Organizing Large Events: Behind the Scene

Pauline Vanhoutte: 0:00

Yeah. So our goal with all the experience is, of course, to gather the community, but also for our employees to stick together and to work together to a common goal. We believe that the people that make the product know it the best. Okay, we did a great event, but we don't want to stop there.

Olivier Colson: 0:18

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Planet Odoo, your check-in for all things about tech, innovation, business, and of course, Odoo. I am Olivier Colson. I'm a developer at Odoo, and I'll be your host for today. Would you believe us if we told you that you could organize a large-scale event with only one tool and all by yourself? No? Then this episode might change your mind. Today we welcome Pauline Vanhoutte, Odoo's event manager. We'll chat about our biggest in-house event Odoo Experience with her. We'll uncover the reasons behind it and how one single person can organize a 10,000 attendees events using only one tool. Hello, Pauline.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 0:53

Hello.

Olivier Colson: 0:54

Thank you for being here today. So, first of all, who are you? How old are you, and what are you doing at Odoo exactly?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 1:01

Well, thanks for having me. So I'm Pauline. I'm 26 years old, and I've been working at Odoo for three years. I'm an event manager in charge of Odoo Experience.

Olivier Colson: 1:12

Okay, What does it consist of exactly? So Odoo Experience first for people listening to us who wouldn't know what it is, what is Odoo Experience?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 1:19

So Odoo Experience is an event that's taking place once a year, usually around October, and next year it will be in November. But we always launch the new version of Odoo during that event. It's the biggest event of the year, which gathers the entire community, all partners, all the users and, of course, all the Odoo employees.

Olivier Colson: 1:40

Okay, so we'll go back on the details. But so people have an idea. And so the organization of this event. So I assume it's a lot of work. It must be a lot of different things you have to handle together and put together and make the magic work between them. So on a day-to-day basis, what do you do to handle this?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 2:01

Yeah. So exactly as you mentioned, Odoo Experience is one event that happens over three days, but it's composed of a lot of different small components. As you see it. It might seem like an easy thing to do. Well, it actually is not because it's very diverse. So on one side, we have an exhibition hall. We have partners that are booking booths and that are there to sell their services to explain their expertise. And on the other hand, we also have conferences. Yet last year, we had eight conference rooms for a total of 250 talks over three days. It's a huge amount of work for all these people to prepare their talks; for us technically to have the rooms ready because the place we're doing the events is not ready to accommodate talks. So we have to arrange all the settings so that it works. And we also have great parties. I'm pretty sure some of our listeners already know about this.

Olivier Colson: 2:56

Yeah, you could find pictures of that type. It's everywhere. I guess. It's not hidden. Okay. And how did you become event manager? Was it some kind of a life goal when you were a student already? Is it something you studied for, or is it really something that came naturally with experience or time, I don't know. How did you get there?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 3:15

So I actually studied communication. So being an event manager wasn't like a dream when I was a child or anything like this.

Olivier Colson: 3:23

Who knows. That's possible!

Pauline Vanhoutte: 3:24

Yeah, I'm sure many people have that dream. It wasn't mine. I'm very happy where I am, though. But I studied communication, and then after my studies, I was like, "Okay, I need to find a first job." I didn't really know what to do. And I saw that job offer at Odoo to be an event coordinator at the time. It was to take care of the roadshows. So I applied, I was in, and then a lot of things happened in three years. I've done a lot of different duties here at Odoo. And then, there was an opportunity to become the event manager for the Odoo Experience. And I happily took the task.

Olivier Colson: 4:02

And say, Yeah, you were in, and you had lived about a bunch of Odoo Experiences before, and so, you know, you knew what it was. Yes. Like it was the right call to go there.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 4:13

Well, I was hired for the roadshows, but of course, everyone is helping for the experience because even if there are only one or two people on the task for the entire year, you always need to give a hand when the event is there because it's impossible for one person to actually organize the entire event by himself or herself and not count on other people. So what we do here at Odoo is that one month before it, we experience most of our marketing action stop, and the entire marketing team is helping the person in charge of Odoo Experience. So that's already what I had done in my first year here at Odoo, and now I'm the event manager taking care of that, but I'm still counting on the entire marketing team to help me.

Olivier Colson: 4:52

Yeah, it's true that Odoo Experience is like giving a rhythm to, Odoo throughout all year because it's the new release. You have to. Or everything, of course. And. Yeah. So I guess there is a lot of teamwork behind it when you're getting close to the data. Indeed. So. About Odoo Experience now, on the organization of the event. So you already talked a little bit about what we were doing there, about the fact we have partners, we have customers coming there. Could you elaborate a bit more on that? So what is what is the interest of doing that, actually?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 5:26

So the number one goal of Odoo Experience is to gather the community so that the people can actually meet because audio is used in so many countries that most people never see each other, and they don't realize how many people are using Odoo, how many people live from Odoo, because of course, we can count the amount of employees we have here had to do. But we also should consider the partners, all the employees these partners have, and all these people live around Odoo and because they never get to meet, we organize this event Odoo Experience, to give them the chance to meet and to learn from each other as well. That's one aspect. Of course, the second aspect is the release of the new version. Because Odoo is evolving, we need to also teach our clients and our partners how to use this new version, and that's the talks part.

Olivier Colson: 6:15

Are there also like some kind of trainings during the event?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 6:18

Yes. So right before Odoo Experience, we have two days, which we call the smart classes, and we select usually five topics. And during the smart class we actually give a two-day training that's really in-depth about this topic, and the partners or clients can attend.

Olivier Colson: 6:36

Okay. There's also, I guess, a promotion side to the event just the fact saying, okay, look how big it actually is and put everything at the same place, take a lot of pictures, share it and have people be, wow, that's huge. How important would you say it is and is there something special we do just for that event?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 6:54

Yes, of course, because we have some part of the attendees that will for sure come, you know, because it's their business for the entire year. So it's for sure that they will come to the events. But we have another part that maybe don't know about the event because there are new clients from last year or because they don't know about Odoo yet, because we also have prospects coming at Odoo Experience to know about the product, know about what we're doing. And all these people, we need to attract them. So, of course, we do some social media promotion, organic and paid. We have billboards for that. We make different ads. We really have a very strong marketing campaign around that as well.

Olivier Colson: 7:37

Over the years, so, Odoo has become bigger and bigger, I guess the event as well, right?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 7:43

Of course.

Olivier Colson: 7:44

Okay. how did it go? So the location did change very recently for Last Edition. Could you explain that?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 7:50

Yes. So when we started Odoo Experience, I wasn't at Odoo yet, but my colleagues told me that we started at the ULB. So it was, of course, way smaller than what it is today. We had a few hundred people, and at the time, it was already a big event because Odoo wasn't what it is today. And then, we slowly grew the events, and we went to Aula Magna in Louvain-la-Neuve for a few years. And then, in 2020, we noticed that Aula Magna wasn't fit anymore. So we had to find a new location. We visited several ones, and then we selected Brussels Expo because it's the biggest we found and the one that could allow us to grow because our goal wasn't to change every year but to actually have a location we could keep for a few years. But then, of course, COVID happened, so we couldn't have the Odoo Experience physically in 2020 and 2021.

Olivier Colson: 8:44

And so what did we do about that?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 8:45

We had the online Odoo Experience, which was a challenge at the beginning because like nobody had foreseen the pandemic. So we had to adjust ourselves and see, okay, what do we do? Because at first, we thought it would last for two weeks. We didn't change our plans. Then we noticed it lasted way longer than expected. So in a four-month period, we changed the entire plan from Brussels Expo to being at the farm and live-streaming everything on YouTube and hoping that the wi-fi would last.

Olivier Colson: 9:19

That was yeah, it was a lot of improvisation, I guess, but you had no choice. I mean, of course. And indeed it was pretty amazing to see how quickly we switched to this other model of event. And so you were talking about the farm. What did we do exactly, Exactly there? How did we go?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 9:37

So first, the most important was the help we got from the R&D here at Odoo, because they revamped the events app so that they could work with an integration with YouTube. So basically what we did is that we, we just had bought the third farm in Grand-Rosière, and nobody was there yet, so we didn't have any office. So we used that farm to actually put cameras, put green screens and our best speakers over there, and we live-streamed the talks, and we live-streamed them on YouTube. But thanks to YouTube and the integration with Odoo, all our participants could watch the talks on Odoo.

Olivier Colson: 10:16

Yeah. Just so people understand. So Odoo basically is centered on Grand-Rosière, here in Belgium, and so the offices are in farms. There are three farms now, and the third farm was brand new back at the time. And so that's what you were talking about.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 10:34

Exactly. But it was a challenge because we had just bought the farm, and it wasn't ready to accommodate this kind of situation. So we had gone a few electric problems as well because I don't think the previous owners had plugged this many cameras, microphones and so on.

Olivier Colson: 10:53

Yeah, because the farm needed renovations.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 10:56

Yes, but it's still under renovation now we bought it in 2020, and it's still not over. So you can imagine the amount of work we need to do.

Olivier Colson: 11:03

So it did not exactly look like a professional studio.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 11:07

Indeed, indeed. I think on the screen for participants, it was okay. For us, when we could see the backstage of it, it looked pretty... I don't even know what to use as a word.

Olivier Colson: 11:23

I don't know. Is artisanal a word in English? Probably something like that.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 11:29

Indeed.

Olivier Colson: 11:30

Okay. So you talked about the homemade side of things, especially for this edition during the pandemic. There are still a lot of homemade things in Odoo Experience.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 11:40

Of course.

Olivier Colson: 11:40

So Odoo employees are a bit everywhere. For what, exactly? How does it go?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 11:45

Yeah. So our goal with audio experience is, of course, to gather the community but also for our employees to stick together and to work together to a common goal. So we avoid asking to external providers to do the things that we could do ourselves. So most of the talks are given by our employees, others are given partners, but we don't hire professional speakers to explain the product. We do it ourselves.

Olivier Colson: 12:14

Why is that so?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 12:15

Well, first, because we believe that the people that make the product know it the best. They might not be the best in English or in presentation skills, but we believe that their insight is more important than what they will deliver, like the way they deliver it. So that's really valuable to us. But also all the technical aspects of the presentation are handled by our team, by people that have not been hired for that They have another job for the entire year, and then they stop their job, they come out with the experience, and they become a sound engineer for three days.

Olivier Colson: 12:53

That's amazing.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 12:55

Yes. It's amazing to see how people can reinvent themselves and can actually be flexible to help Odoo to make this event a success. And we can say that this event is made by Odoo, really by Odoo employees. Our employees are managing the entire catering. The bars are managed by the employees as well. And we even have our own Odoo band.

Olivier Colson: 13:20

Yeah, well, this is also a means like showcase the culture of Odoo.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 13:23

Exactly. Yes, exactly. Our culture is really like we're still a startup. Well, we're big...

Olivier Colson: 13:31

So it's inside.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 13:32

Yeah, exactly. Our core values are still the values of our startup.

Olivier Colson: 13:36

Okay. And about the tools you use to make this all possible and to organize things behind the scenes. So I guess you're using Odoo,

Pauline Vanhoutte: 13:46

Of course, no Surprise.

Olivier Colson: 13:47

Surprise. What apps, exactly? How. What flow are you using exactly?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 13:54

Well, of course, we use the events app. That's like no surprise at all. And the events app is linked to the website application. So that's how we created the website of Odoo experience. Of course, we have great designers here that help that be magic.

But all our applications on Odoo: 14:13

the events app, the website app, the e-commerce app as well. And that's like the parts you can see. And then on our side, the parts we don't see, we use the project app to manage all the actions that needed to be taken to see what has been done and also to make sure like if one day I'm sick, someone can take over and can see, okay, what did she do yet? Where can I take over?

Olivier Colson: 14:43

Okay. Again, for people that wouldn't be so familiar with Odoo. What is project exactly?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 14:49

So Project is an app that allows you to list all the things that are new to do and to basically make it change stages as long as the project moves. So, for example, if I have to find a venue, I put it in my project in the to-do column, and then as long as the project moves, like as I visit a few venues, I can indicate it in the project app. And then, once I found a venue, I selected it. I can move it to the next stage. Okay, this is done now. I can go to my next task, which can be, I don't know, making sure the Wi-Fi connection is working.

Olivier Colson: 15:35

Okay. And so you have different tasks like that. And you can check the status depending what state they are in.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 15:42

Exactly. You can organize the stages the way you prefer based on what you want to do and what you need to do. And then, you create your tasks, and you move them from one stage to another.

Olivier Colson: 15:52

Okay. So indeed, I assume when there are a lot of different tasks to coordinate, it's important to have a tool like that. And especially if you're working with people, you have to delegate things to just check, okay, what's being done by who and what's already over.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 16:07

Yeah, because you can assign the task to other people, and you can set yourself as a reviewer or ask another person to be the reviewer of the task. So that's pretty nice as well. We also have the chatter that we have in all our applications that allows us to discuss like maybe I can add a note."Oh, hey, Olivia, Where is this? This task at?" Uh.

Olivier Colson: 16:28

And, for example, for this, uh, for for for this little episode we're doing now, uh, there was a task, you know, coordinating that as well. So it's indeed a tool that can be used for a lot of different things. Any time you have something to coordinate and to just put together with people having to work on it, I guess project can be very, very useful. Okay. Other tools that you're using and you didn't mention yet.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 16:54

Well, we also use the marketing application. So we have mass mailing and social media which are very useful as well for our communication and the marketing strategy that we mentioned before.

Olivier Colson: 17:06

Mm hmm. Okay. How would you say that using Odoo is better than using other competitors on the market? Exactly what's the gain of using Odoo? Except that we are proud of using our own things. But I guess I guess that's obvious outside of that.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 17:25

Well, the biggest advantage is that everything is linked. So every information I enter in the events app, I will be able to use that information within like the mass mail application or even within the project application. The thing is like everything is always interrelated. So if I want to send an email to all the people that registered with a certain path for Odoo Experience, I do that in two clicks. I don't need to export the list from an application to import it into another application. So first, it makes me gain time, but it also avoids like mistakes or loss of data or all the things that could happen. So that's really the biggest advantage.

Olivier Colson: 18:06

An argument people often give on using Odoo is that everything is integrated like that. Indeed. What would you say are the biggest challenges you're facing? You're facing for organizing Odoo experience?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 18:27

Well, we also want to do it better. That's always the challenge we have, and that's always what Fabien wants as well for us is that "okay, we did a great event, but we don't want to stop there."

Olivier Colson: 18:37

So it's getting more and more difficult.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 18:38

Of course. Of course, it is. But the good thing is that we have more people to help us as well. So while we can think that it's complex, and yes, it is, we also have more people in the marketing team to help out. And that's also great because you can share it with more people. And there is a creative aspect of it because, very often event management is just about like technical aspects and planning stuff. And here you also have the creative aspect of it and we're pretty free to do what we like.

Olivier Colson: 19:11

So could you give examples of things like that where you had that freedom of really putting something new in and that actually happened?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 19:23

Well, for example, last year, like the crazy idea, if I can say, was to have three talks in one room.

Olivier Colson: 19:28

I knew you were going to say something about that.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 19:31

Because at Brussels Expo we have the Auditorium 2000. That's a room that can accommodate almost 2000 people. It's huge. Well, we knew for the keynote of Fabian it would be full. That was like, no doubt about this. But for all the other talks, I mean, we didn't know which talk would actually gather 2000 people because like that's huge. So, like, the idea that we had was that, okay, let's divide the room in three. We gave a headset to every speaker and to every attendee and then every attendee would be able to select which speaker they want to listen.

Olivier Colson: 20:11

To, like switching channels, like on TV.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 20:14

That's exactly like it. So in fact, they could see the three of them, but they could only listen to one of them. So we could have three different topics, one on hr, one in accounting, and one on MRP, for example. And they could actually select who they want to listen to. And that was an idea that allowed us to gain room and to make sure that that room was well used. But at the same time, it was a fun experience for the audience.

Olivier Colson: 20:43

And what were the feedback about the feedbacks about it?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 20:47

Well, at first the employees were really scared.

Olivier Colson: 20:51

I know. I remember, I was.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 20:53

They were really scared because that was an experience they had never done and they didn't know how it would work. So we organize a little test with a few of them that were like the ambassadors of the entire speakers' team. And the test went well. So they were a bit reassured. And right after the event, I only had one employee that wasn't super satisfied with the presentation he gave. All the other ones were really satisfied because they thought they were in their little bubble, so they were less stressed about giving a presentation. I want to remind everyone that this is not their job, that they have another job on the side, and that giving a presentation is just something they do once a year.

Olivier Colson: 21:32

Yeah, and it's a big challenge and most of them are not native English speakers and it's an additional challenge. And you have all these people looking at you and waiting for you to give really the perfect speech. And so it's a lot of pressure, I guess.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 21:46

Yeah, it is. It is a lot of pressure. And here, the good thing as well is that all of the 2000 people that were in front of them, they didn't know who was listening to them. Maybe it was just one person, or maybe it was 2000 of them. So I think that's less stress as well. And they were all very satisfied. The attendees were satisfied as well. So that's something we're going to do again this year.

Olivier Colson: 22:07

Cool. Could you so you talked about the number of attendees. So indeed, 2000 people for one talk is a lot, but we didn't give any actual number of attendees for the whole event. And also, while we are at it, are there other numbers like the number of partners, the number of talks could you provide it?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 22:22

Yes. So we had more than 10,000 people registered for this year's event, which is the highest number we have ever had, except for the online editions, of course.

Olivier Colson: 22:31

Yeah, of course. But it's different. Because people have to be there in person here. So it's not the same at all, indeed.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 22:35

Yeah. We were a bit scared that people would not travel because like COVID is still not very over in some countries. But we were very happy to see that everyone was there, that people were not afraid anymore and that they could join the events. We had more than 90 exhibitors. So that's like the biggest number we have ever done as well. It's more than double than what we had in 2019. And the good news is we will have room for more this year.

Olivier Colson: 23:05

Ha ha. You're anticipating my question. So yeah, what's coming for 2023 then?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 23:11

So in 2022, we had two holes in Brussels Expo. We have booked three for 2023.

Olivier Colson: 23:18

Oh.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 23:19

So it will be more rooms for exhibitors, just as I said. And we also have more rooms for conferences because we had eight conference rooms. We will now have 12. So more talks. We had 250 talks last year. We expect to have more than 300 next year.

Olivier Colson: 23:37

It's going to be great.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 23:38

Yeah.

Olivier Colson: 23:39

About... So it's a bit more personal. We have seen that there were a lot of things involved around this event. How do you handle the pressure of organizing it? Because I guess there is pressure.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 23:52

Of course there is.

Olivier Colson: 23:53

Because there is a deadline. You have to have everything ready in time, and I guess on spot also you have to handle all the things that you can't manage, you know, bad luck and things not working as expected and you have to find a solution, Right? How do you handle that?

Pauline Vanhoutte: 24:06

Yeah, of course, there is pressure and it wouldn't be normal not to have some pressure.

Olivier Colson: 24:11

It would be. It would be exceptionally weird, actually.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 24:13

Right. But I'm very lucky because I'm surrounded by very nice person that are always available to help me. And that's what would help me decrease the pressure. It's really the people you are surrounded by because if you're just by yourself, you cannot get to the end because you will probably kill yourself with stress before. But with the help of all these people, it goes way better. And even during the events, yes, we have a lot of things that were unplanned, but because there are plenty of other employees that are there, they can help me to manage the unexpected.

Olivier Colson: 24:52

Great answer. So the teamwork is fixing the things that can be done just by you.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 24:57

Well, it's the Odoo culture. We're always here to help each other.

Olivier Colson: 25:01

Indeed, indeed. You're right. Okay, so we're reaching the end of the episode. So you have maybe one more thing to say, maybe some anecdotes. You would like to share something less general, but that could be funny or not.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 25:14

Well, to continue on the aspect of the Odoo culture, what's funny is that you could think that with such a big event, it's super hard to take all your stuff and to pack everything at the end of the event, because as we do so many things ourselves, there are plenty of things we bring from the office and that we basically put in place at Brussels Expo. But actually, we never did it so fast than we did in 2022 because we have a thousand employees here in Belgium. So, of course, when a thousand people decide to pack, it goes super fast. And we were so impressed that we could even go home at 2 p.m. What were we supposed to do?

Olivier Colson: 25:54

So the teamwork worked again.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 25:56

Yes, exactly.

Olivier Colson: 25:57

Okay, cool. So thank you for your answers. It was very interesting.

Pauline Vanhoutte: 26:02

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.

Olivier Colson: 26:03

Thank you for listening to us today. As you may know, we have recently revealed Odoo's new pricing and we dedicated an entire episode about it. Make sure to check it out. The link is in the description. Also, if you enjoy this podcast, make sure to support us by hitting the subscribe button, leaving a review, or even sharing it. See you next time. Cheers.