A Work Day In the Life of a San Francisco Tech Events Manager
This is an ode to my Taiwanese parents living in another island country, who completely have no idea what I do as a Community & Events Manager at a startup.
My mom’s usual qualms for me is that working at a startup is not stable, that I am completely debt ridden due to the crushing costs of living in San Francisco, that I don’t eat enough protein to sustain me through my 10 hour work days, and that I do not smile enough with my glaring eyes. None of that is true, but thanks mom — I know you love me.
For some visibility, here is an average day of my life working at a series C startup in San Francisco.
6:30–7:30 am: I normally set two alarms at 7:05 and 7:10 am. Depending on my sleep patterns, I wake up earlier. I hop on the 38 or 38R bus and make it to the office in 15 minutes. I check my networth on Personal Capital and get an update on my financial investments on Wealthfront and Fundrise. This millennial ain’t going to be broke. I need to retire early.
7:30–8:30 am: I am at the work gym, huffing and puffing my way on the Peloton bike. Aren’t they supposed to IPO soon? Sadly, there are no fellow competitive cyclers peering over my shoulder to see how fast I’m pedaling. I should be pedaling faster, but I’m tired, and there are no strobe lights and no smoothie waiting for me at the end (like at Flywheel or Barry’s). I stretch and do some crunches, shower, and head up to the 5th floor to make myself a cup of coffee.
8:30 am: Ah, Aaron is in! I bug my favorite boss with my usual chattiness — he has great patience. I tell him an unusual story of what happened over the weekend, catch up with him, and respond to the 30 something emails in my inbox.
8:45 am: I collect my laptop, notebooks, and Bose headphones, and head to the nice brown lounge chair in the corner of the office. The sun beams in from the window on the right and office plants surround the area; I close my eyes and enjoy this feeling for a minute. I set my own headspace with a cup of coffee and journal. My mind is constantly running, and a word dump helps me empty my mind and set my own expectations for the day by being reflective on what needs to be done — it’s soothing.
Our VP of Engineering David, a fellow early bird, pops in and greets me. He is one busy executive man, but always makes time to chat with me. He has once traveled and lived on a boat with his family while working remotely. Goals.
9:00 am: I move into my “get shit done” mode. I pop my Bosehead phones on and press play on my curated playlist.
Luckily for me, I have piano hands, which allow me to furiously type out emails and slack messages to my receipients. I’m planning Community Day at Converge, as well as our tradeshow booths at three major Cloud partner events with AWS, Google, and Azure. Then we have 5 other meetups and workshops peppered in between. There are many stakeholders and moving pieces. I delegate tasks, pull together working groups, and strategically plan our vision and motive. I work across multiple departments, mostly engineering, marketing, and sales.
Each day, I would say I have at least 50 touch points with different people via slack, email, call, or zoom.
9:30 am-12:00 pm: I usually try to schedule my meetings earlier in this timeframe. Meetings usually include updating our event partners, hopping in on sponsor calls about certain events, syncing with our developer advocates to align on blogs or speaking opportunities, enabling and supporting our field team to speak to technical communities, and acting as a sounding board to other members of our team.
12:00 pm: Like clockwork, I zoom to the kitchen for catered lunch. We use EZCater and we get to eat food ranging from Thai, Chinese, Burmese, Southern, etc. We’re so spoiled. I either sit in the kitchen with colleagues or stuff my face at my desk, and go off to another meeting.
1:00–1:30 pm: I grab my favorite coworker Irene, and we hop on the muni line to Powell and run off to get boba. She is the Site Operations Manager, a unicorn employee and friend, and helps me keep my shred of sanity for this week. We do this once or twice a week as a special treat. The amount of boba we’ve consumed between us is amazing.
2:15 pm: Using Asana has been a godsend. It’s my task tracker, and I work out of this all the time. It helps me aligned with my work, as well as the deliverables that others owe me. I spend some time updating and managing my upcoming events and design deliverables.
3:00 pm: A dart whizzes by my head. The QA Manager David has a toy dart gun in his hand and he sheepishly grins at me. I grab the dart and chuck it to timbuktu. The QA team laughs and continue shooting darts at each other; they’re a fun, hardworking team and I chat with them for a bit.
I make a mental note to self: buy a dart gun immediately on amazon prime and get my unsuspecting victim back for revenge.
4:15pm: By this time, I have drank 5 bottles of hint water. This needs to stop, and I fill up my hydroflask with non-flavored watermelon water. I finish up writing a few speaker abstract outlines and do a brainstorming session with Apeksha, who manages outreach to technical partner communities. We work well together, and are hosting our first ever workshop event Streaming Data with AWS Kinesis and Analysis.
6:00–6:30 pm: I hop on a nonwork call for the TEDxSanFrancisco Volunteer team. Our major event is coming up on October 3rd, and there’s so many moving pieces going on. Everything is volunteer ran and it’s inspiring to see everyone so motivated to drive a successful event based on the sharing of ideas.
7:00–9:00 pm: This time varies. I am usually at my older sister’s in Hayes Valley eating whatever she’s concocted in her beloved Instapot, at a meetup or workshop event, or stuffing my face with tacos at Uno Dos Tacos with friends. Then I hop back on the bus and go home.
Being a Community Tech Events Manager requires me to wear multiple hats and manage multiple projects. As someone who gets bored easily, being in a multi-functional role delivers the challenges I need.
Interested in getting into tech B2B events and learning more?
Email me at emilyifang@gmail.com.
Emily is a US expat currently living in Singapore to learn about the tech communities growing in Asia. She has worked 4+ years in dev relations, community management, and event marketing within the tech and travel industry. Her time at OmniSci, Google and Booking.com gave her cross-functional expertise. In her free time, she runs the volunteer community initiatives for TEDxSanFrancisco, as well as promote and blog on the importance of financial literacy and education.
