[00:00:00] Rachel Andrews: I think when people view an event as exclusive or driven directly for them, or high value experience for them, you get stronger engagement. People get lost in things like CONNECT. When it's 4,000 people, you're like, "Where is my place?" But if we have these smaller curated formats for things, then people seem to find more value in that and find more connection.

[00:00:23] Alyssa Peltier: Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences? Well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

[00:00:35] Rachel Andrews: I'm Rachel.

[00:00:36] Camille Arnold: I'm Camille.

[00:00:37] Felicia Asiedu: And I'm Felicia.

[00:00:39] Alyssa Peltier: And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

[00:00:48] Rachel Andrews: Hello all. Welcome back to season five of Great Events. I'm Rachel, and we're kicking things off with one of our favorite traditions, our annual Hot Trends episode.

[00:00:58] Alyssa Peltier: That's right. Every year we take a look at what's shaping the future of events, marketing, and hospitality. And this year, 2026 is coming in hot with nine trends you absolutely need to know.

[00:01:10] Felicia Asiedu: There is a lot to unpack, so we're breaking it into two parts. In today's episode, part one, we're talking about how events are getting smarter; how AI, personalization, and attendee expectations are reshaping the way we plan and deliver experiences.

[00:01:25] Camille Arnold: And then next episode, we will dive into part two where we'll shift gears to talk about how events are getting a little bit more intentional, driving and diving into topics like trust, ROI, cost, and purpose-driven design.

[00:01:40] Rachel Andrews: All right, let's get into it. So here are the first five trends that are defining events in 2026. I got to start with our favorite buzzword, AI,

but AI is getting operational. So what that means is organizations are moving beyond experimentation and demonstrating more of the measurable outcomes with AI. We're doing that here at Cvent. We're trying to tie time savings and things like that into what we're using AI for. So I can already see that being a huge thing next year. What are you all seeing?

[00:02:11] Alyssa Peltier: Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like we're moving beyond the Nike years, which is "AI Just Do It", which is probably the 2025 approach, into more structure. I think some of the buzzwords that we've been seeing around that is incorporating AI into policies, incorporating AI into governance, and then obviously getting a little bit more structure around that as well, just like Rachel just alluded to. But yeah, 2025 AI Just Do It, and now it's AI Get Organized.

[00:02:40] Camille Arnold: Yeah. And thank God, because I think people are so hungry for this. There's just such an appetite. I mean, we've been talking about, "How do we use AI to work smarter, not harder?" for years now, and I think we're at this point where people are like, "All right, but for real, how do we do this? How do we operationalize this at scale?"

I mean, we're seeing it on the hiring front, right? When people are out interviewing for roles now, I feel like the question of, "How do you use AI in your function to be more successful, to tap into hidden resources that you never thought you could utilize?"

But I am excited to see this and learn from other people, honestly.

[00:03:29] Rachel Andrews: I know. I just want to share like one hot tip for people that maybe are struggling with this.

My team, my meetings and events team, meets once a week and we share a case study of something that someone is doing on the team and we document it. And eventually, ideally at the end of this six month period of us documenting things, we're going to have more of a playbook of, "This is working, this is not working."

And yeah, of course it goes beyond that, it goes into MOPS and a ton of other teams, but I just want one meetings and events policy for AI, and that's like, we're taking just baby steps to make that happen. But it's actually kind of awesome what we have already documented, and I hope to be able to share something externally so people can just take it and maybe copy it.

[00:04:16] Alyssa Peltier: Rach, do you kind of align those operationally, not to overuse this word, but to stages in your planning cycle at all? Have you got to that place?

[00:04:25] Rachel Andrews: We're looking at like pre-event, during, post-event stuff that we're using and flagging it to that. So yeah.

[00:04:31] Alyssa Peltier: And this will probably tail into Felicia's commentary, but we hosted an AI workshop with a lot of senior leaders that was in Cvent CONNECT London just this past month, and a lot of what we were working through was starting to map those opportunities across the event planning lifecycle as it pertains to AI. Right?

I think a lot of what we've been talking about in the previous year in 2025 has been just kind of like, "Everyone use it everywhere, wherever it makes sense," but really starting to maximize the opportunity to say,

"This is a must-have at this stage in the planning lifecycle because this is where we see the most productivity, the most optimization happening."

And so we're shifting away from the, again, "Do it all everywhere," into, "It has to be done in these very strategic places across the planning cycle."

[00:05:18] Felicia Asiedu: So when I went to IBTM a couple of months back now, I sat on stage with Julius Solaris, and he was talking about, he recognizes that we are a driver of AI, you know, Cvent is doing our thing out here, but he wanted some key tips. And actually, Rachel, you're hitting right on the key tip I gave, which is documentation.

To get operational, if you don't write stuff down, there's no way...

Like you're behind because you don't know what's going on. So to write down, yes, the things you're doing with AI and how it can be used at each step, but also the things you want to do, the things where you could see there'd be time savings;

how much time is that taking your team today, and how much time do you anticipate it taking if AI was to step in? And then recognizing as a business,

"We could save hours, money, bodies." You know?

I think it's so important to write it down.

[00:06:06] Rachel Andrews: I should have mentioned that. So the purpose of those meetings is to talk about currently what we're doing, but future wishlists. And a lot of what we've done is document some of the gaps or pain points on the team of,

"It takes 20 hours to pull a list," or,

"It takes 40 hours to research X."

And then our team all just kind of brainstorms, "Okay, have we thought about this? Oh, let's talk to this team."

And we're solutioning that stuff to bring in AI or put it on a wishlist of something that we want AI to do.

[00:06:36] Camille Arnold: Yeah. I'm so glad. Rachel, first of all, thank you for sharing that. I think that's such a helpful tip.

And Felicia, thank you for double-underlining the importance of documentation, because I think that really is the key, as you said, to operationalizing when you think about any other processes that you have internally. Right? Like I think once they're formalized and documented is really where they become real.

And that's where you could even think about scaling things. I'm sure there are lots of teams in many different organizations, hopefully like Rachel, that are doing that kind of testing, and, "What could we do?", thinking through that and then putting that as a test like, "Okay, how many hours did we save?", for example. But if it's not documented, then how does your same team benefit from that moving forward, or how does anyone else in your organization also learn from that too?

[00:07:32] Felicia Asiedu: The only thing I wanted to point out is we don't want to be blind with our trends. And the one thing that has been...

We've been doing a lot of vertical work, so looking at life sciences versus finance and things like that. And actually we've realized that in the financial services, it isn't as operational as it is for everyone else.

[00:07:49] Rachel Andrews: Hmm.

[00:07:49] Felicia Asiedu: So the general trend, you know, that's why it's a trend and not a given, the general trend is that it's getting more operational, but we recognize that for FinServe and financial institutions, they're just waiting. They're in a bit of a holding pattern of like, "Huh, how is this going to impact security and all these other kinds of things?"

So I just want to say we're not blind to that. So sorry, Rach. Segue away.

[00:08:10] Rachel Andrews: No, you actually added to my segue because one of the big, big topics that comes up around AI is trust and people being mistrustful of it, which kind of segues our next trend into trust as a brand differentiator for all audiences.

So I think trust is critical. Digital is becoming more and more untrustworthy, so let's discuss that. Because human connection has always been what we're about, but I think it's going to be even more important in that next year of differentiating like you've got to be in person for a lot of these things to trust where the information's coming from or the relationship, or whatever it is.

[00:08:46] Felicia Asiedu: I'm not going to name any names because I don't want to get in trouble, but we've had some really high profile cases recently, especially in the UK where maybe certain organizations have clipped some videos to make people look like they didn't quite say what they said. And you know, it's a big deal. It's a really big deal. And unless you're there at the time listening to the person speak at an event, it is becoming so hard to trust what is coming out of your screen.

So we know that when people get together, we always say events power human connection, but now more so than ever, given that is the place where you can shake someone's hand and do business. Or if they tell you A is A, it's A, and it didn't get doctored to becoming an apple.

[00:09:27] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. Events are the best channel to build that trust of like, the kind of headline here for me. I mean, people like Camille and I,

we've known that for years. That's how you build a lot of trust just in general. But it's going to be, I think, put up even more on a pedestal. It was put on a pedestal after COVID. Now it's going up there again. I'm like, "I'm great with this job security. That's fine by me." Because I've always known I'm biased that events are the best channel, but now it's even more so.

[00:09:54] Alyssa Peltier: Felicia just said events power human connection. And I'm like, "Well, events power authenticity."

So of course they power human connection, right? There's causality there. And I think that's really important in this time where there is a lot of mistrust, distrust and disingenuous content, disingenuous voices, all of those things. Power of face-to-face has never been more true.

It's so funny because I feel like every couple of years we come up here and we're just like, "Events matter. Events are the best thing. And look, this is what's going on."

And so this is yet but another wave that this industry is able to, I don't want to say capitalize on,

but we're able to capitalize on because this business of events is so important in these times.

[00:10:35] Camille Arnold: Absolutely. I think, you know, you said we can capitalize on it. I think what came to mind for me was events as a channel, they're going to stand the test of time. And I think that is, even and maybe especially in the pandemic, right? When in-person events were taken away from us, there was a certain point where, at least in this country, in-person events were illegal, which was crazy for us. And yet that did not take away the need for us to gather intentionally with our people. And we just did it digitally. We got creative. We said, "Okay, we're going to figure out a way how we can do this still."

So yeah, I think I'd be hard-pressed to find a scenario or a situation, I think now we're in the future where events are not going to hold the power that they do for all the reasons that we just said. They power authenticity, they power trust, they power ultimately human connection, and that's what really moves people to make decisions.

[00:11:36] Rachel Andrews: Speaking of moving people, that brings us to trend number three, loving these segues, emotion and storytelling coming into the B2B event space.

I don't think that's new either, but I think that because of this, events are the best channel to build that trust, then the authenticity piece, plus bringing that storytelling in.

This also goes back to Felicia's brainchild of moments that matter, right? Creating moments that make people feel something is so important. Felicia's talked about all these different ways to make people feel that emotion, like music or just real stories, make that attendees experience. So I like this trend.

[00:12:15] Felicia Asiedu: I like it a lot.

It's definitely not new, but we are seeing more and more typically boring B2B services and B2B companies. Like we could be seen as boring. We're technology at the end of the day. But a lot of these companies are like actually they've figured out that these things are emotive. And when you can tap into someone's emotion, they're more willing to work with you. That humanity comes out, they can relate to you.

I went to a whole session recently where it was run by a DJ, and she said, "Every time you hear this song, you're going to think about this particular thing." And then she would do something else and do another activity, "Every time you hear this song in the club, you're going to think about this." And it was just all these little emotional connection points that you don't typically get from B2B, I don't think.

Even endorsements, celebrity endorsements. You're just seeing them a lot more with like monday.com, and all of a sudden you've got someone that's a celeb that you can relate to, and you're like,

"When did this change?" But it's a great change. It's a really good one.

[00:13:12] Rachel Andrews: I think people are going to be super protective of their time. And if you don't infuse your B2B events with this, like I know we're not B2C and can't do insane things like B2C can, but B2B, you almost need to tell that story before they're even on site of what they're going to feel going into next year so that they make an effort to take that time out. You know what I mean?

I feel like we had this like, everybody went to everything last year. I think I went to an insane amount of events the last two years. And now I'm like, "I'm going to protect my time next year and really select the ones that are going to bring me value in my personal life, but also my professional development." I think this is going to be a huge one.

[00:13:56] Alyssa Peltier: Yeah. Just going back to the notion of AI and the influence of AI on these times, right? So much of voice and brand can kind of be manufactured right now. Right? Like we're starting to see people change the way that they talk. We've seen some of these studies. Like in some ways, so much of society and business is losing its voice. And I think that our buyers and our customers and our members and our constituents are starting to catch onto those things. There is that discerning eye.

So I think, again, tapping into the humanity of things, emotion, voice, storytelling, all of those things that are kind of communal connectors, becomes so much more impactful in a sea of blah, in a sea of just rice, right? Like everything's just the same. It's all just blah. So it's just interesting that all these things kind of stack onto one another.

And it's funny, Rachel, as you're going and were segueing, it's, "Oh, perfect. That's because of this, that's because of that, that all of this is even more important than all the times we may have said it before.

[00:15:02] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. I think you're referring to trend number four, which is personalization becomes attendee-led.

So trend number four, personalization becomes attendee-led, I think, I mean, we are already doing some of this too, but just choose your own adventure type stuff and telling us what you want to see at these events. Because event organizers, we are not mind readers. We need to listen to what people want to see at these things, or lead the horse to water a little bit with personalization based on vertical or topic or persona. It's going to be huge.

[00:15:38] Camille Arnold: I think that is a general theme that can just be applied to marketing in general, not just the events channel. Because I think, especially for events, when I think about the power of personalization, events is one of your only channels where your target audience, they are opting in every single time they register or attend one of your events, right? They're opting into an experience with your brand.

And more and more, I think people want to have a say. They want to be invited into shaping what their journey with your organization or your brand looks like. And so that starts with their expectations in terms of what experiences or what content you're serving up to them along their journey. Right?

That also can look like...

even like I said, just in general in marketing, we have a lot of investment into voice of customer or voice of market, right? Like understanding who is your target audience.

I think personalization was really as important as it is today. Marketers could sometimes be,

not lazy, but you could just decide, you could just make assumptions, right?

[00:16:58] Rachel Andrews: Hmm.

[00:16:58] Camille Arnold: Like even building out your ICP, right? You're just going to like...

You would kind of are inferring or assuming what their interests are, what topics they're going to be interested in, what kinds of experiences they're going to want at an event. And I think now, to your point, Rachel, you're asking, "What do you guys want? What do you need?"

And I think smart marketers, smart brands and companies understand that they need to invite their target audience in to co-create the kinds of hyper-personalized, hyper-targeted experiences that our attendees or our target audience, whether they're buyers or members, constituents, whatever they want, they have to have a seat at the table a little bit, and we have to be smart about how we're inviting them in to take that seat with still making sure we're driving our strategy for our organizations and hitting our corporate priorities.

But yeah, in a way, we have to acknowledge that these people, they are probably going to have an opinion. And if we're not asking them to share their ideas or their wants or their desires or feedback with us, we're missing out on being able to really meet or exceed their wants, their needs, their expectations, and therefore impacting the trust that we can build with them and all the other things, you know?

[00:18:20] Rachel Andrews: Yeah. Last year was all about personalization at skill, right? And now it's, "Let's flip that back onto people."

But I don't think it's like attendees doing all the work either. I think it's like AI helping them see what their journey is, or putting their preferences in and then saying, "Oh, this is the right journey for you," or, "Based on your attendee behavior, it looks like you're really into budgets," or whatever it is. Like, "You should do this," or, "Here's a snapshot from this breakout that you missed. Maybe you should watch this"; and be like, "Oh, okay, I do like that because that's my behavior and that's what I'm telling you."

[00:18:54] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. I mean, you basically took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say that idea of asking the attendees, still needed, I would say right now, but I'm hoping we get to a point where actually it's just this symbiotic relationship of like they just did and we just saw and they just saw, and therefore you can make some differences.

And I know with things like CventIQ and our event app, getting those things like daily summaries, "This is what you did, this is how you engaged," "Oh, did I?", you know, it's almost like giving that window to both sides without there being too much. It's more frictionless, you know? So I think that's quite important.

We've never been so close to true personalization as we are right now, but hopefully people adopt. You know, because that's the other thing. People have to adopt that technology, otherwise we stay where we are.

[00:19:40] Rachel Andrews: All right. I think all of this kind of leads us to trend number five, which is the exclusivity piece.

I think when people view an event as exclusive or driven directly for them, or a high value experience for them, you get stronger engagement. That's also not a secret, but I think that that's what we've seen on the rise with some of these smaller curated formats. People get lost in things like Connect. When it's 4,000 people, you're like, "Where is my place?" But if we have these smaller curated formats for things, then people seem to find more value in that and find more connection.

But I think we're seeing that at scale fringe events, wraparound events, whatever you want to call it. But I do think that exclusivity piece is driving deeper demand and engagement.

[00:20:29] Felicia Asiedu: Even at CONNECT, I love the fact that you started running the forum groups, and it's very exclusive. It's for a particular group of people running a particular kind of organization, having particular budgets and whatnot, and they can relate to each other. And so rather than getting lost in the sea of 5,000 people, actually there's something specifically for them. So I think that's pretty cool.

[00:20:52] Alyssa Peltier: Yeah. And this has come in response to how they have required us to more personalize their experience at the conference, right? Like in many conference environments, it can be a sea of sessions, a sea of even plenary sessions, like a lot of information in all the ways. And so the behavior that we were starting to notice, and now I've been able to capitalize, was one where I'll say micro communities or smaller communities were starting to huddle together and we were trying to figure out, what is "the track", I'll put that in air quotes. Whether it's a package track or something that we would want to monitor them through their journey in the conference itself, we noticed that they kind of flocked together. Right?

And so some of the things that we've been able to trial have been more curated, not to overuse all of these words today, but more curated, more personalized, and ultimately smaller, but equally impactful experiences; which I think is what we're really talking about in trend number five here, where the exclusivity component of being with a smaller subset is leading to more impact with our business message and ultimately on the receiving end with the attendee as well.

[00:22:03] Camille Arnold: Yeah. And I'll just add to that. There's another added benefit here, which is, selfishly speaking, what does this also allow for our organization?

Well, it allows us to drive really deep engagement throughout the year. Right? It's not happening just leading up to or at CONNECT. We are able to carry that momentum throughout the year through these smaller curated event programs that then, like we said, allow us to tell the right story to the right audience at the right time.

And so that's the other side of that same coin where we're like, "Oh, this is actually also another great benefit for our business."

[00:22:45] Alyssa Peltier: I also think it's really important to note, where do you need to be exclusive? What is the most important thing to be exclusive? Because I'm thinking, I have my Rachel hat on right now and I'm like, "Not every single thing can be small and intimate and exclusive," right? Like one, that's not something that you can execute on, but then it loses its exclusivity factor by definition, right?

Yeah.

So I think it is important to look at past data, past behaviors, all of that kind of information that you have. AI can be a big enabler of this. Right?

Who is the most important? Where do we have the most value? And that can be determined in a number of ways through your organization. But then start curating the most elite, exclusive experience for those folks. And I think data will kind of rise to the top in that.

Rachel, did you want to say something on that too?

[00:23:32] Rachel Andrews: No, I was just going to take it kind of outside the Cvent context here and say I've seen some other organizations do it really well where they carry the thread through the year, like Camille was saying, in a community aspect with follow-up meetups, follow-up Zoom meetings to continue that topic or conversation. Or maybe like, I was just at a leadership summit and I was literally given homework to take home, and then they made us all do a group text together to keep ourselves accountable for what we said we would do.

And so it's kind of nice because it does feel like I created this new community and it doesn't just die there on the vine. It keeps going. And then there's a follow-up and then there's just like, "You're part of this exclusive community and we are doing these things for you."

And some organizations don't do that. They're just like, they host it and then they're done, and then they forget to follow up or they forget to engage them, thinking that the attendees will do it on their own. And some of them do, but some of them really don't because they're busy. Everybody's busy.

[00:24:29] Camille Arnold: Yeah. Or the follow-up is like, "Thanks for coming, fill out our survey," and then that's it, you know? Which is like...

[00:24:36] Alyssa Peltier: And I just want to reiterate you don't need to do that for every single person that attends the event, right? Like the format where you were at, Rach, was, I'm assuming, something that was intentionally smaller, curated and already very defined group of individuals that have the need to continue that connection.

Not every single event needs to have this, but be really discerning about where you should do this, where you should invest more time in that kind of continued communal experience. And I think that's where you'll find that impact.

[00:25:07] Rachel Andrews: Yeah.

Well, this is amazing. Loving our hot trends for 2026. Just to recap, the top five trends that we started with are AI gets operational; second trend, trust as a brand differentiator; third, emotion and storytelling come to B2B events; fourth, personalization becomes attendee-led; and fifth, exclusivity drives deeper demand and engagement.

We are going to do way more trends in our part two, so please jump over to check that out when it comes out next time.

Thanks so much for joining Great Events by Cvent. We are excited to have you on the podcast as always, and very excited to kick off another amazing season five and another amazing 2026.

Thank you all.

[00:25:54] Alyssa Peltier: Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

[00:26:04] Rachel Andrews: And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on

Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

[00:26:14] Felicia Asiedu: Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

[00:26:21] Rachel Andrews: Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

[00:26:31] Felicia Asiedu: Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes.

Remember, every great event begins with great people.

[00:26:41] Alyssa Peltier: And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.

[00:00:00] Alyssa Peltier: Our experiences have to be tech-enabled, but we understand there are varying adoption levels within that technology. And so ultimately, I don't really know what that means for our event design. I don't know if we've solutioned for that, but it's not binary anymore. Others might be opt-in, opt-out, weaving in and out. They might be lesser adopters of the technology, but for some it's going to be mission-critical and I think it's a must-have.

Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences, well, that takes a village and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

[00:00:37] Rachel Andrews: I'm Rachel.

[00:00:38] Felicia Asiedu: And I am Felicia.

[00:00:39] Alyssa Peltier: And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

[00:00:49] Felicia Asiedu: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to season five of Great Events. I'm Felicia and we're kicking things off with one of our favorite traditions, our annual Hot Trends episode, part two. Last episode, we covered the first five trends, so don't forget to check that out. And now we are rolling straight into the next few trends. So let's get going, ladies.

We're going to kick off with the era of purposeful event spaces. Now, to define what that means, we know that unique venues have been getting a lot of love for some time now. Especially as we came out of the pandemic, we're like, "We don't just want to stick to the venues we necessarily knew before. We want to try some new spaces." But actually this is a change in that the venues are being selected for much more purpose. If there's a need to be more creative, then people are looking for creative venues. If there's a need to be more collaborative, people are looking for spaces where we can play maybe more games and get together.

So there is this real shift from, "Hey, we just need to be unique and go outside." It's like when your teacher was like, "Go outside. It's a hot day." No, it's not that. It's actually, we need to craft it as part of the event experience from day one. I know you got my reference. So what do we think about this?

[00:01:58] Rachel Andrews: I think this is awesome because a lot of times your execs are like, "What can we do different? We need an activation. We need to think outside the box." And we're like, "Oh God." But I think these unique venues are really coming in to help here and they're not new either. They're like, "We've been doing this for years. What are you talking about?" But I do think that people are —again, back to our podcast last time, I talked about people are protecting their time. But if they see it's at a really cool venue, they're like, "Oh, I want to check that out. " And if you're doing a unique format, they're going to take that back as an experience that they went through with you. And it just increases more engagement, I think.

I'm excited for this and I want to use more. We just did one event in Denver at Meow Wolf, which is arguably one of the weirdest, coolest spaces that you could do an event in, in North America. And it was really cool because we got to do things differently. And this is not a knock on hotel ballrooms because you can do creative things in those spaces too.

[00:02:55] Alyssa Peltier: I want to play devil's advocate for that. How easy is it to find and source these types of things? I know that, not to plug Cvent, but Cvent can help in a number of ways, but I myself find it hard to find the most experiential thing sometimes when I'm doing some of these smaller curated events. So I'm just curious, is this something that is emerging? Is this something that's evolving as event creators, event organizers, event marketers try to push the boundaries? What does that sourcing behavior look like?

[00:03:25] Felicia Asiedu: Well, I was just going to say, locally, from a regional perspective, we have Venue Directory and Venue Directory have always been very good with that kind of unique venue side of things. So differentiating how you source. Maybe going into the sourcing process saying, "What do I need? Do I need to use Cvent CSN for this? Or do I need to maybe look into Venue Directory that I know has more of a unique venue listing?" So being intentional.

And then the only other thing I'd add to that is, like I said at the beginning, knowing why you're doing that in the first place. When we sourced TOCA Social, we knew what we were trying to create. It wasn't just, "I want a random, unique venue to host a board meeting." It was, "I need people to get networking and come together." So there should be a good strategy behind why you do that. But sorry, go, Rach.

[00:04:11] Rachel Andrews: I think it also is like, it's evolving to just, you're not just booking the most wacky venue you can find or whatever you want to call it. Or unique, I shouldn't say wacky. But I think it's more designing the spaces purposefully and bringing the venues into that conversation. So if you're like, "Hey, I really want to really create a unique networking experience for folks," even if it's in a ballroom, how do we bring that to life? Whether it's sensory things, bringing in local things, maybe it's experiential or you're bringing in unique ways to set up the room. There's just a lot of things that you can bring to that.

I think hotels are also coming into play here too and saying, "Hey, we actually have some flexible spaces here or some outdoor options that you can move this around. This furniture's movable." But planners or strategists are coming in and saying, "This event is meant to do X. This is the goal of it. And it's not just theater seating in a ballroom. We need some creativity." And maybe that's where a DMC comes into place too. But I do think that the vendors and venues are expected to become more part of that conversation with the planners to get that business and that's how it's evolved.

[00:05:22] Camille Arnold: I think that makes sense because if I am the one organizing the event and I have, as you said, Rachel, the vision. I know what the end goals are. I know that throughout the agenda or my run of show, I have specific goals. And as you said, at this point, I need my people to be collaborating. And so I need a space that's going to be conducive to that. Or at this point, I really want everyone to just be paying attention to this incredible keynote that we're going to be delivering. And so we need a space that's for that. Or we need to be able to flex in the same space or we want different spaces because maybe we're segmenting the experience based on different groups of our audience or attendees. There are so many ways that you might go about prioritizing how to use your space.

So I think you as the event organizer need to have your end goals. And I guess I'm curious, Rachel, from what you've seen, how often do you think people are letting the space inform how the agenda or the experience actually takes shape? I think in most cases, it's probably like you know what you want the experience to be, sort of. You have your goals in mind and then you don't know how to best utilize the space. But I guess I'm curious, is there ever a situation that you can think of where you're like, "No, I know that there's this particular venue and that there's some element to that venue that is so core to the central idea for the event or the theme or something that we're going to actually take this and then build more of the content and agenda around that." I'm guessing that's probably harder.

[00:07:10] Rachel Andrews: Well, it's like chicken or the egg, right, Camille? What comes first? The vision or the objective?

[00:07:15] Camille Arnold: I feel like the vision, right? Or no, no, the objective.

[00:07:19] Rachel Andrews: Let's just take a case study. If your objective is to get people moving and doing an experience together, then you're going to want a space that provides an experience. So for example, if you wanted to go to an F1 venue and you want people to go into the F1 simulator and have that experience, a bonding moment together, you're going to plan your event a little bit around that, right? But if you want it to be like, "I need a flexible space, but it can be at a hotel or a restaurant," a lot of these are restaurants that are being booked from a cost perspective or whatever, then you're going to design it based off of what you want to do is, I think, where you're going with this, Camille.

I think a lot of planners are driven by the flexibility of the space so that they have the —they can change it. Hopefully your brief doesn't change, but sometimes you have executives that change it. And sometimes it's great to have that flexibility of saying, "Oh, this is a flex space. We can do an air wall in the middle of the day and do experiences on this side and content on this side." Because at the end of the day, you still need content to sell or to get your story across, right?

[00:08:25] Felicia Asiedu: I agree. I think we've spoken a lot about the goals and the whys, and I'm going to use that to move us into our next trend just in terms of why are we bringing this on? So in terms of technology, our next trend is everybody kind of needs to be tech-savvy, but tech-savvy is being redefined based on the generations.

So quite often people, we challenge, why did you purchase the tech? What do you need the tech for? And then people say, "You know, well, we're trying to do this thing. So we bought this tech," and then people struggle quite honestly. Traditionally, if you buy tech without a goal, people struggle with it. But now there is obviously AI we spoke about on our last podcast. You kind of have to just get on board. There is no, "Well, why did we start using ChatGPT?" Everybody has to get on board.

And we've got five generations all working together side by side. It isn't for young people, it isn't for millennials, it's for everyone. So tech-savvy isn't maybe what it used to be. It's kind of everyone has to just get on board. What do you think about that? Is that a lot to give people?

[00:09:30] Rachel Andrews: It's going to be a huge thing in the workplace in general. If you're not upskilled on AI, you're not going to be getting jobs. I've heard some companies are adding that to the recruiting process too. A lot of them are either going to test you on it or say, if you don't have some sort of AI knowledge, you're not getting this job.

And I think it's kind of smart on the company side, but then there's the people that maybe are in another generation that are scared of it. And I heard someone the other day say, not at our company, but just someone that I was talking to said, "Can you just teach me AI?" And I was like, "Nobody knows what AI is." Nobody knows what the hell they're doing with AI. We're all figuring it out together. And I think that's the huge differentiator of this.

[00:10:12] Alyssa Peltier: Rachel, that reminds me of telling my grandmother what the cloud was. What is the cloud? And she was so lost, but totally, totally understand this conversation. Our experiences have to be tech enabled, but we understand there are varying adoption levels within that technology. And so ultimately, I don't really know what that means for our event design. I don't know if we've solutioned for that, but it's not binary anymore.

Felicia, you said five generations. And I was like, okay, so you might only need to satisfy 20%, but that 20%, it is mission-critical to have a tech-enabled environment. Others might be opt-in, opt-out, weaving in and out. They might be lesser-enabled or like lesser-adopters of the technology, but for some it's going to be mission-critical and I think it's a must-have now.

[00:11:03] Rachel Andrews: If you're worried, like, if you're listening to this and you're worried about your job or you're worried about the workplace, Soundings as a company has a good AI trends report out right now on what companies are looking for, what the trends are going towards. So check that out because it is actually really helpful to look at agentic AI versus just a ChatGPT response AI, you probably need to at least know the differences of that and get ... I know there's not a ton of trainings out there, but there are basic trainings you should definitely take and read up on it anywhere. You know what the best thing that you can do? Go ask ChatGPT, what do I need to do in AI to start? And they actually, literally, AI will tell you how to use AI.

[00:11:46] Felicia Asiedu: I tell you, I asked AI the other day to tell me about myself. I said, "Listen, you've worked with me long enough. Let's have a review. Come on, it's time." And it really told me. It said, "You are too in the weeds of what you do. You need to come up and be more strategic." It's like, "Thank you."

[00:12:02] Rachel Andrews: Retweet.

[00:12:03] Alyssa Peltier: Not being read for filth by ChatGPT? Oh my gosh.

[00:12:08] Felicia Asiedu: But yeah, I tell you, I do feel for people because we're talking about people that are older than us, people that are younger than us coming in having to learn. Everybody has to be on a level playing field, I kind of think. To use the apps, if we're putting the apps into people's hands, you have lots of different generations of people attending your events and you're like, "Hey, download this app, use this app." We have to set a level playing field just for inclusivity at least so everyone's together.

[00:12:33] Alyssa Peltier: I will also say, I think, and our CEO has talked about this number of times externally, going to Cvent CONNECT this past year, in conversations with our customers, our customers were acknowledging the lag that they may have had in digitizing their own events and what impact that is now having on their organization's ability to execute and implement AI strategies.

So there is this kind of, we are all going to rise together because again, I keep pointing back to AI as this big kind of equalizer for all of us, huge shift in business, huge shift societally. And if your organization is lacking on technology adoption, technology integration, data collection by way of events, you're going to be left behind. And so I think one thing that I'm very, very conscientious of in talking with customers is making sure that no one does get left behind and technology adoption is really how we help support that transition to this future of AI.

[00:13:39] Camille Arnold: I agree. Well, I feel like I've said this before, but I feel like it would be like saying, "Nope, I'm not going to use the internet." Like, "What?" I'd be like, "Okay, that's a strong choice. Are you going to go live off grid too? What's next?" So I don't think that it's a nice to have. I think it's a need to have. And I think that if you are not carving out time in your life to learn how to use AI in your role or just learn whatever you can about AI right now, then you are going to get left behind. And if you work in events or marketing, I think we especially have to be ahead and work to not get left behind. If you're not learning and you work in marketing or events and you're not constantly learning, you're going to become a dinosaur. And I hate to inform you that all the dinosaurs are extinct.

[00:14:36] Rachel Andrews: So I want to add one more plug. Something I said on the last podcast, so the first trend we dug into, which was AI, I would recommend, and this is coming from the events leader perspective, right? I would recommend that you sit down across generation, across your entire team, maybe even bring in MOPS, depends on what your marketing org looks like, and just have a baseline discussion. And do it from a lens of, what are we doing now? What should we be doing? Where do we want to get eventually? And this is a little bit crystal bally because you don't know where things are going, but start somewhere with documentation like me and Felicia said last episode, just document it, even if you would give yourself an F rating on AI and be like, "Wow, we are really bad."

When we did this, when we sat down and we said, "Okay, what are we currently doing? What do we need to do? What are the gaps that it will solve, time issues, bandwidth issue, whatever? What are those gaps and what is our ideal state?" we were actually way ahead of where we thought we were. And I was pleasantly surprised by how far, and yes, we work at a tech company, so I'm at an advantage here because we have a lot of great things in our MarTech stack here that we can dig into and say, "Oh, they have this, let's try that."

But even if you're not at a tech company, just look at what you're doing, or meet with your operations folks or the people that purchase technology at your company and say, "What things can the technologies that we already own help us do?" We're doing that with Slack right now. We've met with Slack because we talked to our CIO about how can we integrate Slack more into AI helping our events because they're looking at that too.

And so just, I think if you have those open conversations with your organization and just baseline document it, it'll help a lot. And then that up-skills you because you've studied it, you know, and that's bringing it into the next, what do we need to do?

[00:16:23] Alyssa Peltier: I love the suggestion of the multi-generational conversation, all parties seated because I think, and going back to what Camille was talking about, one of the big concerns is this distrust of AI and not just the taking of the jobs, but that true taking over the universe kind of thing. The fear is very real for some individuals and you may be listening. I was on a webinar and I was noticing the chat and there was definitely a schism in the chat sentiments. Not everyone is ready and able to operationalize AI personally, and some are being pushed to do this organizationally.

I think it is very important for leaders of meetings and events to come together in that setting that Rachel just described, and also document what is our code of ethics around AI? What is it that we want to preserve as human? What is it that is untouchable? Certain things that we've talked about, I've hosted a number of AI boardroom conversations that have been around that, the preservation of the human parts while also embracing that which helps us grow and progresses us with our use of technology.

But like I said, I don't think we're living in this binary time where it's AI all in and those who will get left behind. This is about learning to adapt and evolve and live symbiotically with this thing and not something that's truly going to take over, and not allow it to take over. So I think this idea of your AI meetings and events manifesto is something that can really help us operationalize and not lose that ethos of the power of human.

[00:17:57] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah, absolutely. And we're essentially talking about tech. With tech savviness, I'm going to do a shameless plug to get us into our next trend, but we have technology. And Rachel, you said it, we're a technology company, so we get to use a lot of tech. We have technology for things like sourcing. It's not even just AI, AI. Our basic sourcing tools are, when I tell people about them, they're like, "Wow, really amazing." And I'm like, "Oh man, come on." So for our next trend, we're talking about cost driving sourcing decisions. And I know that if you're using a good piece of technology, as we've just spoken about, you should be able to source better than if you're just still looking around, and going back to old relationships, and Googling and things like that.

So cost is still driving some sourcing decisions. We spoke about unique events and event design with the venues, but unfortunately budgets though are rising, costs are rising faster. So they are still driving some of those sourcing decisions. And I think that you can achieve both if you source savvy, right? So back to being tech-savvy. What do we think about that one, ladies? Are we seeing costs that are still rising? Because I definitely am from a regional perspective, yes.

[00:19:09] Rachel Andrews: Oh, yeah.

[00:19:10] Felicia Asiedu: End of conversation.

[00:19:11] Rachel Andrews: I can do this one because this is like, keeps me up at night kind of thing here. It's gotten to the point where we need to reevaluate how many events we do because it's so expensive and you can't just keep adding events with the costs rising. And so maybe that's like taking a look at your whole event portfolio and saying, "Where do we need to really ... Do we combine some things?" Because it's that expensive now. And we've shifted a couple event formats to go back to a restaurant versus a hotel because it is so expensive at these hotels.

But I do think there's a way that you can do this through a sourcing platform to just put your cards out on the table. Help me help you. We want to give you business, but you guys are out-pricing yourselves. I think if you're honest in that sourcing process in sending your RFP through whatever supplier network on our side or reposit or another sourcing platform, I think you can put that in your RFP like, "Hey, we are cost-conscious. How do we work together on that?"

And I've been really creative with a couple venues that still want the business, but they don't want to out-price themselves. So thinking about coffee is just unbelievably expensive. But thinking about, do we need coffee for five hours straight? Or just little changes that you can make to the event design to help you weigh the costs a little bit. We've done an event where during the content, the bar pauses to save you money. And then I hate pinching pennies because that's what it kind of feels like, and you don't want to do that for your top customers, but you have to almost get creative in those aspects to do it.

But I think what you should be doing is if you really are in a bad place with budget, you should be looking at —we just talked about unique venues, you should be looking at unique venues all the way to hotels to see if that will help. And then just putting in your RFP, "Hey, I need you to be a little constructive with me here or help me design a better cost."

Or go back to prioritization and say, "Hey, we actually can't afford all this. Our event budget is like 50% of our marketing budget." That's a lot compared to the benchmarks that are in the industry of 30%. And some companies don't even get 30%, some of them get 20. And so if they only have 20% of their marketing budget, they have to be really scientific of which events are going to drive MQLs or engagement or whatever you're measuring yourselves on, and they have to work that into the things there. And so this is a hot topic with my friends in the industry. They're like, "We don't know what we can do next year because costs like food and beverage is so expensive."

[00:21:45] Alyssa Peltier: Because we can't serve coffee. And I think, candidly, audiences aren't necessarily tuned into that. I think there's a consumer awareness, but that doesn't necessarily translate when you go to an event. There are a lot of behavioral things that we've just come as table stakes for going to an event. There's going to be coffee the whole time. There will be F&B the whole time, "Oh, the bar will be open, right?" everything that you've just described. And so there is concern and hesitancy on are we compromising the audience or the attendee experience when we have to make these cuts? So that is not an easy position to be in. I understand why that's such a hot topic.

[00:22:21] Felicia Asiedu: It really is. And sometimes we'll look at reports. There's marketing reports like the IPA Bellwether Report and it will say, "Budgets are up. Event spend is high." And so it looks really positive, but we've seen this over the past couple of years, budgets being higher and event spend being up isn't necessarily a great thing. So we spoke to the hoteliers and venues about this and they said they are trying to get better at designing more flexible packages, just being a part of the design experience so that they are designing for outcomes and pricing for outcomes. We're about to move on to our final trend of our outcomes. If your venue is helping you to prove the point in the first place, I mean, you're winning, right? It's not just, "Here's the cost. Good luck."

So shall we move into that final trend? Let's do it. Outcomes, measurable outcomes. Now, some can say this is not a trend. Showing the ROI isn't a trend. It's something you should have been doing in the first place. But I think how we're thinking about event outcomes and ROI is changing. It's obviously not just did people show up, but why? Did it achieve our goals in the first place? Are those goals brand-driven goals? Are they relationship building goals? And so that's the change. I think there's more of a flexibility around what is the proof, but are you measuring the proof point?

[00:23:47] Camille Arnold: I think that's a really good point. I think if we kind of zoom out a little bit, there are so many ways to measure event success and quantify event success because in theory, there are so many ways that you could decide to use events to fuel your business or your organizational priorities. And that could be, as you said, Felicia, maybe you are trying to increase brand awareness. Maybe you have a demand gen problem or not a problem, but you just have a big thing coming up next year, like a big product launch or some sort of massive move that your organization is making.

And so because there are so many ways you could use events, there's so many ways to measure success, I think the word that comes to mind for me is just being intentional. And from the beginning, when you're planning, just being clear. I feel like we said this over and over and over again, but it's so important, just being clear about what are the defined goals for this event or event program if you're doing more than just one event.

And then tactically, are we set up to measure success in the ways that we want to because there can be a delta there. Sometimes you can say, "I want to be able to measure and track the impact from this event across all of these different channels, which means all these different metrics or KPIs." And then your operations team or someone might say, "Hey, we can actually only track these three things or half of the metrics that you want to track."

And so I would say if that is where you are, you might know exactly how you want to measure success, but maybe your organization isn't quite set up to measure everything possible, you could create a little roadmap for 2026 of like, "Okay, in the first half of the year, we're just going to measure these things. But at the same time, we're going to have a parallel process to try and enhance the tracking mechanisms or the measurement mechanisms that we have in place. And then second half of the year, we're going to roll out this new measurement framework and there's hopefully, it aligns with other ... there's like, hopefullly, a unified —especially if you're measuring revenue impact, a unified revenue metric measurement framework.

Rachel, I know we've talked about this before, MQLs from events equals MQLs from any other marketing channel. We're defining them the same way. And so then we can more accurately compare impact between channels. And then if we go into a specific channel like events, between programs, right? So I think you can't do any of that if you aren't intentional about it from the outset.

[00:26:51] Rachel Andrews: I think, so just from my perspective, there's this theme of imposter syndrome from the events side. And it's like, as channel owners, we need to fricking step into this power. We know that this channel is badass. What was it? Splash did a outlook report and it was like almost 90% of events generate a steady flow of revenue. Own that shit. And we are still, to this day, trying to prove our value at big companies. And some CMOs get it, some CEOs don't get it, whatever it is, and it's silly. It's like if you can just put that metrics on a slide for your board and speak the same language as them, you are showing those measurable outcomes and they're going to be like, "Oh duh, this is of course important."

I would say most smart people at businesses understand that events drive business, but some planners, or let's not call them planners, let's call them leaders, event leaders or event strategists, don't know. They aren't upskilled, or they don't know how to speak that language, or they're not partnering with the right people. And so they're shouting from their corner of the universe saying, "We're important, look at us." But they're not speaking the language of the entire org or they haven't been properly trained on what EBITDA is, how to move pipeline down the funnel. We weren't trained or taught that.

So it's a lot of on the job training. And if you ask somebody at 10 years into the job, how are you influencing the business? Some of them get it, some of them don't, and they need to have that better partnership with their entire marketing team or start to learn themselves. I struggle with this too. I'll be honest, I'm still figuring out the right way to put that channel forward and say, "This is why we're performing the way that we are."

We have an ROI dashboard that we're looking at, but I think what people are still struggling with is that storytelling behind the data and then tying it to the measurable outcomes. So saying, "Okay, our goal was this." Maybe your goal is renewals. How many renewals did you get from that event? If you don't know and you're not tracking that, then you're not going to prove that measurable outcome from that event.

[00:29:03] Alyssa Peltier: I think that comparative view that I think, Camille, you were just talking about it, and Rachel, getting that language down is really, really important. Because putting my executive hat on, which I do not have, but we're going to pretend for a second it's an executive crown, they're going to say, "Could we have done this" put in air quotes, "What is this without the event? Could we have..." And we're going to pull in all the buzzwords across these two trends, "Could we have proven to the market that we are an authentic voice? Could we have told our story? Could we have physically shaken hands and proven that we speak the language of these individuals in this market?" I'm looking at Felicia as I'm thinking about expanding into France or the DOC region in Europe, right?

I think all of those things are objectively what events can do, but then we also need to have the proof points that they do it, right? And that can be told through MQLs. It can be told through brand sentiment. It can be told through brand penetration. And all of those things require data around it. But I think starting with understanding how an executive thinks really helps you to not get ...

So oftentimes we talk about defending our budget. Let's not get defensive. Let's be a strategic, leaned-in business operator that justifies why our channel exists, sure, but also is willing to compromise and re-strategize, reinvest in areas where the impact is driving the business outcomes that are necessary. Right? So really getting that selfish hat off, but showcasing and really showcasing. Because we know, this group knows that these are a shiny diamond, but an executive doesn't always. They have that very, very, very rational bean counter mindset and we have to speak that language too. So I just wanted to call that out there.

[00:31:02] Felicia Asiedu: I love that. Everything —

[00:31:03] Camille Arnold: I love that mindset shift that you just articulated.

[00:31:07] Felicia Asiedu: Yeah. And everything you said, I had questions for you, you all answered them. I was going to ask, are we speaking the same language as marketers and event organizers? I think in Cvent, we are super lucky. The answer is pretty much yes, but that is because our executives, I think, at times have dragged us around the table and said, "Why are we doing this? What is it for? What is the outcome?" And at times you can feel a bit like, "Why are you coming at me?" Like you said, you're defensive. There's such a clear and obvious answer to this.

But it has made us all sharpen our tools and hone in how we speak and make sure that an MQL was an MQL, like you said. And even for me being regional, I can prove because we're looking at our brand and our brand strategy, I can say, "Well, actually we need to do this in Switzerland because they don't know who we are." So, you're not necessarily, it's not like, "Here's a lead and we sold five billion." It's just we needed to do it for the brand.

So loving this that we're all together, that we are all on one page, loving that our audience has joined us through our trends and our trends are now available to download. You can go through them yourselves. We're going to be doing lots of little mini, mini trends as well.

We're also going to be looking at what are not trends. And I know you're going to think that's really weird, but we intend to look at things that are not trends, they just should be done. Things like sustainability and accessibility and diversity and all the Ds, they're not trends. So look out for that as well because they'll be coming to you soon.

I'm not going to re-go over all the trends, but there's a lot of human connection in amongst a sea of AI. There's a lot of looking after your costs, making sure you are providing experiences, and proving the point at the end of it all. So I've summarized our nine trends into about five points, but if you want to go back and listen to part one, please do that. And if not, have a great day.

[00:32:59] Alyssa Peltier: Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

[00:33:08] Rachel Andrews: And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

[00:33:18] Felicia Asiedu: Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

[00:33:25] Rachel Andrews: Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

[00:33:36] Felicia Asiedu: Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

[00:33:45] Alyssa Peltier: And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.