Google x UP Global
Celebrating our appreciation for our Global Community Leaders by taking over Downtown Las Vegas.
UP Global Summit was an annual gathering, seeking to reward the most involved community leaders, from around the world.
In 2014, UP Global partnered with Google for Entrepreneurs to host the UP Global Summit in Las Vegas, NV.
Every year we would gather our most involved community leaders in one place and treat them to a week of workshops, mingling, and fun adventures. It is a way for the non profit to say “thank you!” to the organizers and a way for the organizers to meet others that dedicate so many hours to making their communities better.
Any event with international attendees is a logistical challenge, but even moreso with a city takeover in Las Vegas. We handled it all, from booking flights and hotel reservations, to getting permits for our food trucks and venues, to speaker management, content development, organizing multiple fun activities, family dinners and visits all over the city.
Can you hear us now?
Our main goal for these summits was to create strategic conversations that would bring different perspectives of developing entrepreneurship hubs around the world: what are the challenges, what are some tools that we can use to grow, how do partners integrate in a new ecosystem , etc. We wanted everybody to learn and share with each other and to be able to go back home with new ideas that they could use to improve their communities in a significant way.
For this to happen, we worked on a comprehensive content plan for months that included:
General sessions that would outline a shared vision of entrepreneurship and recommendations about how to move forward while providing the latest information about our plans for the year.
A vast group of content tracks that would focus on specific needs: creativity, growth hack, storytelling, etc. These groups allowed community leaders to interact with like minded people and share their stories around a common topic in a more intimate setting and targeted conversations.
Community Partners were an integral part of our DNA. Our community leaders wanted to learn about what projects they had in place to help them and our partners wanted to get honest feedback and learn from their challenges to be able to tailor their offerings. We hosted different sessions to foster new relationships in a small setting and we set up specific next steps after the event to continue the momentum between them.
You had to be there.
Our digital strategy focused on one thing: FOMO. This was an invite only event - rewarding UP Global’s top Community Leaders with an all expenses paid experience. The goal was to generate excitement around the event so folks not in attendance would live vicariously through the tweets, instagram, pictures, videos, and more and be inspired to work hard during the year producing their local events and be able to gain an invite next time.
Our spaces were designed to be photogenic and selfie-friendly, with signage promoting our hashtag #upsummit. By using this tactic, we made sure that at all hours, there would be organic social media coverage of our different activities. It was also a great way to promote our sponsors and partners that hosting sessions or supporting specific activities.
The onboarding experience was top notch: our designer created a set of informational assets that were visually easy to understand and would provide the right amount of information to attendees. We built a swag package with everything they may have needed during the summit: branded hoodie for the night, toiletry bag including sun care and a first aid kit, notepad, sunglasses, recommended reading, maps and a cool tote bag to carry around. Our swag became like a status symbol amongst community leaders since you could only get it if you were invited to one of our summits.
Global Sponsors
The results.
The results of the UP Global Summit were not a short term measurement. It took about 10 months to see the impact, which was measured by an increase in organized Startup Weekends all over the world and sign ups to our newsletters. We were able to track participants and see how many events they did after they had attended our Global Summit, and if they had partnered with someone else that attended the event to facilitate a Startup Weekend somewhere else.
The spike in events organized by these community leaders was significant, lead to a measurable increase in our revenue, and solidified the value of partner investment in our event. At the same time, it opened the door to be able to sign new sponsors when they saw the impact it had in other brands.
Google for Entrepreneurs became known all around the world as the biggest supporter of startup ecosystems and founders. We went on to partner many more times with them afterwards, hosting some our local summits in their Google Campuses for Entrepreneurs in places like Brazil, Spain and Ireland. We also saw how our startup weekend alumni would join their campuses in the different regions, and continued working with them thanks to the great relationship that they had forged during the summits. A great way to build community and pipeline that was a win win for both.
