“When your keynote cancels 48 hours before and you’re rewriting the entire run-of-show on the fly.”
The event space is shifting. You can feel it in the RFPs, the budgets, and the boardroom conversations.
Associations, especially, are under pressure to show value, to speak to DEI, to fill gaps in industries that are evolving fast (and sometimes shrinking). And when economic uncertainty creeps in, events are often where the reckoning happens first.
Lately, here’s the question I’ve been sitting with:
Are we listening hard enough before we pivot?
READ THE ROOM BEFORE YOU RESET THE FORMAT
In events, pivoting is not a trend, it’s a necessity. But successful pivots come from listening, not guessing.
Before changing up your format or focus, ask:
- What conversations are happening at the margins of your industry?
- What gaps is your audience trying to fill? Not just in knowledge, but in connection and credibility.
- Are you solving a funding issue, or a relevance issue?
We’ve worked with clients who paused an annual gala to run a roundtable series, or replaced a trade show with curated 1:1 meeting. In both cases, the shift worked not because it was different, but because it responded to what members were already asking for.
Sometimes, the data won’t tell you everything. But the hallway chatter might.
IN SHORT: Don’t just pivot for optics. Pivot for alignment.
When the market speaks, great events answer back with clarity, with context, and with formats that actually fit the moment.
If you’re thinking of reworking your 2026 event strategy, we’d love to be a sounding board. Let’s chat.
