Building the Iceberg Summit from the Ground Up
How a community event grew from a co-sponsored virtual summit into a self-sustaining, in-person conference with 750 attendees and zero net cost.
The Challenge
Apache Iceberg is a technology Dremio invests in deeply, with engineers contributing directly to the open source project. The goal was to build visibility around that commitment, grow awareness of Dremio's role in the ecosystem, and create a community event that could drive real pipeline. In 2024, we co-sponsored a virtual summit with an external partner to get it off the ground. When that partner was acquired, ownership of the event fell to me. I had to rebuild it from scratch, working directly with the Apache Software Foundation and a new set of sponsors to bring it back as an in-person event in San Francisco.
The added constraint: the event had to run at net zero cost. There was no internal budget. It would need to pay for itself through sponsorships and ticket sales.
The Approach
For the 2025 event, I structured a full sponsorship program and partnered with Microsoft, Snowflake, Databricks, and AWS to fund the event and shape the program. We set clear targets: 400-500 in-person attendees, a satisfaction score of 4.5 or higher, strong intent to return the following year, and a balanced budget.
Beyond the logistics, the event was designed to serve the community first. The content focused on the open source ecosystem, with sessions and speakers that would attract practitioners and decision-makers in the Iceberg space. That credibility and relevance drove both attendance and engagement.
In 2026, we ran it again with the same model. By that point the event had enough brand equity to grow on its own.
Results
750 in-person attendees in 2026, up 50% from 2025
4.5+ attendee satisfaction score, meeting our target both years
88% of attendees said they'd return the following year
Both years came in at zero net cost. Ticket sales and sponsorship revenue covered all expenses, with additional revenue generated in year two. The event also produced direct business outcomes: new meetings booked, increased web traffic, and a measurable uptick in downloads of Dremio's Iceberg and open source content.
Key Takeaways
The Iceberg Summit demonstrated that a well-positioned community event can serve multiple goals at once: thought leadership, ecosystem credibility, pipeline generation, and brand awareness. Running it at net zero cost required disciplined sponsorship structuring and ticket strategy, but it also proved the model is sustainable. Year-over-year growth of 50% in attendance without increasing spend is the clearest signal that the community found real value in it.
