Workday Rising 2025 brought together over 30,000 of our closest friends and created 1.45 billion in pipeline. Putting an event of this scale together is a team sport involving collaboration, leadership, and hard work. I’m proud and humbled to have been a part of this massive effort working alongside Workmates from Events, Product Marketing, Comms, and our agency partners: Ogilvy, Sparks, Freeman, Makr and GPJ.
The theme for this year’s event was: AI-powered. Human-centric. Future-ready. This story was consistently carried through from the moment attendees arrived at SFO through the event space at Moscone Center—and everywhere in between.
The Core was the heartbeat of our Expo and showcased our most innovative and future-forward technology which meant one thing: agents, agents, agents. Attendees were invited to interact with four large-scale LED towers to see our agents in action or activate an interactive tabletop to experience the future of work with AI-human collaboration at the center.
A big part of our AI story was also told through our keynote openers for each day in collaboration with our partners at Where The Buffalo Roam.
From the moment attendees picked up their badges and swag bag, we designed every touchpoint with intentionality to maximize their learning, networking, and fun. Inside Moscone, they could get a front row seat to the future of work at our mainstage keynotes (with a surprise appearance by Billy Idol), shop at the Workday Store, connect with like-minded attendees, or experience a meditative sound bath, and more.
Outside Moscone, we created a festival atmosphere so attendees could watch our keynotes from raised bleachers, hang out at The Club, create photo moments at the Illuminate bus, or visit The Diner where the story of Workday began with a breakfast meeting between founders Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri.
Our customers also got to join in the fun with special activations on the Expo show floor that told our partnership story. From taking a 360 victory lap with McLaren to an apres ski photo with Club Med.
To cap it all off, we threw a 20th birthday celebration at the Home of the Giants with wild boys Duran Duran headlining the party.
