After the winter season brought a resurgence of COVID strain fears, our event management team wasn’t sure what the beginning of the year would look like. We had already begun planning for in-person 2022 events and the thought of those falling through made us weary. After more than two years in the fully virtual world, we were hopeful that 2022 would involve more in-person times ahead. And we’re glad to say—so far, so good!
We were involved in eight events in Q1, ranging from more intimate client dinners and webinars to a full-scale hybrid conference right here in San Francisco. We are proud of the variety and hustle with which we kicked off this quarter.
Commencing the quarter, we began by tackling an important theme in recurring client Wellness Coach’s webinar: Psychological Safety in the Workplace. It was rewarding to be involved in this vital topic with attendees, and allowed for key internal discussions of the matter at cred.
Later in the quarter, we were thrilled to be back in-person at long-time client LiveRamp’s RampUp San Francisco. An event we last successfully put on right before COVID shut down the city in March 2020 came back in full-force as a hybrid event and brought together 1,200+ attendees at the Fairmont and another 700 virtually on Hopin. We were proud to highlight diversity through both speakers and content. Read our full recap here.
Where else were we this quarter?
Throughout this quarter, we’ve helped recurring client Tatari with four of their in-person client dinners in New York City, LA, Palm Springs and Las Vegas. It’s been really fun to take on a new event format through our work with this client.
In mid-February, we executed our third virtual sales kick-off for recurring client Meraki where we managed 105 speakers. The two-day conference played on a halftime show theme which saw musical elements carried throughout the entirety of the event—from design features, to the opening AC/DC segment, talent show submissions and beyond. Not to mention, the eight-time Grammy-nominated keynote speaker Janelle Monae.
In mid-March, the second annual SaaStr Build featured 20 virtual speakers from top unicorn and public companies like Amplitude, Samsara, Notion, Atlassian, and Salesforce to name a few. Executives shared their best practices, motivations, and success stories to scale their businesses to $100M ARR. It was quite the day of tactical presentation and immersive Q&As. Catch up on all the sessions here.
We continue to enjoy playing a role in elevating the voices featured by our clients at their events. Here are just a few of the 250 incredible speakers we had a chance to work with:
Alice Katwan, SVP and GM, North America Sales, Twilio
Aneesh Raman, Head of Strategic Communications, LinkedIn
Anil Chakravarthy, President, Digital Experience Business, Adobe
Antonio Lucio, Founder & Principal, 5S Diversity; former CMO of Facebook, Visa, and HP
Carolyn Pollock, Chief Marketing Officer, Tailored Brands
Carrie Tharp, Vice President, Google Cloud Retail, Google
Doug Milliken, VP, Marketing Transformation, The Clorox Company
Emma Grede, Co-Founder and CEO of Good American; Founding Partner, Skims
Ivonne Kinser, Vice President of Marketing and Innovation, Avocados from Mexico
Janelle Monae, Grammy-nominated Singer, Producer and Actress
Jeff Green, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, The Trade Desk
Jonathan Weston, Regional Vice President - ISV Business Builder, Salesforce
Madhu Muthukumar, Chief Product Officer, Notion
Maryam Banikarim, Head of Marketing, Global and Community, Nextdoor
Omar Tawakol, VP & GM Cisco Customer Experience as a Service BU, Cisco
Poorvi Shrivastav, GM & VP, Products, HubSpot
Samuel Baroukh, CMO, Nestlé France
Tia Cummings-Hopkins, SVP, Global Brand Marketing, Square
Walter Geer, Executive Creative Director, XD, VMLY&R
We always learn with every event—especially in today’s rapidly changing landscape! Here’s what we’ve noticed this past quarter:
Proof of vaccination and onsite COVID testing is still so important in calming attendees’ worries and making them feel safe at an event. Most testing vendors make it quick and very simple without taking up too much time.
Being able to network in-person again is like being able to eat cheese after doing Whole30 for a month. We loved watching the enthusiasm and energy of meeting at an in-person event—it reminded us of the true reason why conferences and events matter.
Hybrid is in fact possible! If your in-person event involves virtual speakers, we can’t reiterate enough how important testing and dry runs are. Ensure your virtual speakers are doing their dry run from the same computer and location where they’ll be doing the live broadcast. There’s very little room for error during a live event so it’s crucial to make a clear plan of action for your AV team to set yourself up for success.
When hosting a virtual event, don’t forget to keep it fun. Gamification, polling, and chat/networking functions of your virtual platform continue to drive attendee engagement. And never, ever underestimate your attendee’s commitment to a theme!
Our team closed out the quarter feeling rejuvenated and motivated. We’re proud to say 44% of the speakers we worked with this quarter were underrepresented minorities (URM)—an initiative we are always prioritizing. It was also so rewarding to see attendees feel safe, comfortable and able to enjoy mingling in-person again, when for so long COVID had made this possibility feel slim. We continue to be grateful for our work, clients, and partners who make it all possible. A busy Q2 lies ahead and we look forward to even more events—whether they are in-person, virtual, or somewhere in between
Have an event you are looking to bring to life? We’d love to help! Email us at hello@credpr.com.
