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Room 427-429 (Level 4)
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Co-Sponsored by:
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Room 427-429 - Level 4
Hosted by:
Co-Sponsored by
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
Attendees don’t remember every session title, sponsor activation, or agenda block. They remember moments. The feeling. The spark. The conversations. The unexpected emotional highs that make an experience feel alive.
This session introduces the concept of Vibe Eventing: designing events around energy, emotional momentum, and human connection instead of simply filling schedules.
Together, attendees will identify where events lose energy, where momentum breaks down, and how to intentionally create peak moments that drive loyalty, advocacy, return attendance, and stronger communities.
This is not about adding more production. It’s about designing smarter emotional experiences.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
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Terrace Suite - Level 4You don't need a massive budget or a large portfolio of events to unlock meaningful growth. Whether you manage one show or many, this session explores practical, proven strategies to drive organic growth by listening to customers, identifying adjacent opportunities, testing low-risk pilots, and building partnerships that accelerate growth.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Economic uncertainty. Inflation. Tariffs. Geopolitical turmoil. International travel declines. You have seen all the headlines, but how are these developments really impacting the industry? Join Tommy Goodwin from the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance and Kevin Hinton from the U.S. Travel Association as they separate perception from reality, share the latest news from Washington, D.C., and talk about the real state of the industry… and bust a few myths along the way!
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
A SIGHTLINE Live Session
What does value really mean to brands today?
As experiential marketing accelerates, the brand–organizer relationship is being redefined. Brands want more than booth space or sponsorship inventory—but what does “outcome” really mean?
One year after launching SIGHTLINE, Emerald’s media and content platform for the experiential marketing community, we bring SIGHTLINE Live to the stage—translating our podcast conversations into a live, candid discussion at SISO.
This SIGHTLINE Live session features Nicholas Cogger, Senior Brand and Event Manager at Lightspeed Commerce, and Paul Miller, CEO of Emerald/Questex. The discussion will be moderated by Marie-Elaine Lemire, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Emerald and creator of SIGHTLINE.
Together, we’ll unpack how brands evaluate event investments, what organizers believe drives real value, where expectations align—or clash—and how both sides can build smarter, more strategic partnerships.
This isn’t about one side doing it better. It’s about what becomes possible when brands and organizers stop negotiating across the table—and start building on the same side of it.
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Paramount Lounge (Level 4)
☕🥐🍎
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Co-Sponsored by:
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
- Women's Leadership
This 60-minute interactive keynote introduces leaders to a practical framework for building psychological safety from the inside out.
Facilitator and Licensed Professional Counselor Samantha Edu, LPC, NBC-HWC, teaches through a three-part arc - identity awareness, team awareness, and communal accountability - helping participants understand how what they carry into a room shapes the culture they create in it.
Using a discussion-based format grounded in clinical frameworks, participants examine their own identity as leaders, develop awareness of what the people they lead may be carrying, and explore what shared accountability for brave culture actually looks like in practice. Anonymous polling and table-based discussion are woven throughout to keep the learning immediate and relevant.
Participants will leave with:
- A working definition of psychological safety grounded in identity and lived experience
- A new lens for understanding how their background and identity shape the way they lead
- Practical language for building brave cultures with their teams starting immediately -
Paramount Lounge - Level 4
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
This panel will discuss international activity. You'll receive up to minute scorecards on where opportunities lies both in attracting internationals to your events as well as where opportunites to expand your brands exist worldwide.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Events have become the growth engine for many media brands. This session will cover how media brands are capitalizing on the value that events IRL provide and what's next.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Show organizers and their strategic partners discuss candidly what it actually takes to turn stagnation around and what has to change for marketing can do its job. We’ll examine real cases and what the path to recovery looks like.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Over $5Billion spent in May. What's next for the industry. Some of the faces that have been in the news will share interesting perspectives for 2026 and beyond.
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- Women's Leadership
Taking themes of psychological safety from the keynote and panel, attendees will have the opportunity to look into their own identity in four different layers below - how it's been shaped and how it impacts their role as a leader.
Inherent (race, gender, age, ability, and the parts of identity you didn't choose): What parts of who you are, by nature, show up in how you lead? Which ones do you bring fully, and which ones do you leave at the door?
Cultural (faith, family, language, tradition): How does your family, faith, or upbringing shape how you make decisions, communicate, or lead under pressure?
Organizational (role, title, industry): What does your role or industry expect of you that feels aligned with who you are, and what feels in conflict?
Behavioral (communication style, habits, emotional patterns): Which patterns do the people you lead feel most consistently, and which ones might be worth a closer look? -
Room 427-429 (Level 4)
- Women's Leadership
🍽 Buffet Lunch
A buffet lunch will be provided for all registered participants of the SISO Women’s Leadership Forum.
Hosted by:Co-Sponsored by:
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Terrace Suite - Level 4This session will explore how intelligent matchmaking, curated introductions, and real-time personalization are transforming disconnected moments into deliberate, high-value engagement. They'll unpack what it looks like when connection becomes a designed outcome rather than a happy accident — and what separates organizers who are getting this right.
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Signature Room - Level 5
Lunch
Hosted by:
Co-Sponsored by:
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Signature Room - Level 5
🍽 Lunch Options – Departure Day
- Grab & Go Boxes will be available starting at noon for those needing to leave early for flights.
- For those staying, grab lunch and sit down to enjoy before going on the tour.
Hosted by:
Co-Sponsored by:
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Industry leaders will share proven approaches to budgeting, supplier negotiations, operational efficiencies, and technology adoption that are helping events protect margins and build greater financial resilience.
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Signature Room - Level 5
Tour the Seattle Convention Center
Hosted by:
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Experience two Seattle landmarks in one memorable outing.
Travel aboard the historic Seattle Center Monorail, connecting downtown Seattle and Seattle Center since 1962, before enjoying a tour of Climate Pledge Arena—the world's first net-zero carbon certified arena and a global leader in sustainability.
Meet in the Hyatt Regency lobby for departure.
Hosted by
Co-Sponsored by
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
Moderated by Mike Carlucci, COO of Clarion Events North America, the discussion will combine Lisa Werner’s extensive emergency-management and disaster-response experience with Mike Grant’s operational leadership across RX’s U.S. event portfolio.
Lisa will offer insights from a career that has spanned public-sector emergency management, major disaster response and private-sector consulting. Mike will bring the event-organizer perspective, exploring how those lessons can be adapted and applied across a diverse portfolio of live events.
Together, the panelists will discuss what preparedness means in today’s changing environment, how leaders can improve organizational readiness and what event producers at every level should be thinking about before they arrive onsite.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Consumer events are often the first to reveal shifts in audience expectations around personalization, content delivery, technology, and experiential engagement, making them an important source of insight for B2B organizers.
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Paramount Lounge - Level 4
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Hosted by:
Co-Sponsored by:
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
Join Clarion for an inside look at how they combine first-party insights with Bombora intent data to accelerate registration and maximize pipeline velocity for sponsors and advertisers.
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Paramount Lounge - Level 4
☕🍪🍎
Beverages will be served in the lobby.
Hosted by:Co-Sponsored by:
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Terrace Suite - Level 4Events generate a lot of data. Most of it never gets used. This session looks at how event organizers and media companies are closing that gap, connecting event attendance and engagement signals to their broader audience and revenue strategies. You'll hear from operators and leading media companies on what's working, where the biggest gaps still exist, and how to turn event data into something your sales and marketing teams can actually act on.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
In an era of AI-generated content that anyone can put together as well as the same speakers sharing the same insights at multiple conferences, the greatest threat to an event's longevity is interchangeability. If an attendee can hear the same panel at a competing event or get the same insights on another platform, the value proposition of your community can disappear overnight. This session will highlight and explore what it means to create a specific value proposition with your content for your community.
We'll examine frameworks for identifying and securing unique voices whose perspectives are not part of the AI echo chamber. We'll detail why "good" is the enemy of "exclusive," and what it means to promote and celebrate connections and insights that cannot be found anywhere else. We'll showcase the importance of voices and perspectives that can only be found at your event. Attendees will learn the importance of content and conversations that literally exist nowhere else for the benefit of your events and digital publications.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4AI is reshaping how our teams work — automating routine tasks, accelerating decision-making, and opening new opportunities for skill development. At the same time, it raises real questions around job displacement, training needs, and how we redefine roles moving forward. This session explores both sides: the productivity gains AI offers and the workforce challenges we need to plan for.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
The way audiences discover events has changed. AI-powered tools now shape what people find, trust and act on before they ever engage with an organiser. For senior event leaders this creates a growing commercial risk that most haven't yet measured or even noticed.
In this in-conversation session, Jon Benjamin, CEO of ASP, sits down with Shanna Allen, Director of Marketing at CloserStill Media, for an honest discussion about what the AI visibility shift really means in practice. Drawing on real AI visibility audits carried out across the event industry alongside CloserStill's own firsthand experience of addressing this challenge across their event portfolio, they explore what the data is actually showing, how discoverability connects directly to registrations, attendance, exhibitor and sponsor revenue - and where responsibility for this sits within a well-run event organisation.
This is not a marketing session. It’s a commercial conversation for every leader in the room, whether you run the P&L, own the sales pipeline, or drive event marketing strategy.
Because if AI can't find your event, your audiences, exhibitors and sponsors may never find it either.
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Terrace Suite - Level 4
It is my pleasure to introduce Emily K. Cantrell, President & CEO at Seafair, Seattle's premier summer event series. Join us as Emily shares the people, partnerships, and preparation behind Seattle's biggest events.
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📍Chihuly Garden and Glass
🏢305 Harrison St, Seattle, WA 98109
Complimentary shuttle service will run between the Hyatt Regency Seattle and Chihuly Garden and Glass for the Closing Event. Coaches begin boarding at 5:45 pm and depart at 6:00 pm sharp. The first 100 attendees on the first two coaches will receive complimentary Space Needle tickets to enjoy the view before the reception. The Chihuly Museum will be open for our attendees beginning at 6:45 pm. The reception begins at 7:00 pm, and shuttles will operate continuously throughout the evening, with final departure from Chihuly Garden and Glass at 9:15 pm.
For security purposes, entry to event functions is restricted to credentialed attendees. SISO name badges must be visible and worn at all times.
Attire
👕 Casual dress
🩳Hosted by: -
Opening Night Reception
Gather at the top of the Hillclimb at the Seattle Convention Center's Summit Building, Level 5, from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM for cocktails. Convention Center staff will be available to guide you. The evening continues with a reception on the Garden Terrace from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, featuring food, entertainment, and perhaps a Sasquatch sighting or two!Hosted by:
Co-Sponsored by:
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August 18-20, 2026 I Seattle Convention Center
August 18-20, 2026 I Seattle Convention Center
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