2022 was the fourth year for GAIA as a non-profit organisation. This year was a recovery year after the COVID-19 pandemic. This report describes the year that passed and our outlook for the coming year.
During the year, the GAIA board consisted of Jakob Andersson (chair), Josef Lindman Hörnlund (treasurer), Josefin Scott (secretary), Amanda Nilsson, and Viktor Olsbo. Daniel Sääf was the auditor.
One can join GAIA as a member by registering through our webpage and paying the membership fee. In the period between the last annual meeting (2021-11-02) – when the meeting set the price – until writing this report, 42 people joined as members.
In early 2022, the government lifted the ban on physical events in Sweden due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They temporarily lifted the ban in late 2021 before reinstating it. Our planning for the 2022 GAIA Conference was, therefore, temporarily halted, but, in the end, we could proceed as we wished. With the ban gone, we have returned to physical meetups. That is great, but we lost momentum with the speakers and the audience. We are still trying to recover from the motivation dip due to the cancelled events mentioned in last year’s report. All in all, we only hosted two events this year besides the conference. During the year, we experimented with a new concept – network groups. We started a self-organising group around natural language processing. The group met in relaxed settings four times during the year.
We have continued growing on social media, especially on YouTube and LinkedIn – our primary channels. On YouTube, we had 21,400 views corresponding to 1,900 hours watched during the year and grew the channel by 304 subscribers to 875. On LinkedIn, we grew by 318 followers to 891, enabling a better reach for future events. Our LinkedIn presence becomes more important as meetup.com declines in activity.
During the year, we only had two smaller events, but we once again hosted our main conference. The first meetup was with Volvo Cars, and the second was with Tenfifty. They averaged 42 attendees. Both were physical events.
We feel it is still challenging to find speakers after the pandemic. At first, there was much hesitation. Later, the economic turmoil reduced many companies' recruitment needs, a significant networking event driver. We expect the situation to be better next year.
The 2022 GAIA Conference was the primary event this year. Finally, we could host our conference at Svenska Mässan, initially planned for 2020. On April 7, 2022, 600 people (sold out) joined us at Svenska Mässan for a full day of machine learning and data science. We had two tracks with 21 talks in total. The recordings are available on our YouTube channel.
We offered four partnership tiers – platinum, gold, silver, and bronze – and one extra startup tier. We had 19 partners, with AstraZeneca as our platinum partner. All partners except the bronze tier were at the conference, with booths in the exhibition area. Partners were happy to be once again able to meet attendees and network.
Also, the participants were pleased with the event. As seen in the response below to the survey we sent after the event, most participants were excited afterwards (note, the scale is 1–4). We had a high response rate to the survey. Participants agree that we deliver on our goals of supplying an opportunity for networking and learning while showcasing cool things happening in Gothenburg.
We sold the tickets for 500 SEK, with a 50% discount for students. We intend the tickets to be affordable, and most of our revenue comes from partnerships. The platinum tier cost 100,000 SEK, the gold tier 60,000 SEK, the silver tier 30,000 SEK, the bronze tier 10,000 SEK, and the startup tier 2,000 SEK. Companies who bought our digital gold package in 2020 and bought the gold tier or above this year, received a 20,000 SEK discount. We sold one platinum, five gold, five silver, six bronze, and two startup packages providing an income of 472,000 SEK. We also offered a free booth for Women in Tech.
The conference made a positive financial result. We expected a positive result but are always unsure, given our reliance on large but few partnerships. This year, the financial result was unexpectedly improved by Svenska Mässan failing to record one of the presentations and delivering sub-par quality on the rest, thus crediting the cost of the recording. The failure improved our finances by about 52,000 SEK, but we would have taken the intended delivery instead.
We made a significant profit from the conference this year. We managed, in the end, to secure a strong line-up of partners. The mishap with the recording afterwards improved the result. Recording the conference is one of our biggest investments. We believe it is important towards our mission of learning and showcasing the machine learning and data science community of Gothenburg.
It is important to have a strong buffer. The pandemic has made that clear. On the other hand, we are a non-profit organisation and cannot accumulate too much money. We now have a buffer of 330,000 SEK, which we consider ok given that it is less than the conference expenses for one year. GAIA stands strong for the future.
We have not made any extra investments in the organisation this year like the brand work conducted in previous years.
We made a profit of 204,817.95 SEK, a margin of 26%.
We are grateful to return to live events. The pandemic has been challenging regarding events and our motivation in the organisation. Meeting the community is what got this organisation started.
The conference was successful and appreciated. We have a strong reputation, making reaching speakers, partners, and attendees easier. We believe it has a strong future. At the same time, we see shifts in the community. Machine learning and data science as fields mature and the region grow with the remote work trend. We will continue experimenting to see what our community needs to grow and develop.
Our quest to make Gothenburg a leading AI region continues. Curiosity and progress orientation will take our community a long way!
Gothenburg, 2022-10-26
Jakob Andersson
Chair
Josef Lindman Hörnlund
Treasurer
Josefin Scott
Secretary
Amanda Nilsson
Board Member
Viktor Olsbo
Board Member
