San Francisco Event Venues
Convene
Jack Simpson Photography is a San Francisco corporate event photographer with hands-on experience shooting multiple conferences and corporate events at Convene SF, a 53,000-square-foot premium meeting and event venue in the Union Square neighborhood at 100 Stockton Street.
We’ve served as the lead photography team for three major conferences at Convene in 2025: Chainguard’s Assemble, Winning by Design’s Impact Summit, and the U.S. Privacy Summit co-hosted by Ketch, Kelley Drye, and WISP. All three were high-profile, single-day productions requiring fast turnaround, expedited gallery delivery, and the ability to navigate Convene’s multi-room layout across two floors under a mix of natural light and production lighting.
Whether you’re planning a tech conference, product launch, corporate summit, or executive event at Convene, our team brings venue-specific expertise, fast delivery, and a proven track record with leading Bay Area companies.
Venue Overview
What makes Convene unique for corporate events?
Convene 100 Stockton is one of San Francisco’s newest and most sophisticated purpose-built event venues. Located in the heart of Union Square at 100 Stockton Street Convene occupies the fourth and fifth floors of the redeveloped former Macy’s building. The venue spans 53,000 square feet across seven distinct meeting and event spaces that can be configured to accommodate everything from intimate executive roundtables to large format conferences with up to 470 attendees in theater seating.
For corporate conferences and summits, Convene’s layout allows event producers to run keynotes, breakout sessions, sponsor activations, and networking receptions across multiple rooms without congestion. The venue offers in-house AV with on-site technical support, built-in video cameras, microphones, and LED screens in every room, plus in-house catering and dedicated hospitality staff.
From a photography standpoint, Convene’s design is distinctive. The venue features dramatic natural light through floor-to-ceiling windows, warm wood finishes, stonework, and lush greenery, all inspired by Northern California’s coastal aesthetic and anchored by the “Karl the Fog” design theme. This creates a visually rich environment that photographs beautifully, but the interplay between abundant natural light and production lit stage areas requires a photographer who understands how to balance both within the same event.
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Convene at 100 Stockton St, San Francisco · Chainguard Assemble 2025
Featured Events
Our Work at Convene
We’ve had the privilege of serving as the lead event photography team for three major conferences at Convene in 2025. Each event activated multiple rooms across Convene’s two floors and presented distinct photography challenges, from balancing natural window light against stage production lighting to covering fast moving programming across the full venue.
October 23, 2025 · Convene SF
The U.S. Privacy Summit 2025
The inaugural U.S. Privacy Summit: Compliance, Enforcement, and the Road Ahead was held at Convene. Co-hosted by Ketch, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, and Women in Security and Privacy (WISP), the one day event brought together regulators and privacy practitioners for keynotes, fireside chats, and panels on the most pressing issues in U.S. data privacy. Confirmed speakers included officials from the California Privacy Protection Agency, the California Attorney General’s Office, and the Federal Trade Commission, alongside industry leaders from companies including Meta and e.l.f. Beauty.
Coverage scope: Lead event photographer covering all programming, regulatory keynotes, fireside chats with enforcement officials, practitioner panels, sponsor activations, and networking moments across the full-day program running from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
Full gallery: 500 final images delivered with expedited turnaround, organized by session, space, and moment type, ready for press, social media, internal communications, and future event promotion.
May 14, 2025 · Convene SF
Winning by Design – Impact Summit 2025: The Year of AI
Winning by Design held its inaugural customer conference, The Impact Summit: The Year of AI, at Convene. The event brought together 250-300 C-level executives from recurring revenue businesses for a curated, single-track experience focused on how AI is transforming Go-to-Market strategies. The opening keynote was delivered by founder Jacco van der Kooij, with sessions covering the unveiling of Winning by Design’s AI GTM Research Report, an interactive AI GTM Lab, and the first-ever AI Lab Awards ceremony.
Coverage scope: Lead event photographer covering all programming: keynote presentations, expert sessions, the AI GTM Lab sponsor showcase, the AI Lab Awards ceremony, and networking moments including lunch and the closing happy hour.
Full gallery: 500 final images delivered with expedited turnaround, organized by session, space, and moment type. The Impact Summit sold out at $1,500 per ticket and has already announced its return to Convene for 2026, with Jack Simpson Photography retained as the lead photography team for the second consecutive year.
March 25, 2025 · Convene SF
Chainguard – Assemble 2025
Chainguard held its inaugural user conference, Assemble, at Convene. The event brought together over 300 security and engineering professionals for a full day of keynotes, technical sessions, workshops, lightning talks, sponsor activations, and networking. Co-founders Dan Lorenc (CEO), Matt Moore (CTO), and Kim Lewandowski (CPO) delivered the opening keynote, which included major product announcements: Chainguard Libraries, Chainguard VMs, and a new partnership with Datadog. The event closed with a keynote by mentalist Oz Pearlman and the first-ever Guardian Awards ceremony.
Coverage scope: Lead event photographer covering all rooms: main stage keynotes, technical deep-dive sessions, hands-on workshops, sponsor activations, lightning talks, the Guardian Awards ceremony, and networking moments across Convene’s fourth and fifth floors.
Full gallery: 500 final images delivered with expedited turnaround, organized by session, space, and moment type. Assemble received significant press coverage from theCUBE/SiliconANGLE, who provided live broadcast coverage from the event.
Venue Knowledge
What should an event photographer know about Convene?
Convene is one of San Francisco’s most polished and well-equipped corporate event venues and photographing it well requires a specific understanding of its design, lighting, and multi-floor layout. Having photographed three major conferences at Convene across March, May, and October of 2025, we bring that accumulated experience to every event we shoot there.
Challenge 01
Natural light and window management
Convene’s most distinctive photographic feature is its dramatic natural light. Floor-to-ceiling windows on both the fourth and fifth floors bring in abundant daylight that creates a warm, inviting atmosphere, and photographs beautifully for networking moments, candid attendee interactions, and environmental shots of the venue itself.
Our approach: Natural light is an asset when managed correctly, but it can create challenges for stage photography, particularly when a speaker is positioned between windows and the audience, or when afternoon sun shifts the color temperature mid-event. We meter for the speaker and use exposure compensation to retain detail in both the subject and any bright window backgrounds. For networking and candid moments near windows, we work with the natural light directionally rather than fighting it.
Challenge 02
Stage and production lighting in the main room
Convene’s largest rooms are equipped with in-house AV including built-in LED screens, video cameras, and microphones. The interplay between Convene’s in-house AV, the production team’s lighting, and natural daylight filtering through nearby windows can create mixed color temperatures and exposure challenges that require experience to navigate.
The main keynote room (Pacific Hall) is trisected by large support columns and will require use of an ultra wide lens and creative framing to capture the signature center wide shot. Wide angles taken from the back center of Pacific Hall will not show the main stage as it will be obstructed by the center support column.
Our approach: We work with the production team’s setup rather than against it. We identify the best angles during soundcheck to avoid screen moiré and backlighting issues, and adjust white balance to match the dominant light source on stage. At Convene specifically, the keynote rooms benefit from creative angles from far left or far right to avoid the support columns. Positioning is very important, specifically in the Pacific Hall.
Challenge 03
Multi-floor event coverage and room-to-room transitions
Convene’s event spaces span the fourth and fifth floors, connected by dedicated elevators and internal access. When a conference activates rooms on both floors simultaneously, as both Assemble and The Impact Summit did, photography coverage requires understanding the transition times between floors and planning a rotation that ensures no critical moments are missed.
Our approach: We work from the client’s run-of-show and build a shot priority list before the event begins. We map the physical layout, identify must-capture moments (keynotes, awards ceremonies, major announcements) and flexible moments (general networking, atmosphere shots), and factor in the transition time between floors. Convene’s layout is efficient, but the elevator transition between floors means you need to plan ahead rather than react in the moment.
What We Offer
Photo services for your Convene event
Scalable Teams
For larger events at Convene that require simultaneous coverage of multiple rooms or floors, we can scale our team with experienced, vetted photographers who work under our creative direction.
Rapid Delivery
Curated, edited highlight images delivered during your event for immediate posting. At the U.S. Privacy Summit, we delivered 350 images with next-day turnaround so the Summit team could post to socials while the energy was still high.
On-Site Headshots
A dedicated headshot photographer operates a portable studio at your event, giving attendees polished professional portraits. This is an extremely popular add-on for conferences as attendees love walking away with a new LinkedIn photo.
Venue Familiarity
Why hire a photographer who knows Convene?
Venue familiarity matters more than most event planners realize. A photographer who has already shot at Convene understands how the natural light behaves through the floor-to-ceiling windows at different times of day, knows the best angles to avoid screen glare and backlighting on the main stages, understands the physical layout and transition times between the fourth and fifth floors, and can anticipate the logistical challenges of multi-floor event coverage.
This isn’t something you can learn from a venue walk-through the morning of the event. It comes from hands-on experience under real event conditions, shifting natural light, simultaneous programming across floors, and the pressure of delivering images on an expedited timeline. Having photographed three major conferences at Convene across 2025, we bring that accumulated experience to every event we shoot there.
About Jack Simpson Photography
San Francisco’s corporate event photography studio
Jack Simpson Photography is a San Francisco Bay Area corporate event photography studio with over 10 years of experience. We specialize in conferences, summits, brand activations, and executive events for technology companies, professional organizations, and corporate teams.
Our client list includes Meta, Stanford University, Databricks, Nasdaq, Together AI, and the producers behind Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman. We are known for fast delivery (next-day galleries and real-time social media selects), scalable multi-photographer teams, and a discreet, editorial approach that captures authentic moments without disrupting your event.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Available for events at Convene and venues throughout San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Napa Valley.
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