This report highlights the key takeaways from EAGxAustralasia 2025
It is primarily written by Tom Hutton (Conference Team Lead), with direct input from Bridget Loughhead (Conference Coordinator), and incorporates ideas and notes from the rest of the organising team.
Opinions expressed are generally those of Bridget and Tom, though we’re not aware of any opinions the wider conference team disagrees with.
“We” generally refers to Tom and Bridget for matters of opinion, and the wider team for matters of delivery.
Bridget and Tom were also lead organisers for, and wrote a more in depth report about, EAGxAustralasia 2024. This has much more detail about our operations, processes, and decision making. We stand by most of it.
We’ve tried to note currency throughout. If currency isn’t specifically noted it should be assumed to be AUD.
You can read this as a google doc here. The content is the same, the tables are formatted slightly differently.
This report is written in a governing thoughts structure; the contents serve as a high level summary:
- This report highlights the key takeaways from EAGxAustralasia 2025
- This report is written in a governing thoughts structure; the contents serve as a high level summary
- [...]
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Outline:
(00:15) This report highlights the key takeaways from EAGxAustralasia 2025
(01:12) You can read this as a google doc here . The content is the same, the tables are formatted slightly differently.
(01:21) This report is written in a governing thoughts structure; the contents serve as a high level summary:
(06:12) Most metrics we track improved
(06:35) Operationally the conference was similar to 2024, with some key differences
(06:42) Our new goal review process was light-weight and useful, and we're looking to refine it
(08:04) We grew our team from 4 people to 6, and found having a generalist who could add capacity in different areas to be very useful
(08:35) By wrap up we'll have spent around 1580 hours organising the conference, with Tom working ~540hrs, and the rest of the team between 140 and 250 each
(09:06) Our ways of working doc details how we operated as a remote, asynchronous team - and it's a useful high-level resource
(09:35) Opening applications and launching Swapcard both took longer than we expected
(10:10) We were significantly under budget, with our major expenses being venue + catering + AV, organiser time, and attendee travel support
(11:06) We spent less on Speaker Travel, and more on event expenses than in previous years
(11:27) On request, we allowed children between 10 and 18 to attend the conference. This went ok, but could have been managed better over the weekend
(11:47) We invested time and money on marketing, it was hard to know what was impactful
(11:53) We struggled to find balance between marketing widely and avoiding an influx of applications below our admissions bar
(12:19) We could invest more in finding consistent messaging and interesting content that communicates what EAGx is
(13:00) We did targeted outreach on Linkedin, resulting in 7 counterfactual attendees
(13:24) Attendance was lower than previous years, but not as low as we feared
(13:30) Despite more marketing and applications opening earlier we saw (approved) applications coming in later in 2025 than 2024
(13:41) The attendance rate from people who have been accepted has declined since 2023
(14:04) Attendees were older and more gender/pronoun diverse than in 2024
(14:25) Since 2023 there's been a decrease in attendees from NSW and ACT
(14:52) We identified multiple scam applications attempting to gain upfront travel support
(15:09) We had a couple of issues with the application/admissions process, these were short-lived but caused attendee confusion and may have lost us some attendees
(15:54) Our programme achieved our goals!
(15:59) We ran a more streamlined programme, and we think this was the right call
(17:25) Feedback indicated that we had a wide range of good content
(19:11) Our content lead for the last two years (Will) has outlined his thoughts on EAGx content. We think this will likely be useful reading for other content leads
(19:26) We successfully replaced the Friday Night Keynote with an Organisation Fair
(20:46) We invested in inventory for future years
(21:17) Our badge printer (purchased in 2024) allowed us to print badges ourselves, including last-minute requests on site
(21:45) Buying our own Chromebooks for displaying slides worked really well
(22:29) We are overall (very) happy with our branding and merchandising
(22:45) A contracted designer accelerated us by giving us a logo, colour palette, and great-looking templates for our content
(23:30) We provided t-shirts, high-quality stickers, bookmarks, and books as merchandise
(24:19) We aimed to Provide fantastic attendee experience with a culture that welcomes everyone and we think we did this well
(24:27) We used a conference style venue, and were very happy with it
(24:55) Our menu was nut-free and vegan
(25:08) Our catering was rated significantly higher than previous years, and we had no major issues with dietaries
(25:53) We directly followed up with attendees who shared dietary restrictions or accessibility requirements, and suggest other organisers do this too
(27:10) We ran a light-touch buddy programme and one third of our registrants signed up
(28:35) Feedback on the buddy programme was overall positive, though with a significant number of buddies not meeting up
(29:07) A single day of professional photography was very valuable
(29:27) We have more specific learnings! If you're organising a similar event and are keen to hear these please get in touch
(29:47) We think these resources of ours might be useful templates/inspiration for others running similar events
(30:46) We have some open questions and uncertainties and think input from others with high-context may be useful
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