Recently I’ve attended two conferences two weeks apart in San Francisco, and the difference in style is shocking. One did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick:-) The other a decidedly more “closed” traditional corporate conference, so much so, that fellow commentators actually compared it to time travel :
R Ray Wang Time travel RT @benkepes: .@rwang0 amazing that a week ago you were at #DF12 and this week you’ve gone back 10 years to be at OpenWorld #OOW
What’s really shocking to me how the external appearance truly reflects the messaging of the two companies. But I’ll shut up – here are some photos, you be the judge.
The “park” in the middle is normally busy Howard Street, shut down for the event, astroturfed, set up with stages, large screens, food stalls, lots of bean bags and all sorts of entertainment. Beautiful San Francisco weather did not hurt, either.
Now, let’s see how the other conference converted Moscone and Howard Street:
It reminds me of a formation of the Roman Legion…
Dark alleys, some with dead ends.
Why do I feel like I am at a train station?
Oh, well, this is fun. Pictures do talk, after all. So much so, I’ve decided to give you a pictorial preview of a few posts I am about to write:
(Disclosure: As is customary in business, all vendors mentioned or referred to covered or will cover T&E for conference attendance)
(Cross-posted @ CloudAve » Zoli Erdos)
[…] so I ‘m abandoning my pictorial post schedule, as Box-mania just broke out, and I feel compelled to jump in. But the skipped NetSuite post is […]
[…] Everything about the conference from the keynotes on was crafted with the new version of their ecosystem and high-energy entertainment value in mind. Not just at the Moscone Center but all around the area. They had a Woodstock like atmosphere with large screens set up on artificial turf with benches, tables and chairs everywhere to sit around outside and still see the keynote. There were people on street corners within about a mile radius of the Moscone Center, wearing salesforce uniforms that were there to provide helpful instructions on how to get somewhere if you had to ask them. I heard, though this is unconfirmed, that salesforce hired primarily homeless people to be these street corner directors which underscores (if true) how deeply into their DNA, the philanthropy goes, and should serve as a model for all the vendors who hold conferences anywhere. Kudos to them big time if this is true. To get a great visual of Dreamforce X, see Zoli Erdo’s “A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more) on the Enterprise Irregulars sit… […]
[…] Everything about the conference from the keynotes on was crafted with the new version of their ecosystem and high-energy entertainment value in mind. Not just at the Moscone Center but all around the area. They had a Woodstock like atmosphere with large screens set up on artificial turf with benches, tables and chairs everywhere to sit around outside and still see the keynote. There were people on street corners within about a mile radius of the Moscone Center, wearing salesforce uniforms that were there to provide helpful instructions on how to get somewhere if you had to ask them. I heard, though this is unconfirmed, that salesforce hired primarily homeless people to be these street corner directors which underscores (if true) how deeply into their DNA, the philanthropy goes, and should serve as a model for all the vendors who hold conferences anywhere. Kudos to them big time if this is true. To get a great visual of Dreamforce X, see Zoli Erdo’s “A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more) on the Enterprise Irregulars sit… […]
[…] year I made a bit of fun of Oracle, picking on the symbolism in their closed, walled conference setup vs. the open festival-like […]