My first Dreamforce was 2009, maybe 2010. It started with booth duty.
Somebody handed me a lanyard, a scanner, and a script. Stand here. Ask what they use today. Scan the badge. Next.
Booth duty is the purest version of the job most people have at that conference. The motion already exists. The keynote tells you what to say. The floor tells you who to say it to. Your job is to run it well.
After that, I ran it from a lot of positions. Consulting partner, selling implementation of whatever got announced that morning. Operator, with my own booth and a team doing the scanning. The badge changed. The job did not. Someone established a motion, and I was there to execute it.
No complaints at all. Established motions are where the money is. The whole ecosystem is built on a platform announcing a direction and thousands of companies lining up behind it. It works. It worked for me.
The motion does one more thing, and you only notice it when it stops. It tells you where you fit. Your booth is here. Your partner tier is that one. Your logo goes on that slide. You never have to ask where you belong. The motion answers before you ask.
This is my first Dreamforce as a founder. Kosmos did not exist the last time I walked that floor, and nobody is assigning me a place this time.
That is the lane I am talking about. Not a gap in the platform. Where a company like ours fits: in the ecosystem, next to the partners, in front of the customers walking past. I do not know the answer yet. Finding it is my only job next week, and I am carrying one question into every conversation: if we didn’t exist, who would you expect to solve this?
Booth duty tells you where to stand. Being a founder means figuring it out yourself.