EXCLUSIVE Look behind the curtain of ETHCC

DeFi Slate Fam:

We have to give a massive shoutout to the YAP Global team! Without them, we would never be able to attend these conferences, create our interviews and podcasts & everything else!

Having quite a few conferences under their belts the YAP Global team, led by Sam, made quite the splash at ETHCC.

They did a daily recap of all the best talks and events, planned many speakers and connected tons of media with important people! In today’s Q&A with Sam from YAP Global we discuss what it takes to support a full on conference, how YAP is planning on growing and much more!

Check it out and have a great week!

Cheers,

Andy

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Behind The Scenes of ETHCC Media Partner YAP Global

Andy: Sam, how are you? How is your experience at ETHCC so far?

Sam: I am good, the experience has been great. I’d like to say that ETHCC is my favorite conference. We (YAP Global) are media partners of ETHCC. Today there are 5 of us on the ground covering the talks, helping out the press, supporting the media and you know it’s been really exciting to see that even beyond the crypto media, there are more mainstream news teams here than ever before. I saw a journalist from CNBC, a journalist from CNN, and one from The Financial Times. It’s great to see more mainstream interest in the space, that’s a good sign for the future.

Andy: Yeah, you’re right. I googled ETHCC and saw the article on CNBC, which was pretty cool.  

Sam: I think she’s also been going to the side parties to get the full experience of the Ethereum commuinty. I love how in her video interview she angled ETHCC as the ‘opposite’ of Bitcoin Miami! It totally is. I think people in the community wonder how she could compare the two, knowing that it’s totally different. However, if you see the video on CNBC as someone who’s not as involved, they might know of Bitcoin but very little about Ethereum, so it’s very cool to have her showcase the Ethereum community to the world. The community is here and they are builders!

Rob: Yeah, as you said the important part is starting to dive deeper into the blockchain ecosystem overall, instead of just Bitcoin and Ethereum which you can jumble together like one thing. Now mainstream media will be a little bit more specific and detailed about blockchain and crypto. How do you think mainstream media perception of crypto has changed over the years?  

Sam: I think the increase in Bitcoin and Ethereum price during the last bull market was really good for generating more interest in the space. We definitely do see that now, I mean that fact that CNBC and The Financial Times are sending resources to the conference is a big indication that it is worth their time to learn about. By covering this event they go deeper in the ecosystem showing the world that it is not just about Bitcoin and Ethereum price, it’s about what they are building! The innovation is the most important part but usually it is just ‘Ethereum price up… Ethereum price down…’ and clearly this space goes way beyond that.

Andy: Right, it’s definitely more behind the scenes, looking at what is actually being built in the Ethereum community and how these conferences go. We are curious about what is going on behind the scenes with YAP Global, how you structured this entire event being a press partner?

Sam: So, good question! Actually a lot happens about 3 months beforehand when we start with building the list of speakers and teams attending. Of course it’s important to start in advance because people need to plan their schedule, put it into diaries, get budget approval. This week we are behind the scenes, so that means we do more PR, sharing more on what this event is covering, creating media alerts, giving updates on what to expect, and then on the ground we are also covering and reporting the talks. We gather all the notes and then we put it into a daily report. It is very helpful because when you’re here you can’t be at all the talks, but you can trust that the team will cover it and they will give you the recap.

Andy: Awesome, y’all do a great job! Also, the team seems to be a bit less crazy than ETH Denver.

Sam: ETH Denver was huge at scale. But, I like the space here it’s so nice. We have a few conferences in our bag so we are a bit more experienced. It helps to have solid relationships.

Andy: You guys are doing a great job, like connecting companies to speakers and putting us in touch with important people so we have a chance to interview them. How does that process go? How do you work with your clients?

Sam: What we do behind the scenes is we ask them: What do you want to announce? What do you want to talk about? Are there interesting things you wanna bring up? What are your key messages? We as journalists align our team to certain sectors of the conference, so someone will cover NFTs, someone will tackle the DeFi arena. We kind of operate like match-making the media and speakers together to create the interview for a story that makes the most sense. We don’t want to waste someone’s time here! People’s time is precious. After a conference, we wanna go to the party, but first we should make sure that every conversation went well and was worthwhile!

Rob: Overall we (as media/community) make up the Ethereum voice. DeFi journalists and PR teams connect like-minded builders & leaders with voices for the entire community. What insights from the community do you want to highlight about this conference?

Sam: I think people are talking about this multi-chain future. So that means first we need to educate people about what is going on in the community. Start CeFi, and link it with DeFi, I would like to clarify a few things: CeFi is not DeFi, and multi chain ecosystems are here to stay. Cosmos, Near, Polygon – those are different ecosystems that are growing quickly. The conference is called ‘Ethereum’ but it is much more, it is not necessarily just about Ethereum.

Rob: Yeah we see tons of zk (zero knowledge) stuff popping up, that kind of overall blockchain world is growing too.

Andy: What are other things that you guys would like to change or what would you improve? What have you’ve learnt?

Sam: I think that we have a process, and I think we’ve done it well. I would say that is more like covering the conference editorially, we are capturing the key talks, and the key messages. Also this is not the whole team that you see, our team has grown to 25 now and a few people from the team are in London right now, watching live sessions and working on notes for them as well!

Andy: That’s awesome, you guys have grown in many aspects recently! 

Sam: Can I show you our newsletter? It’s a full time job keeping up with the crypto world. Even for you guys, on several interviews a week there’s always something you miss! So, how do we know what to think about? So we created a newsletter that answers “okay, what is the story this week?” What we do is we look at crypto twitter and collect top stories. The team decides on three stories to care about this week and we write about them! It comes every Thursday.

Andy: Awesome, we will definitely be signing up (we’re already on it). What are your thoughts about YAP Global bringing Ethereum and crypto to larger media audiences like CNBC and Forbes? What is that process like?

Sam: It starts with the continuation of more journalists coming to the conferences because when they come here and see with their own eyes people who don’t care so much about price, and just want to talk about technical things that they want to build. We want to be at conferences, we want to welcome new journalists and support them!

Andy: Yep! It is a  totally different vibe when you are here!

Rob: Journalists from CNBC and CNN are starting to recognize what is CeFi and what is DeFi, that’s important!

Sam: They are! And that is why having them here is amazing! I am able to explain to them key points like this!

Andy: Thank you Sam for putting this on and helping us to get here, and setting this interview, me and Rob appreciate it.