Circle Day 2023 @ Squarespace HQ in NYC!
Design Powers attends Circle Day 2023 in NYC! Evelyn and I attended in person at Squarespace, while Emily joined virtually.
Squarespace Circle is a free partner program for creative professionals, web designers and developers. Circle has an active online community forum, prioritized support, product features, exclusive access to discounts and commissions, extended trials and special events!
Our trek up north begins…
We arrived in New York City on Tuesday, August 22, a day before the Circle Day event. We were both excited to be there! Evelyn had recently been up to see the Edward Hopper retrospective at the Whitney this past February, but I had not been there in 8 years!
After a speedy, lane-changing, sometimes nail-biting 3.5-hour drive up the NJ Turnpike, Evy Andretti (Evelyn’s Italian race car driver alter ego), we arrived at The Arlo in Soho.
The super cute hotel was about six blocks south of Squarespace headquarters on Clarkson Street. After settling in, we decided we’d walk from Chelsea to midtown. The weather was beautiful, and as anyone who has been to Manhattan knows, the people-watching is beyond compare.
Evelyn had purchased tickets to see Broadway's latest musical comedy hit, Shucked, at the Nederlander Theatre. A story about a corn-fed, corn-bred small town named Cobb County — we hooted and hollered from start to finish. After the show, we did what every tourist must do: We went to Times Square to take in the sights, sounds and the highly entertaining humanity of the Big Apple.
Day 1: Member Workshop Day!
Heading to Squarespace HQ!
The next day, we got ready for Squarespace’s first Circle Day event, Member Workshop Day.
This private event is for Circle members, with hands-on learning sessions, interactions with the Squarespace team, and exclusive previews of upcoming new products and features!
Upon arrival, we were greeted by smiling employees who gave us our attendee badges and directed us to the 6th floor, where they would start their new course collection page demo.
Flexing our Circle Day attendee badges!
We were pleasantly surprised once we saw the ample spread of food. We promptly chowed down while seated at a table with other circle members, discussing our businesses, why we started using Squarespace and enjoying the delicious food.
Squarespace’s new course collection pages!
After lunch, we listened to Squarespace's Community Manager, Sarah Greisdorf, and Product Director, Tim Miller. They began a presentation about the new course pages.
The course pages add learning management system functionality directly within Squarespace sites. Now, we can build professional branded lessons with the power of Squarespace’s 7.1 Fluid Engine editor to make a user-friendly and enjoyable online classroom.
You can upload secure video libraries directly to the platform to create engaging multimedia lessons your audience will love. Students track their progress through chapters and can check off completed lessons.
One of the best parts of the course release is the many options for how you charge for your course with the new digital product pricing plans. Course creators can set a one-time price, payment plans, recurring subscription fees, or free access to your content. Some settings allow students to purchase your course anytime or enroll in cohorts.
Our Course: How to Make the World’s Best Paper Airplane!
We were eager to try it out and luckily, that was next on the schedule! We broke into groups of four and began the Circle Day courses workshop. Our group consisted of Evelyn, myself, a web designer named Rachel, and a non-profit designer named Kareem.
We were tasked with developing our own course and assigning a role to each group member. I took the role of the client; Evelyn was the filmmaker, Rachel would build the course, and Kareem would market it. Our topic? Paper Airplanes 101: How to Make the World’s Best Paper Airplane. We needed to come up with three lessons. We decided to do varied difficulty levels: Lesson 1: Beginner Level, The Bulldog Dart Airplane. Lesson 2: Intermediate Level: The Harrier Airplane. And finally, Lesson 3: Expert Level: The Hammer Airplane.
Evelyn and I went to find a quiet spot on the 6th floor to film our three lesson videos each under 2 minutes. While we worked on that, Rachel was busy setting up the course pages: three lesson pages and one course overview page. Kareem figured out a cost for the course and prepared a graphic using Canva to market our course. Once all was completed, we published our site!
Since this was the first member workshop day Squarespace had ever done, there was a glitch factoring the load on the wifi. Initially, we were all going to share our course with the group but due to the internet issues, Tim and Sarah decided to feature a select few. We saw funny course ideas like “5 Easy Ways to Kill Your Houseplants” and more serious topics like “Are You an Entrepreneur Struggling with Confidence?”
After a successful day, the Squarespace team invited us downstairs to enjoy networking and a lovely happy hour with more food. Evelyn took this opportunity to talk to some of her Squarespace heroes that she admires from afar.
Of course, Hannah and Nick from SquareKicker who traveled from New Zealand! They are as delightful in person as they are virtually, but even better. SquareKicker is a no-code design and animation plugin. We use SquareKicker on most of our client websites, so it was so exciting to meet them in person!
An evening along the Hudson River
Once the workshop day ended, we headed to Hudson River Park to check the Little Island. Little Island is a new public park along the West Side Highway where visitors can experience nature and art in a unique urban oasis on the Hudson River.
We were fortunate to arrive just as the Philippe Lemm Trio, a group of jazz performers, were finishing their last set. After some selfie-taking, we wanted dinner. Both Evelyn and I love Asian cuisine and were intrigued by the 4k reviews for Buddakan, a fantastic Asian fusion restaurant situated at the end of the new Chelsea Market. It’s covert from the outside with no indication that we were in the right place. We clued in that the massive decorative door must be it and tentatively headed inside. Those 4k people were right - a really lovely dinner.
Afterward, we headed back to our hotel anticipating Circle Day 2!
Day 2: Squarespace Circle Day 2023!
Holding up a Squarekicker tee and wearing a Circle Day 2023 hat! Evelyn’s neon yellow eyeglass frames were on point.
The day we’ve been waiting for!
Circle Day began at 10 a.m. on the 12th floor. Unlike member workshop day, which was a small group, Circle Day had over 350 attendees, with more than 4,000 people joining virtually!
This year's Circle Day theme was “Build Your Toolkit.” Squarespace provided coffee and pastries for all the attendees, and everyone was gifted a free Circle Day tote bag full of awesome swag like pens, stickers, and a corduroy hat!
Sarah Greisdorf kicked off the day with a rousing introduction and brought up Tim Miller and group product manager Jeff Aldrich to deliver this year's Opening Keynote speech.
Emily was Slack messaging us that other circle members were groaning at their puns in the online chat, but Evelyn and I both enjoyed their spunky energy. Haters in the chat were trash-talking the logo, but Emily stood up for the cute CD’23 logo — it has clean, readable letters and numbers bouncing around with excitement, stands out from the crowd, and is in a circle shape!
10:50 a.m.
Everyone broke for the first round of talks. Evelyn, Emily, and I used Slack for work communication and decided our best plan of attack would be to split up, attend different topics and share what we learned afterward.
Evelyn went to the workshop room to hear about “How to Monetize Memberships with Squarespace.”
I attended all of the topics on the main stage area. Each presenter was given 10 minutes to discuss their presentations, so I saw a wealth of topics in a short time. Some of these included “Turning Your One-time Project into Recurring Revenue” and “The Price is Right: How to Charge a Premium for Your Offering.”
Circle Day online at Emily’s office
I enjoyed hearing from Denys Kapush, who was presenting on “Recruiting AI for your Marketing Team.” Perhaps the biggest takeaway for her presentation was the website; there’s an AI for that, and the case study Denys presented about how he used Jasper AI with Squarespace to help service a client's site.
Emily attended the virtual sessions, which at this time were all of the talks happening on the Main Stage, and throughout the day, she toggled between the two live-streaming sessions (while holding down the fort with our ongoing client work!).
11:40 a.m.
It was time for the next round of talks! I attended more topics on the main stage, like “How to Sell Acuity Scheduling” and “Don’t Leave Money on the Table: Circle Benefits You Can’t Miss!” Although I’ve been a part of Circle for a while, there were some features that I didn’t know about, like how they send out product emails every Monday about new offers and product updates!
Evelyn decided to stay in the workshop room and attend a talk called “Empower Your Clients with E-commerce Essentials.”
Evelyn with Anthony Casalena, Founder & CEO of Squarespace
12:20 p.m.
We all came back together to eat lunch and talk about our mornings. Squarespace had Korean BBQ catered and plenty of delicious lunch bowls.
After lunch, we heard from Squarespace’s CEO and Founder, Anthony Casalena, who was interviewed about his 20 years of building Squarespace. He shared why he’s stayed on as CEO for so long (it’s rare for a founder to continue to hold that position) and answered some questions from Circle members about his work and insight. Evelyn even managed to grab a quick selfie with him on his way out the door!
Vanessa in the in-person workshop room
1:50 p.m.
We broke apart again for some longer talks. Evelyn attended “Template Sellers Tell All” presented by a panel of template creators and sellers. In this talk, SquareKicker announced their upcoming template services designed to empower designers with the tools they need to create, sell and build templates on Squarespace.
Simultaneously I attended “Using Client Energy for Intuitive Design.” This was a fun presentation by Elizabeth Ellery that explained how you can use Pinterest mood boards to help get a good sense of your client's design aesthetic and have them collect elements that will help inform the overall design for their website.
2:40 p.m.
Evelyn with Wayne Pelletier
It was time to switch again! I attended Connie Holen’s talk on the main stage about “Niche Down, Level Up.” This presentation was about how you can figure out what kind of niche client you want to advertise to (fitness & wellness, B2B businesses, small businesses, etc.) and what you can do with your personal brand to help attract that client (and retain them)!
Evelyn returned to the workshop room to hear Wayne Pelletier speak about “Stop Trading Time for Money.” We had the opportunity to meet and talk with Wayne briefly the day before at member workshop day, so Evelyn was excited to hear him talk about his topic.
3:30 p.m.
Evelyn and Vanessa came back together to attend the last presentation of the day, “Is Social Media Really Worth It?” moderated by Drew Rapp; the panel consisted of brand experts Karen Happel, Annie Franceschi, and Liam Lacey.
This was more of an open discussion that allowed attendees to ask questions and gain insights about how promoting yourself on social media 24/7 can be exhausting. They aimed to teach us how to avoid burnout by exploring various perspectives on social media strategies. Although, they didn’t really answer the question, Is social media worth it?
The DP team did learn a lot about picking the right platform for your business (for our business, it’s LinkedIn, so stay tuned and follow us)! We also learned tips on telling our clients' stories, making the algorithm work for us, and methods for growing our business beyond social media marketing.
Online session with David Lee
4:40 p.m.
Everyone gathered at the main stage to hear Squarespace's Chief Creative Officer David Lee discuss creativity. This was one of Emily’s favorite discussions of the day online!
He talked about his background, design school, previous agency and ad experience, solid takeaways, and how he got to Squarespace and chose to work in the digital interactive space.
He answered interview questions about being a dad and how he stays inspired. He chatted about the importance of constraints in creativity, how to increase your creative inputs, what's motivating him right now, creativity in your own career (staying open to possibilities), and how to stay creatively hungry.
“Design actually isn’t going into Photoshop and moving things around. You’re ultimately trying to solve a problem through a creative lens.”
5:15 p.m.
We had a wonderful time at Circle Day 2023, surrounded by our Squarespace peers and learning useful, thought-provoking information about how we can improve Design Powers for our clients and ourselves!
Seeing so many familiar faces in person was exciting, and getting to be in a room with so many high-up Squarespace employees made us feel special. It’s impressive to see how small but mighty the Squarespace team is.
In addition to all that learning and getting to try Squarespace's new products, they kept us fed and happy. The day was well-organized and super fun.
We can’t wait to come back next year!
