Latest / Best of: Features / 'They were f—king assholes': Dreamforce nightlife is awful

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'They were f—king assholes': Dreamforce nightlife is awful · Best of: Features

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  They were effing assholes. Over. Dreamforce, nightlife is awful. Written by Matthew
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  Brown This article is being read by an automated voice, generated by
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  Everlet. For San Francisco locals, it's finally over. Dreamforce, Salesforce's
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  annual customer conference, has come to an end, leaving downtown streets clear
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  of both blue lanyard wearing tech attendees and traffic jams, or at
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  least worse traffic than usual. The giant three day party draws around
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  forty thousand Salesforce customers from all corners of the world to Moscone
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  Center and surrounding streets. Depending on whom you ask, it's either an
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  eyesore or heaven. But either way it's a star studded spectacle with
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  a stretch of Howard Street closed to make space for faux waterfalls
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  and exclusive catering. Between events showcasing the utility of new AI powered
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  software and discussions of artificial intelligence's potential doom, Dreamforce's stages featured not
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  just CEOs of Bay Area Tech Giants, but also Hollywood A listers,
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  Grammy Award winning artists, and even Bill Nye, the science guy. This
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  event means a lot to people. For San Francisco, a city that
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  has lost tech conferences to other cities over the past few years,
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  Dreamforce is like the Super Bowl or a World Cup match. Salesforce
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  says the conference injects an annual 130 million into the city's economy.
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  And the injection continues into the evening as the event makes an
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  overwhelming effort to make its customers feel like royalty in CEO Mark
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  Benioff's kingdom with a big time lineup and extravagant after parties. I
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  mean, how else do you make B two billion sass? Business to
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  business software as a service. Cool, let alone fun. The short answer,
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  exclusivity, big names, and lots of booze. I spent two days scouring
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  the Dreamforce nightlife. My limited social capital in the tech world as
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  a relatively new tech journalist was pretty obvious. I requested tickets to
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  around seven private events and received only three invitations. Not all events
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  are sponsored by Salesforce, so it'd be an unfair comparison to lump
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  them together. For example, a Tuesday night after party for founders and
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  revenue officers, hosted by an AI startup at Swanky Billiards Club, the
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  Hall SF, appeared to have more locals smacking cue balls than founders
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  talking seed funding. To see if the emptiness could be attributed to
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  it just being early in the week, I paid a visit to
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  one of my favorite dive bars, Bender's Bar and Grill, just a
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  few blocks down the street. There The neighborhood postwork After Party. Was
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  on full display. Drinks were flowing, music was blaring, and cigarettes were
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  burning. From my point of view, it being only Tuesday night had
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  nothing to do with The
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  first event's lackluster attendance. That much was obvious when I went to
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  the Grand Nightclub in Soma that same night for the Salesforce Bin
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  After Party. The event isn't sponsored by Salesforce, but it's adjacent. Salesforce
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  Bin is an independent media site than covers the Salesforce ecosystem. Its
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  founder, Ben McCarthy, also performs as a DJ. The nightclub was packed
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  for it being only around nine PM. Not everyone came out to
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  dance, a theme I found, at music based Dreamforce events as the
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  week progressed. Out of what seemed to be more than one hundred
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  attendees in the two floor club, fewer than a dozen were doing
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  more than just bopping their heads and clutching their drinks on the
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  dance floor. Drinks were not free for the masses. A gin and
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  tonic was sixteen dollars in change. Yet that didn't seem to deter
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  the attendees looking to blow off steam after the first day of
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  Dreamforce, as the bars were kept bustling with orders. A few club
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  staffers occasionally walked around the balconies with small bites, which included shrimp
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  tempura and mini stuffed baked potatoes. A small corner of the upstairs
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  balconies was taped off for VIP guests, But it didn't appear different.
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  From the commoner side that I checked out, except for a private
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  bar vending ice buckets and some more standing room. The next night,
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  however, Salesforce really tried to make everyone feel like Vipeas. The company's
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  annual Dreamfest charity concert, with headliners Gwen Stefani and Usher, took over
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  Oracle Park. It was a weird fever dream for me, as someone
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  who lives in San Francisco and loves a Giants game. But this
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  was wildly different. Vending booths pushed unlimited ballpark food and full pints
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  of beer and glasses of wine to wash it down, all for
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  free. It felt like that could be enough to make just about
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  anyone dance out on the concert floor covering the baseball green, but
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  it wasn't. As Gwen Stefani danced the catwalk, belting some classics like
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  Hollaback Girl and Rich Girl, the crowd struggled to match the energy.
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  Dream Force's signature dance move this year appeared to be the two
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  foot planted sway. It didn't seem to be Stefani's fault, as she
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  tried multiple times to hype up the room, emphatically calling the crowd
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  Otrageous, but it seems the best truth she could muster was a
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  pitiful compliment, that it was one of the top dream fests she's
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  played. When Usher came on later, making his way from the crowd
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  floor to the stage with his hit Yeah hardly anyone shouted the
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  Yeah back to him. I can't tell for sure if that dead
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  crowd can define the night for everyone. After all, I wasn't let
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  on to the concert floor. Security stopped letting people down there by
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  at least seven PM, despite what appeared to be tons of wide
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  open space, marked by large areas of visible white dance floor across
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  the baseball field. Several individuals got into heated spats with security when
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  The were told off. Some attendees, appearing to be Salesforce employees, tried
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  to plead with the gate guards for entrance by showing the company
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  badge, which I recognized from prior visits to the downtown office. The
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  real party seemed to be up in the stadium stands, from small
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  pockets of friends just dancing with each other to some event workers
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  getting their groove on, when drink lines subsided. In the middle of
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  Usher set, I went to give another private after party a chance,
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  this time at the Hawthorne in downtown near Market Street. It was
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  another event featuring Salesforce Ben. The party was pretty empty, which I
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  chalked up to the fact that most folks were probably still swaying
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  to usher. The two room club had fewer than two dozen people
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  scattered around just the main lounge area. When I cashed in my
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  ticket for one free drink with the bartender, I asked about how
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  the week had been going so far. He said that night seemed
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  to be more chill, but Tuesday was slammed with around eight hundred
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  flowing through the underground club over the course of the night. I
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  couldn't help but ask how the crowd was. They were effing assholes,
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  he replied. Dreamforce itself tries to maximize exclusivity. It's a good marketing
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  strategy for a software company that's had to fight off fears of
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  an AI powered obsolescence this past year, by making all one hundred
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  fifty thousand customers feel like they're part of a select club. Some
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  companies attempt to do the same but at a smaller scale. To
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  future Dreamforce attendees, however, fun is not guaranteed by a private stadium
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  concert, your name on a nightclub clipboard or a limited Apple Wallet
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  QR ticket. Go explore San Francisco, hit the local dive bars, and
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  grab some signature San Francisco bites. Just remember to take off your
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  lanyard, tip your bartender, and most importantly, and don't be an asshole.
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  Work at a Bay Area Tech Company and want to talk. Contact
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  tech reporter Matthew Brown securely at Matthew dot brown at skate dot
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  com or Matthew Brownskate. One one on Signal.