Salesforce extravaganza back, but at a fraction of usual size
San Francisco’s Howard Street has been transformed once again into a high-tech summer camp, as Dreamforce returns after a year of being virtual due to the pandemic.
The giant tech conference that brings together the greater Salesforce community runs Tuesday through Thursday and will be much smaller this year, with only around 1,000 attendees, down sharply from the 171,000-person sellout crowd of 2019. It’s one of the first in-person conferences since the pandemic started, and an economic lift for a local economy that’s recovering
slowly, particularly in the tourism industry.
Dreamforce is keeping its nature theme from previous years, with artificial grass, rocks and tents being constructed on Monday. Flowers were attracting butterflies, as workers constructed booths for Salesforce partners like Amazon and Mercedes-Benz.
“We want you to be transported into a national park, which gives you the feeling of going on an adventure with your family and friends, and a vacation and just being immersed in nature,” said Sarah Franklin, Salesforce’s chief marketing officer.
But just as vacations have been turned upside down, attending the conference will be substantially different this year.
Attendees not only have to be masked while indoors and vaccinated, per city guidelines, but they’ll also have to take daily COVID-19 tests. The daily testing adds a “significant cost,” reaching six figures, said Chris Meyer, CEO of George P. Johnson Experience Marketing, Dreamforce’s event planner.
“Everybody is dealing with change. With change, you always have to be thinking and innovating and not let anything get you down,” Franklin said.
The Foo Fighters will perform on Tuesday evening, and Metallica, a Salesforce customer, will also make an appearance, along with actors Will Smith and Jane Fonda.
Meyer said the conference setup shifted significantly. The event shrank in size, with around 1,000 event staff and vendors, down from around 2,500 in pre-pandemic years. There’s also higher focus on the online broadcast. The event will have over 100 hours of live and on-demand video streams.
“Now we have to think of Dreamforce as a studio, more of a television show,” he said. “That requires a different level of talent.”
Downstairs in Moscone South, the previous site of keynote speeches, the floor was bare and trailers full of audio and video equipment were being tested on Monday. One trailer used by the Foo Fighters featured an audio mixing board from 1977.
The conference’s main stage has been shifted outdoors, with artificial rock formations and a tree trunk emblazoned with “Dreamforce International Park.”
Dreamforce will be one of only two major in-person tech conferences this fall, along with Amazon Re:Invent in Las Vegas later this year. Most companies are staying virtual — for instance, Apple’s product launch event last week, which it called “California Streaming,” had no crowd.
Meyer said that San Francisco has seen price discounts, such as at hotels, during the pandemic, which could help it lure more events in the future.
Tech companies are also flush with cash to hold events. Salesforce’s revenue in the last fiscal year leaped 24% to $21.2 billion, a record high.
“San Francisco still has an advantage because of the proximity to audiences,” Meyer said. “A lot of big brands are based here in the Bay Area.”
Salesforce is donating $1 million to help the city’s small businesses and $1 million to American Forests and One Tree Planted, environmental nonprofits. The company is also donating $19 million to five school districts this year, including San Francisco and Oakland.
As crews labored to set up the conference in downtown San Francisco on Monday, though they were all wearing masks, their presence marked another shift from pandemic quiet to bustling activity in the city’s epicenter, which became a ghost town during lockdown orders and remote work.