No Sleep After Show: Episode 2
Todd and Anthony reflect on the audience experience and everything the team set out to change about B2B conferences with Goldenhour months in the rear view mirror.
What's up everybody and welcome back to the No Sleep 'til Brooklyn after show.
I am here today with Anthony.
How you doing, man?
Good, dude.
How are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
And today we are talking about episode two, which was all about not only
content, but
kind of like the audience experience as a whole that we built at Golden Hour.
So before we actually get into the documentary, Anthony, why don't you tell us
a little bit
about what you wanted to achieve with Golden Hour and specifically the
experience you wanted
to give people?
Yeah, for sure.
Well, I think so many of B2B events in general have this negative connotation
in a way where
you look at some of the consumer events and they're super experiential.
All of these activations, we use this language that we almost don't even bring
into the B2B
world.
We could have our event at like a airport, like Radisson in, and that's totally
fine.
And so first of all, there's this stigma almost for B2B events.
And many of us have tried over years to break through.
And the way we've done that historically has been just focusing on a great
speaker agenda.
And then it becomes kind of this playbook you could apply.
Then you do the happy hour and then you do like the sales dinners on top of it.
And like, you know, lather rinse repeat is like the same kind of formula.
And so when we looked around the marketing conference circuit, especially, it
was like
kind of surprising that there's, you know, inbound maybe at the top of the
charts, that's
like, again, optimizing around reach and how many people can you get to fill up
conference
halls and, you know, massive, massive scale.
But then like there aren't other events, there's a million events, but there
aren't many that
are obvious at least that are taking sort of more of that experiential
activation kind
of lead approach.
So our hypothesis with Golden Hour was what if like the medium was the message
for our
event, where it wasn't just what was said on stage.
It wasn't just who was in the room, both very important things.
But it was also how it was how the event was put on from, you know, everything
on like
social and the build up to from the moment somebody stepped foot on site at the
hotel to like, you know, that last moment leaving dinner.
We wanted all of it to be calculated and curated.
We held ourselves for as a small team to a really high standard for being able
to deliver
that.
So that's, I think, the intention of it.
And we didn't know, you know, we came up with the idea like what those things
were.
We just knew we wanted to really deliver something that was an amazing
experience as
well.
Yeah.
So it's interesting you say we didn't really know what those things were.
So as we were figuring out what those things were and like what we wanted to
kind of become
known for in a sense, we kind of pulled our audiences to see like what they
love about
marketing conferences or B2B conferences and what they don't love so much about
it.
So we're going to get into that in a second.
But I want to just play this intro clip real quick because this is kind of once
we figured
those things out, the intro clip here is kind of like introducing all of that
for the rest
of the documentary.
So let's play this real quick.
What do people go to B2B events?
To learn.
To network.
To spend company money.
And what is the worst part of B2B events?
The sessions.
Going alone.
The entertainment.
What if people loved the sessions?
And what if we helped them meet people?
And what if the entertainment made them want to stay?
He's a god.
Genius.
No sleep too.
We're right there.
This was the first one we filmed.
Todd, I remember we're a little.
Yeah, I think this was.
I think.
Yeah.
They got progressively more awkward.
But this one, you know, we definitely kicked it off with a bang for sure.
Yeah.
So this one's kind of interesting though because I think a lot of the other
ones are this one,
it's obviously specific to this episode because we're talking about audience
experience
and content and all of those things.
Sessions and entertainment and networking and all of that stuff that kind of
works into
the experience.
Yeah.
But at the same time, I think this one is like it speaks to the conference as a
whole.
Or like the other ones are very pointed at the actual episode or like that very
specific
thing.
This one talks about like the entire conference.
So we actually had a person like on the street, so to speak, like at the event,
like going
up and talking to people and asking what their favorite parts were.
In the perfect world, these align with the things that like we wanted them to.
And I just want to get like your reaction to these things.
What are you most excited about for today?
To be honest, it's the people here.
The people here are spectacular.
I mean, all these people that we've been creating with from afar come together
and then also
it's a killer location.
I think I feel like I'm bumping shoulders with people I've seen on LinkedIn
give incredible
thought leadership.
Like I'm in the room with the people that I want to learn from in real time and
actually
like shaking their hands, asking them questions.
So I think it's just like bringing the right people together in like a super
cool venue
is just sort of creating the environment where I think a lot of knowledge is
going to get
shared.
We may have chose the most random spot to hold a B2B conference, which was
Brooklyn.
But the venue was like by far one of the top responses.
So I guess the question is like why Brooklyn?
Yeah, I mean, what we wanted to do was like, or we went into the brainstorm
thinking it's
not San Francisco.
After years of doing events in San Francisco, like all I knew is that this was
not, this
was going to be sort of not your average San Francisco based tech conference.
And I think making that distinction up top was pretty important to us that it
wasn't,
you know, going to fall into that formulaic kind of playbook that every other
kind of
conference in our view has fell into.
So that brought up, you know, okay, well, San Francisco is great because you
can drive
a lot of people to the event because a lot of the market's there.
So where do you go next?
And so then the idea was New York.
It's the obvious like next, next one.
The other idea was LA given sort of the whole media thing and thinking that,
you know, Hollywood
backlot, there was some like vision for what that could look like.
But I had gone to, you know, many events in Manhattan in New York and they have
their
own, it's different, but their own sort of playbook as well.
And it's either like Times Square, Marriott Marquis, you know, high rise craz
iness type
of a thing.
Or it's like a Soho, you know, warehouse or a turnkey kind of event venue
somewhere, you
know, down, you know, somewhere in the lower Manhattan.
So the bet was like, okay, we think it's important to make this a destination
event.
New York is a tough market to make.
It's not real.
It's a destination city in a way, but not in the same way that you would think
compared
to, you know, Nashville or Miami or some of these other markets.
But we think we can pull a lot of locals if we did it in New York.
And for me, it's kind of a personal story.
My cousin lived in Williamsburg and I went out and visited him a couple of
years ago
and, you know, we go out kind of semi regularly.
And what I loved about Williamsburg is again, it's like two stops from Flatiron
District
in Manhattan on the subway.
So like really easy to get to Williamsburg in particular.
It had this like grungy hipstery kind of vibe to it.
And then these hotels, I think there's like three of them in Williamsburg, one
of which
is the William Bale, are like super high-end and artsy.
And so there's this like, again, cultural kind of, I hate to say, but like vibe
in that
area that spikes on like art and design and all fashion and all of that.
And yet, you know, it feels like a rolled away, but it's so close to Manhattan.
So the belief was, I don't know if we would get a lot of people to come to LA
because
everyone would have to travel.
Nearly 100% of attendees would have to fly into that host city, destination
city.
San Francisco, we can get a decent amount of people, but we wouldn't get the
experience.
So Brooklyn felt a little bit like a hack.
And then it was a little bit cheaper.
You know, it ended up being a non-union property, which for event folks know
that, you know,
it helps on the budget, at least, you know, quite a bit and some of the
complexity.
And it was, you know, it just felt right.
It just felt right.
The dates lined up, the budget kind of worked.
And so that's kind of how we landed on Brooklyn, at least for year one.
We only had 300 people by design in that room.
But we were able to get like arguably the best 300 people that we could have
got to
show up in that room.
So as far as like designing the event, like, how did you design it?
So we did get the right people in the room.
Yeah, so I wish there was this like genius plan that explained how we got all
the right
people in the room at Golden Hour.
But it was a series of like mistakes and learnings and things that actually
worked out.
I actually pulled up some data to look at 27% of the tickets that we sold sold.
In the last seven days, last week before the event, 47% sold in the last 14
days, two weeks
before the event started.
And what was really interesting if you dig into that data, a lot of it was paid
It wasn't just like we gave away a bunch of free tickets.
We had a bunch of people within the last two weeks decide that they're going to
pay full
price for the event, book a flight across the country and sometimes across an
ocean and
travel to Golden Hour.
So that was something that was new.
We did not anticipate this.
In fact, I think I don't know if it's this episode, it might be another episode
coming
up where we talk about email as the way of driving registrations.
And it worked for me brilliantly for eight years.
Tickets are early birds ending, early birds extending, and we have all of these
like urgency
moments that drive registrations.
None of that worked.
None of it worked this time.
Zero.
I don't know if that's like us, it's like our database is new or a young
company or if
it's a first year event or if email is a channel, and talking to some other
event marketers,
it seems like email as a channel isn't as performant for driving reg anymore or
just harder to get
people to actually buy the ticket.
So yeah, we were sweating.
We were sweating, I think the first, I mean, we started selling 100 days before
the show
and it didn't, what until the month before that the curve starts to spike up.
But what I remember, and this was something again that I'd love to get your
take on because
I think you were kind of at the core of a lot of this, we started using
LinkedIn organic
as a real big lever to drive kind of buzz around the event.
So I had done some things around like walk-in talks and, you know, giving quick
updates,
you know, video things.
So I try to have like a weekly post or something on Golden Hour, but then I
think it was you,
Amanda, JK, like you guys came up with the idea of doing the like creator
activation
and finding ways to get folks who had a lot of influence with us or in our
market be a
part of the speaker agenda in the right places, but also amplify their
participation.
The whole I'm going with, I'm going to Golden Hour kind of thing.
I had very little to do with that.
This was all your creative genius, you and the crew.
What was it from your perspective about that that worked so much better than
email?
Yeah, I think this goes to the whole like experience of a smaller event.
And I don't know that this would work if I'm trying to fill up like a
conference hall.
But I think the beauty of our event is it was a more intimate event.
So the way that we broke this thing out, even from the content perspective, it
kind of
broke itself out into three different like ICPs kind of or personas where it
was kind
of like executive level, CMO, VP kind of like that level below that like demand
gen and
then content people.
So I think the beauty of what we did and we'll get into this in a minute is you
can only
have so many people on stage, right?
Specifically when it's a one day event and there's a relatively small group at
the conference.
You can only have so many people on stage.
But what we did was we also had this other virtual broadcast booth event
happening at
the same time which we had a lot more control over because they were much, we
made them
quick, like flash talks I think is what we called them as we were building it
on purpose.
So we could one, I don't think people online want the 45 minute sessions but
two, we could
get a lot more voices in there.
So essentially I think what worked really well and part of the reason we were
able to get
like such a strong group in the room is because we were able to offer those
broadcast speaking
slots to like essentially like all of our, because this is a community, right?
Like the LinkedIn marketing community, we were basically able to offer those
slots to like
a bunch of our friends who we knew were deeply plugged into that community.
So when you have a 15 minute slot, you're going to promote that you're speaking
and
you know that kind of I think incentivize people to tell all their friends and
invite
people and all of those things.
So I think there was kind of this snowball effect at the end because I don't
know why
this happened.
I mean, a lot of people seemingly like they posted like the hey, I'm going to
to to golden
hour when we asked them to.
But then it seemed like everyone started like, I don't know, getting excited
about the event
and like it was coming up and like, I feel like everybody started like organ
ically posting
and talking about like, hey, they were going in the last week or two, which
probably drove
a lot of that as well.
That's when you know it's working pretty well when we're not even asking people
to post
it anymore.
But they're you know, they're they're kind of sharing that they just booked
their ticket
or whatever.
You know, I think that the underlying emotion here though, that is applicable.
I think to every event is FOMO like we created helped curate FOMO, which is
probably one
of the hardest things to do in event planning.
But I think it's also the thing that ends up selling the tickets.
And what was really cool, the outcome of that is, you know, you heard this
probably, I think
we all heard this talking to different people on at the event.
Everyone was like, it's like my LinkedIn feed came to life in the room, like
all of the people
who I you know, wanted to meet or I've had this sort of like relationship with,
you know,
digitally or whatever, I now get to see in person.
And for our business, you know, for our market, for our audience, that's a very
powerful thing.
And so I think we can take some credit for it for the reasons discussed.
I think yeah, the digital broadcast was built for social.
And so it was really a good a good avenue for us.
But the outcome was this kind of really powerful FOMO thing that happened.
And I think that's the key for for companies to try to figure out how you can
unlock that.
So I want to talk about the broadcast ask for a moment because this is one of
the things
that didn't actually show up in the documentary.
I know.
It's a big thing.
But I think this is there's a reason for this.
And it's it's because I think the team filming the documentary was kind of
scrambling for us
to help make this happen.
But when we went and we scouted the venue, I don't know, a month, 90 days,
whatever
it was, or 60 days before the before the actual event, we're kind of figuring
out where everything
was going to be placed.
And they showed us, I forget what they called the room, but it basically like
this penthouse
on like the 20th floor of the William Vale.
And it had this massive balcony that overlooked the the Manhattan skyline.
And like immediately when seeing that, it was like, this is where the broadcast
ask has
to be.
You know, we wanted shooting out that way so we can see the skyline like this
is going
to be perfect.
And then I don't know, 24 hours before, you know, everyone started showing up
to register.
Literally the the it was basically said like this is going to be impossible.
You can't aim the cameras that way.
You're going to have to point them at the wall, which is like, I mean, it was a
nice
looking wall, but at the same time, this was the reason we chose space.
So tell me what was going through your head when when you were told like this
vision that
you have for this arguably like the most one of the most innovative things we
were doing
there.
Yeah.
Can't can't be what you want it to be.
This was the whole like intention of like the to your point, the innovation of
golden hour
was that it was intimate for the 300 that were there, but inclusive for the
thousands that
you'd be watching online.
And it was the hardest thing for us to plan.
And you you live this with me.
It was like, we felt pretty good about the 300 and like that run of show, but
even like
a couple days before we're like, gosh, like it's really hard for a team of
seven full-time
employees to do two events at the same time, it turns out.
And so yeah, you know, you walk up there and the desk is actually like
beautiful.
I think they did a great job with like building the desk.
You know, they wanted to move it into a wall that looked slightly better than
this one,
like behind it.
And meanwhile, I'm staring at like the most beautiful view, like, you know, on
the other
other direction.
So yeah, I mean, it was not only was I nervous, I remember saying the words
like, I feel pretty
good about the in person event, but I'm really nervous about this whole this
whole thing.
And then when I saw that, I was like, Oh my gosh, like this is good.
This is not going to work.
Like it's just not going to work or like, is this like endemic of more problems
that we're
going to have?
Is this just this is just the beginning?
Like the stream's not going to work, like, you know, whatever, like, because
the technical
logistics to do a multi person live broadcast using in person clips that happen
hours before,
like it's a nightmare to be able to plan that out.
And so thankfully the team doing the documentary, because I think Craig and Ron
came down to
lighting basically where they're like, so the lighting.
Yes, basically what happened was we were on this balcony, which was in the
shade, you
know, it had a ceiling.
It was in the shade and we basically got what we wanted.
We had a beautiful sunny day out in New York, which made it dark where the
broadcast booth
was and bright behind it.
And if you know anything about cameras or lighting or any of that, like, that's
a hard
situation to light for because basically I have to make the broadcast booth as
bright
as the sun behind it.
I just want to a basketball game like the day before or something, or 90 before
, sorry,
like the month before.
And I saw like the ESPN set up or whatever, it was like a nationally televised
game.
And this was indoors.
And they had like blinding lights, like blinding, blinding lights shooting like
the desk.
And then when I walk up, I'm like, there's nothing.
Like there's no, there's like little lights, but like nothing near what we saw.
So I don't know anything about video, but I just saw like what I saw and I was
like,
this ain't it.
This isn't gonna work.
Yeah.
So essentially what happened was they set it all up like as it was planned for.
And basically what what they warned us of is what happened.
Like you could have one of two scenarios.
You could have the people at the desk lit properly.
And behind them is just like a bright light.
Like you can't see anything because it's so overexposed or you can have them
super dark
and the background looks nice.
So basically what ended up happening was the documentary crew like scoured
their contacts
in New York City to find a rental house that had some like super intense lights
that we
could use.
And we ended up making it happen and it looked fantastic.
Aim before.
The morning of I believe or I guess it was late into the night.
Yeah.
They found them the day before and they were setting them up.
And that was the other problem.
They were they were sourced the day before, but they didn't get them into place
until
the evening.
So they didn't even know.
Yeah.
How they were setting it up in the morning, but the sun was still coming up.
So it wasn't the proper condition.
So, but anyway, they did a they did a fantastic job and I ended up working out
beautifully.
Big thank you to Amir.
Same, same today.
I remember walking in the downstairs conference hall during the conference.
It was like a break or something.
And we were playing the live broadcast on the TVs and I just walked by and I
saw it
and I was like, thank God.
It looks so good.
It looked amazing.
And I just knew that the lights were like that was it like we needed that light
to like
make all the difference.
So yeah, it was just like on passing like, oh, like beautiful.
Last thing that we kind of talk about within like the attendee or audience
experience is
the entertainment.
So yeah, I think this falls into like two buckets for us.
One was the actual entertainment like the the acts so to speak that was
entertaining
people.
And the other the other was the sit down dinner itself.
Yeah.
So like why don't you why don't you kind of take us through like those those
two things
and how we kind of wanted to make it different.
Yeah.
And I think we talk about this on the show that like, you know, people don't
travel to
events just for content anymore.
That's the meta kind of thesis that we had coming into the planning process.
And so we knew building an amazing experience is what would drive in person
attendance.
Again, content's amazing.
And I'm sure I think we're going to talk about it in one of the episodes to
come.
That's why we're even doing events, you know, as a whole.
But the idea is we needed to create an experience.
And so when it came like entertainment dinners, like maybe we'll start with
dinners like,
you know, I plan many events as a marketer carrying a pipeline target, you know
, thinking
about pitching events as a way to support sales and, you know, customer renew
als and
all of that.
And so the way we talked about like, it is basically you've got your corporate
event
during the day.
And then you have these like field marketing activations after the event.
So if we're driving 5,000 people in San Francisco, like we're going to work
with sales, we're
going to set up a bunch of different dinners after the conference is over for
target accounts,
for active prospects that are forecasted to close, each A is going to have
their own
dinner.
We have the CEO kind of make their way to the different dinners.
It's going to be a customer dinner and so on.
And the goal of those moments is pipeline or revenue, ultimately deal signature
And that's kind of been the norm.
There's VIP dinners for certain events.
There are speaker dinners that I've been invited to.
But if you are the conference attendee who is not in sales force as an open
opportunity
or close customer or a speaker, you don't get invited any of these things.
Like 5 p.m.
You're done.
You know, please come get next year unless you want to be a prospect.
And so one of the hypotheses was what if we did a not mandatory, but a dinner
that was
for everyone and everyone was invited to it.
And we can kind of it could be sort of the great kind of leveling of sorts and
you can
sit a speaker, could sit next to a attendee and I saw this all across the
restaurant and
kind of build those relationships across any sort of like, you know,
designation, I guess,
at the event itself.
And you know, dinners are, you know, goes from the beginning of time, I think,
like,
you know, to commune with someone to sit across a table from them to share a
meal.
Like, it really brings people together, people from different, you know,
backgrounds from
different perspectives.
And so I think in general, dinner is a very powerful opportunity to build
community.
And so the vision that we had really activated by the venue, because we knew
there was this
like rooftop overlooking Manhattan and like, would be at the perfect space for
this experience.
Like the vision I had had in my head is like one table and this like metaphor,
we're all
at the table together type of thing.
Now logistically, we had to break it up a little bit considering the venue wasn
't shaped
like a shoebox basically.
Like, I could hold 300 people at one table.
But you know, I think that was sort of the idea.
And what was really interesting is there were other like sponsor, other vendors
that hosted
dinners competing with the golden hour dinner, which is always like a real
thing that happens.
And I'm not saying that's bad.
We do it too.
But I think we had a fairly good turnout.
I don't know the final numbers, but you know, I'm not sure how successful those
other dinners
were because we were like, yeah, not not saying it's a good thing, but we like
ran out of
food.
It got down like the last two plates, but we ran out of food.
And then it was packed.
So I think that was one of the big reasons for doing a dinner.
Now entertainment more broadly, again, it goes this idea of like, what's my
like privileged
experience I get by booking a flight to go to this thing where, you know, we've
hit on
you know, a number of different vectors for that.
But what's something that I can see or be a part of that I wouldn't get on
LinkedIn or
wouldn't be the same thing.
And so we built into the budget, you know, we'd have a ton of money, but some
type of
entertainer.
And the idea there too is that it's a draw that it would sell tickets or it
would add
to the equity of the event that this isn't just a business conference, but we
get this
like shared experience as a community to come together around this moment that
exists.
And you know, for whatever reason, because we had a bunch of different ideas
for what
we wanted, you know, musicians, comedians, like there's a number of different
things
we can do.
But for whatever reason, I got infatuated by the idea of Lindsay Sterling.
And namely because her story was amazing, she built her own audience on YouTube
instead
of signing with like a major record label.
She created her own content.
She still does today.
So there's something really powerful about that.
I couldn't get over the idea of like violin music being played like on the like
like poppy,
classical music.
She's like, I don't know, like I'm not going to buy typically a ticket for that
, but to
have the option to that or to experience something like that, that's different
than like just
listening to a DJ or whatever.
Yeah.
And so there was something like different about it that I think fit the
aesthetic of
the brand like night, you know, golden hour over Manhattan from a rooftop
listening to
the violin.
And then Lindsay Sterling carried a little bit of a brand, Panache, I think it
helped
us like punch above our weight while also like respecting the budget to some to
some
degree as well.
And so, you know, she was very kind to work with us on that.
But in general, it was I would, I mean, even months later now, like it'd be
hard to find
a better person for a year one event in a year one budget than being able to
get someone
like Lindsay Sterling to perform.
So that was the rationale behind it.
Did it, I think it helped us sell tickets to some extent.
It's hard to know.
I mean, it doesn't really show up in the graph as like we announced her and
sold a bunch
of tickets.
But I think it helped paint this picture in the minds of the audience that this
was a
premium event that this wasn't kind of a, you know, boxed lunch type of event.
It was a little bit more high end and experiential.
And I think from that perspective, it was good.
And from the actual show, I don't know how much time we have left on this, but
we learned
a lot about that too.
Yeah.
So that's what I was going to ask you.
So first, when you were talking about like, when you were talking about the
actual dinner
itself and you were making the comment about like everyone kind of around one
table and
you know, the room wasn't necessarily built for that.
But like, I do think one, it's, it's, I do think that we kind of achieved that
in a
sense though, because for people that weren't there, you can, you can see this
in the actual
documentary.
If you're looking for it, but the way the room was set up, there's an actual
term for
this.
I don't recall what it is, but like we had Lindsey in the middle of the room
and everyone
was kind of seated like all around her versus like she was on a stage in the
front.
We were all kind of watching.
So it felt like a very inclusive room and everyone was kind of like around and
kind
of like looking inward versus like you could be in the front or the back or
whatever.
So I do think like, obviously we didn't have one table, but to me it felt more
that way
because of the way the room was set up.
A two, I think the where you were, where you were about to go with this is we
had this
like weird moment during dinner where there was like a subset of people that
wanted to
just watch the performance and there was a subset of people that just wanted a
network.
So the room was very loud and we, which you would expect it like a conference
dinner,
people are not working.
We didn't necessarily like think this through fully, I think.
But part of the idea of getting Lindsey Sterling was that we asked her in
between songs to
talk about like her journey specifically because he said she's a content
creator.
That's how she built her audience.
Her journey, how she built her audience, like all of these things that we
thought would
be interesting from a learning perspective to the people in the room.
It was very difficult for the people that wanted to listen to hear and like for
her,
I think, you know, she may have felt like people weren't listening.
So tell me how you were feeling in that moment.
I think even at one point someone was like shouting like quiet down or
something.
I'm an idealist, Todd.
I'm an idealist.
In my head, I had this picture that was unshakeable.
It was the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline.
Lindsey Sterling coming up beautiful like violin that is just like creating
this emotional
stir across the room.
And shame on me.
I did not consider all of the other things that go into this.
So first of all, it was a cloudy day.
In fact, it began to rain.
And so it wasn't as golden houry as I was hoping for.
But the bigger implication of that was there's this patio just outside the
venue and then
or outside that room and even above where, I don't know, maybe people would
have gone
out and talked out there had that been an option, but it was cold, windy and
started
in terrain.
And so everyone, no matter who you were, was packed in this room.
And in the back of the room was a bar and people congregating around the bar
having
some drinks doing what they do.
And that's cool.
And so yeah, I mean, the people in the back were very loud.
And I think if you were of the group upfront listening to Lindsey or if you're
a Lindsay
herself, like that comes across as, you know, disrespectful or whatever the
case is.
But if you're the people in the back, you're like, well, where do you want us
to do?
Where do you want us to go to have these conversations?
And so some of the feedback we heard in the survey was, well, maybe the
performance shouldn't
be during dinner.
I'm like, I don't know if that maybe, maybe not, maybe we need it.
Maybe it's a venue constraint situation.
And so I don't know that I fully processed how to fix this for next time.
All I know is that it was pretty awkward.
And I was sitting there like, you know, six chairs or so away from Lindsay,
feeling the
like awkwardness, knowing that I do something.
So I'm just on Slack, like trying to get people who I physically saw in the
back to like get
people back to quiet down.
But honestly, I didn't take into consideration like their perspective either
until seeing
it in the survey.
So I don't know, we got to figure that out for next year.
Definitely going to do entertainment again.
Yeah, for sure.
Figure out how and where to do it.
And you know, we talked about networking and making things inclusive.
Like this is one of those areas where inclusivity means some people want to
just hang out and
like talk and not feel like they have to sit down and listen to a classical
violinist
if they don't want to do that.
And I think we missed our opportunity to really carve out that experience for
them.
Yeah.
So I think at the end of the day, the overall audience experience or all the
feedback that
I had gotten was overwhelmingly positive.
Yeah.
I think that for a first year event, knocked it out of the park.
There's some things I think we could do differently with the broadcast and you
know, the entertainment
and some of those things.
But is there anything that like major that you would change going into next
year?
Not major.
I mean, this was this going.
Now was an idea.
We haven't seen anything like this before.
And so even as a team, we're like living in this mental picture of what this
could be.
And so until we did it, we never would have known some of these things.
And so for a proof of concept, nothing, no regrets.
I wouldn't change anything really.
You know, the one piece that I wish and what we will fix going to next year is
like, you
know, like we talked about, the digital experience was the thing that felt not
felt by the wayside
but was like had the least amount of intention relative to everything else.
And I think it would like 1400 or something people watching it at any given
time.
Like I think it's a core part of what will make Golden Hour different and
unique over
time.
And so what I'm thinking about for next year is like we need to like make it a
first class
citizen at the event, really be super intentional about every minute, just like
we were, you
know, for the in-person experience and really use that as just an important
kind of part
of the event, I guess in general.
And order pre-order lighting also.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, everybody, thank you for watching.
Episode three is now live so you can go check it out and we will see you next
week.
All right.
See you everyone. (phone ringing)