From Crashing Platforms to Flawless Execution: Neo4j's NODES Transformation

• 13,000+ registrations in 2025
• 32% registration growth over 3 years, with consistent YoY increases
• 4,500+ live attendees in 2025
• 34% attendance growth over 3 years, with consistent YoY increases
• 96 hours of content delivered across 4 concurrent tracks
• 157 sessions delivered across three global regions
• Thousands of chat messages and Q&A interactions

NODES is Neo4j's flagship virtual conference. It's a 24-hour event spanning three global regions with four tracks running concurrently. The event brings together developers, customers, and partners from around the world to explore the latest in graph technology and AI.

Pulling off NODES requires nearly a full year of planning. The team coordinates 47 producers, 40+ moderators, and nearly 200 speakers to deliver content to 13,000+ registrants. At this level of complexity, the right platform is mission-critical.

Before Goldcast, Merrilee Parsons, who leads the event experience for NODES at Neo4j, struggled to find a platform that could handle the event's demands. The platform that was used in 2020 couldn’t reliably manage the multi-track format. In 2021, the chosen solution was too rigid to accommodate last-minute changes. Then in 2022, a new platform seemed promising until everyone broke out from the general session into individual tracks.

"It crashed," Merrilee recalls. She compares it to an in-person event where "everybody exits the general session and they're all trying to get on an elevator to go to the next room." The platform simply couldn't handle the surge of traffic. The delay frustrated attendees and left the team scrambling to keep them engaged while the platform recovered.

Beyond stability, the workflow was fragmented and manual. NODES is a crowdsourced event, meaning community members propose session topics that Neo4j reviews and approves. Managing this in the past meant constant exports, spreadsheet updates, and reminders sent through separate systems.

What else? No integration with Sessionize, the third-party platform Neo4j uses to manage their community-sourced agenda, or with Marketo for real-time lead data. For an event driving awareness, education, and consideration across their entire funnel, they needed technology that could keep pace.

Sometimes the best solutions find you at exactly the right moment. Merrilee was actively searching for alternatives when Goldcast reached out, and the timing couldn't have been better. "I was just like, oh, I think this is the solution that I've been looking for," Merrilee recalls.

Three years later, Neo4j is still with Goldcast. What sold them wasn't flashy features or sales pitches. It was a platform that actually understood how enterprise virtual events work at scale.

Rock-solid infrastructure. After years of crashes and delays, Goldcast's ability to handle 13,000+ registrants breaking into multiple simultaneous tracks without breaking a sweat was transformative.

"It's seamless," Merrilee says. No more holding your breath when the keynote ends and everyone floods to their next session.

All-in-one workflow. Registration, branded reminder email sequences, speaker management, and agenda integration. All in one platform.

"We didn't have to continually update the agenda with so many sessions to manage," Merrilee explains.

The Sessionize integration meant their massive crowdsourced agenda synced automatically via API, eliminating hours of manual updates across 157 sessions.

Real-time Marketo integration. This was non-negotiable for Neo4j's marketing operations team. With 13,000+ registrants, manual data exports were unsustainable. With Goldcast, every registration flows instantly to Marketo and Salesforce, eliminating hours of manual work and ensuring no leads fall through the cracks.

Speaker backstage experience. With 196 speakers presenting from around the world, the backstage functionality gave producers and speakers a professional, intuitive environment. Goldcast made coordinating producers and speakers across time zones actually manageable.

Flexibility for their hybrid model. NODES runs a handful of pre-recorded keynotes but the majority of the sessions are live. Goldcast handled both formats seamlessly, playing the polished keynote recordings followed by live presentations across multiple tracks.

Custom solutions for complex logistics. Because the event spans three regions (APAC, EMEA, and AMER), Goldcast worked with Neo4j to build a custom calendar workflow, which allowed attendees to select their preferred region at registration and receive calendar invites specific to their local 8-hour block.

The numbers tell a compelling story. NODES 2025 drew 13,000+ registrations and 4,500+ live attendees. Over three years, registration has grown 32% with consistent year-over-year increases, while attendance has grown 34% with improving conversion rates.

The platform handled 157 sessions across three global regions, delivering 96 hours of content across four concurrent tracks. Throughout the event, thousands of chat messages and Q&A interactions kept attendees engaged without a single platform crash.

The difference with Goldcast is night and day. Where their previous platform created bottlenecks and delays, Goldcast delivers seamless transitions.

"I liken the platform to a hotel ballroom," Merrilee explains. "All the rooms are well marked. You can find your way."

No more elevator queues. No more frustrated attendees stuck in virtual traffic jams. Just smooth, intuitive navigation that lets people focus entirely on the content. That's exactly where you want the attention to be.

Perhaps most telling is what Neo4j is building next. They're not just running NODES annually. They've expanded the program. They're adding a second major event in April 2026. NODES AI 2026 is a specialized AI and graph conference. The confidence to expand comes from knowing Goldcast can handle it.

This growth isn't just about event success—it's about pipeline impact. NODES serves as a critical touchpoint across Neo4j's entire funnel, introducing new developers to the platform, educating prospects, and deepening engagement with existing customers. With Goldcast’s stability and scale, Neo4j is able to turn their flagship event into a reliable demand generation engine.

With 47 producers coordinating 196 speakers across three continents, 40+ moderators managing thousands of real-time interactions, and zero platform crashes across 157 sessions, Neo4j has turned NODES into a scalable, repeatable success.

"The platform just works," Merrilee says simply. For an event of this scale and complexity, that's not a small thing. It's everything.