Author: Dave Lutz


Panel Sessions 3.0 for 2023

For years I’ve been a fan of bringing in more outside voices to make mainstage sessions more valuable and deliver more impact. While keynote speakers can still be a significant attendance driver, I think 2023 is the year to resurrect the industry panel. What you don’t want to do is go back to the same … [Read more…]

Do’s and Don’ts: Six Tips to Help Justify Attendance at Your Event

As we progress through the event industry’s recovery to 2019 levels, conference organizers must have a laser focus on helping potential attendees make their business case for attending their events. The best path for helping them get approval to attend is to ensure that the majority of your education program is aligned to advance business … [Read more…]

Making Up for Fewer Skilled Workers at Your Conference

Throughout 2022, nearly every meeting service provider continues to be short-staffed and plagued by last-minute no-shows or insufficiently skilled workers. This is having a huge impact on event organizers and their teams during both planning and execution phases of events. More than ever, we need to be running several steps ahead — checking, double-checking, and … [Read more…]

Seeking a Hybrid Conference Steady State? Here’s a Framework

With live conferences’ comeback, event organizers need to make complex decisions about how to incorporate digital product extensions into their business model. Based on our research, we estimate that there’s an even split between conference owners who are including synchronous or asynchronous hybrid options and those who aren’t. The half who is pursuing hybrid knows … [Read more…]

Five Tips for Conference Sponsorship Pricing

In my experience, most large conferences this year are realizing about 80 percent of their 2019 revenue performance. For some of the major annual meetings we’re tracking, sponsorship revenue has been a bright spot when compared to exhibit revenue performance. The textbook outcome of a successful sponsorship is improved attitudes and behavior for that brand. … [Read more…]

2022 Conference Registration Pacing

Before March of 2020, pacing data was a useful tool for predicting final attendance and revenue. If you were pacing behind, you could make midcourse corrections. As we come out of the pandemic, we need a different playbook to drive attendance and earlier commitment. Use these five tips to develop a plan for optimizing registration … [Read more…]

7 Design Considerations for Your Conference Hub

High-tech user conferences like Dreamforce and Microsoft Ignite have been designing innovative hub spaces to engage and nurture their top customers for years. While some of the elements in these areas can be costly to implement, they don’t have to break the budget. Creating a town-square-like experience can help grow your community through valuable connections. … [Read more…]

Better Because You Were There

According to The New York Times, living with the pandemic “has pushed us to reckon with our deepest questions … [about] how we make meaning of our time on this earth.” In particular, COVID-19 has brought the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, social responsibility, and wellness to the fore. A number of our consulting … [Read more…]

Will Use-It-or-Lose-It Budgeting Negatively Impact Expo and Sponsor Revenue?

Our crystal balls are pretty foggy when it comes to predicting the return of in-person expo and sponsor revenue. Three of the big questions are: With the advancement of digital demos, will exhibitors opt for smaller booth spaces? If marketing budgets intended for show participation in 2020 or 2021 were reallocated, or not spent, will … [Read more…]

Conference Organizers: What Is Your Duty of Care?

Just when we thought we were turning the corner on a rise in Covid cases, we are hearing about short-term cancellations of conventions once again as the Delta variant causes cases to rise. Several conventions that occurred in June and July resulted in a number of positive COVID tests, including breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated … [Read more…]