Cannes & VidCon

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Well, that was a week 😮‍💨.

It started in the French Riviera for Cannes Lions and ended on stage in Anaheim for VidCon. The past 10 days have been ridiculous, and because it’s my newsletter, I’m going to share the full play by play.

Although I suppose some of the ridiculousness started the week prior to Cannes. I flew into Paris for the French Open final and witnessed arguably the greatest tennis match in history.

Then spent the week working from Paris, eating croissants, and got to finally meet one of our European coworkers (shoutout Manpreet).

After work on Friday, I flew over to Cannes to meet the rest of the beehiiv squad. This was our first year at Cannes, so we started off small. Or at least, the squad was small… the villa was adequately sized.

For those who have never been to Cannes Lions, I’ll paint a picture of the chaos for you.

Large tech companies ranging from Meta, Google, Amazon, Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, etc. all have these massive installations directly on the beach back to back to back of each other.

Agencies, funds, and media companies like WSJ, Hearst, Adweek, Axios, etc. all have their own installations in restaurants, hotels, villas, and yachts.

All of them have an around the clock lineup of panels, events, and parties featuring the who’s who of media and tech. At any given time, there are dozens of competing events all within walking distance.

And everyone is there to meet and make deals. beehiiv actually sits perfectly at the intersection of all of this: brands and agencies (ad network), media and talent (customers), and big tech (partnerships).

Here’s how the past week went down…

I spent the majority of the day working from the villa, which was the last bit of “work” I’d do in Cannes. I greatly underestimated how all-encompassing it would be once the event kicked off.

We dropped by Adweek’s opening Soiree then bounced to Baoli for dinner, which is a Cannes hotspot that is just as much of a club as it is a restaurant.

A few people headed out for drinks afterwards but I decided to bank some sleep where I could and head back to the villa for the night. Just flexing my responsibility here.

The squad split into a few different groups to cover as much ground as possible. Me and my Chief of Staff, Dan, went to a live recording of Brian Morrisey’s The Rebooting Show, then grabbed breakfast with Brian afterwards.

After breakfast we headed over to Axios to watch Sara Fisher interview Linda Yaccarino (CEO of X), which made headlines briefly after.

We dropped by The Female Quotient lounge to catch a few panels and meet a handful of founders (and beehiiv users), then headed over to Pinterest Beach to meet a few people.

We popped a little rosé for lunch and regrettably bought $49 caesar salads that tasted like $10 caesar salads, then we headed back for our event.

beehiiv hosted a 75-person tequila tasting and dinner at our villa, aptly named Maison du Mezcal. We partnered with HubSpot Media who picked up a handful of our VIP guests in black cars and recorded some interviews cash cab style (content dropping soon).

I somehow ended up as one of those VIP guests, so I got a ride to my own party and did an interview with Silicon Valley Girl.

The party was a hit. I was obviously the DJ (recall that Big Desk Energy originated as a Spotify playlist), the tequila tasting and food was great, and we had an amazing guest list of all the top people we wanted to connect with while in Cannes.

After our event, we went to the Snapchat party to see 50 Cent. We ended up bumping into dozens of familiar faces and kicked it there til late before heading back home to wrap day one.

Started with breakfast with Roy Schwartz, the founder of Axios, to chat about media and tech.

Then we headed over to the 776 House to meet with Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit) before swinging over to Yahoo Beach for a meeting, followed by Hotel Barrière Le Majestic to chat with Ben Smith (founder of Semafor).

We dropped by a happy hour hosted by our friends at The Raine Group, then I went to this secret garden dinner with 60 others, hosted by DEPT, Microsoft, and HOPE Hydration.

The dinner ran pretty late. I met some friends afterwards at the dive bars which felt a bit like Barrio Alto in Lisbon, before heading home to clock a few hours of sleep before my flight.

I took advantage of the time zones and ended up working 20 hours while flying from Cannes to Paris to Los Angeles. Thank you adderall.

I woke up early to hit the gym (finally) prior to driving down to Anaheim for VidCon.

I actually experienced one of the more magical “a-ha” AI moments on that drive. I hadn’t found the time to prepare for the panels with all the travel, so I copy and pasted the prep questions into ChatGPT then had an hour long conversation chatting with it (her?) to prepare.

Between the Tesla driving itself, and me having a full-blown conversation with an AI assistant, I felt like I was living in 2035. The future is tight.

I spoke on two panels chatting about creator partnerships and communities.

I spent the rest of the day meeting up with people at the conference, then headed back home to catch up on work.

As productive and fun as these past few weeks have been, I’ve never been more excited to be back in LA where I can lock myself in my room and build.

beehiiv is about to have the most legendary Q3, and I can’t wait to share it with you all 🫡.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/cannes-vidcon

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