Seth Meyers roasts corporate speak, Dreamforce at San Francisco event

Seth Meyers closed out 2023’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco with a biting put-down of the corporatized affair.

The comedian and late-night talk show host delivered a 40-minute comedy set in SoMa’s Moscone West conference hall, pacing on a blue Dreamforce logo in the middle of hundreds of attendees. He poked fun at vaccine holdouts and wedding tropes, plus waxed about parenthood in New York City and his relationship with sports.

But it was his eviscerating commentary on corporate speak and the Dreamforce conference that got the biggest laughs from the lanyard-wearing crowd.

“What a crazy room this is,” he said, looking around at the cartoon scenery projected across every wall and the campground-style chairs ringing the stage. “This is like a 5-year-old had a birthday party and said they wanted the theme to be ‘forest.’”

Then, he corrected himself: “A 5-year-old billionaire.”

The crowd roared its approval. Then, Meyers pitched up his voice: “I want there to be a waterfall, daddy!” (Outside on the conference grounds, SFGATE spotted at least two.)

For years, Salesforce has decorated Dreamforce with National Park-esque trappings, which this year included a venue called the “Dreamforest.” The moniker did not escape Meyers’ aim: “You also know you’re doing well when you can have a thing at your conference called the Dreamforest, and people will still come to your conference.”

Meyers went on to pick apart corporate language, which was extremely prevalent in Dreamforce’s schedules and Salesforce’s product descriptions. First, he noted that the prisoner who had actually broken out of a Pennsylvania jail might take offense to the constant use of the phrase “breakout session,” quipping: “He had to crab-walk up two walls … you just have badges.”

Then, he made fun of the recurrent use of the words “roadmaps” and “trailblazers” in the conference program, before turning to the intensely active verbs.

“You are achieving, you are amplifying, you are accelerating,” he started. “‘Architect?’ I saw ‘architect’ used as a verb. I don’t even think architects use ‘architect’ as a verb. If you were at a party and you said, ‘What do you do?’ and someone said, ‘I architect,’ you would think, ‘No you don’t!’”

“We’re gonna empower. We’re gonna experience. We’re gonna explore,” Meyers continued. “How do we know we’re gonna explore? The f–king roadmaps.”

Like comedian Sheng Wang and actress Kristen Bell, who introduced Wang to start the show, Meyers let one fly at the host company’s corporate vagueness. He said that even after all his research, he still had “no f–king idea” what Salesforce does. Again, the crowd roared.

“All I know,” he said, “is that I’m walking around a carpeted pond, at what is likely the beginning of a pagan ritual, and it will end with you setting me on fire while you join hands and dance around me in a circle.”

Hear of anything happening at Salesforce or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.