Summit Season: Notes

Some random notes from my experiences at the recent Snowflake and Databricks Summits in SF.

I’m just back from attending the Snowflake and Databricks Summits. I wasn’t exhibiting or presenting. The main purposes of attending these were to figure out what else who else in the space is doing, and (perhaps, more importantly) figure out how these conferences work.

Booths

Both conferences had large “expo areas” where people set up exhibition booths and other people stopped by to check them out. I spent the entirety of my time at these conferences at these booths (in fact, at Databricks, my pass only allowed me booth access).

Someone on a WhatsApp group I’m on asked about how these booths work, and this is what I wrote in response (mildly amended):

• ⁠the lowest “tier” was ~$30K in both conferences. The next tier was ~$55-60K. I imagine the tiers go up geometrically.
  
  Paying more can get you both larger booths and better positioning of booths. In Databricks, the lowest two tiers of booths were of the same size, but differed in location. At snowflake they differed on both location and size.

• Conference organisers provide backdrop, TVs and wired internet. You take your laptop and connect. Snowflake allowed you to customize your backdrop with your message. Databricks didn’t. Only had your comapny name there

• A lot of ⁠⁠companies typically hire local marketing agencies to man the booths. They usually talk through a prepared script, and can’t really answer your questions.
  
  As a corollary, founders / senior employees need to be around at booths at all times to answer questions, and talk to the “more qualified visitors”.

• ”number of badges scanned” is one metric these agencies optimise for. if you’re an exhibitor, the QR code on the badge helps you collect the badgeholder's contact info, which you can use for later outbound stuff.

• Footfall is highly dependent on where in the conference hall your booth is. there is some monetary component to getting better booths. it is also down to good old lobbying

• Companies try all kinds of gimmicks to get people to visit their booths - giveaways, games, raffles, etc. I don't understand the RoI of this, since it's mostly non-customers who will come for this (I collected a bunch of soft tow

• ⁠⁠if you're very early stage, putting up a booth can also make you vulnerable. for eg. at Snowflake two of my "approximate competitors" had put up booths right next to each toher. i was chattign wtih the founder of one, and while describing his product he was explaining why the other company's algos won't work etc.

Ambush marketing

“Nothing official about it”, went Pepsi’s slogan in the 1996 Cricket World Cup, where Coke was the “official” drinks partner. Pepsi’s campaign went as viral as it could in the pre-internet era.

There were a bunch of interesting ‘ambush marketing” cases as both conferences, where companies that had nothing to do with the events used them to promote themselves. Some memorable ones:

• MotherDuck hosted awesome afterparties during both events (their Snowflake party being much better than their Databricks party)

• Cloudera set up a coffee truck outside Databricks, collecting email IDs in exchange for free (Starbucks) coffee. The people at the booth used a cheeky “oh, for some reason our badge scanner isn’t working, can you type in your name and email ID on this iPad?” to get around the fact that the badge scanner did nothing much for non-exhibitors.

• During Databricks, HevoData (not an exhibitor there) had a truck doing the rounds around the Moscone Centre saying "Why pay 5X for Fivetran? Switch to Hevo Data"

• When I first entered the Databricks event, there was one guy who had put up his company’s standee right at the entrance (I guess early-stage company; don’t recall the name)! The next time I passed by that spot, he was gone. I guess he had been shut down.

Solo Attendee

As the founder of an early stage startup with limited funding, I didn’t do either. The best I could do was to message a bunch of attendees before the event asking to meet. I had a few good conversations thanks to this, but a number of conversations didn’t work out since I didn’t have a booth (I got a few “how do I find you if you don’t have a booth”s) .

There were also a few good serendipitous conversations, including at the afterparties (that needs its own post).

I don’t know if I’ll go to such mega events in the near future. That said, if I can line up sufficient meetings ahead of the event, then it makes sense to attend.