Glide Powers UnDavos Summit's Event Management System at Scale.

Mark Turrell's unDavos Summit faced a common problem at uncommon scale. Coordinating 3,000 delegates, 400 speakers, and more than 1,200 side events across Davos Week requires infrastructure that most conference teams don't build. Most large conferences rely on spreadsheets, coordination teams, and what Turrell describes as "a lot of last-minute scrambles to catch things falling through the gaps."

The solution came from Glide, the no-code platform that turns spreadsheets into custom applications. Working with Glide Expert developer Abdo Awad at LessCode Agency, Turrell built a conference management system that now serves as the operational core for unDavos. According to Glide's announcement, the platform handles everything from speaker applications to badge generation, replacing manual processes with automated workflows.

"We have the largest conference system with the lowest headcount of anybody," Turrell said. "Our event scaled 100x in 3 years, and it would not have been possible without Glide."

The unDavos platform replaces Google Forms with custom Glide applications for speaker submissions. Attendees who register through Luma and share LinkedIn data get AI-scored for session fit before human reviewers see them. Speaker record changes automatically sync to the event website through Webflow connectors. Badge QR codes link directly to attendee profiles inside the app.

This approach eliminates the coordination overhead that typically scales linearly with event size. Traditional conference management combines registration platforms, spreadsheet tracking, manual website updates, and separate badge printing systems. Each tool introduces friction points where data gets copied, pasted, or manually reconciled.

Glide's architecture lets conference organizers build connected systems without writing code, a capability the platform has refined since returning to its spreadsheet roots with AI-powered app generation. The unDavos implementation shows how no-code tools can replace enterprise software in specialized use cases where customization matters more than feature breadth.

Other event teams have started running conferences on the system Awad built for unDavos. The Human Change Foundation managed their 2024 conference using the same platform, with data fully isolated from unDavos operations. This multi-tenant capability suggests the system was designed with reusability in mind from the start.

The technical details matter here: Glide's data separation and permission controls let multiple organizations use the same application logic while keeping their attendee and speaker information private. That's different from building a SaaS product, but it demonstrates how no-code platforms can support horizontal deployment patterns.

Glide has been highlighting operational use cases more aggressively in recent months, showcasing mobile-first implementations for field operations and internal tools. Conference management fits that pattern. The workflows are complex enough to require custom software, but not complex enough to justify a six-month development cycle with traditional tools.

Turrell's comments about scaling 100x with minimal headcount point to the real metric that matters for small operations teams: how much coordination overhead you can eliminate. Spreadsheets break at scale not because they can't store the data, but because they can't enforce process. Applications can.

The unDavos case study suggests Glide's positioning as an operational platform for business users is resonating with teams that need custom tools but lack engineering resources. Whether that translates to broader enterprise adoption depends on how well the platform handles edge cases and integration requirements that emerge as organizations move from pilot projects to production systems. For now, it's running one of the more visible conferences in the tech calendar.