On 31 March and 1 April the time has come again: our very own #DCDW event! More than 200 interested people have signed up for the gathering in Houten. And yet it’s always exciting to see how many actually show up… That’s the trickiest part of an event: the number of guests.

The why?

Why we organize the #DCDW events is clear: we’re on a mission to make online automotive better. We do that with the best content. Think of my articles, the podcasts and videos, the events (or so I hope), the best software such as Calldrip and with the best team members. The #DCDW event is our foundation, our bedrock, but also something that demands a great deal of effort from our small team.

The two event days fly by, but the preparations take months. Bernike van Laar in particular is busy with all sorts of things. Most of it happens so far below the surface that you have no idea it’s going on, but if it doesn’t happen you immediately know what you’re missing.

Speakers

Booking the speakers is important. I saw our keynote, Russell Richardson, last year at an event in Kansas City, where I was speaking myself too! What a presentation, what energy and what different information than usual! I immediately asked him whether he ‘fancied’ doing the presentation at our event. I only said: you have longer than half an hour, does that work? The answer was yes, because it bothers him that at most events the presentations aren’t allowed to run longer than 20 minutes. With us it has always been different: let the keynote speaker present longer, that’s what most visitors come for! Russell is on for 2 hours!

Of course there are also shorter presentations, for example from my premium partners such as Marktplaats and 2dehands / 2ememain. From ikwilvanmijnautoaf® | driven by dealerdirect®, Niels Oude Luttikhuis will come to speak, and we have a fun panel discussion. The Belgian edition, which we now organize together with AutoTechnica, is worthwhile too. Geert De Clercq of TRAXIO Mobility Professionals is coming and of course AMI – Automotive Marketing Intelligence for you! In both Belgium and the Netherlands we’re holding a book presentation about the car portals; in the Netherlands by Rolf Westgeest. Oh yes, and Frans Huetink of PowerKraut will be there too!

Sign up?

So if you haven’t signed up yet, and you’re an employee of a car dealership, a dealer business, a leasing company or an importer, then attendance is free! If you don’t belong to that target group, you’re still very welcome, but then you contribute to the investment we’re making. That’s an amount of €595 per participant.

Back for a moment

Let’s go back to the beginning for a moment. The trickiest thing about organizing such an event is therefore the number of participants. Who’s coming and, above all, who has signed up but ultimately doesn’t come? If you look at the effort we put in and the time we invest, we simply love it when everyone who signs up actually comes… It also helps at lunch: then we have to throw away and pay for less. So sort out your calendar and make time to make online automotive better together.