Last week, I published the backstory of MagnoliaJS, as well as what I, along with a ton of support from the community, had been able to accomplish in my first week of serious planning.

Well, here's an update of how last week went!

First off, I was able to raise another ~$2,000. I still must raise at least another $10,000 within the next couple of weeks — reach out if you'd like to sponsor!

Thanks so much to Echobind, DevRelate, and Infinite Red for sponsoring!

I finally got a bank account open, so we actually can accept money now.

I ran a giveaway (sponsored by Infinite Red) to ChainReactConf. Congrats again to Dallas for winning! I have one more ticket to giveaway — keep an eye on our Twitter!

Next, I confirmed all Main Stage speakers! We have a really amazing lineup. I'm blown away — if you would have asked me 3 weeks ago if our lineup would be this good, I would have say definitely not.

• Laurie Voss (@seldo)
• Ken Wheeler (@ken_wheeler)
• Jay Phelps (@_jayphelps)
• Tae'lur Alexis (@taeluralexis)
• Nader Dabit (@dabit3)
• Joe Previte (@jsjoeio)
• Gant Laborde (@gantlaborde)
• Kurt Kemple (@kurtiskemple)
• Sia Karamalegos (@thegreengeek)
• Blake Watson (@blakewatson)

Lastly, I was able to launch Early Bird ticket sales using Tito! The page is a bit incomplete (I have to make some customizations tonight), but it's functional and we've sold our first tickets! I highly recommend Tito — it took me ~20 minutes from start to finish to be ready to accept money and sale tickets!

Up Next

High Priority

• Get more sponsors
• Add speakers to website (probably missing ticket sales because of this right now)
• Close CFP on Friday and start selecting the rest of the speakers
• Customize event page on Tito
• Contact emcee who was recommended to me
• Finalize and publish all workshops

Regular Priority

• Contact meetup organizers in surrounding states and offer coupons, specifically:
  • Atlanta
  • Birmingham
  • Little Rock
  • Memphis
  • Nashville
  • New Orleans
• Finalize contract with photographer
• Generate speaker cards for Twitter using React-Sketchapp (thanks a ton to Peter Piekarczyk for showing me how I could use this to easily generate speaker card PNGs for Twitter!)
• Conduct another giveaway for ChainReact Conf

If you have any tips at all or would like to help out, please reach out!

And if you haven't already, go purchase an Early Bird ticket and come hang with us on April 18!