 people](https://twitter.com/steventey/status/1565762030459568135?s=20&t=-vk-oXaAom8yaFyZPJNvfQ). Is there more to conferences than being really, really... really ridiculously good looking? ## Step 3: Open Source Adoption Developers suck at design, so once you have a great design template, *that has been validated* ("if its good enough for Nextjs Conf, its good enough for me"), you will be copied endlessly. Since Vercel open sourced their [Virtual Event Starter Kit in Dec 2020](https://twitter.com/vercel/status/1339242284563320832), it has been adopted by: - [React Conf 2021](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1453430274709094401) - [React Miami Conf 2022](https://twitter.com/MichelleBakels/status/1485790782187528194) - [Strapi Conf](https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1371200521080602624) - [Supabase Launch Week](https://twitter.com/supabase/status/1549784137006886912) And even adapted [for non-tech events](https://twitter.com/digitalbase/status/1517454988942979072). and adopted as a template by [every CMS partner of Vercel's](https://github.com/vercel/virtual-event-starter-kit/network/members). Other organizations like StackBlitz and Vite have taken the ticket idea on its own: %[https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1547664169347866624] ## Other Hyped Online Conferences What other successful strategies have been adopted by online-native conferences? I have in mind: - HYTRADBOI: https://www.hytradboi.com/ - All lightning talks, all prerecorded, 2 tracks - Known curator - Entertaining topics/unusual tech that break the norm - Performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PX0BV9hGZY - Skits/editing (not slide deck) https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/your-frontend-needs-a-database More talk genres https://www.swyx.io/cfp-advice#pick-a-genre - Vicki Boykis: https://twitter.com/vboykis/status/1565505261162446849 - GitHub let you [create your own OctoCats](https://myoctocat.com/) ([Octodex](https://octodex.github.com/)) ([excitement here](https://twitter.com/search?q=own%20octocat%20github%20&src=typed_query&f=top)) ## Update 1 day after launch, Next.js Conf 2022 is already boasting 30k registrations and reminding people that they have an easter egg: %[https://twitter.com/vercel/status/1566114964342915072]