Modern Data Infrastructure Summit
San Francisco, CA
I produced a first-year technical conference for a data infrastructure startup. Work kicked off in May 2025 and I executed on September 18, 2025.
A data infrastructure startup wanted to build community credibility by hosting a technical conference for engineers, architects, and infrastructure leaders. They came to me with a date, a venue, a logo, and a list of people they wanted to reach. Everything else was on me.
How it started
The client's original budget was $150K. My first job was to bring that number back down to earth. I rebuilt the budget from scratch, figured out where we could cut without gutting the experience, and landed on a working plan of roughly $40K in sponsorship revenue against $44.5K in expenses. We ended up basically breaking even on a first-year event, which almost never happens.
From there, I owned the whole thing: sponsorship prospectus, speaker coordination, ticketing, venue logistics, catering, photography, videography, insurance, badges, swag, staffing, run of show, social media, and day-of execution.
What I did
Budget and sponsorship strategy: I took a $150K wishlist and turned it into a real $40K plan. I created the sponsorship prospectus, set up tiered pricing, and built the outreach materials that helped close five sponsors (MotherDuck, ScyllaDB, Greptime, Redpanda Data, and TiDB/PingCAP).
Speaker program: I wrote the call for speakers, coordinated with all eight speakers across seven sessions, managed slide deadlines, and built the full run of show. The lineup included folks from Carnegie Mellon, ScyllaDB, MotherDuck, Greptime, Redpanda, DragonflyDB, and ShareChat, covering everything from observability data lakes to agentic AI to cloud cost optimization at hypergrowth scale.
Marketing: I owned all organic marketing and social strategy. I also ran a targeted direct mail campaign, sending postcards to ICP accounts in the Bay Area. At least one attendee told us they came specifically because of the postcard, which was a great moment. I also managed audience lists across HubSpot, Luma, and Apollo, targeting previous conference attendees, local contacts, and ICP companies.
Vendor management: I booked and managed the photographer, videographer, caterer, event insurance, and check-in staff. I negotiated with The Foundry SF on A/V, security, staging, and bar service.
Day of: I printed the badges at home. I ran setup starting at 6:00am. I managed set up, check-ins, stage-managed the entire day, time-kept all sessions, coordinated the cocktail reception, and oversaw teardown.
After the event: All talks were recorded and released as a YouTube playlist, so the content kept working long after the room emptied out.
The numbers
- 172 signups, 78 attendees (60 of those were non-sponsors, non-speakers)
- 5 confirmed sponsors, $40K in sponsorship revenue
- $2,600 in ticket sales
- Total spend of ~$44.5K against ~$42.6K in revenue
- 8 speakers across 7 sessions
- Full day at The Foundry SF (4,400 sq ft), 8:30am to 6:30pm plus a 2-hour cocktail reception
- All sessions recorded and published
Why this one matters to me
Most first-year conferences lose a lot of money. That's considered normal. You're building the brand, finding the audience, and proving the concept. The fact that we broke even on year one, with a strong speaker lineup, real sponsors, and genuinely positive feedback from attendees, is something I'm really proud of. I touched every single piece of this event, and heard from our highest value speaker that they've never had someone give them a "know before you go" guide as dedicated and detailed as what I provided.