Record years feel like proof of concept. For The Car Wash Show, 2024 was exactly that — peak attendance, peak revenue, industry-leading metrics. Then 2025 arrived with a different story: lower attenda ...

Joe Federbush, President, EVOLIO, shares new data from the just released whitepaper on The Attendee Acquisition Reality Gap. He will explain why strategy, data, and execution are failing and and how t ...

Why do people trust strangers on the internet more than event marketers? Why will someone spend thousands to attend a conference they've never experienced, wait overnight for concert tickets, or trave ...

Tactics to Reduce Friction and Drive Participation Gen Z wants to attend business events, but getting there feels harder than ever. Research shows higher stress around travel, lower confidence in netw ...

A new study by EVOLIO, Trade Show Executive and Lippman Connects reveals how exhibitors and sponsors are shifting their event investments. Budgets are increasingly being directed toward opportunities ...

Sponsorship and exhibit sales are shifting from transactional models to more strategic, data-informed growth engines. In this session, Cory Smith, Vice President, Strategic Services at Shepard, shares ...

Exhibitor churn is one of the most expensive challenges in the trade show industry, yet most organizers invest far more energy in acquisition than retention. Learn how to proactively identify at-risk ...

What organizers see. What exhibitors feel. Where the value gap is quietly costing revenue.

Please see the signs below highlighting 25 years of ECEF pictures. Sign 1:  2002-2009 Sign 2: 2010-2017 Sign 3: 2018-2025 ECEF 25th Anniversary visual montage

Too few opportunities for independent organizers and associations to partner come to fruition because of an implied culture clash. It doesn’t have to be that way. In this candid and insightful session ...

What happens on Capitol Hill and in the White House has never had a bigger impact on what happens on the show floor. That’s why the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA) is the public policy voice ...

ECEF 2026 Word Clouds and Polling Results

Widen Your Leadership Perspective Your leadership acumen has brought you great success. Keynoter Edwina Kulego gives you the opportunity to build on that success. Edwina explains that a global mindset ...

Hosting, sponsoring, attending. We've done it all. And every time, we're watching people ask the same quiet question: is it worth coming back? Rajul Shah, GM & Global Head of Sales - Growth Products - ...

The Annabelle Project (TAP) is a mentoring program, founded to feed the events industry pipeline with Next Gen talent. Sam Lippman interviews two TAP mentees. They share fresh perspectives from the PO ...

Sam Lippman, President, Lippman Connects set the tone for the day with this fast-paced session highlighting key data points that have big implications.

When does it pay off to leave money behind? For the past 24 years, the NACS show has been quietly doing just that. Bob Hughes, Vice President, NACS, shares their success strategy. NACS does not leave ...

As organizers continue to rethink the role of learning at events, this session explores how different formats, environments and interactions contribute to meaningful knowledge exchange.  Ken Holsinger ...

Even strong events can’t rely on repeat attendance alone to sustain growth. In this case-study session, Lily Doerfler from AdvaMed and Rachel Scharmann from mdg walk through how the MedTech Conference ...

In this session,  John Wilson, Vice President, Business Development, Northeast Region, CNTV, explores how to use video more intentionally to support both attendee acquisition and retention. Rather tha ...

Joe Federbush, President and Chief Strategist, EVOLIO, explains EVOLIO’s latest Tradeshow Benchmarks and how you can apply the data to your attendee acquisition strategy.

ConnectUp articles written by mdg for Lippman Connects How to Turn On-site Social Content Into Your Most Powerful Marketing Asset The Passive Model Is Out and Structured Networking Is In Influencers M ...

Every post you share, every update you publish — prospects are watching before they ever decide to engage. The question is: What are they seeing? More importantly, is it opening doors or closing them? ...