Avocet has been integrally involved with LSW since the beginning. Members of our team have been featured speakers over the years and from the start, we have handled all the marketing and public relations to promote the event. However, 2021 was a bit different. After enduring one of the most challenging years anyone can remember, Longmont’s entrepreneurs, startups, and businesses were ready to be inspired and to return to the New Normal. While LSW had been entirely virtual in 2020 due to COVID, for 2021 we knew we wanted to bring back the event’s in-person experience, energy while maintaining safety and comfort levels for all.

This necessitated the coordination of a hybrid approach: the combining of — and creating excitement for — live in-person social events along with virtual sessions that abided by local health department mandates. We needed to consider the logistical management of such an approach, which meant not only working through the technological challenges it posed, but also working with sponsors who were committing to a new approach to this long-standing event, coming up with content and topics that made sense in the pandemic environment, and the issues presented by differentiating the event from other competing startup events in the state occurring around the same time.

Every strategy and tactic we deployed to orchestrate and promote LSW21 embraced an “open for business” optimism. We began planning LSW21 six months out. We quickly restructured committees that would be responsible for various aspects of the event: technology, marketing, social, sponsors, and volunteers to help provide depth and breadth across our community leadership who boldly volunteered to lead this year’s event. An Avocet team member served on each committee. Sub-committee and committee-at-large meetings were held bi-weekly and then weekly leading up to the event.

Our execution began with reaching out to sponsors — the local business leaders that have long supported the event — as well as to new sponsors. We also embarked on a new relationship with a local media partner who agreed to stream the live sessions.

We plotted out the week’s format and daily themes early on, as well, giving us plenty of time to research and invite speakers and panelists well in advance. The speakers were chosen based on their ability to contribute to the overall event and its themes and were tapped for their experience and insights, especially as it related to a post-pandemic world.

Once the themes — Re(Fresh), which highlighted innovation; Re(Calibrate), which focused on operations; Re(Imagine), highlighted leadership; Re(Design) was all about creativity; and Re(Vitalize) which focused on capital — were decided, and the presenters and moderators confirmed, we established regular meetings for each session’s group. We assisted speakers and panelists with creating their presentations and drafted moderator and speaker playbooks that gave minute-by-minute breakdowns of each day and each session. We also worked closely with volunteers, bringing them into our organizational planning so that the event would run smoothly from start to finish.

Each day was anchored with in-person gatherings and social networking events that occurred at local venues. We helped promote these events through organic social and news releases.

We rebuilt the website that incorporated a best-in-class event CRM and refined our 2021 targeted audiences with campaigns specific to Earned, Owned, Shared and Paid initiatives.