It’s hard to believe that Q3 is already behind us—and what a quarter it has been. From the beginning of July through September, our event management team executed 15 events spanning not only states and countries, but also industries and formats.

We jumped right into Q3 by helping Tatari with a few high-end business dinners in NYC. At the end of July, longtime client Wellness Coach hosted the webinar “Wellness ROI: The Value of Investing in Your Employees” by bringing together several Talent and People Leaders for an engaging and candid conversation. It has been wonderful to witness and be a part of this recurring cient’s evolving event series. 

In August, we were particularly busy with events for Lightspeed Venture Partners, setting up five mixer events and roundtable dinners for them in LA, NYC and the Bay Area. Across our clientele, we’ve been working on this type of event a lot more in recent months, picking up more and more expertise as we go. 

Last, but certainly not least, was an eventful September—in the truest sense of the word. In addition to mixer and dinner events for Lightspeed Venture Partners, we brought to life SaaStr Annual 2022, SaaStr’s flagship and 10th anniversary event, in San Mateo from September 13 to 15. The three-day conference brought together 10,000+ attendees! Our team oversaw the speaker management and content coordination for close to 300 speakers. Both sides of cred’s business (speaker and event management) work with clients in the SaaS and Venture Capital space, so it was fun to see familiar faces and make connections onsite. 

Closing out the month, on September 29, Tatari Forward took place in the heart of Manhattan. With 150+ people in attendance, this conference was a forum in the name of the future of TV advertising. Our team handled speaker and venue management, and secured Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary as a keynote speaker. We also helped to plan their Customer Advisory board (CAB) event which occurred the same day. The closing happy hour had the picturesque backdrop of a warm sunset reflecting off of the Empire State Building—a 2022 highlight for sure! We have a full blog post coming soon recapping this specific event!

This quarter, we had a chance to work with a whopping 293 speakers, including:

• Aileen Lee, Founder & Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures

• Ben Chesnut, CEO, Mailchimp

• Bernadette Nixon, CEO, Algolia

• Bill Magnuson, Co-Founder and CEO, Braze

• Brad Hoover, CEO, Grammarly

• Cameron Deatsch, CRO, Atlassian

• Christine Edmonds, Partner, ICONIQ Growth

• David Singleton, CTO, Stripe

• Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO, HubSpot

• Dini Mehta, CRO, Lattice

• Gretchen Battle, Wellbeing Coach, Wellness Coach

• Howie Liu, CEO,  Airtable        

• Jason Lemkin, Founder & CEO, SaaStr

• Josh Reeves, Co-Founder, Gusto

• Kate Ahlering, CRO, Calendly

• Lara McGowan, VP, Product, Tatari

• Mark Kornfilt, President and CPO, Vimeo

• Pouyan Salehi, CEO, Co-Founder, Scratchpad

• Prelini Udayan-Chiechi, SVP Global Demand Gen, Zendesk

• Robin Spencer, Chief Strategy Officer, Clearbit

• Shuo Wang, Co-Founder & CRO, Deel

• Tiffany Luck, Partner, GGVC

The events industry is always changing, and with this, we’re always learning. Here are a couple of biggest takeaways from the past 3 months:

• Keep it short & sweet. We’ve seen very low attrition rates with attendance if you keep your content to under 3.5/4 hours total. Folks are much more likely to stick around through your event if you pack powerful content into just a few hours versus the 9-4 conference schedule we all became accustomed to pre-COVID. 

• Getting creative is getting competitive! We’ve seen some really impressive and engaging sponsor booth activations in the past few months. One booth at SaaStr even had a waiting list for their activation—can you guess which it was? 

• Keep healthy, dietary preferences in mind. Attendees are looking for vegetarian, vegan, and dairy-free options. Let them feel seen!

• Mix up your venue! If the weather permits, folks love the festival-type layout that a conference can take on, or try a tented rooftop with a great view of the city. Host your next big meeting in the city’s newest trendy restaurant. Gone are the days where corporate events can only happen in hotel conference rooms!

• It still pays off to keep health & safety in mind. Sanitizing stations, temperature checks upon arrival, keeping airflow top of mind—these are all ways you can show your attendees you care. We even had a client bring a mobile vax van onsite!

In all our projects, we continue to prioritize speaker diversity. Forty percent of the speakers we’ve worked with this calendar year are from underrepresented groups. We look forward to continuing to work with our clients towards achieving at least 50% by the end of the year. 

The team can’t wait to finish up the calendar year strong. We have everything, from in-person conferences to webinars to several dinner and networking happy hours left to execute before the end of 2022. We even have another international event coming up which we can’t wait to fill you in on!

Have an event you are looking to bring to life? We’d love to help! Email us at events@credpr.com

This blog post was written by Charlotte Heckard & Kathryn Kemp.