Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Planning LTX is CHAOS”.
All right Dan hit me sure, I’m a little embarrassed by this one. Hi lld had the joy of seeing Dan frantically making the sponsor list for the intro at the keoksia booth earlier. What is the most frantic last minute work that you had to do for an LTX before an LTX? I’Ve had a really easy time with every LTX I just got ta show up and I’m like this is cool man, and then I do my stuff. I have nothing to do with these man.
I would say that the most frantic one for me was the story I told earlier where we were trying to turn 2018 into not a complete disaster um. Well, I know I know it’s because we worked really hard at the last minute to kind of turn things around a little bit. They they we yeah. We came up with some stuff and it was. It was a real challenge.
It was not me I I helped, but it was a team effort and that was the most stressed I have ever been about LTX ever yeah. Oh sorry, I got a message simultaneously. Hi dll, if cost and Logistics were no issue, what would the number one thing? Each of you would want to make a reality for a future LTX. Oh wow, that’s really tough! I mean for me um, it’s already gotten kind of so close to what we had what we could have ever hoped for it to be.
We wanted it to be. You know not just um about Linus Tech tips like that was that was obviously some some kindling that we could use to start. The fire right is to to draw you guys in here, for you know the uh, Linus and Luke, and you know the rest of their punk ass crew right um.
But we had the the greater vision for what could make it more than just that was to make it about bringing together the community, because LTX didn’t actually start as a uh uh like a trade show it didn’t start as a convention. It started as a meet-up um 2017 came about because it was becoming untenable for us to try to do like a lot of smaller meetups. It was. It was kind of like oh well. If we could just get the community all in one place and sign everything they shove in front of our faces and take all the Selfies that they could ever want – and you know just talk – talk shop with people, then maybe that’ll that’ll kind of be our our Solution to to doing that in an in a scalable way, and then it was it was so awesome and it was so cool bringing the community together like that that the next time around you know we had the idea of like oh what, if we could like Bring other creators out and then people could see more than just us and you can kind of see how it like starts to evolve into just this. This ever broadening definition of community and obviously you know you have to bring brands in in order to help pay for the thing because believe it or not, um, we can’t sell an unlimited number of whale tickets. It’S funny the whales actually asked me. Why didn’t you sell more whale tickets because we, you could have you know, made this thing super mega profitable if you just sold more whale tickets – and I was like right but there’s five of you here or six of you or whatever at the at the whale Dinner, did you really want there to be 60? Would it have still felt so intimate right, so there’s a limit to what you can do in terms of ticket sales you have to you have to bring in Brands, but you know we wanted to do it in a way that was really authentic and really Community. Driven as well so um we’re kind of like okay, so we’re gon na we’re gon na bring in the audience we’re gon na bring in uh other creators, we’re gon na bring in Brands and then and then what happened at 2019 was the creators all started like Networking with each other and the audience started networking with them and the brands networks with creators and they networked with the audience.
They became this like super cool thing, and we had all this momentum and then the world got sick um and I’m I’m really. I’M really happy. I’M really excited to see that four years later, it’s managed to, it seems to me still be that but bigger and better and awesomer. So I guess I don’t know I wouldn’t foreign, I guess what I’m trying to say is. I don’t really think I would change anything other than you know just try and make it better. Try and try and uh.
Have the POS terminals have no connectivity issues and you know, try and make the lines shorter and and like go wider. You know, go, go, go broader, go more whale yeah! It’S like all! Just natural progression stuff. I don’t think, there’s anything major that it’s missing.
It’S just yeah nah. I think LTX stays here some something that I think would be like. A pretty crazy Milestone is once one of the buildings can’t properly contain us, and we have to take both that’ll, be like a pretty big moment.
We made it yeah yeah, because you know packs they have more than one building. So, okay. So here’s a here’s. An on the spot question uh-oh and I I don’t think you have to actually answer it. Okay, then I won’t, but I’m wondering what the vibe check is right now, because leading up to the event every single time, oh you’re, really gon na. Do this I’m gon na do this leading up to the event every single time? It’S you know it’s actually really expensive. We make less off of this than you would think. Also known as like I don’t know, opportunity.
Cost of LTX is extremely high. Yes, so there’s that and it’s really difficult and like it, it creates a bunch of short weeks which is hard for production, like things are really hard, but now you’re here and I do tend to find that there’s the negativity dip and then LTX happens and he’s Like yeah, let’s go so how are you feeling? I always? I always have a blast at these. It’S always really exciting. Uh. You know a it’s. It’S so cool to see that you know every comment right like every every chat message. You know there’s an actual real person and it’s hard to feel like that when it’s all online, it becomes just numbers right like this feels like a lot more people to me right now than the people watching online. Just because they’re not they’re, not there, they’re, not they’re, not tangible, but these aren’t we’re not on side monitors for these people. [ Laughter, ], tell me in chat. Do you feel personally attacked right now, but that number that number online is 10 15x? What’S here so like, theoretically, we’re talking a little bit like this enormous, you know crowd right, um, but it’s a it’s so cool that it feels real and it feels so big and it feels so connected and then B. It feels so positive. That’S something that is fantastic has that I just I it’s not the same vibe that I necessarily have ever gotten anywhere else and if you get it from very old packs, but not anymore, but it’s not just us. You talk to anyone and they’re, just like oh yeah, I, like I’m meeting so many people here, and I just I like. I did all this stuff and it’s so cool and um. I just it’s hard to not kind of fall in love with it right, not not to be the sometimes boring businessy person that I’ve kind of become. But I think it’s also a really interesting and good reminder or show, depending on how long people have been here.
For certain people on the team of like why we do some of the things that we do sure, so you start having these conversations with people in person that are like this is why I got into this career. This helped me get through various things. This got me interested or or got myself and my partner interested in one single subject that we can Bond over lots of different reasons why this community is important to them. So you don’t have to answer now I will I will.
I will give you the best answer. I can um, you know until we decide, otherwise the intention is to bring it back next year. However, however, we haven’t booked the convention center. Yet we do need to do a debrief. We need to make sure that what we’re doing makes sense – and this is one of the reasons – these kinds of really hard decisions – is one of the reasons that I honestly just don’t really want the pressure of being CEO anymore.
I actually don’t want to make the call I would like to. I would like to comment I’d like to participate. If it’s something that the company does, that makes sense and to be clear, you know taryn’s, not gon na I’ve talked to him about LTX he’s not going to come in and immediately go well. The ROI on this isn’t good enough. Uh see you later right, like he understands the inherent value of you, know, networking with other creators networking with the community bringing people together um.
We just have to make sure that we can do it in a way that is not breaking the back of our team, because that’s the that’s the other, that’s the other. Really important aspect we have to consider is, you know everyone talks about how you know crunch is bad right. I think we can all agree that whatever industry you’re in crunch is a is a negative thing right, and so what? If I told you that I you can have LTX, but we can’t find a way to figure out how to do this without it causing crunch for a significant portion of our team. Is that worth it? I don’t know I I don’t know, that’s true and, and it’s true there is crunch LTX – is really really hard on a lot of the team. So um, you know obviously we’d love to try to find a way to make it just easy and smooth – and everything goes great and it does it’s totally cool right, but man, the logistics we’ve got like 6 000 people in here today. Isn’T that yeah right? It’S wild.
Do you know what 2019 was do you know the member attendee count Chase told me today, and I think I see him at the back. Is that chase you silhouette, yeah, okay, uh Chase, just uh. Give me a no no you’re good you’re good you’re. Good, but but was it 2300 at 2019? Is that a yes or no for about 2300 and for attendees today we had over four thousand and then plus the plus ones of our staff, which is now a significant number of people.
Each gets two. So that’s like another 200 people, plus our staff, which is another 100 people, uh, plus all the vendors like we had. Some Brands show up with like 10 15 people for their Booth, so we have apparently it’s close to 6 000 people today, um, which is it’s just a lot, it’s a lot and um we want we want to do it, that’s what I’ll say we want to Cool yeah good enough: okay, yeah .