From Steve Ballmer’s cringe-worthy dance moves to Steve Ballmer, again, jumping around the stage like an angry bull, tech conferences can be mind-blowingly mad events. Or they can be immaculate lessons in corporate comms.
But when you invite a celebrity into the mix, it can go seriously awry.
During the Dreamforce conference last week in San Francisco, attendees got an absolute roasting from comedian John Mulaney. At an event that was all about the future of AI, the comedian took a long look around the room of Salesforce employees and said it wasn’t a future he wanted!
John Mulaney Roasts the Tech Industry
Setting the tone right from the get-go, Mulaney kicked off with “Let me get this. You’re hosting a ‘future of AI’ event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?” He then had a scan of his audience and told them: “You look like a group who looked at the self-checkout counters at CVS and thought, ‘This is the future’.”
In his 45-minute stinging set, Mulaney also had a little chat with an employee of data visualization company, Tableau: “You’re an account executive at Top Low?” he asked her, quipping back. “You know in your goddamn bones that a bunch of you are working on products that are just OK, but you have to vamp and make up terms to make it sound more awesome than it is.”
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The audience was told that the crowd that they’re “imminently replaceable” as well as the comedian ferociously taking tech jargon to bits, reports the San Francisco Standard. “Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days,” he said. “The fact that there are 45,000 ‘trailblazers’ here couldn’t devalue the title any more.”
He also thanked the attendees for the dystopian future they were creating for his son in which “…he will never talk to an actual human again. Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot.”
Michael Bay is a Man of Few Words
Mulaney had a lot to say. At Samsung keynote at CES in 2014, director Michael Bay staggered the audience with his silence.
The Transformers director was having issues with the teleprompter and told his audience: “The type is all off. I’m just going to wing this.” But it was Bay who was all off – off the stage in fact. After an awkward silence, a little bit of handwringing and a brief apology, he disappeared as the crowd sat in awkward silence.
Adam Levine Left Marooned
At Qualcomm’s 2013 CES event, the spotlight wasn’t on one celebrity but many. A marketing exec who had got a bit giddy seemed to have booked everyone from Big Bird to Desmond Tutu.
One after another, bemused celebrities arrived on the stage. At one point, director Guillermo del Toro asks Qualcomm’s Executive Chairman if he wanted to come over for Mexican food one day. The line-up also included Maroon 5 who had been booked to sing but, in fact, couldn’t as Adam Levine’s microphone wasn’t working.
More baffling was the start of the event where three shouty actors declared why they were “Born Mobile”, which is apparently something you have to be “if you want to be a top dog, or a tough arse warrior or super popular!” Right. I think I’ll take Steve Ballmer dancing after all.
King of Snark
The best roasting at a tech event, though, has to be Tom Hanks on stage for Sony at CES in 2009.
Cited as one of the nicest men in Hollywood, the actor had a rare moment of snark. He made it perfectly clear that he views the never-ending launches from companies like Sony as irritating, telling the audience about the defunct tech he has stacked at home. He also told a slightly scared-looking Howard Stringer that he was only there “…because you keep writing into my contract!”
The actor then had great fun playing with the terrible script some poor Sony flunky had written for him as well as pacing up and down the stage like an overexcited tech exec.
He finally left the stage shouting: “Help. I’m being sucked into a vortex. I feel the evil forces of Samsung pulling me deeper and deeper” as Stringer laughs with a tightly clenched jaw. As a Redditor commented: “Imagine having enough power in the entertainment industry to publicly give Sony the finger for 12 minutes.”
Putting Yourself in the Firing Line
Hanks and Mulaney may have left their hosts and audience a little bruised; and whoever booked them hiding under their desk; but some startup founders are actively seeking the snark.
In San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, founders attend events where they pitch and then comedians tear them apart for laughs. Next time, they could just book a front row seat at Dreamforce.
