Learnings From SaaStr Annual 2021 with SaaStr SVP & GM Amelia Ibarra

All right, welcome everybody to the hoppin booth. We're so excited to keep presenting you the best content possible here at our booth at IMAX 2021. I'm so excited today to have a guest from one of my favorite events. Kind of geek by nature and, you know, Sasky is like a point of reference for everybody. That's not anything to do with technology. Amelia Ibarra, welcome to our space at all. Do you want to give a brief introduction?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. It's much at your booth. This is fun. It's good to be back in person. I'm amelia Barra. I'm 15 here in the classrooms, the world's largest BD community. We just had an in person event after a long laugh. So I'm sure we'll talk about it more.

Oh my God, I can't wait. Apologies to my in person audience here. If I'm looking at Amelia and hi to everybody online. Yeah, we love you. So Amelia obviously is an institution when it gets detected. And specifically asked everybody in the past 18 months. Nothing new here. You embrace digital, you embrace Birdsall. You did your business.

Let's start with that.

What was your pivot? How did it play out for you?

Well, you know, it's interesting. There was no roadmap, right? When the pandemic first hit, we weren't sure what to do. We just knew we had to try and get our community together. Right. Content community has always been a massive core. So that was at the front of our goal and the front of our mind was like, okay, this. There's crazy things happening to everybody. It's us, it's our community, it's everybody else and kind of clouds. So what can we do? So, you know, we were five days away from Loden for our Castrator 2020 event when we got the Shelter at Home order and Ferret County. So as you can imagine, we had all these speakers. We're like, well, I guess we'll just sell this to you not to because they can't come. So we emailed them a week later and we're like, hey, so this last campaign might be last. We weren't the ones going to last, right? We didn't before at the beginning of COVID we weren't sure, so we just emailed them all. We're like, hey, would you come to slow them with us? We've never. We hadn't typically done big digital events. We shortly done in person, some small webinars. Right. So that was kind of like the chart of the senator first at the time, at the time. And we have all of our features that were just so ready to share the community through this touch fund, share the learning through their playbooks. A lot of them related back to the market Graphs back in 2006. So we were talking about flagship events as an anchor. The community really came together. I think we had like 10,000 people sign up in a week and it was insane. We didn't bounce every the volume. Right. We're like, well, we've got our speakers, they're all at home wasting time getting on the zoom. Like, let's just create some content for our community and like whoever shows us is awesome. And that way all of our ticket holders and our community can come. So they did and it was just a crazy good response. So we kind of took it from there and we kept doing. We've done more there on like the content, the community, the networking side. And then, yeah, we were just waiting and doing a lot of research and a lot of plans, like how to basically throw it out the window until we could come back to it in person.

Wow. The way we position these sessions, this one specifically is called Brain Cells and the objective of is to borrow your brain to deal with like situations we deal with every day. And the situation right now is I want to go back to in person. I remember probably March 2020, the announcement. Week by week, we're first going to implement measures and then it didn't happen, so you have to cancel like everybody else. And then I saw again in the build up of your latest event that obviously things were still unsure with things out there. So take us through the comeback to in person. What was your faithful? How did it happen? How can we be maintaining safety, I guess during this stressful moment.

Yeah. So since we're talking brain trust, right. It was definitely a long road. There were a lot of plans scrapping. We knew first and foremost like it could. We're in an interesting time. I think our industry not only having massive events, but everything that just happened with Astro World. I know it's not necessarily like a lot of people now are coming out and saying, like, who is the burden of tear on? I think if you take that as a subject of like who's the burden of caron for health and safety as an organizer, whether it's, you know, a conference, your own user conference, whatever it may be, includes the burden of safe security, like all Covid happening, like who should have to do all this? And so as event hosts and organizers of A community event. We always put our community first. And we. The moment we started planning, our Jason, our CEO founder, was very much like, we have to make sure our community not only feels safe, but comfortable and that they want to come back. So day one, I started looking for health and safety vendors. We started looking at venues that were both indoor, outdoor, because we knew that some of the early research was done, you know, outdoor was lesser for the spread. It was safer, it was more comfortable. So even 18 months ago, we were like, we probably can do the panel outside, which is our biggest debate. We're always in convention centers, like.

Well.

Typically we have 10,000. This year we had five because our international folks couldn't send, but the band still listed. So we were a couple months ago. So, yeah, typically 5,000. So when you think about putting all those people in the room, we wanted to have health and safety first. We knew that we have to work not only more closely with thinking outside the box. Let's find an outcome venue. Okay, we found one. How do you build booths like this outside? How do you run power? We have to get tension. We had to do all these things that we had never previously done as organizers. And so we figured out how to do it right. We made some mistakes that we fixed on site. There's always going to be learnings when you're trying something new. But what we saw happen today is that the community really responded to it. We kind of became adaptive. We were like, it's going to be like, you know, your favorite festival just outside the sky. And we weren't sure why Colorado people were going outside, like, before you see any conventions. So it was kind of a risk. But we knew at the end of the day, it would be the right call because it would be safe for our community. Folks were comfortable. They didn't have to wear a mask unless they were inside. We did rapid custom for all of our attendees who had a beat as we did that theme checked. So we've all the things, but there wasn't a blooper. Right? So we kind of. We just put our community at the front and we said, we're going to do whatever it takes to make sure we can all things together. That we have rapid tubes available, that we have temperature scans and we had masks. We built stages outside, we built tubes outside. We ran towers. There's no WI fi in a parking lot. Like, there's a lot of logistics that went into it. So that was a big part of it was like getting the logistics right for moving something outside like that to Be comfortable and also managing people's expectations and our communications. Right. We're like, this is outside. Like, let's embrace it with all of our sponsors is going to be outside. We thought everybody coming is going to be outside. Let me go.

Because I mean your community, for those that we don't know, we're talking about the chat community, the top of the top of the chat community.

There's a couple of us in these where something goes wrong.

They're going to be on Twitter.

In a minute.

There is that bias to deal with. You make some key decisions here, right? Stuff like implementing vaccine rapid testing. You put some interesting signage.

For the scope.

Can you walk us through the thinking behind it? Was it dictated just by the audience needs, obviously being a state, or was it also, I don't know, assurance you were thinking about and like implications that could have come out of not thinking that way?

Yeah. So here's the almost scary part for Valor Geiser is right, There is no one blueprint that people are going to tell you to follow. There's no one study book. And all the rules are different. So we had our San Mateo County. Well, the rules for San Mateo county are different from even San Francisco City, like rules and regulations. So what you can do in one county, you can't do another. So for us it was a little confusing because we're like, okay, we gotta find somebody at the city with our venue who can tell us what's going on. Because the rules keep changing. And then they kept screaming, right? It's like as Covid has waves, there's less masking, there's more masking. So it's hard to keep up with that same turn event in our. So we, between Jason and myself and our events, we just laid out a set of rules, right? We're like, we're going to follow these, these are going to be our key testaments, right, that we're not going to use no matter what because other factors can change. But at least if these are our rules, like everything around it can kind of fluctuate. But we know that we'll deliver on this. So we always said at the very beginning, like, we're going to do that same exact thing. We'll find out a way to do it. So we have a healthcare safety partner, literally. Check. We found people who could do temperature tests that were passive so that there's not people like skimming you. We found ways to be like passive gas scamming. So we did all these things and we said, like, we're going to stay for two weeks, we're going to put them all over the website. We're going to tell everybody he's coming so that, you know, if you're coming into bed, you have to not only make these health and safer requirements, but like, you can feel comfortable making them here because everybody else is in the safe environment. Nobody has a fever. So that's what we stuck to. And as we fluctuated in San Mateo county, like, there was some masking. There wasn't. And then by the time of our event, there was some social distancing rules, but then there wasn't. Right. So it's like, how do you keep up with all that, you chance? Let me just tell you, you can't make changes to us. So you just have to figure out your cornerstone of what makes sense for my attendees, what makes sense for us as the organizers to stick to it. Because everything else can change. But at least if you have that, then it doesn't have to keep changing. Right. Because you can't keep up all that change.

Unbelievable. And congrats on doing that and making it happen. Okay, so you mentioned that obviously your answer is running at 100% faster compared to previous years. Did you do anything? And I want to introduce here the big H word. Did you do anything to cater for Dos Escobida?

Yeah, so we did. We live streamed all of our stages, which we had never previously done. We've had a little bit of live stream in like the past year. Like 525. Just a ministry, right? Just some of the smaller things we decided going into this year. Amparians can have. We still have the great content that people want to watch. So we did a completely free component that was all digital, kind of perpendicular rather than hybrid because they didn't really overlap too much. So I called them perpendicular. But we did. That was the first time we did that, which was interesting. On day one, we had like, we started the first whole day as Dustin Drive. We have a lot of people signed up who can't come, who can't be here. They just want to watch me. Wait, we're on. But like, let's just do content from on site live as, like, you know, these personal beings that are whatever. Well, as an organizer, that was too, like, oh, why didn't you do it? So I thought, okay, well, we played it because we wanted to, like, serve our digital audience as a distinct audience. Right. We wanted to make sure they had content that you couldn't watch.

And they just.

The speakers we dialed in via Zoom, they weren't happy to. Go the first time we did that. And people seem to like that because they can watch it in real time, whereas typically it takes a while for us to get our sessions out because they have so much content.

So we've talked so far about the things you've done. Let's look at analyzing them and give a post to them. Will you keep on doing it or will you change something and like kind of drawing conclusions, I guess? Outdoor events.

Oh, we're doing them.

Are you doing again?

I don't want to go. Listen, I would have never thought. I don't think Jason would have either. I don't ever think pre Covid we would have ever thought to move our conference outside. I mentioned all the infrastructure things we had to do. Crazy, crazy time money budgets, like, which is crazy, right? Like, who would have never done that if we hadn't had a push from our community to find a way to safely host an event. People who want to get back and forth. There's a lot of reasons why Sastra exists for training, for playbooks. A lot of people bring their teams to Saster and that's like their big team meetup. So we knew we had to fill this need and help people get there. So that's why we did this as possible. And I was worried, honestly, I was like, I don't know if they were going to be like, I'm building a booth outside. The sponsors might hate it. Like they were in the sun for part of the day. Right. I'm like Riesling blessed. But they all loved it. Like, they loved being outside for three days. I was blessed with good weather. So, like it all worked out for the best. So we're already planning to do outside. More outside next year. Yeah, even bigger outside with sun inside because some people did use our inside spaces because we want everything to call whatever it is. So, yeah, outdoor events, I love them.

Great. So hopefully we're not going to need it anymore. Should we need it.

Vaccination testing.

Are you going to keep on doing that?

Yeah, we're going to keep on doing it. I think one thing that's interesting with our health and safety team, who I still talk to, they work with a lot of events, they work with nhs and they're of the impression that Covid form of COVID will linger for the next. I think we feel a little bit when we go to events like these or when we go to events that's after that Covid's a little bit over. It's still lingering. Right. We're getting into the fall time and now people are starting to get their boosters. I think it's just something you have to plan for because if you don't, it's a little bit again things keep changing around you, like I said. So for us we plan on having still like vaccine requirements, uploads. We'll still have it because I think there will still be a need for it for the next few years.

And what about Bird Fortnite? Are you going to keep on doing.

Them or doing them? We have one on December 15th. December 15, yeah. We've done about one digital event per quarter. We're working on like doing more hybrid year round networking because that's what our community really wanted. After this in person event we did, they were like this is awesome. We still want to do more like for some people who couldn't be there, right. For kids that aren't hybrid.

So hybrid.

Hybrid.

Does this still happen? Will it still be the case or are you the person in your.

You might hit a little bit bias to confidence. No, but I think for the industry, right. It's an interesting time because live events like this are starting to come back and that's like ours where we did it indoor outdoors came back and it was helped successfully. Right. So it can be done. Festivals are starting to come back for next year, right? Michelle is back next year. I'm excited to go. So I think as organizers we struggle plan on it being around because people have adjusted for this now the way we have to adjust to safe way to do our event. People have adjusted people for work. All of King Chassis distributor now we used to all be in San Francisco. Now we're all over the place. I can't even tell you where everyone is, right. Not in the same time zone anymore. So I think it's something where we have to embrace it. But the best parts of it, right, I do for aunts. I see it needs. They both need to keep attention. So the digital component, if you're going to do something that's digital, focus on that or have an owner for that. If you're doing something in person, have an owner for that. Where they meet. You need an owner for that too, right? It's like where do those two meet in the middle. And that's how we define hybrid. That's how we think about hybrid is like where does the digital world interface with the physical world and how can you make sure that they both still have a great experience? If we try and do like half of one and a little bit of the other, neither of Them are good. Yeah, exactly.

And you know, often we think that in general, like there's no. The concept of planning events has never been more fluid than it is right now. There's no the future is library. The future is virtual. The future is in person. The future is whatever you want to do for your audience.

Exactly.

In tech conferences make it easier for you. But I want to ask you also, I guess in terms of the future, before I move to that, one more question. What is your biggest learning from running virtual events during this hiatus that you applied to? Impressive. Did you change anything and how you handled success?

Love it. We actually learned a lot about our audience and our community through the virtual and digital events. So we did about a dozen of them before our in person events and we saw what we believe had in our gut was reflected in the data. And then we learned a lot of things. Like we added a lot of roundtables, we added a lot of small group questions because a lot of people came to our digital events were really great like minded people in our community who should be rhythm up to like a speaker level. Right. So we took some of those attendees, we made them speakers in annual. So that was super helpful. That's where we benefited from Digital in person. A lot of people when we did digital sessions, we learned about different content formulas, right? Like how to make a team of. He was like really good at making a catchy title so that people react to the session and then go to it. Like we figured out that like, you know, how many is the right amount of slides? I'm like, well, it depends on how long the presentation is. We figured out the right presentation length is 20 minutes on Zoom. Zoom, 20 minutes. So we figured out a lot of these tasks, like how much Q and A is too much. Where do we do some Q and A, some not. So we took all this learning from doing I don't know how many digital definitions all the events, probably 300. We used that to impact our in person events by changing the format of the content. We changed the speaker times, we made everybody bring data where they could. Everybody has a housewives a firefight hat.

Doesn'T work on digital.

It's hard. What we're doing here works because you've got cases in front of you. If we would just do this like two boxes on these rooms. I mean I love zoom, but it's. Things happen on meetings right in the digital world. So we dip all that in reality. Let's bring that to our in person events which we changed the time of day that we normally do our sessions, we just took it as a data point, right? And we're like, okay, we've got all this data from our cast of different events, but now we have even more data from 300 digital pens. We took all that, we injected it in and we moved things around. We changed some of the sizes of the faces based on it.

A lot. Quite a lot.

Quite a lot.

Almost another podcast episode. Let me ask you, did you see any different reaction in the in person audience coming from burnout and zoom exposure, just like their tension spans, expressions and stuff like that?

No. I think what we learned much like here is, you know, people were really ready to go back. It ended up being. We didn't plan for this, but Sasper ended up being the first largest in person event that was back in the Bay Area. I'm like, that's not something you're like, what if it's on a whiteboard somewhere? Largest in person San Francisco event, right? I'm like, maybe somewhere at somebody's office. And on ours I really make sure people are happy. Very different whiteboards. So it ended up being the biggest one. But it's not something that I think you can set out to do and I think so many people told us that they brought their team. A lot of people were having individual challengers brought their entire team. A lot of people that was their first time they had met people on their team and a lot of people saw people that they're sort of friends with and they're patient buddies with. So that was such a unique moment. And I don't think it's going to last. Right. Because as in person events are coming back. There's going to be more and more moments for people to meet. But I don't know that people want to travel as much isolation. It's this weird conundrum where people want to go back in person. They want to see their friends that they. But you're also from bearing on an airplane.

30 seconds. Can you tell us what was written on the sign that you put at the entrance of how it's asked that we could tell us what the moment.

We did it went viral again. You did all signs where pissing out teachers who have symptoms of COVID 19 racism or shield. I love it.

And with that I want to send to me your bar of for being with us. It's been a pleasure to help you. Thank you.