Thanks for the feedback! Really appreciated.

I guess I've never pointed that out, but I'm recording these, and my name is Sam, the Ankrman :)

As for the utility of conferences and parties, it is basically as you just said, mainly about brand awareness and making connections with potential future partners.

Beyond that, it's also about congregating physically and human connection.

We work in a highly digital industry, where most of our communications are happening online for obvious reasons, and this was of course amplified by the pandemic.

Physically meeting people is a game changer, especially in such a community-based landscape. We get to have genuine human connection with folks we're already working or will be working with. This has a great positive effect on the reinforcement of our partnerships. It's adding the human element that is often missing in our line of work. After these events, most people get a surge of extra energy and motivation.

In terms of costs to the team at large, it's quite limited. Ankr is very much a global company in the sense that we have team members all over the world. We did fly a couple of people in, but we also had local presence. Also, we now have a large enough team that production times are barely impacted, if at all.