Google Cloud NEXT
Next is Google Cloud’s flagship experience, and the largest event across all of Alphabet. Next brings together over 30,000 leaders, developers, engineers, analysts, customers and technology professionals to help shape the future of technology together through Google Cloud and their vast partner ecosystem.
GPJ was tasked with helping bring Google Cloud’s ambitious brand promise, a New Way to Cloud to life for a global audience. Buttressed by the recent announcement and rollout of Gemini, we embarked on a mission to immerse attendees in the magic of Google Cloud, and help them to imagine, learn and build new experiences that can shape the future of technology—and society.
Our goal was to create a seamless narrative that blended design elements, activations, messaging and content all together in exploratory, thought provoking and quintessentially Googley ways.
Google Cloud’s brand differentiators lie in their approachability, intuitiveness and helpfulness—and Next is a critical reflection of those values. To mirror this user experience at Next, we studied best practices around people flow in public places like city streets, parks and airports to create a streamlined physical journey throughout the venue, powered by intuitive and comprehensive wayfinding.
We also designed a three-step journey framework with associated touchpoints and engagement types that we leveraged to build attendee journeys across various programs at Next—Imagine, Learn and Build. To first help attendees imagine the possibilities, we exposed them to big customer stories, provoking questions and bold claims to pique their interest. From there, we accelerated learning through a variety of different touchpoints—sessions, engagements, demos, etc. Finally, we facilitated collaborative building through workshops and meetings, encouraging guests to co-create custom solutions for their business alongside Google Cloud.
To help AI seem real and approachable, we brought AI-generated visuals to life across Next as a major design element. Nowhere was this more prominent than in the Google Cloud Showcase—the 35K square-foot central experience on the expo floor showcasing the latest and greatest in Google Cloud technology and customer stories.
The concept for this experience was an “AI-generated city,” where we imagined a society powered by humans leveraging AI-generated solutions—a sort of new age utopia.
Innovators Hive
Innovators Hive is Google Cloud Next’s developer-focused experience, with showcases, demos, labs and experiences all tailored to practitioners. To lean into this focus, we designed a concept called “Dark Mode,” to reflect the unique, scrappy, and sometimes quirky-cool nature of this specific audience.
Within the Innovators Hive area, Google Cloud had a sustainability showcase to demonstrate how practitioners across the world are leveraging Google Cloud to promote more sustainable solutions and practices. For this space, we used as much upcycled and repurposed material as possible. We even turned shipping crates used to ship actual event properties to the venue into seating hubs for guests! After the event, these hubs morphed back into shipping crates to ship properties back out of the venue to storage.
Sustainability
With a focus on greener initiatives, we wanted to make sure that the attendee audience was integrated into a sustainable experience. Partnering with the venue, we became the first private event that successfully closed the Hacienda Bridge so that attendees were able to safely walk to the Concert venue. This helped to reduce the need for any unnecessary additional transportation/buses outside of mobility accommodations. Once inside we leaned into the state of art technology for branding and directional instead of print graphics (made use of the venue’s 5,400 screens) and also leaned into protein alternatives for our menus to remain more sustainability-friendly for F&B.
In keeping with GPJ’s sustainability practices, approximately 80% of the builds at Google Cloud Next ‘24 were rental properties or reused from previous years. But we went further, making sustainable choices a priority in multiple areas:
- Meatless menu options including no beef lunches, all served in recycled and recyclable containers
- Shipping crate reuse
- Refillable water bottles and water refill stations, reducing single-use plastic waste
- Badge recycling
- Sustainable venue selection
- Prop re-use
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, gave the event a stellar review, calling it one of the most well-executed conferences he’d been to in 27+ years.
