What makes a good event

As luck would have it, I ran into People Inc chief innovation officer Jon Roberts at Cafe Cluny last night. Jon is my go-to expert for how the media is navigating the challenges of AI. And I’m happy to say, he’ll be joining TRB Audience Summit to share his inside view of not just the battles for AI licensing deals but why he’s optimistic that a workable licensing regime will emerge more broadly. This will be the focus of one of TRB Audience Summit’s salons, which will be private conversations for media operators to share what’s working.

Come to TRB Audience Salon on Sept 17 in NYC to connect with Jon and other media leaders.

Today, I’m digging into the lessons I’ve learned in over 25 years of industry events. Plus: A conversation Scouted’s Madeline Sullivan about the future of affiliate operations at publishers.

In the course of my career, I’ve participated in hundreds of events across the world. I’ve spoken to dozing Japanese executives in Kyoto, gone on stage three hours late in Istanbul and been nearly run over by fans trying to get at the Entourage guy in Dublin. I moderated a panel where a panelist threw up in the middle of it, been accosted by a nationalist during Q&A in Serbia and spoke on stage in Hamburg while guys made sushi rolls behind me. My first moderating gig was during breakfast in a basement restaurant in Chinatown. I’ve put in my 1,000 hours. I’ve seen misbehavior, or more often heard of it later, like when an enterprise software seller streaked the lobby in Palm Beach while using a palm frond for modesty.

My last job, ideally ever, was at what was essentially an events business. It meant spending a month a year at various resorts in Scottsdale, Vail and Key Biscayne. I found it challenging to keep up with my work as editor while people milled around in bathrobes or trundled by in ski boots. We developed a rule among the team: Nobody was expected to make small talk at the airport on the way home.

Something I’ve pondered is what makes a good business event. I like to make fun of the goofy parts of corporate events. The cheesy branded schwag, the lanyards, the terrible hotel ballroom carpets, the road warrior ethos of sales people who are on the road half the year at these events.

I have an aversion to over air-conditioned hotel ballrooms. I find panels almost always boring. Too many organizers get too greedy and put far too much mayo on the sandwich. And worst of all there’s no reason for them to exist. 

The most successful event franchises establish themselves in a field early – there’s a coming gold rush around AI-related events – but I’m partial to events timed to an industry inflection point.

The media industry is at an inflection point. Publishers will continue to operate the old traffic model, relying on indirect traffic from platforms and monetized through third-party demand. The new businesses that publishers are building are audience focused. That means starting from scratch with new audience-focused models or retrofitting old models. That’s the infection point TRB Audience Summit is built around.

This event is about that transition and is built for an industry in transition. Over the past four years, I’ve held over 50 small-scale gatherings, from 12-person private dinners to 40-person breakfast salons to 100-odd person Mixers. TRB Audience Summit is built to connect the dots of those discussions to enable the construction of sustainable business models at a time when a lot of forces outside of the industry’s control are working against that. 

Events live and die by the right people in the room. We’ve had nearly 1,000 executives at our gatherings. I’m a believer in doing things that don’t scale, so we make all of our events invitation-only to assure the right people in the room. We’re carrying that through to TRB Audience Summit to make sure we have the right mix of participants.

The best events also know the assignment. In business events, the purpose is connection. You want to connect attendees to each other, to new ideas they can apply to their businesses and to partners who can help them.

Many conferences go wrong with the size in the pursuit of margin. Why do a bunch of smaller events when you can do one massive event? I’ve consistently found the most valuable gatherings are in smaller rooms. I was part of the Raptive Publishing Leaders Retreat last weekend in Miami Beach. There were 20 publishing executives with Raptive execs, and that size is valuable. I’ve seen this over the last four years of hosting over 50 small scale gatherings, Getting the right people in the right size room is critical.

I like events around 200 people over a single day because at that size, you are likely to bump into and connect with several people there who you should. Large events often struggle with a matching problem. They have people who should connect but are unlikely to because there are 1,000 people in a warren of rooms and hallways or worse at Javits. Bigger isn’t better in convening; in fact, it’s often the opposite. It’s telling that a sprawling event like Cannes ends up atomizing into hundreds of smaller gatherings.

Programming is the glue for events. I prefer conversational formats in media.The main stage is an opportunity to have big picture discussions of strategies with CEOs steering these businesses. We’ll have a variety of formats for these discussions, including my attempt to reinvent the extremely tired conference panel format. My approach is to make the conversations lively, informative and even entertaining at times. We’ve all suffered through too many boring PowerPoints.

With salons, we can focus on execution, because this is an execution business. Salons curate the audience to match people together around topic areas. We’ve found that facilitates conversation and through that connection. Our salon format is built around our what’s working framework for conversational case studies. The goal is both learning but also enabling people to connect over shared challenges. One publishing executive recently told me that a finalist list for CRO at a major media company included over five people who were at one of our TRB Morning Salons earlier this year. That’s why focused rooms matter.

There’s a lane for “live journalism” events, but that to me is an ingredient to a great event, rarely the main thing. The biggest unforced error of events is not nailing the cocktail party. I once got a good conference tip from Tony Hsieh. He told me the key to a good cocktail party is you open a second bar halfway through it. People will see it as a nice surprise. 

Conferences need to create spaces for unstructured connection. I find too many events look to overengineer networking and connection. I object to “speed dating” meetings on taste grounds, although I recognize the power of the hosted-buyer model in creating receipts. I prefer the more organic approach to connecting a buy and a sell side. That means providing many opportunities for connection without having a countdown clock and a gong for people to move to their next meeting.

One of the things I’ve learned about events over the years is they’re a details business. It is an execution business. The events group at publishers has long been underappreciated at many places. I can remember  how people in the newsroom at one place I worked would pretend to be on the phone when the events people came around our cubicle farm. In truth, the weight of these businesses is moving to convening. I’m happy to have Lisa Boyars Gehrke and the Clear Sky Collective team sorting out all these details. 

I’m excited to put all of these lessons into practice at TRB Audience Summit. I hope you'll join us for the inaugural edition. Get in touch with me to discuss sponsorship options or other questions you have about the event by hitting reply.

Performance marketing has eaten digital advertising. Affiliate marketing rose at publishers to become a key monetization channel. This is a business also at an inflection point as publishers shift from relying on Google search traffic in favor of loyal audiences.

Ahead of our collaboration with Affinity Global on Affinity Conversations on Tuesday, July 28, in NYC, I spoke with Madeline Sullivan, an affiliate veteran who spent eight years at Forbes in their affiliate operation. Madeline has built the shopping app Scout, and her view is affiliate operations will be upended by AI far beyond declining search traffic.

That’s because of agents. Agents will increasingly be on the loose to make buying decisions. The question is how publishers will influence those agents with their commerce content but also how they’ll get credit. The recent controversy over Phia’s cookie stuffing is testament to how affiliate is premised on getting credit for the sale.

"If you have an AI agent, the cookie is injected into your browser,” Madeline said. “So if an agent is using a different browser — let's say you have a Mac Mini where your agents live — that agent is going to be on a completely different browser. How are we thinking about people's digital identity to provide credit to the publishers?"

Listen to my full conversation with Madeline

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