WASHINGTON D.C. — Leaders from the exhibition industry converged on the U.S.’s capital this week for the 2024 Lippman Connects Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum (ECEF).
The event saw its largest turnout as professionals from independent show organizers and associations came together to network and share information and insights.
The 2024 edition of ECEF attracted 269 industry leaders to the Grand Hyatt Washington for a full day of education and product demonstrations. A key theme of the programming was how to cause and harness disruption to create unparalleled experiences and events.
From utilizing data and research to better understand audiences’ needs to identifying niches to be filled to providing information on ROI that’s relevant to CFOs, the speakers at ECEF covered a wide variety of topics centering around designing and producing the event of the future.
ECEF Fosters Information-Sharing and High-Level Connections
Following Lippman Connects President Sam Lippman’s Five Key Data Points, Freeman Senior Vice President of Strategy Ken Holsinger dove into the organization’s data around what attendees and exhibitors want at an event, using Freeman’s XLNC framework.
In a keynote, Melissa Medina, Co-Founder, CEO and President of eMerge Americas, told the story of eMerge, which began as a story about a family taking a risk to come to America for more opportunities. It was in that same spirit of taking risks and leaning into entrepreneurial roots that her and her father decided to launch a technology conference in Miami — eMerge Americas — and to position the city as a global tech hub.
In the 10 years since its founding, eMerge has generated more than $3 billion in economic impact in Florida and helped create more than 10,000 jobs in the region.
“I’m really excited to see how we’ve grown over the last ten years,” Medina said. “Over 22,000 attendees, almost 80% senior-level executives or above, almost 300 sponsors and exhibitors, almost 60 countries represented and almost 50 states. Two stats I’m very passionate about is we’re 40% women — tech conferences are very male-dominated, and we continue to push ourselves to change that — and almost 70% of our attendees identify as multicultural.”
The brand also created Miami Tech Month, leading to the creation of other tech events in the city with eMerge serving as the center point of it all and positioning itself as the leader in the industry.
An Inside Look at CFO’s Decision Making
In a panel discussion, CFOs discussed what they consider when deciding budgets and why they choose to invest in attending shows. When determining what is a successful event, the panelists shared they consider if they generated new sales, what kinds of attendees were there (C-suite or other levels), the educational content and value as well as did their team learn what was going on and changing in the industry and market.
“I know from speaking to my event participants that we send out, they really appreciate the technology features, and I appreciate hearing that they’re coming back and saying, ‘I was able to get all of these meetings in in a shorter time,’” said Daniel Isanuk, CFO at Newman & Company.
“It does mean that we’re more likely to participate in that event — and perhaps participate at a higher level — because we’re able to more efficiently navigate that event,” Isanuk said. “It’s been remarkable what’s happened with technology and how that’s being used in the [event] space, so I strongly urge everyone to try to optimize that as much as possible for your attendees. It really is about efficiencies, so while we want everybody to be able to attend events, it’s really where that time is best spent, what is the most convenient for your company, where are your customers, and for us making the decisions, making sure it’s easy for us to make them.”
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Teena Piccione, Global Transformation and Operations Executive at Google, spoke about transformative change at organizations, and how leaders can encourage their teams to get on board with change. She advised that leaders go for the little, easy wins at first, to build confidence and momentum to be able to make more sweeping changes to processes and the overall organization.
“If I can get a small sliver of people going, I can then start tackling the really hard things that we have to tackle,” Piccione said. “But I have to get some wins under the belt because it brings confidence to the team, it brings excitement to the company and then they’re all in to give you a little bit more money and carte blanche to be able to do a little more with the teams you have.”
Piccione also shared that it’s incredibly important to get the younger generations to buy into your mission, or they could become the biggest roadblocks to change.
“When you think about organizational change, and you have that North Star and you have the messaging, you got to have the hook for an industry to follow you and employees that want to do it,” Piccione said. “Without those two key components, it’s going to fail every time… It’s about how do you make modifications to what you do in order to provide a sense of purpose that everybody wants to conform to.”
Looking to the Future of Events
In a special portion of the event, Sam Lippman paid tribute to Freeman CEO Bob Priest-Heck, who will retire from his role in July. Preist-Heck shared what he believes is next for the events industry with the help of technology, which includes research-driven strategy, simplification, accessibility, personalization, social responsibility and optimization.
“We live in an insanely divisive time; everything seems polarizing,” Priest-Heck said. “But look at us; here we are, unified around what we do with the idea that what we do matters. We can build bridges that reach higher, that span the things that divide us. People come to events to seek experiences, learning, network, commerce — and if we think about all the individuals at all of the events that we produce around the world, it’s pretty massive.
“Never underestimate the power of live events to push the world forward, not just our individual businesses, and I believe it is still the best tool society has to connect people in meaningful ways, in ways that supersede the forces of polarization, by harnessing their desire to be part of something bigger and something better. We build trust for solidarity, for progress, for innovation. It’s hard work and it’s the best we do,” he said.
Later, returning to his predictions made 10 years earlier, Greg Topalian, Chairman of Clarion Events North America, reflected on where he thought the industry would be today and gave his thoughts on what the next trends will be. He shared that providing VIP experiences and packages will be a strong revenue source for B2B organizers in the future, and emphasized that the growing feelings of distrust in information channels offers a great opportunity for events to be a primary source of information and learning.
“Any time we have an opportunity to listen and learn from a transformation expert [Teena] that worked for AT&T, Fidelity and now with Google, we have to say ‘yes,’” Lippman said. “And Greg is one our industry’s rock stars with the courage to honestly critique his forecasts from 2014 and predict our future into 2034.”
Closing out the event was Christine Kiesling, Vice President of Customer Experience, Hargrove from Encore and Erin Uritus, CEO of Out & Equal, who discussed how they’re leaning into the trends driving the event of the future to provide better experiences and strengthen their events and organizations. The two focused on designing for belonging, championing longevity, event value, in-between spaces, emotive affect and technology-driven connection as the trends driving the industry forward. Kiesling emphasized that while collecting data is important, it is necessary to do something with the data too.
The event also served as a networking opportunity for attendees, who could mix and mingle during the opening reception and various breaks throughout the programming.
The 2025 edition of ECEF will take place May 28 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. and will be held in conjunction with the Exhibitions and Conferences Alliance Legislative Action Day on May 29.
Reach Sam Lippman at sam@lippmanconnects.com
