The Corporate Marketing team includes Corporate Events, Corporate Communications (PR, Executive Communications and Social Media), All-Remote Marketing, and the Community Team. Corporate Marketing is ultimately responsible for creating awareness and driving top-of-funnel interest in GitLab. We do this by driving conversations in the communications channels that accelerate our objectives and by developing an integrated communication strategy that is executed globally.
There is an initiative underway to simplify Project Management across all of Marketing.
In the meantime, we have implemented a few practices to help us get organized:
Fri: Apr 17, 2020)backlog milestone if they're no longer plannedEach quarter, we create cascading OKRs from:
GitLab empowers everyone through knowledge access, job access, and the DevOps platform. This is captured in our GitLab brand.
GitLab's brand has a personality that is reflected in everything we do. It doesn't matter if we are hosting a fancy dinner with fortune 500 CIOs, at a hackathon, or telling our story on about.gitlab.com…across all our communication methods, and all our audiences, GitLab has a personality that shows up in how we communicate.
Our personality is built around four main characteristics.
These four characteristics work together to form a personality that is authentic to GitLab team-members, community, and relatable to our audience. If we were quirky without being human we could come across as eccentric. If we were competent without being humble we could come across as arrogant.
GitLab has a higher purpose to make it so that everyone can contribute. We want to inspire a sense of adventure in those around us so that they join us in contributing to making that mission a reality.
See Brand Guidelines.
Read more about our Brand Guidelines in the Brand Activation handbook.
GitLab is an open source project with a large community of contributors.
GitLab Inc. is a company based on the GitLab open source project. GitLab Inc. is an active participant in our community (see our stewardship of GitLab CE for more information), as well as offering GitLab, a product (see below).
GitLab is a complete DevOps platform, delivered as a single application. See the product elevator pitch for additional messaging.
For resources for GitLab team members who are planning on attending events or speaking at conferences, see Speaker Resources. To join the GitLab Speakers Bureau, see the Developer Evangelist page on the Speakers Bureau.
To learn more about the Corporate Events team, its purview, and how we work, please see the Corporate Event Marketing at GitLab handbook page.
See our handbook page for more details.
Sponsored Event Tiers
Sponsored Events are categorized into (3) Tiers at GitLab. The Tier of the show is determined by the sponsorship level, thought leadership opportunities, size of the booth, stakeholders attending and if the audience is our key demographic. Depending on the booths size they are staffed accordingly:
1. Tier 1: Typically uses our 20 x 20 Tier 1 booth structure, which has (4) demo stations, lightning talk area, meeting area, host counter, activation (example: VR experience), & coding challenge desk. Ideally 20-30 staff members will be asked to work at the booth in order to adequately staff all the shifts and ensure coverage in all the zones.
For Tier 1 shows, we may add-on an additional Activation Zone space that will feature other activities. Some examples GitLab has done in that past include: a caricature artist, code challenge, charging stations, or tabletop games.
2. Tier 2: Will either be a smaller version of our Tier 1 booth or a turnkey booth 10 x 10 - 10 x 20 foot print. Around 6 - 10 staff members will be requested to staff the demo stations, activation, host counter & assist with other onsite activities such as sessions, photography or an ancillary event.
3. Tier 3: This size sponsorship does not require a big lift from Corporate Events and only 4-6 staff members will be needed onsite to manage two shifts that are properly staffed and can handle 1 or 2 demo stations and a host counter. These shows have no other activities going on such as sessions, meetings or an ancillary event.
Staff Process
Once you have taken into consideration the audience and focus of the show, you can start reaching out to managers and VPs via group slack channels to staff the show. Try to be specific in your request with travel dates,details of the show, and how many team members from the group that you're needing.
Once you have built a list, start tagging in the team members to complete the staff checklist in the comments and ask them to tag in their manager for approval.
Once the team member completes their checklist, slack DM them their registration code to register for the show with additional information for booking hotels and flights.
After you have a full staff list and all those who are expected to attend fully registered, you can start building out the staff schedule to assign booth shifts. Booth shifts typically last 4 hours and are split between AM and PM shifts.
Once the staff list is full, make sure to send out invites for:
See more details on handling and fulfillment specific on the merchandise handling page. All swag requests, creation and vendor selection is handled by the Brand Strategy team.
GitLab utilizes, Boundless and their warehouse as our swag vendor of choice. Boundless is available to produce, ship and store swag and event material for global events. The Event DRI is responsible for all swag and trade show items for their events. Since the Corporate Events team is responsible for both Owned and Sponsored Events swag, both processes are detailed below.
Sponsored Events:
Budgeting for Swag:
Owned Events:
The purpose of the recap/results deck is to give leadership a quick overview of the show in 3-5 slides. The deck should include event highlights, results, budget updates, and shout outs. Additionally, this deck will be a living document that the Event Manager should update as leads are followed up on and converted. Most recap/results decks should be completed roughly 2 weeks post-show and no later than 1 month post-show.
Example Decks:
Tier 1: 2022 KubeCon EU
Tier 2: 2022 OSSNA
Please consult the All-Remote Marketing Handbook.
Please consult the Corporate Communications Handbook.
Please consult the Social Marketing Handbook.
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Return to the main GitLab Marketing Handbook.