Why are industry conferences so overcrowded and useless?
Massive keynotes draw tens of thousands of attendees, leaving overflow crowds stuck in packed watch rooms with little room to move. Unless you are a big shot from a major company, navigating the chaos makes it impossible to get any useful information out of the event.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Watching keynotes remotely via streaming services instead of attending in person
- 2Skipping the crowded sessions and main keynotes entirely
- 3Focusing exclusively on one-on-one networking, parties, or developer zones
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The main keynotes have tens of thousands of people trying to get in. If you can’t get in, you’re asked to go to a watch room, which (you guessed it) is also packed to the brim.”source ↗
“It’s my first year at Dreamforce. It’s insane if anyone can get something useful from this chaos.”source ↗
“unless you're a big shot, at a big company, it's an awful experience shuffling around.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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