By Zoe Kelly
Get ready for plenty of awkward fist bumps and “I didn’t realize you were so tall over Zoom,” exclamations: Conferences are back IRL 🎉.
We’ve got conferences with locations spanning across the world (as well as virtual for those who prefer remote) where you can talk partnerships, keep up with the latest tech trends, get deep dives on your specific ecosystem, and learn from industry giants. Who knows? You might even make some friends.
Browse by category:
Are we missing your favorite conference? Let us know at insights@crossbeam.com.
Partner Conferences
The partnership space is all about building relationships, and doing so at a conference with your peers and industry leaders at an event where everyone is extra fired up after almost two years of Zoom happy hours sounds great to us. If you’re in the same boat, check out these conferences below (and maybe we’ll see you there).
SaaS Connect April 27th – 28th 2022 📍San Francisco, CA
Attend the annual event for SaaS companies, platforms, API services, channels, distributors, resellers, app stores, and investors.
Go if you like:
- Total focus on SaaS partnerships, platforms, and distribution.
- Meeting 400+ partnership leaders.
Past speaker orgs include:
– Zapier
– Intuit
– Shopify
Supernode May 17th-18th 📍Philadelphia, PA
Supernode is a two-day gathering in Philadelphia presented by Crossbeam. Join 200+ partnership professionals from leading SaaS companies to swap best practices, get inspired by leading partner programs, and (most importantly) make new friends.
Go if you like:
- This blog 😉.
- Actionable, battle tested workshops.
- Listening to 13+ mainstage talks from industry leaders.
- Ending the weekend literally surrounded by masterpieces.
Don’t miss out on being a part of the first-ever Supernode.
(or subscribe to our newsletter for updates on speakers)
SaaStr Annual September 13th – 15th📍San Mateo, CA
The world’s biggest SaaS event is back for the eighth year in a row. The conference includes three days of networking sessions, speakers, deep-dives, and workshops.
Go if you like:
- Meeting 10,000 cloud and SaaS founders, VCs, and execs.
- Conferences that are outdoors, festival style.
- 100+ workshops.
Previous speakers include:
– Anjali Sud, CEO at Vimeo
– Wade Foster, Co-Founder & CEO at Zapier
– Jennifer Tejada, CEO at PagerDuty
– Ali Ghodsi, CEO at Databricks
– Ariel Cohen, CEO at TripActions
– Abhinav Asthana, CEO at Postman
SaaStock October 17th – 18th, 2022 📍Dublin, Ireland
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders, execs and investors to learn from industry experts, get hot leads, and connect with your peers.
Go if you like:
- SaaS-specific workshops, talks,and networking.
Previous speakers include:
– Joel Gascoigne, CEO & Co-Founder at Buffer
– Padmasree Warrior, CEO & Founder at Fable
– Cris Savage, CEO & Co-Founder at Wistia
– Edith Harbaugh, CEO & Co-Founder at LaunchDarkly
– Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO atGocardless
Tech Conferences
Great for those in tech partnerships (or for those who are just tech nerds). You can see a showcase of upcoming tech trends, hear from industry experts, and network with peers who could potentially become your next tech partner.
Collision Date TBD 📍Toronto, Ontario.
This “tech carnival for entrepreneurs” has an exhibition floor, onstage sessions, roundtable discussion, and networking events for the 38,000+ attendees to learn about and discuss the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship.
Go if you like:
- Nerding out on tech while rubbing elbows with industry leaders, investors, and celebrities.
Past speakers include:
–Ryan Reynolds, Actor, Owner at Mint Mobile
– Ukonwa Ojo, Global CMO at Amazon Prime Video & Amazon Studios
– Katherine Maher, Former CEO at Wikipedia
– David Bekham, Goodwill Ambassador at UNICEF
– Bret Taylor, President & OOO at Salesforce
– Nick Tran, Head of Global Marketing at Tik Tok
– Dan Schulman, CEO at Paypal
– Radhika Jones, Editor-in-chief at Vanity Fair
Synapse Summit February 17th 📍Tampa, FL
Synapse Summit is a one-day event focused on tech innovation featuring panel discussions with industry leaders, hands-on workshops, and skill building and trend spotting activities
Go if you like:
- Urban, renewable energy, financial, healthcare, and/or defense tech.
- AI/Machine learning.
- Cryptocurrency.
Past speakers include:
– Daymond John CEO at The Shark Group
– Tammy Hodo Ph.D. CEO at All Things Diverse LLC
– Steven Galanis Founder and CEO at Cameo
Web Summit November, Date TBD 📍 Lisbon, Portugal
Web Summit is the largest tech conference in the world and is back this upcoming year with two dates and locations. Both events will feature industry leaders and celebrities discussing strides taken in the tech world.
Go if you like:
- Emerging technology.
- Tech companies from outside of North America.
Past speakers include:
– Dr Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer at Amazon
– Amy Poehler, Founder of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls
– Ayo Tometi, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter
– Craig Federighi, Senior VP of Software for Apple
Top Ecosystems Conferences
These conferences aren’t partnerships specific, however they are industry specific. Depending on your ideal partner profile, you may find your next partner by choosing the most relevant conference below.
MarTech
RampUp February 28th – March 1st 📍 San Francisco, CA
RampUp is a conference bringing together marketing and technology professionals to collaborate and tackle problems.
Go if you like:
- Marketing technology (or “MarTech”).
Past speaker orgs include:
– Loreal
– Peloton
– Roku
– Bayer
MozCon July 11th-13th 📍Seattle, WA
MozCon is a three day event for marketers looking to sharpen their SEO tools. Attend for the presentations, insights, tactics from industry leaders.
Go if you like:
- SEO, search marketing, mobile, conversion optimization, and local search.
‘22 speaker lineup includes:
– Amanda Milligan, Head of Marketing for Stacker
– Areej AbuAli, Head of SEO at Papier
– Brie E Anderson, Owner & Founder BEAST Analytics
– Casie Gillette, Senior Director of Digital Marketing for KoMarketing
– Dana DiTomasca, President & Partner of Kick Point
– Kameron Jenkins, Content Lead for Shopify
Sign up to be notified when registration is open
FinTech
FiNext February 2nd – 3rd 📍Dubai, United Arab Emirates July 14th – 15th 📍San Francisco, CA
FiNext conferences provide a meeting place for the global financial sector, introducing FinTech startups, tech providers, investors, and stakeholders to one another.
Go if you like:
- FinTech, banking, and/or finance.
Dubai ‘22 speakers include:
– Aamena Khan, Partner at PwC
– Ritu Marya, Editor in Chief at Entrepreneur APAC, Franchise India Media, Entrepreneur Media
– Atul Monga, Founder at BASIC
Previous USA speakers include:
– Ben DiScipio, Chief Strategy Officer at Bloom Protocol
– David Galvan, Vice President at MasterCard
– Nathan Adamson, Head of FinTech at Railz
Register for Dubia location here
Show interest for USA location here
LendIt FinTech USA May 25th – 26th📍New York City, NY
LendIt FinTech is putting on New Yorks’ largest FinTech event, featuring networking events and speaker sessions with top internet finance leaders.
Go if you like:
- FinTech.
- The big 🍎.
- Big slices of pizza.
Previous speakers include:
– Nick Molnar, CEO & co-founder at Afterpay
– Sallie Krawcheck, CEO & co-founder at Ellevest
– Mike Cagney, CEO & co-founder at Figure
– Henrique Dubugras, CEO & co-founder at Brex
Ecommerce
eTail February 28th – March 2nd📍Palm Springs, CA
eTail is a three day event focused on helping ecommerce and retail professionals network with their peers. Includes 30 hours of discussion groups, roundtables, networking, and creative-think tanks.
Go if you like:
- eCommerce and omnichannel retail.
‘22 speaker lineup includes:
–Lev Peker CEO at CarParts.com
– Rich Fulop Founder & CEO at Brooklinen
– Melanie Travis Founder & CEO at Andie
– Eric Hutchinson Co-Founder at Resident
– Kevin Moffit Chief Retail Officer at Office Depot
– Jonathan Mayes, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Albertsons
Data / Business Intelligence (BI)
Power BI Summit March 7th – 11th 📍Virtual
Power BI Summit is a multi-day event with speakers from the Microsoft Power BI team’s product group and industry experts from all around the world and will feature more than 100 sessions.
Go if you like:
- Microsoft power BI topics including: Power Query, DAX, Dataflow, Visualization, Power BI Desktop, Power BI report server, Mobile experience, Embedded, Power BI Premium, Architecture, and governance.
‘21 speakers include:
– Arun Ulag, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft
– Craig Bryden Chief Executive Data Strategy at BITQ
– Patrick LeBlanc, Principal program manager at Microsoft
Growth Marketing Summit June 15th📍Frankfurt, Germany
This European summit is all about scaling sustainably with a data-driven, customer-oriented approach to digital growth. It features TED-Style discussions from industry leaders (all talks will be in English).
Go if you like:
- Digital growth and optimization.
‘22 speaker lineup includes:
– Dan Ariely Author, Co-Founder at BEworks
– André Morys CEO & Founder at KonversionsKFRAFT
– Simon Dahla Premium Conversion Lead for Spotify
– Joost De Schepper Associate Director Premium Conversion Optimization for Spotify
– Erin Weigel Principal Designer for Booking.com
– Morgan Brown VP Growth for Shopify
– Sandra Wu Director of Growth for Himalaya
Startups
Startup Grind Global Conference February 28th – March 2nd📍Redwood City, CA)
Join 3,000 of startups for a conference with an emphasis on bringing humanity back to business.
Go if you like:
- Interacting with 3,000 startups and scale-ups from the global tech ecosystem.
- Hands-on workshops for scaling and evolving your startup.
Past speakers include:
– Eric Schmidt, Former CEO & chairman at Google
– Stewart Butterfield, CEO at Slack
– Katrina Lake, Founder at Stitch Fix
– Michael Siebel, Managing director at Y Combinator
Sales Tech
Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference May 16th – 18th📍San Diego, CA
This three day conference is for Chief Sales Officers (CSO’s) and their sales team members looking to strengthen their strategy and overcome the obstacles stemming from COVID-19, economic challenges, and an ever-changing tech landscape.
Go if you like:
- Sales strategy, enablement, and operations.
Previous speakers and featured Gartner experts include:
– Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director, and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley
– Brent Adamson, Distinguished VP, Advisory at Gartner
– Michele Buckley, VP, Team Manager at Gartner
– Dave Egloff, VP Analyst at Gartner
– Craig Riley, Chief of Research – Sales and Customer Service at Gartner
– Craig Rosenberg, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
Presented by the big players
There are some companies whose partner ecosystems are so big that they can influence the space entirely. As those who have taken our Tech Ecosystem Maturity Diagnostic survey know, we categorize these partner programs as Supernodes, the most mature. Conferences hosted by these big players are great places to learn from the experts.
Inbound, presented by Hubspot Details TBD
Hosted by marketing automation and CRM company Husbot, Inbound Conference showcases business trends, conversations with industry leaders, and workshops for attendees to apply marketing techniques to their specific business. After two years virtual, the ‘22 conference will be back in person.
Go if you like:
- Marketing, automating marketing, CRM optimization.
Previous speakers include:
– Yamini Rangan, CEO at Hubspot
–Oprah Winfrey, CEO & founder at the Oprah Winfrey Network
– Brian Halligan, Co-founder & executive chairman at Hubspot
– Dharmesh Shah, Co-founder & CTO at Hubspot
– Sarah Paiji Yoo, Co-founder & CEO at Blueland
– Spike Lee, Writer and Filmmaker at 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks
AWS Re:invent Announcement TBD
Amazon Web Services’s Re:invent brings together the cloud tech community. While ‘‘21 has yet to take place, so details on the ‘22 conference haven’t been released. Register for November 29th – December 3rd Las Vegas event, or check back frequently for the ‘22 announcement.
Go if you like:
- Cloud technology.
‘21 speakers include:
– Adam Selipsky, CEO at Amazon Web Services
– Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of Utility Computing and Apps at Amazon Web Services
– Werner Vogels, CTO at Amazon
– Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Machine Learning at Amazon
Google Cloud Next Details TBD
Google Cloud Next focuses on how the future of cloud technology can influence new business opportunities with your tech stack.
Go if you like:
- Cloud technology.
‘21 speakers include:
– Sundar Pichai, CEO at Alphabet
– Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud
– Melonie D. Parker, Vice President & Chief Diversity Officer at Google
– Alison Wagonfeld, VP of Marketing at Google Cloud
Microsoft Ignite Details TBD
The Microsoft Ignite brings together developers and tech professionals to hear from experts and participate in hands-on activities. Check back in frequently for more information on the ‘22 event.
Go if you like:
- An all-encompassing look at building and scaling a tech company.
‘21 speakers include:
– Bret Arsenault, Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft
– Steven Astorino, Vice President of Development at IBM
– Nadim Abdo, Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Microsoft
Ready to get back to in-person conferences? Check out more information about Supernode below:
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