The Inflation of Silicon Slopes
The air is cooling (and frozen), leaves are changing (and covered in snow), crypto’s falling and that can only mean one thing… The Silicon Slopes Summit is back baby!! (cue the noise)
Hopefully you got a day or two out of the office (or your basement) to go live, love and laugh learn with Utah’s finest. Few things compare to walking the concourse in search of the Domo bus, snaggin’ the sweetest of swag (read: 10-cent totes), and minglin’ with bushy-tailed, bright-eyed, founders hockin’ their SaaS’s off.
This year’s Summit was headlined by notable tech luminaries (checks notes) Rob Riggle, Steve Young and Jimmer Fredette. As you may recall, Riggle is famous for being silly, Steve is famous for throwin’ balls and Jimmer is famous for shootin’ balls. And while jokes and jocks headlined, Silly Slopes staples like Aaron Skonnard, Davis Smith, Blake Murray and a rebranded Scott Paul also got their moment (or fifteenth) in the blue sun.
The same, but different
Look, we all love Clint Betts’ mustache trying desperately to justify its creation… But like most unplanned things, there comes a moment where we find ourselves asking, “hey, what’s going on here?” You know we love a good event, but this year’s Summit had similar mustache-phase vibes. Some of it was cool, other parts felt intentional, but most of it was downright confusing.
The biggest difference this year was the venue. To celebrate it’s 6th year, Silicon Slopes decided to make the flat-brimmed-faithful more comfortable by moving the event to Vivint Arena. In Bett’s words, the Summit is “a massive family reunion for Utah’s tech community.” And nothing says ‘family reunion’ like a techy-takeover a sportsball arena.
The family reunion analogy made sense as a comparison… The cousins you never see (first-timers) gathered randomly in the arena because they thought they had to, the rich uncles (investors) mixed and mingled in the suites while the real ones (people who don’t wear Patagonia sweater vests) slapped hands, ate snacks and traded stories on the concourse.
The endless loop of vendors was fun. But it also felt like being stuck in a blender packed with similar-sized SWAG, Chip Cookies, caffeinated SDRs, and a few too many run-ins with that one guy, from that one company who did that thing that you should remember but you don’t.
There’s a lot going on right now…
To be fair, it could also be that world pressures like the war in the Ukraine or spiking cost of living has taken the wind out of the sales of the flat-brimmed bros and free-stuff Summiters. It certainly felt like this year the Summit cost the same, and we got less…which is the textbook definition of inflation.
