A Guide to Boston for UNBOUND26 from a local HubSpot Partner

Our team has been coming to this event since its early days (when it was called INBOUND). We are a HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner, which puts us in the top 1% of HubSpot's Solution Partner ecosystem. Over the years that has meant a lot of trips to Boston for this annual event, and a lot of trips across the river to HubSpot's offices in Cambridge in between. We have navigated the Seaport area, attended our fair share of sponsored parties and heavily sampled the local cuisine.

So here is our practical companion to UNBOUND26. Where the venue is, how best to get in from Logan, where people actually meet this year, where to eat, what the evenings look like, and even what to wear. The UNBOUND team has published two good official event guides and we link to both as relevant resources below.

First: the venue has a new name

The building is now the Thomas E. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center, or MCEC. For the last twenty years it was the BCEC, the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Signage, older maps, rideshare apps, and most Bostonians may still say BCEC. So may your driver and your hotel concierge. It is the same building at 415 Summer Street. Just say "the convention center in the Seaport" and you will never have a problem.

Once you are onsite and want local help from an actual human, the Meet Boston Visitor Services Desk sits on the west side of the North Lobby. Open 9 to 5 Tuesday through Thursday, 9 to 1 on Friday.

Getting in from Logan Airport

This is one of the shortest airport-to-venue trips of any major US conference destination. Logan is directly across the harbor from the Seaport. Rideshare runs ten to twenty minutes, and the variable is tunnel traffic, not distance.

Take the Silver Line instead. The MBTA's SL1 runs from every Logan terminal to South Station, and the SL2 continues into the Seaport. It is free inbound from the airport, which surprises people every year. If you land near rush hour it will usually beat a car.

Skip the rental. Parking in the Seaport during a 13,000-person conference costs more in time than it saves. Almost every hotel worth staying in is a ten to fifteen minute walk from the front doors, and the Seaport is flat and gridded, which makes it the easiest part of Boston to navigate on foot.

Key resource: For the full official guide, UNBOUND's Boston, Made Easy article covers transit, walking routes, and arrival logistics. It is thorough and we would not try to out-do it.

Where people actually meet this year

The Exchanges replaces the old scattering of meetups with a set of always-on networking spaces, split three ways.

• The Sync groups you by role, so you find people who hold the same job you do.

• The Sector groups you by industry.

• The Spot is built around identity-based communities. If you have ever walked a conference floor hoping to bump into the right person, this is the fix.

If you have ever wandered a conference floor hoping to bump into the right person, this is HubSpot's attempt to fix that, and we think it is going to be a real improvement.

Our CEO, Christopher Nault, and our Senior Strategist, Katrina Horne cross paths with HubSpot's Co-Founder, Brian Halligan in the hallways of a previous INBOUND. 

HubSpot House (Hall B) Where the HubSpot platform comes to life: Here you'll find live demos, the AI experiences, and the product teams themselves, so you can ask the person who built a thing why it works that way. Customer Support and the Trust Center staff desks here too. Go Wednesday afternoon instead of right after Spotlight, when everyone else floods in.

Braindate Lounge (Hall B) These self-organized meetups have been very popular with attendees in past years, but many people don't know about them. Thirty minutes, one-on-one or small group, on a topic somebody posted because they wanted to talk about it. We have had better takeaways from Braindates than in a lot of sessions we've attended.

Loop Activation (Hall B) HubSpot is calling it Loop & Hoop, and it is a basketball court on the show floor. Shoot some hoops and pick up a free copy of Loop, the new book from CMO Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan. It is also a low-stakes place to meet fellow attendees and start a conversation while shooting some hoops.

Lawn on D is where conversations go to continue. Outdoor space next to the convention center, art installations, the light-up swings. When the floor gets loud and you need some fresh air, take the meeting or stroll out there.

The coffee line and the hallway outside a session that just ended are still where a surprising amount of great connections and conversations happen. Take advantage of these moments and spaces. Stand still for a minute and chat with a new friend you met in line instead of speed-walking to the next room.

If you are in the HubSpot Partner Ecosystem

Two things to be aware of.

Partner Day is Tuesday, September 15, the day before the main event opens, for eligible Solutions and Technology Partners with valid tickets. It pulls a large share of the ecosystem into Boston early, which means Monday and Tuesday evenings are nights with HubSpot power-users in town.

Partner Hub is open through the event for Solutions and Technology Partners: lounge, workstations, and Partner Connect meeting space. If you are trying to get time with a specific partner or HubSpot team, book it there rather than hoping to catch them on the floor. 

Where to eat and drink, walkable from the venue

You get few real windows across these three days to skoot off campus. Here is where we would spend them, when you have them.

Coffee. Cocorico is on the lobby level of the Omni Boston at the Seaport, 450 Summer Street, opens at 6:30, and the pastry case is better than a hotel cafe tends to be. Little Wolf Coffee on Sleeper Street is small and excellent, and worth the walk when you need ten minutes away from the event floor.

Oysters, which is the local specialty. Row 34 on Congress Street is serious about the food and relaxed about everything else. Book ahead for that week, because it's popular and will be even more so with the event in town. Legal Sea Foods Harborside on Northern Ave is another popular large-group bar/dining venue with the water view. It gets packed during event week, but it is still good if you can get a table.

Rooftops. Deck 12 at the top of the YOTEL on Seaport Boulevard has the best skyline view of the group, reached through the YOTEL entrance up to the penthouse level. Rooftop at The Envoy on Sleeper Street is busier and louder. Go to either for the view and plan to eat elsewhere.

The one adjacent to everything. The Grove at Lawn on D is casual, outdoor, food trucks and drinks, and the easiest place at UNBOUND to keep the conversation going over food and drinks without anybody needing to make additional plans.

Key resource: UNBOUND's Beantown Picks guide collects local recommendations from the speaker lineup this year, which pairs well with the list above.

What the evenings look like

The official shape of the week, from the UNBOUND agenda:

• Tuesday, September 15. VIP Welcome Party, with live entertainment, food, and drinks. VIP ticket holders only. Also Partner Day.
• Wednesday through Friday. Lawn on D open daily. 
• Thursday, 5:30 to 6:15 PM. Kyle Cooke DJ set at Lawn on D.
• Thursday, 6:15 PM. UNBOUND After Hours on the Main Stage, with Aziz Ansari headlining. Badge required.
• Friday, 2:30 PM. Tom Brady closes the Main Stage. Check your flight to be sure you catch his talk before you head home!

HubSpot has said more programming is coming. Once you are onsite, the mobile app is the source of truth.

Beyond the official program, the ecosystem builds a second parallel conference every year in the bars and hotel lounges around the venue. Partner happy hours, invite-only dinners, rooftop receptions, 7 AM run clubs. Most of it gets announced in the first two weeks of September, so it is worth checking back.

To find it yourself: search #UNBOUND26 and #UNBOUNDEvent on LinkedIn sorted by recent rather than top, check LinkedIn Events filtered to Boston for that week, and search Luma. Search BCEC as well as MCEC, because plenty of hosts are still writing the old name. And search Seaport on its own, since some hosts post a venue and never tag the conference.

One thing worth knowing if you did not get a ticket yet: UNBOUND26 sold out. Anything inside the convention center needs a badge. However, most things in a hotel lounge or bar do not.

Thursday night

Thursday is the crowded night. Aziz Ansari goes on at 6:15 and it will be a good time. It is also a room with a few thousand people in it, which makes it a poor place to have a conversation.

By Thursday evening you have absorbed two days of product announcements, AI frameworks, and session takeaways, and you are about twelve hours from someone at your company asking what all of it means for them. Almost nobody schedules time for that part, which is why so much of what people learn at this event evaporates on the flight home.

So we are hosting the other thing, with our friends at Apollo.io. The location is super convenient: The Lounge @ Coquette is directly across Summer Street from the convention center. You do not need to know the Seaport, find an address, or get in a car. Walk out the front doors, cross the street, you are there.

What to wear this week

The community has turned conference dressing into part of the experience, and HubSpot started it. Meghann Keogh, a former bridal boutique owner turned HubSpotter, has become the de facto style voice for this event, sharing outfit planning and recommendations for attendees.  

There is also a limited UNBOUND attendee-exclusive merch drop, pre-order only, pickup onsite, no restocks, and it sells through.

The other truth is that we have walked that building for years. It runs cold, it is enormous, and you will cover more than five miles a day without noticing.

So dress for the photo above the waist and the mileage below it. A layer you can carry, a jacket you can take off in a packed session and put back on in a freezing hall, and shoes you have already broken in. Save the outfit you want photographed for the evening, when you are standing still with a drink.

September in Boston is lovely and unpredictable. It can be 80 and humid or 55 and raining, sometimes in the same day. Pack for both.

The UNBOUND hashtags and how to use them

#UNBOUND26 and #UNBOUNDEvent together are the main feed. This is where the parties, the last-minute invitations, and the "we have three open seats at dinner" posts show up. If you have a free evening and want something to do, that is your search.

#UNBOUND26Insider is the coverage feed. Seventy-one Insiders publishing from sessions in real time. Use it when you are stuck in one room and want to know what happened in another, or when the session you wanted filled up and you're looking to see what people are up to around the event.

Also worth reading

The Revenue Leader's Guide to UNBOUND 26 covers the other half of this: which sessions to book, the reservation deadlines, and who to follow. 

See you in Boston

However you spend your days at UNBOUND, this annual gathering has always been better because of the people who show up and share what they learn. We will be publishing from the floor all week, so follow Growth on LinkedIn along with our CEO Christopher Nault and our Head of Revenue Amber Kemmis and Nick Salvatorello, our Head of Marketing, if you want the takeaways as they happen. Otherwise, find us in a hallway or at Coquette on Thursday night.

Enjoy Boston, it is a good week to be here.