Prepared for Alicia Wolfe · LWT / TechFutures · August 2026
What I'd build into the room
A working run of show for #LWTSUMMIT — October 5–7, Pier 17, New York.
Alicia — thank you for Wednesday, and for being straight with me about where things actually are. I went and did the homework.
If you can share the working agenda and an honest read on which tiers are moving, I'll come back inside a week with this slotted properly — named sessions, named activations, somebody's name against each one. I'd much rather build it around what's real than guess at it from out here.
Until then, here's where my head is: what I see from the outside, what it does for the people in the room, what it's worth, and where it lands on your schedule.
The room, from the outside
Read off your public pages and our two calls — I haven't seen the working agenda. Correct me anywhere I'm wrong. Click any line on the right to see the fix.
Six weeks out, the fastest money in this building isn’t a new logo. It’s the four hundred people already holding the cheaper ticket.
The thesis, in one line- Two genuinely distinct rooms — the LWT day and the TechFutures days.
- A venue that does real work: theatre rooms built for sound, with desks.
- A technical audience, mid-to-senior. Julia said deeper is better — a rare permission.
- A dinner and a party already on the books.
- Track-based curation with someone whose job is spotting holes.
$700 between General and VIP buys a dinner, a party and a faster badge line. Two experiences and a queue.+
A private concert from Erica Mason. Candlelit, no phones, one room. That's her format, not a booking — it's the most memorable thing you can put in a building, and it's the single line that makes a $1,500 badge obviously worth $700 more than an $800 one.
A sapphic set from TimaLikesMusic to close a night. She's an R&B artist and producer who runs her own '90s and Y2K party series and plays rooms in this city already — so the Tech Crawl stops being a bar and becomes a night people post about.
Then the two that cost you nothing but a room: a closed-door founders' table — small, invite-only, one hard question, no panel — and a safety-by-design salon on building for people who can't afford to be outed, which is my actual expertise and exactly this room.
Each is a line you could put on the ticket page this week. The money page prices it.
Tracks, but few moments. Nothing yet that people rearrange a day to get into.+
Not more sessions — bigger ones. You have eight theatres and up to five running at once, so the constraint isn't room, it's draw. Marquee sessions are the difference between a conference someone attends and one they talk about. I can help fill those chairs.
Recording is still an undecided budget line.+
Footage is the only asset still working on October 8th. It's what your speakers post, what sells 2027 tickets to everyone who missed it, and what you hand a sponsor instead of a headcount slide. If the budget can't carry it, say so and I'll bring capture.
Three posts a week, one shoot. Everything after the first column is the return.
The sponsors already in the building look under-used.+
Twenty minutes each, on stage, on camera, with reach they didn't pay for. New-logo acquisition in a collapsed category is the hardest sale in the building and it takes a quarter you don't have. Going back to a brand that already showed up, with footage of the stage time you gave them, takes a call.
Nothing programmed between sessions — and that's where people decide about next year.+
In the venue and around the Seaport: moving people between rooms, filling seats before sessions start, working the crawl, shooting all day. Cheapest way to make five hundred feel like fifteen hundred, and rooms that photograph full are what the footage is capturing. My community and marketing team runs this lane already, and I'm an official NYC Pride sponsor this year — the local relationships are built. You're still new in this city; I'm not.
Three of your own pages disagree on dates, headcount and price. At six weeks out that's friction on every ticket sold.+
That one's free. It's the cheapest thing on this site and it's costing you sales right now — anyone comparing your pages before buying finds three different answers about what they're buying.
Almost no live conversation about LWT, in either direction. No scandal — but buyers read silence as decline.+
The rebrand and the Women Who Code news went essentially uncovered — free press left on the table, and still recoverable. One shoot in October gives you sixteen weeks of proof that the room is full and the work is good.
The journey — what the build actually does
This is the pitch. The schedule shows what gets added; this page is why it works. Two people decide whether LWT has a 2027: the woman buying the ticket, and the brand deciding whether to renew. Here's what each of them experiences, with and without.
Track one — a mid-senior engineer deciding whether you're worth it
She compares three of your pages and gets three different answers about dates and price. VIP costs $700 more for a dinner, a party and a shorter queue. She buys General — or she waits, and waits is usually no.
One page, one answer. A marquee name announced. Three named VIP experiences she can't get anywhere else. She buys VIP, and she buys early.
Registration, a lanyard, and a room where she doesn't know anyone. She looks at her phone until the first session starts.
Street team at the doors and around the Seaport. Someone learns her name before she sits down. The first room she walks into is already full, because filling it was somebody's job.
Well-sorted tracks. She picks one, learns something real, moves on. This part you already do well.
Same tracks, plus two or three rooms she moved her day to be in. And she's on camera in at least one of them — which matters more on the last page than it does here.
A hallway. And the hallway is most of the day — more hours than the sessions themselves.
Founders' table before dinner. Safety-by-design salon. Programmed hours instead of dead ones. This is where she meets the people she'll still know in 2028 — and that's what she's actually buying.
Dinner. Party. Both good — both inside the same building she's been in since nine.
Erica Mason plays a private concert — candlelit, no phones, and she was in the room. An off-site with its own address, so the top tier goes somewhere. TimaLikesMusic closes the crawl. And on the last night, a sizzle cut of the week screened at the party — she watches herself be part of something.
It ends. She has photos on her phone and a good memory that fades by December.
Sixteen weeks of clips she's tagged in. She posts them. Her manager sees them. In March she asks for budget for four people instead of one.
Nothing on this page is a new sponsor. It's the same three days, made to convert — first into a VIP ticket, then into next year's table.
Track two — a brand that already said yes
They bought a placement. Nobody inside their company can describe in one sentence what they got for it.
They get a twenty-minute fireside on stage with a founder — something their marketing lead can forward internally without explaining.
A booth, a badge scan, a tote bag. Their team stands next to a table for three days.
Their name on a session people chose to attend, in a full room, on camera. Reach they didn't pay for.
A post-event email with an attendance number in it. That number goes into a deck nobody reads and a renewal nobody defends.
Their own footage, cut and delivered. A clip their comms team can actually run, and a room that photographs full behind it.
You ask them to renew a line item their CFO already cut once. In a collapsed category, that's the hardest call in the building.
You call with the tape. It's a renewal-and-expand conversation, and it isn't a favor. That's the only version of 2027 I can see working from here.
What the $700 is actually worth
Here's the part I keep coming back to. That $700 is the only number on this page I didn't have to guess at — it's the gap between two of your own published prices. And it's worth $700 every time one person moves up, whatever your current mix happens to be.
You don’t need a sponsor to find this money. You need a reason for the upgrade.
$1,500 − $800 · your own published pricesThat's the whole case for spending the next six weeks on the top tier rather than on new logos — the money is already inside the building, and the reason for the upgrade is what everything on page two is for.
Below is the same idea as a full-room model, if it's useful. Fair warning: the room-level version needs me to guess at your current mix, and I'd rather be upfront that the $700 above is the solid number and this is the illustration.
The same thing as a full-room model — and the two numbers in it I had to guess+
| Scenario | People | VIP $1,500 | General $800 | Day $399 | Ticket revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| As it stands | 500 | 75 (15%) | 350 (70%) | 75 (15%) | $422,425 |
| VIP earns its price | 500 | 150 (30%) | 300 (60%) | 50 (10%) | $484,950 |
| And the room fills | 550 | 165 (30%) | 330 (60%) | 55 (10%) | $533,445 |
Yours, straight off your site: the three prices, and the 500-person room.
Mine, and I'm guessing: that you're at 15% VIP today, and that fifty more people would come. If you're already at 30%, the top row is wrong and the gap between rows one and three closes to almost nothing.
The extra fifty in row three would be the street team filling seats, the marquee sessions pulling people in, and the footage selling late tickets.
So take this as a shape, not a forecast — it's showing you that the tier mix moves six figures, not predicting where it lands. Send me your real split and it becomes an actual number instead of an illustration.
The run of show — your three days
Your published shape, with everything from page two dropped into the slot it belongs in. Flip the switch.
My session, three ways
Already selected. I'd rather it be useful than be mine. Three shapes — and I'll take whichever one your agenda actually has a hole for:
I'd rather not lock this until I've seen the agenda. Picking against what you've actually programmed beats me guessing and landing in the wrong room. I know the audience is technical — what I don't know is what's already covered, and that's the whole decision. Happy to go whichever way your speaker team reads it.
Doors, opened deliberately
In writing, so it can't be misread later. My relationships exist because I hold safety for the people inside them — I build the models these companies run on, and that is the only reason the door opens when I knock.
An introduction spends trust I don’t get back. So I make them once, and I make them late.
Why nothing on this page is namedTwo I'll name, because they're the ones I'd put on your stage. Erica Mason — the private concert on Monday night. And TimaLikesMusic, closing the crawl. Talent I'd bring, not sponsors I'd broker — which is why I can say them out loud here and the rest of this page stays blank.
The rest, without naming:
- Two platforms in the same category, both paying me, currently competing hard. That competition is the leverage.
- A members-club operator looking for New York activation.
- An infrastructure and AI partner whose programs we already sit inside.
- Consumer and cultural brands, plus artists who'll travel if I ask.
- Pride and community organizations where I have the lists, not just the logos.
None of it is a 2026 sponsorship. It's 2027 pipeline — and you build it by putting those people in the room in October as guests, then selling them in November on what they saw.
Terms, said out loud
Your policy requires a VIP purchase from companies over 500 people, and asks for it between 100 and 499. We're under ten — and the policy says exceptions are made.
More to the point: I'm not coming as an attendee. I'm bringing access and production — content, a street team, capture, an agenda audit, and the relationships on the last page. That's not a ticket I'm buying, it's a contribution I'm making. I'd like the pass comped.
I'd rather say that plainly here than let it sit underneath everything else we build.
What I'd want back
- Credit and co-promotion on anything I bring — speaker graphics, the activation, the recap.
- My team credentialed where they're working: head of marketing, experiential partners, street team.
- Footage of my sessions and anything my team produces, with usage rights clear on both sides. Settled in writing, not discovered in November.
- A direct line to production, so logistics don't route through you every time.
- Consulting: you raised it. My session and the page audit are free. If the build becomes real work — my team's hours, my vendors, my relationships — let's price it. Better named now than later.
What would help me most
- The working agenda — every slot, filled and unfilled.
- Your real tier mix and how it's selling. I know that's a vulnerable number to hand over; I just can't design around one I can't see.
- Your confirmed October sponsors, so I know whose fireside chairs we'd be filling.
- A yes or no on capture. If the budget can't carry it, just say so and I'll bring it — not knowing is the only bad answer.
- How you count attendance, before we build anything together for November.
- Whether there's activation budget, or whether this is all barter and partner-funded.
- Who owns production, so my team can work with them directly rather than through you.
You said on the first call you’re trying to break the pattern where a speaker shows up, talks, and leaves. I’d rather help you break it than be another example of it.
Where I’d like to end up