Rodney Hart: Hello and welcome into another Event Perspectives episode. My name is Rodney Hart. I’m the VP of events at RainFocus here. And this one I feel like I start every episode the same way, that I’m so excited, but I really really really am excited because not only do I have a newly minted VP of global events, Pam Corcoran at CrowdStrike, but also a really close friend of mine. So Pam, I can’t wait for this conversation. How do you feel?

Pam Corcoran: I feel fantastic, Rodney. Always love to spend quality time with you. Let’s dive in.

Rodney Hart: You know, this one we’ll have some fun with. And normally I start everybody with an icebreaker question. I’m going to start you with one, too. Since we’re doing this at 9:00 a.m. on the East Coast first thing in the morning, I’m going to give you a question our new marketing intern Isabelle said she would love to hear a highly successful person answer, which is: what is your morning routine?

Pam Corcoran: Well, that actually just happened, so this is fresh in my mind. And that’s a fairly easy icebreaker. Thanks for taking it easy on me. So I am a morning person. I’ve always been wide awake the minute my feet hit the floor. I get up early. The morning is my time. I always exercise. I go to the gym a few days a week, go out for a walk. I work from home, so I need to get out of the house. Even if it’s cold, and I’m outside Boston, I still go outside almost always. Love to get some fresh air, get some exercise. Then I come back and I eat breakfast every day. I know a lot of people think that’s weird. Many of my friends think it’s weird, but I eat breakfast every single day. Then shower, get ready, and I’m at my desk by around 9:00.

Rodney Hart: Eat breakfast every day. I would say I eat breakfast every day if you consider a large iced coffee, drinking it in my car. What are we having every day?

Pam Corcoran: You need to have some protein, Rodney. I usually have an egg, maybe half a sausage, just light protein to get me going.

Rodney Hart: And did you always have this routine? You know me well enough to know my morning routine is more of an evening routine kind of thing. But I’m curious: have you always been a morning person? And when you’re traveling, when you’re on the road, when you’re having late nights because our job sometimes necessitates it, do you change your morning routine?

Pam Corcoran: That’s a lot to unpack. When did it start? A long time ago, probably not in my early 20s, but even then I did go to the gym in the morning. When I travel, sort of all bets are off. I do often get up and try to squeeze in a walk, but if I have an 18-hour day ahead of me, I can’t add another hour to that. If you’re only sleeping four or five hours a night, you can’t take an hour from that to go to the gym. So I usually don’t when I’m traveling. There’s a morning routine, but I feel like sometimes morning routines get blown out of proportion. I remember reading about Mark Wahlberg getting up at 3:00 a.m. every day. There are some of these that I’m like, “No, that can’t possibly be real.”

Rodney Hart: Pam, this is a great start. We’re rolling now. And one of the other things we love to do with this series is really dive into the background. You’re at this VP role now at CrowdStrike, an amazing company doing some amazing things, but what got you there? Tell us a little bit about how you started working in the event industry, because for so many people it wasn’t a straightforward path.

Pam Corcoran: Yeah, that’s true. So I started off in publishing and thought I wanted to go into advertising. That’s what I studied in college. I didn’t even know event planning was a thing. I graduated, took a job at a publishing company, and it was okay. I didn’t love it. But one of the things I did while I was there was a couple of industry trade shows. The company published magazines for insurance companies and HMOs at the time. We did a couple of trade shows and a couple of events at industry gatherings. And I loved it. I was like, “Whoa, this is for me.” I had no idea what it was about, but I knew that was what I loved.

The company was very small and events were just ad hoc. So I talked to a friend who knew someone at the World Trade Center in Boston, which is a small convention center. He sent me on this path of talking to venue managers, DMCs, corporate event planners, all the different pieces. I learned so much about an industry I had no idea existed. I ended up at a meeting planning agency, spent a couple of years there doing everything under the sun. Massive exposure. From there I’ve worked at a couple of software companies and at Dell for 11 years, and now I’m at CrowdStrike. Although it wasn’t quite straight in the beginning, I’ve been doing this since I was 25. I consider myself a career events person. Interestingly, looking back now, I was always the kid in the back of the cafeteria selling tickets for every event in high school. I planned the junior prom. I pulled all my friends together and planned everything for them. So inherently, that’s just who I was. I didn’t know it was a career. Took me a few years to figure it out, but here I am, and I’m so thankful for that.

Rodney Hart: And at RainFocus, we had this conversation a little bit off air, but I’d love to bring it on air. We talked a little bit about the evolution of events, specifically from a corporate perspective. Back then there were hospitality jobs, roles in the event space, but the idea of corporate events as a marketing channel has really evolved. Have you seen that evolution over your time?

Pam Corcoran: Yeah. When I was in college, there was a hospitality major but no event planning major. Now anyone who does this for a living knows when we hire interns or young people out of college, there are event planning majors and so much more support for our industry. Everyone knows about events now. Everybody talks about them. I think most people went to conferences 30 years ago, but it just wasn’t as prevalent. Tourism is a huge piece of every city and they talk about it a lot more now. Conferences add to tourism. So yeah, I definitely think it’s grown a lot.

Rodney Hart: Before we get to your current role, I’m curious: you talked about how you were doing these activities in a publishing role that wasn’t your core job, but it really lit up for you because it was what you felt inherently interested in. I’m curious, when you think of events, or when you’re advising someone who’s wondering if it’s right for them, what is it about events that worked so well for you and keeps you there?

Pam Corcoran: You know, most of us who do this job love to see it come together. That is the best part of event planning for me. Watching all the hard work come together. Nothing better. I love watching people pour into the expo that we do. I love watching everybody pour into the keynote as it opens. You throw a huge party, and if the dance floor is packed, nobody has to tell you you did a good job. You just know it was awesome. There’s a lot of “event high,” if you will, watching everything come together.

So many jobs you work and work and then something changes and that priority isn’t a priority anymore. In events, the event is going to happen, so you’ve got to make it happen. That’s what’s sustained me all this time. I also love having a million things going on, and I’m very good at keeping a lot of details straight.

When I talk to young people, which I do quite a bit, I talk about the pace and the ability to work without a lot of direction, because there’s a lot of gray in events. Even now I still say to my experienced team: you’ve got to be comfortable not quite knowing and just feeling it out as you go. A lot of people are not comfortable with that. I had someone on my team years ago who was naturally anxious when things weren’t settled. Three weeks out from an event and she was freaking out because we didn’t have a lot of answers. And I realized inherently she was not made for events. I think three weeks is a lifetime. We’ll get everything done. We might change direction three times between now and then. So I do talk a lot about: you’ve got to be honest with yourself. You either love the job or you don’t do it. There’s not a lot of in between.

Rodney Hart: That’s such a phenomenal answer. My first marketing job was an internal marketing role, same thing every day, no real endpoint to work toward. I kind of accidentally fell into an events role, and one of the things that stands out is there was a task: “Help us figure out this idea.” I ended up finding these buses, “Oh, we could do this experience on a bus.” Better hands then took that and ran with it, but I remember walking to the event and seeing those buses, and I was like, “I did that.” Seeing things come together is such an amazing part of what we get to do.

Pam Corcoran: Yeah, that’s a big piece. You’ve got to love having a million things going on at once. That’s sort of how I’ve lived my life since I was a kid, without knowing it was leading me to a career.

Rodney Hart: All right. Looking at your resume and having known you, before we talk CrowdStrike, you’d been at Progress Software for a pretty extended period, then Dell for an extended period. Talk a little bit about those decisions, what made it feel like the right time to move.

Pam Corcoran: I left the agency and went to Progress because I wanted to go corporate. I didn’t want to be an agency person forever. I had a friend who worked there, which turned out to be an awesome thing, because I really grew up there. I was hired to do trade shows, then conferences, then ran the team for many years. We did everything: seminars, conferences, incentive trips, worldwide user conferences. I traveled a ton. Then I was at the point of, do I want to stay here for the rest of my career, or do I want to make a move? Then a decision got made for me: I got laid off, which was an economic decision. I had survived many layoffs and then it was my turn. That turned out to be an awesome opportunity to really step back and figure out what’s next. I investigated going out on my own. I was in my 40s at that point, so this was the next step for the rest of my career. I ended up at EMC, which got bought by Dell, and that was amazing because I wanted big-company experience. Progress Software was small. The agency was small. Dell was a great opportunity to learn how to navigate and work through the politics of a large company. I stayed there for 11 years. And then I came to CrowdStrike because it was an opportunity to run the entire team, take all the experiences I’d had, and create something. When I started, they hadn’t had a conference in several years. So I really got to build the program from the ground up, hire the team. I feel really lucky and thankful for that opportunity. And you can see from the length of time I stay places: I root in.

Rodney Hart: And through the connection that we have and through RainFocus, I know for a fact that at CrowdStrike you’re at a very fast-growing company where events are very important. Talk to us a little bit about what the events channel is to CrowdStrike.

Pam Corcoran: It’s a critical piece of the go-to-market function. CrowdStrike is probably more event-driven than some other companies I’ve worked at, which is great for me. What’s great about CrowdStrike is there’s tremendous value in the events we do. Our Falcon user conference is our biggest pipeline driver of the year by far. So there’s tremendous ROI and therefore the executives are fully supportive. The sales engagement we have at CrowdStrike is unbelievable, the best I’ve ever seen in my whole career. The support from the CEO on down is awesome. And at CrowdStrike we like to make sure that our events are an extension of our brand. Our brand is bold. We’re in cybersecurity, we want to stay ahead of adversaries, so we want the events to stay ahead of trends. I’m asked to deliver really first-class events, which is exciting and makes for some really awesome things that come together.

Rodney Hart: And speaking of fast pace and growing quickly, in each of these episodes we talk about the most interesting challenge. And the thing you really hit on is that your events are growing so fast that you have legitimately sold-out events. Part of me wants to say “good for you,” but talk to us a little bit about what it means to manage a sold-out event.

Pam Corcoran: You know, there aren’t a lot of places where you have sold-out events. Even though I’ve been doing this a long time, I’d never had a sold-out event before. Turns out it’s a lot of work. It’s exciting, and everybody jokes that it’s a good problem to have. Well, any problem is a good problem to have until you actually have it. Last year, we booked venues a few years out. When I started in 2022, there were no venues booked for Falcon. So of course we booked out through 2024 thinking we’d have modest growth of maybe 20% year over year. Turns out it was 50% year over year. By the time 2024 came, the venue we were at in Las Vegas, the Aria, was maxed at 6,000 and we could have easily gotten 7,000 to 7,500.

So in that case it was a venue situation. We just didn’t have enough room. But if you think, “Oh, well, just turn off registration,” not really. We want to make sure we’re driving the outcomes we want to drive. We want the right people at the event. We don’t want to just fill seats. We want to drive enterprise customers and larger customers. When you are looking at a sellout situation, you have to pick a cutoff date, but keep a few in your back pocket because there are always really important customers who haven’t registered yet. We have a big sponsor ecosystem, over a hundred sponsors. Sponsors are promised passes, but as we all know, even as a sponsor, you never quite know who’s going until the last minute. So there were a lot of passes outstanding that sponsors were allowed to have, but we couldn’t actually fit them. You don’t want to upset your sponsors. And you always have to watch the budget.

This year, same story. We’re about 60% ahead of registration at this time last year for our event in September. So we’re already talking about what a sellout plan looks like. We don’t necessarily have a venue capacity situation, but we have a budget we need to manage to. It’s a bunch of work. You’re planning the event and then you have to stop, step back, and say, “Okay, how do we fix this so not everybody is upset?”

Rodney Hart: So you’re 60% ahead of a year where you grew 50%. In terms of employees in a sellout situation, how are you handling that?

Pam Corcoran: We don’t want to fill the space with employees. But we need enough people to host all those customers, the presenters, the speakers, the people working in the CrowdStrike booth and all the workshops they’re leading. So we work really hard making sure all employees have multiple roles on site. Nobody is coming to hang around. If you’re in sales, you’ve earned your way there. There’s an incentive where they have to get a certain number of customers to the event before they can be invited to attend. Then they’re hosting those customers, hosting meetings. We really try to keep that tight, because who doesn’t want to go to a great event? Everybody wants to go, and there’s some value in it, but we want to fill those seats with customers.

Rodney Hart: Quick question on managing your team through this. I’m guessing your events team is not growing at 50% or 60% year over year. How are you managing that growth?

Pam Corcoran: It’s really difficult to make sure everything’s balanced. With more activations and programming comes more work for my team. My team is a small but mighty team and it’s really hard because attendance and expectations grow, and the team grows, and you’re never quite keeping up. So we really lean into an agency model. We think of our agencies as an extension of our team. We spend a lot of time bringing them along as team members, making sure they know everything we know, and we work really closely together to execute. Even with agencies though, it’s always really important to have a CrowdStrikers in the mix. My philosophy is that even though we have agencies, we want to make sure we’re managing them and guiding them. Not just the agency talking to the internal stakeholder without me or my team involved, because then we’re adding no value. That’s my opinion.

Rodney Hart: So you’ve got this sold-out event. You’re nailing it. But you also talked about never the same thing twice, more experiences, more activations. From an ROI perspective, as you’re looking at these new experiences, are they just value adds, or are you looking at new ways of bringing customers together with sales or technical people? What causes something to get added to Falcon?

Pam Corcoran: We really try to stay very focused on the outcomes we’re trying to drive. A lot of the additional activations we’re adding are opportunities to engage customers in ways that we want to engage them. There are a couple of initiatives in our company we want to drive at Falcon. Everyone’s talking about AI. We have a big AI initiative and you’ll see that talked about in keynotes and breakout sessions, but we’re also building an activation around AI. And I don’t want to do activations just to say I have activations. I could do five AI photo booths all differently, but if there’s no connection to the messaging or the outcome we’re trying to drive, that’s just noise. So we’re trying to be more thoughtful, to curate an experience that is built and connected to some of the key messaging and outcomes we’re trying to drive.

Rodney Hart: Pam, I could talk all day, but I do want to get to some fun stuff. Before the Gen Z trivia, and you’ve referenced your two daughters in their 20s, so I’m sure they’ll be watching and hoping you do well, I’d love to close with the question we ask all our guests. We’ve talked about the craziness of this industry. What’s your favorite piece of advice that you would give to someone new in the event space, or maybe a favorite piece of advice you’ve received and held on to?

Pam Corcoran: Take advantage of everything that you can. I value a self-starter. Don’t sit around and wait for someone to tell you what to do. You see an opportunity to do something, just say, “Hey, how about this? Can I do that?” And also, just keep trying things through that gray area, during the uncertain times. As time goes on, you build experience. You become less uncertain because you know that even if you don’t quite know what’s happening right now, in the end it’s all going to be fine and the event is going to come together. And stay true to yourself. As I mentioned, this is not for everyone. If you’re a person who’s anxious when things aren’t lined up exactly, this might not be the perfect career. But what I love about events, especially for someone young, is that events touch every marketing function in the organization. You could come to it, do events for a year or two or three years, and then go easily into field marketing or partner marketing or any of the other marketing functions because you’ve already been around them. It’s a really great way to see all of marketing at once.

Rodney Hart: Such fantastic advice. And I think I’ve seen those transitions out of events into product marketing roles in ways that really suited someone. Pam, phenomenal. But I’m not going to let you go quite yet.

Pam Corcoran: My palms are getting a little sweaty. What’s going on?

Rodney Hart: We’re going to do a Gen Z trivia. At our INSIGHT user conference last year, one of the keynote topics we covered was the generational shift: by 2030, 70% of the workforce will be Gen Z and millennials, 35% of which, half, will be Gen Z. To help us prepare for that eventuality, we’ve prepared a special Gen Z trivia for you.

Pam Corcoran: I can’t Google anything, right? No?

Rodney Hart: Absolutely not. All right. Your event coordinator comes up to you and says, “We’re cooked.” What are they telling you?

Pam Corcoran: We’re done. We’re finished.

Rodney Hart: Is it positive or negative?

Pam Corcoran: It’s not really positive.

Rodney Hart: In this case, the answer is: we’re in trouble, the plan has failed. Okay, you’re tracking. Number two: someone on your team says, “We’re five days out from the event. We need to lock in.” What does that mean?

Pam Corcoran: We need to completely focus, commit. We’re ready, not talking about anything else. Got to get it done.

Rodney Hart: One hundred percent. Ding, ding. The team is working on a solution. Let them cook.

Pam Corcoran: Let them think about it. Let them figure it out and work through all the details.

Rodney Hart: You got it. That means they’re figuring it out. Give them some time. They’re working on it.

Your colleague says to you, “You’re going to slay that presentation.” What do they mean?

Pam Corcoran: We’re going to kill it. Crush it. Excel.

Rodney Hart: Perfect. You ask a colleague if they want to grab a coffee and they respond, “Bet.” What does that mean?

Pam Corcoran: Bet. Oh boy. Uh, yes? I don’t even know what that is.

Rodney Hart: You got it from context. I one time had a young person say “bet” to me and I literally looked at them and said, “I don’t know what you mean.” But you got it through context. All right. You overhear this sentence at an event: “That’s cap. I know you didn’t wake up at 5:00 a.m. to finish a presentation you’re doing today.” What does “cap” mean?

Pam Corcoran: That is false. It’s a lie. You’re full of it.

Rodney Hart: You’re exaggerating. Excellent. In a post-event survey, they said the food on day two of the conference was mid. What does that mean?

Pam Corcoran: It was okay. It wasn’t great.

Rodney Hart: Same survey. They say the speaker during the day one keynote “ate.” He was amazing? He was terrible?

Pam Corcoran: He was terrible?

Rodney Hart: Completely wrong. That was a first. “Ate” means to nail it. They performed exceptionally well. So that was a fail. What does it mean when someone says the live music at the afterparty lives rent-free in my head?

Pam Corcoran: It means it’s in my head and I can’t get it out.

Rodney Hart: Easy, too easy. Another one: an attendee said the panel speaker was a bot. What are they telling you?

Pam Corcoran: They’re automated. They didn’t have anything. No excitement.

Rodney Hart: Someone with no personality behaving like a robot. You got it. I know this would never happen at a CrowdStrike event, but the feedback says “it’s giving low budget.” What does that mean?

Pam Corcoran: The vibe is cheap and cheesy and not great.

Rodney Hart: Wow, you even said “the vibe.” All right, one last one, and I’m going to try to get this sentence out without laughing. Ready? “That presentation, you slayed the boots down Houston. I’m deceased.” Unpack that for me.

Pam Corcoran: So I know it’s a positive comment. I think you killed it, crushed it, knocked it so far out of the park that I cannot even live. Something like that.

Rodney Hart: You got it. Except there’s one piece, and I think “you slayed the boots down Houston” also has something about: you looked good as you did it. Made it look easy. The full answer was: you looked so amazing it’s almost too much to handle. Extreme admiration, praise for performance. Pam, for this entire Event Perspectives interview, you slayed the boots down Houston. And I am deceased.

Pam Corcoran: You wanted to say that twice, didn’t you?

Rodney Hart: Yeah. Pam, thank you so much for joining. This was a ton of fun. Thank you for the time.

Pam Corcoran: Thanks for inviting me. It’s always great to spend some time with you, my friend.