Participating in a Microsoft launch event 
As you read the following I hope you keep the following in mind: I'm an IT Pro and I am absolutely shameless. I recently participated in a state-wide launch of a Microsoft product and themed our table around the holiday season – we had snow, stockings, Santa hat and more than 2000 pieces of candy. Total marketing expense outlet: $65.00 and a free UPS Store Santa hat. Orlando IT Pro association was recently invited by Culminis to participate in the regional launch of Microsoft SQL 2005, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Biztalk. We were the only town in Florida to hold the launch and consequently had over 2000 people register for the event at the Orange County and Convention Center in beautiful Orlando, Florida. We started promoting this event the very moment it was launched and even had Microsoft Technet speaker Blain Barton come to our group and demonstrate all the small-business relevant SQL 2005 topics. Blain is a very dynamic speaker and was able to cover the very basics and essentials of what SQL Server 2005 does all the way up to answering DBA questions for several members that were planning their migrations. Microsoft sent us five (5) copies of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk along with a banner and some swag to give away at the event. We also received free training on SQL 2005 from Microsoft. Because we had a highly successful in-group launch of SQL Server 2005 and we participated in another event with Culminis related to SQL 2005 (Tampa launch hosted by Windows IT Pro magazine) we were invited by Culminis to be a part of the launch. Culminis really took great care of us from the planning to scheduling and getting everything we needed – power, network, signs, etc. We had a central point of contact in John-Paul Parker who arranged and managed everything for us. All we were responsible for coming to the event, there was no hidden agenda of having to promote the event or participate in any other way (which we did anyhow because it turned out to be highly valuable to our members). Microsoft provided tables to other organizations (PASS, .NET group, etc) but in past the system administrator / infrastructure IT Pro was not represented at all. Culminis really helped us with that and from what I was able to tell almost everyone there was at least a system administrator, some were even developers. Such is the nature of the database admin, you have to be both. Needless to say, we were the poorest financially backed group there – Where we gave away cheap candy the INETA sponsored group (which even had the local Developer Evangelist present) was inviting attendees to a skybox after-party dinner at the nearby TGI Friday's. Again, Culminis really hooked us up. We had the best table in the house, directly in front of the entrance to the vendor hall and lunch area. It was obvious Microsoft had spent a ton of money on this event as did all the vendors. I felt slightly bad that we had gotten such a prime spot but I'll take it considering such a small budget and all the great stuff Orlando IT Pro does to support Microsoft products at absolutely no cost to Microsoft. Event Management Approach 
So how did we market Orlando IT Pro? The first smart thing I did was to wait for other SBS group leaders to provide their feedback on their individual SQL Server 2005 launches. I got great feedback from Tavis and Frank and was able to shoot higher than I was going to with my swag – I had originally only budgeted enough stuff for 500 people but once they told me that their events were maxed out I decided to go for the full count. Microsoft events suffer from a tremendous dropoff (especially the free events) in attendees vs. registrations so I still went into it a little conservatively. 
I know my fellow IT Pro's, we are down right allergic to pushy salesmen and garbage literature. I was not about to go in and kill a bunch of trees just to give someone extra weight to the swag-bag. Nope, I decided to get in the spirit of Christmas and instead hand out candy. Think about it, 12 foot table, 2000 people, in less than 8 hours. There was no way we could actually talk, it was going to be a line. Meaning, I had to load the swag into a shotgun and fire at the people anywhere near me. 
What I ended up doing is going to the local Big Lots to find a bunch of candy canes – the smaller the better. I was hoping to find them individually wrapped so I could staple them to our group information sheet. People cannot resist candy, it is something you just have an immediate use for and something you tend to be happy to find when you're doing cleaning. Perhaps I'm just a fatass but finding vendor marketing crap really pails in comparison to finding food in a giveaway. Either way, I was sure folks would love it. 
Candy was cheap, super cheap. I spent about $1.99 for each 100 pack of miniature mint candy canes. I also bought a dozen boxes of premium/huge candy canes so I could give it to the people that actually said hello to me. Again, I know my kind, I did not need a whole lot of it. I figured, if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you and give you a bigger sugar rush. To the side is the actual bag of all the candy dumped into it, notice yet another plug for Microsoft for carrying around the candy. You would not imagine a few thousand candy canes would weight a lot but they did. On my way back from Big Lots I stopped by the UPS Store and got them to make 500 copies of my info sheet. While I was talking to the owner I noticed that he had a UPS Store santa hat. Now that would be neat, I could be Santa MCSE. With no shame I asked him to borrow the hat for a day – Something about him just finishing the holy month of Ramadan told me that he was not going to use the Santa hat a whole lot. The Event Setup 
You would be amazed at the number of people who have no idea what SBS is. For those uninformed few I had a dozen SBS eval copies that I intended to use to drive traffic and entice people to sign up for the group. I also had a banner that Mike Iem sent me at some point and this was the first time I had an appropriate venue to use it at. SBSers are quite resourceful, to the left is the picture of Nils Titley nailing the Microsoft SBS banner to the table with his shoe. It does not get far more entertaining than that at a tech event. 
There are many fun things I could think of, standing behind a 12' table by myself selling nothing and doing nothing of any value is not at the top of the "fun" list. Everyone I recognized was dragged behind the table and forced to help. That actually had multiple benefits – because I was the only SBS group lead from Florida to show up I had guys from other Florida groups hang out with me so when they asked "do you have one in Palm Beach?" I could just pass them off to Brian and get them to sign up. 
Get someone to help you manage the sheets, pens and move candy and junk out the way. As people lean over to sign up for the group they put down their coffee and then bang the table with their 200lb bag of swag. We had several signup sheets and a few dozen pens which I knew were going to get stolen. There was actually one left by the time I took away signup sheets. Very important, never make anybody sign up for your mailing list, trust me, they don't want to be on it. Just politely explain to people as they pass by to either drop their business card or sign in so you can let them know about the group and where/when you meet. This way they can come, check out the meeting, or at the very worst case just remember you in the future when they lose their job that allows them to ignore social networking opportunities. 
Finally, I started stapling candy canes to the invitations. Invitations had little more than our phone number, web site address, topics of discussion and our purpose. True engineers love the sense of purpose and accomplishment, so bs mission statements just do not work. Kept it short and sweet and mentioned the words FREE and ORLANDO about a half a dozen times along with the URL to join us. 
Do not expect IT professionals to have business cards. I cannot stress that enough. Only people that deal with customers are handed business cards. In order to drag them to the table and entice them to sign up, I handed everyone that walked by (to get the stamp for a drawing) an invitation stapled to the candy. This gave me an opportunity to say the following to about 2000 people: "If you want to hang out with other Orlando IT Pro's either sign in or drop your business card in the stocking." – This is an enterprise developer & sysadmin crowd, the kind that the company never issues business cards to because they are an embarrassment to the company and should never see the light of day, much less be in any sort of identifiable contact with the customer. Why do you think 9/10 IT people you deal with don't have a business card? Don't expect one, so I had plenty of signup paper and pens to go around. As I looked around to my INETA neighbors during the flood of people waiting to find out what "Orlando Small Business Server User Group" was all about I noticed virtual deserts to the left and right of me – INETA, PASS and Microsoft Dynamics had very few people around. We on the other hand were swamped for solid three hours. 
Never pin sales people against IT professionals at a tech event. You won't sell, you won't close, you'll just embarrass yourself by getting a bunch of swag bandits looking for a cool gadget to take home as a prize. We were successful because we were only fishing for people that may be interested in what we do. We were not selling anything, we didn't care what the people that talked to us did, we didn't try to get any kind of a survey out of them. Basically we just gave away candy and chatted with the friendly folks while they were in the line. There is only so many times you can say "Sign up for our IT Pro group" so it takes some wit and humor but we made it through all the swag. I'm still going through the web site signups and follow-ups (because an overwhelming majority of people were from north and south of us) but we got a ton of names and raised interest for both our user group and Microsoft SBS. For relatively little that Microsoft gave up to have this table not go to a vendor they got over a dozen passionate people to stand and talk about SBS for several hours for absolutely nothing. No T&E, no swag, nothing. Not just that, but we gave away trial Microsoft products, used Microsoft materials and explained why they should be interested in Microsoft solutions for small business. We reached over 2,000 people who now have another venue of support to rely on, another free marketing outlet that local Microsoft PAM/SMS&P/TS2 sales channel can hit at absolutely no expense. 
Still think user groups do not contribute to Microsoft's bottom line? I beg to differ, just look up at what we were able to pull off. At just about $65 total cost we were able to reach more people than the local .NET and PASS groups combined. I would like to argue that we deserve more money than Microsoft Dynamics. We had a bigger audience and with our monthly meetings more IT Professionals will be able to influence the purchase of Microsoft Dynamics products. Our group provides more relevant content and we have much better presentations. That is one thing I can prove, please look to the right. This man was so bored that our Palm Beach UG leader kept on snapping pictures of him in hope that he would snap one just as the guy fell out of his chair. I suppose you can say they really killed, but I hope Microsoft sees the value in these groups and starts supporting IT Pro groups as much as they seem to support developers.
