The CMO Holiday Mixer is on Wednesday, December 9, 2026, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. PST in Palo Alto. Open Future Forum’s CMO Executive Forum and ThinkingAI are bringing together senior marketing and growth leaders for food, holiday drinks and peer introductions. Registration is subject to host approval.
The invitation spans CMOs, chief growth officers, VPs and heads of marketing, and leaders in growth, demand generation, product marketing and product growth. It is aimed at venture-backed and public companies, including consumer apps and gaming.
Request an invitation to the CMO Holiday Mixer.
The campaign you would run again
If you are deciding what to keep in the 2027 marketing plan, there is a useful conversation to have with someone who has been making similar choices.
Pick one campaign or experiment from this year. What did you expect to happen? What did the customer actually do? Which part would you repeat?
The detail makes it possible for another marketing leader to respond with something relevant. A consumer-app growth team may have learned something about onboarding that is useful to a product marketer. A demand-generation leader might have tested a message that helps a colleague think differently about customer intent.
With several marketing disciplines represented, there is room to compare how different teams approach the same customer.
Customer discovery deserves a closer look
One of the topics on the invitation is how buyers find companies when AI assistants are part of their research.
That can produce a more specific discussion than asking whether AI search is important. Are customers mentioning an assistant during sales conversations? What information did they find useful? Has the team changed how it explains the product, and what has it observed since?
These are questions to compare, not assumptions about what every company is experiencing. A leader marketing a consumer app may see different behavior from someone selling enterprise software. Hearing where experiences differ can be as useful as finding agreement.
Open Future Forum’s AI search and CMO strategy guide covers SEO, AEO and GEO in more detail. For ongoing peer gatherings, see its guide to CMO communities and marketing executive networks in Silicon Valley.
The work that comes after acquisition
Retention is another subject in the evening’s invitation. Bringing a new customer in creates a further set of questions about onboarding, continued use and the reasons people leave.
You might start with the point at which a customer stopped progressing. Was the initial promise unclear? Was the first useful action hard to complete? Did marketing and product have different views of what success looked like?
AI in marketing and plans for hiring are also on the list of possible topics. If a tool has changed your team’s work, you might describe the task that changed and the review it still needs.
You can bring a question you are still working on, or just come to see people before the holidays.
How the evening works
Food and drinks begin at 5:30 p.m. There is a welcome from Open Future Forum and the hosts at 6:15, with mixing and peer introductions from 6:20. The event closes at 8:00.
Dress is festive business casual. The mixer is off the record, with no slides or vendor pitches. Location details are provided to approved guests.
Murray Newlands and Yvonne Newlands host with Meena Karnani, Director of Partnerships and Events at ThinkingAI, and Dan Usedom, Founding GTM at ThinkingAI.
The CMO Executive Forum is part of Open Future Forum, a global executive community founded in Silicon Valley.
See all four Open Future Forum holiday gatherings in December 2026.
Last updated: November 13, 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Request a CMO Holiday Invitation
Join marketing and growth peers on December 9. Submit your professional details for host review.