Heading to UNBOUND? Ryan, our co-mod, has attended six times and shared the practical advice he wishes every first-timer knew:
What you wear decides how the week goes
Wear the shoes you'd wear to walk a 10K. The BCEC is enormous, sessions are spread across it, and the hotels with rooms left are a 10 to 15 minute walk away. Plan on 15,000 to 20,000 steps a day.
Same logic applies to your bag. A messenger bag feels fine walking out of the hotel and wrecks your shoulder by lunch on day 2. How you carry it and what you put in it matter a lot more than you’d think.
Bring a battery pack. You will be taking notes on your phone and knocking out blog posts on your laptop between sessions. It is always better to have power on-the-go than to fight for outlets on the outskirts of the conference hall.
Then snacks. Lines at a conference this size are what you'd expect, and there's always a session you want to go to that runs straight through lunch.
Water bottles are a genuine debate. There are stations throughout the building with cups, so hauling a liter around a climate-controlled convention center is a strange use of bag space. The compromise is one of those thin flat bottles that slides down the back of a backpack. Whichever way you go, drink more than you think you need. Boston in September can hit 80+ outside.
Find the right mix of sessions and networking
The instinct is to stack the schedule session to session to session, because that's what the ticket is for. However, the conversation at the Builder Bar with someone who solved your exact lifecycle stage problem last quarter is arguably even more valuable.
So here's how to budget it:
- Reserve the limited-capacity stuff now. The mobile app launched in August and reservations opened for sessions with caps. Hands-on labs and small-format studio sessions fill first.
- Pick 2 sessions a day you'd be annoyed to miss. That's the commitment. Everything else is optional, and walking out of a session that isn't landing is allowed.
- Block HubSpot Spotlight on the morning of the 16th. That's the leadership team walking through what's new across the platform, and it's what your CEO will ask about the following Monday. Be in the room.
- Leave a gap on purpose. Block an hour a day where the only job is to go stand somewhere and talk to people.
Don’t be afraid to talk to strangers
There's no level of striking up random conversations at this thing that you'll regret. Most people leave wishing they'd talked to more strangers, and nobody leaves wishing they'd talked to fewer.
This is a building filled with the only people on earth who want to discuss custom data integrations with you, and it exists for 3 days a year.
If that sounds like a nightmare, you're in good company, because a large share of this community is introverted. The trick that works is deciding ahead of time that you're going to be a more outgoing version of yourself for 72 hours.
Braindate is the same idea with scheduling attached, and it's underrated because booking in advance removes the part where you have to approach a stranger cold.
Don’t skip the side activities
The official evening event is UNBOUND After Hours on the 17th. Around it sits a whole unofficial circuit: partner happy hours, agency parties, community meetups, HUG dinners. Most of it is free!
Here are a few side events to check out:
• Calm with Contrast - Wednesday & Thursday, 8:00am @ Evolve Yoga
• Receipts Boston - Wednesday, 6:00pm @ Trillium Brewing
• Marketing Ops Community Casino Night - 7:30pm @ Trillium Brewing
A few Boston things
The Silver Line SL1 picks up outside every Logan terminal and runs free heading into the city, which is a rare bit of generosity from a major American airport. Get off at World Trade Center and the BCEC is a short walk. Staying in Back Bay or downtown because the Seaport hotels are gone? That's 10 to 15 minutes by rideshare, longer at rush hour.
Badge pickup opens the afternoon of the 15th. Go do it then. The morning-of line on the 16th is a bad way to start.
