GDS Group Omdömen 

GDS offers a great opportunity to network with other marketing leaders from the most diverse industries. Besides, their sessions are frequently valuble and allow professionals to get direct benchmark. Last but not least, the vendor sessions are well assorted and in a short time you get in contact with a multitude of potential new agencies.

Speaking on leadership at the GDS event was a highlight. What made it stand out wasn’t just the production (which was top-notch), but the intimacy of the setting. It felt like a room full of real decision-makers ready to exchange ideas, not just passively absorb them.

The crowd was engaged, thoughtful, and genuinely curious—exactly what you hope for after stepping offstage. The conversations that followed my keynote were some of the most valuable I’ve had at any summit.

GDS gets it right.

I recently attended the Digital Banking Summit in Tampa hosted by GDS, and I can confidently say that GDS is the real deal. The event was extremely well-organized and provided fantastic opportunities to connect with industry leaders and prospects. The conversations were insightful, and I walked away with several valuable connections. GDS really knows how to curate events that drive success. If you’re looking to engage with top players in the industry and unlock growth opportunities, I highly recommend attending one of their events!

I attended the GDS CIO Summit in Amsterdam March 2025. The event was brilliantly organised and run, the venue was excellent. I met like minded peers to discuss current challenges with, which helped to crystalize my plans at the time. The presentations were given by knowledgeable and experienced industry leaders. The event was hosted really well in an entertaining and business like way. Only one of the sessions missed the mark for me. If you are thinking of attending make sure the topics are relevant and the available vendors are ones you would seriously consider as future partners.

The overall experience of GDS was wonderful. I think the extensive prep meetings that occurred prior to the event brought a sense of understanding and comfort that you don't often find with these sorts of conferences and I greatly appreciated that. I learned a lot, met a lot of incredible, likeminded professionals and would highly recommend others attend if given the opportunity.

GDS Summits are a great way to learn about the world's trends, know great vendors and networking!

I recently attended the GDS CMO marketing summit that proved to be an incredibly valuable experience. The keynote presentations were truly inspiring, full of fresh insights and forward-thinking strategies. I also made several meaningful connections with vendors who offer solutions that directly address some of our current challenges. Perhaps most impactful was the opportunity to connect with peers across the industry, exchanging ideas and building relationships that will continue well beyond the event.

I loved every part of this conference, but my one suggestion would be an alteration to the 1:1 scheduling. Having the ability to request meetings with attending partners would be wonderful, and also having an opportunity to decline meetings might be a great consideration (this could be for reasons such as they are vendors which you've had past interaction with, but do not wish to continue the conversation- as this could become awkward, fast.)

I am writing only to warn others to never respond to their emails or attend any of their events. I agreed to attend one of their events in Dallas and it was a disaster from the start. They locked me into a contract with a $1500 penalty for non attendance but then couldn’t arrange a pickup for me until 2 hrs into the event. The talks I did attend were poorly organized and unprofessional. There was little in common among the executives invited other than we generally worked with data and the one open discussion we were allowed was barely moderated, lasted only an hour and even that was cut 10 minutes short. The support staff from GDS were also very young and unprofessional often acting like bouncers at a club blocking off common areas or herding us to meetings or 1x1s with vendors. The vendor selection was also a poor match as most vendors I was assigned to meet with were not able to offer me relevant services or were barely interested in meeting. The food was also terrible and looked like it had been catered from a local grocery store with little prep work. Though I met a few interesting people I made no meaningful contacts and found no useful vendors. For the most part I was made to feel like a hostage having to ask permission at times to use the restroom or step away if the time was too close to a vendor meeting with the threat of the contract penalty used to enforce compliance. I would advise anyone who doesn’t want to waste their time to stay away. The free food and hotel stay aren’t worth giving up your time for such poorly organized events run by such an incompetent and unprofessional group.

These people email me asking to come to their events up to 5 times in a week. Despite asking to have details deleted they just ignore and keep mailshotting me. I’m in the process of adding their ceo and their founder on LinkedIn to speak to them personally. Genuinely terrible business

We are in a custom software development business and have been approached by GDS team with the promise they would provide BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) prospects during recent CIO Summit. We have been told the idea is to match make bigger companies which need services like ours and smaller companies like us (we are 27 employees at the moment). It all seemed pretty good until the summit itself - great organization, quick email responses, 14 meetings are scheduled as promised, some of the companies explicitly requested us to talk to them, etc. The only early clue this may not be what is being promised is the projects themselves - as part of the preparation companies needed to provide projects they want to be worked on, and these projects we pretty vague, high level (e.g. we would like a digital transformation). After the 3rd meeting during the summit it became obvious there was actually no match making made. Instead it was a pretty well orchestrated process, starting at the beginning with great promotional materials and BANT promise (which is not written down in the contract itself), over to us selecting companies with projects, on to those companies requesting us to talk to. During the talks I started asking if the representative is even interested in talking to us and most of them replied that they are not. Those big companies representatives were incentivised by free participation in the summit and most of them wanted to listen what other companies are experiencing and to hear about trends in the industry. None of them were BANT from our perspective, nor they had concrete projects for us, nor do their regulations/rules allow for selecting a Vendor like us (instead they work with huge vendors). When asked about projects or why they requested us to talk to - they said the system forced them request at least 50% to proceed further in the online form.

We committed to a GDS Group campaign targeted at HR industry. GDS set the expectation of BANT ready leads that are highly qualified. Asked us to provide a target list of companies for them to include. All fell way short of the expectation set. The list of attendees are far fewer, the list with any project even less, the list of projects that align are zero.

One of the worst CMO event experiences ever. They offered us a 50% discount to attend in Cancun. Because they discounted us they placed our table in the hallway where people thought it was a table for catering trash. They put us in the wrong group/period. On top of which the meetings they set up did not even show up. After addressing these issues they did absolutely nothing to make it right. They even had the nerve to ask us to pay again and attend more events. All in all useless don't waste your money GDS.

I have worked for GDS Group for more than 6months. And was one of my best experience in my life. I would recommend everyone to try to work for GDS Group.

I’m currently working at GDS Group and so far I’ve learned a lot and created a lot of network - more than in any of the previous jobs.

However, sometimes there’s a lot of pressure. Being consistent and ‘chasing’ people all the time it consumes a lot of energy!!

GDS Group is the current company I’m working for. It’s a good environment that gives employees a good opportunity to grow, and learn new things needed on the career journey.

Cons:

It’s been a good experience at GDS Group, however, sometimes stressful and there are KPI to be fulfilled on weekly and monthly basis, but I guess that’s the nature of sales.

I’ve been working for GDS Group for more than a year now. Great opportunity to be a part of the team and create network with people around the world.

So far, it’s been one of the best experiences that I’ve learned and grown professionally. The environment and supportive team in GDS Group is also a major positive factor that makes me enjoy this job.

I have been working for GDS Group for the last 1 year and 2 months. So far, GDS Group has been the best working environment in my working career.

The company itself has a very good atmosphere and a super supportive staff that helps with every issue you face in order to achieve and exceed your daily tasks.