Advertise on podcast: EVENT ABOUT IT: Event Marketing, Strategy & Business Growth

68% of US Google searches now end without a single click, which means event SEO as you learned it is quietly breaking. If your discovery plan still depends on getting somebody onto your website, that is a problem nobody has budgeted for. Laura Davidson ran a search agency for a decade and she is blunt about what is happening: the touchpoints have collapsed. Someone asks an AI, gets one answer, believes they have done thorough research, and registers. Her argument is that this is not new marketing at all. It is a return to something much older, and the event brands that already invested in being known are the ones it rewards. In this one: What zero-click search actually means for event marketing, and the two metrics her team watches now that attribution is breaking Why a B2B buyer is only in market roughly 5% of the year, and what to do during the other 95% The one question that decides whether your event gets funded, and why a well-known bad event beats an unknown good one What connected TV and ChatGPT ads really cost, and whether an event marketing budget can actually reach them The ambassador program setup that cut cost per acquisition by 49% on a single creator video, and the contract clause that makes it work If you are heading into budget season with a number you are not sure you can defend, start here. Mentioned in this episode Zero-click search study, SparkToro via Similarweb clickstream data: Search Engine Land coverage About the guest Laura Davidson spent 14 years running paid search and paid media for global trade shows before selling her agency to Freeman, which means she is watching the collapse of click-based measurement from inside the discipline it disrupts. She now leads digital at mdg. She has also produced her own events, which is why her advice sounds like someone who has been on both sides of the invoice. Connect with Laura Davidson and Tag Digital: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lauratagdigital mdg, a Freeman company: mdg.agency Instagram: @tagdigitalglobal About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She’s the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious.

Gating your agenda is one of the most common moves in B2B event strategy. According to today’s guest, it is also click bait. Laura Davidson has run more than 2,000 event campaigns a year across more than 40 countries, which means she has watched this exact decision play out at a scale almost nobody in this industry has access to. Her argument is that your agenda is the single most discoverable asset your event owns, and locking it behind a form costs you far more than the email addresses it collects. Especially now that buyers are asking an AI before they ask Google. Then we made her rule on seven more event marketing tactics most teams run on autopilot. In this one: Why gating your event agenda works against you in AI search, and what to publish instead The one paid channel she says event marketers should stop buying entirely, and where that budget belongs How many brand touches it actually takes before somebody registers for a B2B event, and why your campaign plan assumes a smaller number Why the "last chance to register" email should go out four separate times, and the one thing that has to change in each send The reason every trade show ad looks identical, and what the events pulling ahead are doing instead If you are building next year’s campaign plan right now, this is the 18 minutes that will change two line items in it. About the guest Laura Davidson has spent 14 years running paid media for some of the largest trade shows and conferences in the world, at a volume that means she has watched the same mistakes repeat across more than 40 countries. She built Tag Digital out of Glasgow with her husband, sold it to Freeman, and now leads digital at mdg. She is unusually willing to tell you which of your tactics are wasting money. Connect with Laura Davidson and Tag Digital: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lauratagdigital mdg, a Freeman company: mdg.agency Instagram: @tagdigitalglobal About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She’s the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. In it, Laura breaks down what replaces the click now that 68% of searches end without one, and what actually decides whether your event gets funded. Send this episode to the demand gen lead who still thinks the agenda is a lead magnet.

The honest answer is no. And the person telling you that actually built it. Huong Nguyen spent 13 years running a multi-million dollar events agency before she started building Aletheia, an AI platform for event operations. She tried the vibe coding route first. She knows exactly where it breaks, what it costs when it does, and what the real gap is between a one-time AI workflow and a scalable event tech product. Her advice: do it for fun. Just do not do it for your actual program. That's one of six conversations in this Aftershow. We also got into how she built a seven-figure client roster for 10 years without a LinkedIn presence, a $500K contract she landed at 24 by working for free first, and what she now understands about event tech vendors that she didn't before she became one. In this one: Why vibe coding gets you a prototype and leaves you with a maintenance problem — and what it actually takes to scale event technology across different program types and budgets How 10 years of building an agency without a personal brand generated more client retention and referrals than most visible founders ever see What a non-technical founder with no coding background actually does when she decides to build event tech — and what breaks first The one question every event planner should ask in a vendor demo that almost nobody thinks to ask until they're already locked into a contract If you are currently evaluating event tech, thinking about building your own, or wondering whether being less visible is costing you business — this is the one. The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious. About Huong Nguyen Huong Nguyen is the 2x CEO and founder of Shiloh Events and Aletheia, an AI-powered intelligence platform for event operations. She co-founded Zoomtopia and spent 13 years producing enterprise tech events for Zoom, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, Uber, and Google without ever building a personal brand. In 2023 she surfaced, started climbing, and started building. She is still doing all three. Connect with Huong: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mshuongnguyen/ Aletheia: https://aletheia.events/ Shiloh Events: https://shiloh-events.com/ About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): https://msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: https://msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious.

Most event teams are filed under marketing and measured on attendance. That's not a strategy problem. That's a reporting structure problem — and it's costing you pipeline. Huong Nguyen has produced enterprise tech events for 13 years: NASA to ServiceNow to co-founding Zoomtopia. She knows what events look like when they're treated as a logistics function, and she knows what they look like when they're wired into demand gen. The difference is not effort. It's where the team sits and what they're held accountable for. Plus: the vent nobody in the industry talks about out loud — what happens to your F&B and room block when your client has surprise layoffs and the hotel won't budge. And yes, she's the one who moved an entire conference to a parking lot overnight after the pipes burst mid-keynote. In this one: Why demand gen — not marketing — is the right home for your event team, and the one game answer that makes the case in under 10 seconds How to negotiate hotel contracts that protect you when your client's headcount gets cut without warning (the clause most planners skip until the F&B bill lands) The event insurance line item most planners overlook until it's too late — and the AV equipment bill that proves it Why designing for emotion first and logistics second isn't a soft strategy. It's the pipeline strategy B2B event teams are still missing. If your event team is still reporting into a marketing org that measures success in badge scans, this is the conversation to send up the chain. Subscribe so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops — that's where Huong gets into what it actually cost to build Aletheia and what every planner thinking about vibe coding their own event tech needs to hear first. Send this to the event leader who's still trying to prove ROI in a marketing meeting instead of a demand gen one. About Huong Nguyen Huong Nguyen is the 2x CEO and founder of Shiloh Events — 13 years producing large-scale enterprise tech events for Zoom, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, Uber, and Google — and Aletheia, an AI-powered intelligence platform for event operations. She co-founded Zoomtopia, produced events for NASA, and grew Shiloh from zero to multi-million dollar revenue in three years. She named her company Shiloh, Hebrew for peace. She is now building the technology to deliver it. Connect with Huong: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mshuongnguyen/ Aletheia: https://aletheia.events/ Shiloh Events: https://shiloh-events.com/ About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): https://msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: https://msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. Next week Huong and Megan get into what it actually costs to build event tech from scratch — and why vibe coding isn't the shortcut planners think it is. Send this to the event leader who's still trying to prove ROI in a marketing meeting instead of a demand gen one.

Six hundred registrations is not an answer. The first thing a CRO wants to know is which logos are in the room, and most event leaders cannot answer that without asking for time to go look. This is not a recap of the main episode. This is the meeting that rewrote our guest's entire career, told in full. Sara Ann Straw walked in with a binder, a highlighter, and a registration count. She walked out with an $80 million pipeline target attached to her event and no idea how to hit it. What she did in the weeks after that meeting is the actual lesson, and it is more repeatable than it sounds. In this one: Bring the four data points executives consistently ask for: who is in the room by account tier, what percentage have open opportunities, which accounts are up for renewal in the next six months, and how many attendees are repeats from last year Find out why one event leader lost a director role after three flawless product launches, and what the person who got the job did instead Get the Strategy, Alignment, Scale framework, including why scale means consistency rather than running more events See the real math on pulling a fragmented event org under one roof, including the $130,000 a year one team stopped spending on an agency Sit in on an honest conversation about pricing anxiety, discounting people you like, and what nearly 20 years of experience is actually worth per hour There is also a Bravo break, a Bethenny Frankel story that got someone's father genuinely concerned, and a real debate about whether Montana deserves a Housewives franchise. If your next executive review is on the calendar and you are still building the deck around attendance, listen to the first ten minutes before you touch another slide. About the guest: Sara Ann Straw has spent nearly two decades building and rebuilding global event organizations at high-growth tech companies, usually by pulling field, partner, webinar, and corporate events under one roof. She learned to speak executive the hard way, in a meeting where she could not answer why her own company was investing in its own event. Her book, The Experienced Executive, is the version of that lesson she wishes someone had handed her at the start. Find Sara: Website: saraannstraw.com Book: The Experienced Executive — https://a.co/d/07Rit5wG Podcast: Solo Travel Woman, on Spotify LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saras23/ About Your Host: Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going: The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious.

Most event teams are not badly run. They are badly wired. Three teams doing the same job in three different directions, and the event ROI conversation never actually happens because nobody owns it. This episode runs a live diagnostic on that wiring. Ten real decisions event teams make every week, sorted in real time into executor thinking or executive thinking, with a guest, Sara Ann Straw, who has walked into fractured global event organizations and rebuilt them from the inside. One of her calls is going to annoy you. She is also right about it. In this one: Run your own week through ten real scenarios and see which side of the executor and executive line you are actually operating on Stop carrying a contingency line you have not questioned in five years, and know exactly what to interrogate instead Learn what executives actually want from registration pacing, which is not the registration number and not the segment breakdown Understand why a lead that sits longer than 24 hours loses roughly a third of its conversion rate, and what that does to the marketing and sales blame cycle Hear what happens when your production partner walks six weeks before a 2,000-person sales kickoff, and why "vendor" versus "partner" is a budget decision, not a vocabulary preference If you are walking into budget season with a number you cannot defend, this is the one to start with. The diagnostic takes ten minutes and it will tell you something uncomfortable. About the guest: Sara Ann Straw has spent nearly two decades building and rebuilding global event organizations at high-growth tech companies, usually by pulling field, partner, webinar, and corporate events under one roof. She learned to speak executive the hard way, in a meeting where she could not answer why her own company was investing in its own event. Her book, The Experienced Executive, is the version of that lesson she wishes someone had handed her at the start. Find Sara: Website: www.saraannstraw.com Book: The Experienced Executive — https://a.co/d/07Rit5wG Podcast: Solo Travel Woman, on Spotify LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saras23/ About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. That one is the full story of the meeting where a CRO asked why the company was investing in its own event, and the answer was "because I was told to." Send this episode to the event leader on your team who is excellent at the wrong thing and has not been told yet.

Every event on the circuit is running some version of the same program right now. Comp the badge, comp the flight, comp the hotel, get content in return. Suddenly the registration list has "creators" on it, and almost nobody in the room agreed on what that word actually means, or what they're paying for when they use it. The quick answer: a content creator asks what to post this week. A thought leader asks what only they can say. An influencer asks whether their audience will buy what's being shared. Three different jobs, three different payoffs. Most hosted creator programs in the events industry never decide which one they're actually hiring for, and that's the expensive mistake this episode is built to fix.  This is a solo episode, no guest this time, built around a distinction Megan couldn't stop thinking about after her own turn inside Cvent CONNECT's first hosted creator program. It pulls in growth executive Elena Verna's writing on the "operator" path versus borrowed authority, breaks down where creators, thought leaders, and influencers genuinely overlap, and then puts Megan's own campaign data on the table, including the one post that outperformed everything else in her lineup for reasons that had nothing to do with strategy. What you'll learn: Why "content creator," "thought leader," and "influencer" are three different jobs with three different goals, and why most event budgets quietly default to the easiest one to measure instead of the one that actually moves the business The three questions to ask before you build or join an event creator program, so you know whether you're buying reach, content, or influence What happened when Megan's own Cvent CONNECT wifi failed and accidentally proved the entire thesis of this episode, with the real numbers: her best post pulled six times her next-best result and roughly a third of all her campaign engagement Why a niche, relevant audience routinely outperforms a massive, unengaged one, and what that means for how you evaluate who to bring into your event's creator program The honest goal nobody wants to say out loud when they build one of these programs, and why saying it plainly beats dressing it up as "community" or "creator partnerships" This episode connects directly back to event-led growth: how event budget decisions, event marketing ROI, and B2B event strategy actually hold up once real campaign data gets put next to the pitch. If you've ever approved, built, or been comped into an event creator program, this is the episode that tells you what you were really buying. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so you don't miss what's coming next. Send this episode to the marketing leader who just signed off on a creator or influencer program and still isn't sure what they're actually getting for it.

Everyone talks about the agenda. Almost nobody talks about what happens before the venue is even booked, or what happens to that content a full year after the show wraps. In this Aftershow, we get into the parts of event content strategy that don't make it into most conversations: how sponsored sessions actually get negotiated, why celebrity keynotes mostly fail, and the one connection that made an Olympic-themed keynote at Tableau Conference actually work. If you caught the main episode, you already know why Stephanie Wells is the person you call when your event has sessions but no strategy. In the Aftershow, we go past the headlines and into the operating system behind it. What You'll Learn: What a full event content lifecycle actually looks like when next year's planning starts while this year's event is still running Why "back pocket allocations" exist and how they save a content strategy when a company acquisition drops two weeks before an event How to balance sponsored content against owned sessions without turning the agenda into a string of sales pitches The real reason most celebrity keynotes fall flat, and the one Tableau used that didn't What to measure in a post-event report if you actually want your C-suite to fund next year's budget Guest bio: Stephanie Wells has spent over 20 years building content strategy for Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, and Workday. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council and most recently spent two years inside hands-on training at Skillable. This fall she's launching Gold Heart Events, specializing in event content, strategy, and operations. Connect with Stephanie: LinkedIn: Stephanie Wells Website: goldheartevents.net (launching fall 2026) The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit

Picture this: a dozen rooms, 200 attendees, a paid hands-on training session everyone showed up specifically for, and the Wi-Fi just... dies. Not for five minutes. For hours. Turns out the culprit wasn't the venue's internet at all, it was a stranger walking the floor with a pocket microwave sucking up bandwidth. This week's guest lived it, owned it in front of her entire leadership team, and turned it into one of the biggest lessons of her career. Stephanie Wells has spent 20+ years building the content strategy behind some of the biggest tech conferences on the planet, Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, Workday, to name a few. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council, just wrapped two years embedded inside the world of hands-on training, and this fall she's launching her own firm, Gold Heart Events. She's also the person you call when your event has sessions but no strategy, and this conversation is exactly why. What You'll Learn: Why an event content strategy needs to exist before the venue contract gets signed, not after The real story behind a hands-on training Wi-Fi outage that took down a paid conference session, and what it taught an entire leadership team about contingency planning Why AI-written session titles are quietly making every conference sound the same, and what that's costing attendee loyalty The "Scope or Nope" test for deciding what actually belongs in your event content plan How to build a content repurposing strategy before the agenda is even finalized This episode covers the real mechanics of event content strategy: what belongs in scope, what gets cut, and why event ROI depends on decisions made months before anyone signs a venue contract. Stephanie makes the case that content should be first out the gate and last to leave, ahead of sponsors, ahead of venues, ahead of everything. Guest bio: Stephanie Wells has spent over 20 years building content strategy for Microsoft, Salesforce, Tableau, and Workday. She's a founding member of the Event Content Council and most recently spent two years inside hands-on training at Skillable. This fall she's launching Gold Heart Events, specializing in event content, strategy, and operations. Connect with Stephanie: LinkedIn: Stephanie Wells: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-wells-6930325/ Website: goldheartevents.net (launching fall 2026) Instagram: @gold_heart_events Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. We're going deeper into the full event content lifecycle, from venue contract to post-event report, plus where celebrity keynotes and sponsored sessions actually earn their spot on the agenda. Send this episode to the event planner still finalizing the agenda before anyone's touched the content strategy. Keep laughing, keep growing, and keep eventing about it. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit

The events industry keeps publishing research about Gen Z. Nobody thought to read it back to one. So Megan brought her assistant Sierra Siebulrud to Cvent CONNECT 2026 for her first-ever industry conference — and her first major conference of any kind — then sat her down and read out thirteen published Gen Z stats to her face. Some of them held up. Several of them did not. The ones that fell apart are the ones your agenda is probably built on. This is a different kind of Aftershow. So this is net-new: a fact check, a first-timer debrief, and a straight-answer session on the things everyone wants to ask a Gen Z and doesn't. What you'll learn: Why the "Gen Z avoids in-person networking" stat gets pushback from an actual Gen Z, and who she thinks is really responsible for the shiftThe real reason a first-timer will sit through your hour-long session, and the one thing that guarantees she won't remember itWhat actually pulls a Gen Z attendee to a booth (hint: it is not the tote bag, and the answer will annoy your swag budget)The 30-second rule she uses to accept or ignore every LinkedIn request after a conferenceWhere Gen Z goes to learn how to network before an event, and why it isn't Google and isn't AIThe exact sentence that predicts whether a Gen Z hire stays a year or bailsHow she verifies whether "great company culture" is real before she applies, using nothing but LinkedInApproximate chapters: 02:40 — Fresh Eyes: walking into CONNECT completely blind04:15 — What surprised her most: the rebrand as a full factory reset06:15 — The purple badge and the partner reception panic11:05 — Her advice for first-timers, and it takes ten seconds a day12:05 — The acronym problem14:55 — A brief and necessary Bravo detour18:50 — Stat Check: thirteen published Gen Z stats, live34:35 — Ask a Gen Z: LinkedIn, swag, managers, and job hopping51:10 — Rapid fire, plus a real conversation about alcohol at events56:15 — Curiosity card Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.comNewsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignupConsulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutitTikTok: @eventaboutit Plus: the purple badge moment, the acronym problem nobody in this industry will admit to, a Bravo detour involving a Montana wedding, and the fastest way an older colleague loses credibility with someone half their age. About Sierra Sierra Siebulrud is 27, Gen Z, and currently exploring what's next — checking out different industries before landing on her next opportunity. She came to Cvent CONNECT 2026 to help Megan and to find out whether the events industry is a fit for her. She left thinking it might be. Worth naming up front: Sierra shadowed Megan through the creator program, so this is one Gen Z's read from an unusually good seat, not a stand-in for every Gen Z attendee walking your show floor. About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Keep the Conversation Going The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at squareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup . Until next time, stay curious.

Cvent just bet a billion dollars that presence, not swag, not badges, not brochures, is the rarest signal left in B2B marketing. They're calling it the presence premium: in a world where AI can fake almost anything, showing up in person is the one thing it still can't. Megan Martin spent Cvent Connect 2026 in Nashville as one of only ten creators hand-picked for Cvent's first-ever hosted creator program, the first of its kind in the events industry. In this solo, no-guest edition of Event About It, she breaks down five takeaways almost nobody else is reporting on, and holds Cvent's own numbers up to the same scrutiny she'd apply to any client's data. What you'll learn: Why Cvent's "trust recession" stats (85% say AI content is harder to trust, 81% say in-person events raise audience trust) are worth reading twice, and the one question every marketer should ask before quoting vendor-commissioned event ROI data in a budget meeting.What the new Cvent Center for Event Insights signals about the future of first-party data and event attribution, and why Megan thinks it could become the most cited research source in the industry within two years.Why the ON24 and Goldcast acquisitions aren't a contradiction to Cvent's in-person pivot. They're the bridge between event technology and martech.What it means that Cvent IQ runs on MCP, the same protocol connecting AI agents like Claude and ChatGPT to outside tools, and why that could reshape event technology before anyone has a clean use case for it.The real lesson from Cvent's inaugural creator program, plus two chaotic behind-the-scenes stories from the show floor and one deeply humbling DoorDash run-in with Cvent's entire C-suite. Watch the real-time Field Notes recaps, recorded on-site in Nashville: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZUgwx4w3vAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc4g-k9G8Bk About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutitTikTok: @eventaboutit Subscribe to Event About It so you don't miss the two follow-ups coming next: the full story behind Cvent's creator program straight from Dara, the person who built it from scratch, and a first-timer's honest take on Cvent Connect from Megan's Gen Z assistant, at her very first industry conference. Send this one to the marketer who's about to walk into a budget meeting with a vendor's stat and no idea who paid for the research behind it. Keep laughing, keep growing, and keep eventing about it.

Most event teams are organized under marketing. But what if that's the whole problem? Aleksandra Panyukhina has been building events as a go-to-market motion for twelve years — and the difference between how she operates and how most companies run events is not a small gap. This is the Aftershow — where the strategy goes deeper and the guardrails come off. We get into the architecture behind it all: how she thinks about event portfolio strategy, why she removed the word "events" from her job title, how the FLOW initiative at Pixelz works as a full GTM motion, and what event teams need to look like in five years if they want a seat at the table. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: • Why she removed the word "events" from her job title — and what that reveals about where event marketing's identity problem actually lives • The zone of genius framework for event and field marketers: why trying to own logistics AND strategy is the fastest path to being replaced at both • How the FLOW event portfolio actually works — and why the single non-negotiable rule is that every event has to be one the sales team asked for first • How to measure event attribution when deals have a 12-month sales cycle, why "pipeline in the room" is the metric that earns executive respect, and when the math on a trade show simply doesn't add up • What event teams that survive the next five years look like — and the patterns they've already stopped following ABOUT ALEKSANDRA: Aleksandra Panyukhina is the Experience Marketing Director at Pixelz, where she leads FLOW — an event-led growth portfolio combining owned flagship events, local meetups, community, a podcast, ABX strategy, and partner marketing under one umbrella. With twelve years building event programs across five continents, she has driven millions in pipeline and closed-won revenue by treating events not as a marketing function but as a core go-to-market motion. She is based in Prague and is, for the record, also a professional salsa dancer and teacher. Follow Aleksandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apanyukhina/ The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious. ABOUT YOUR HOST: Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. CONNECT WITH MEGAN AND M SQUARED DYNAMICS: • Podcast: ⁠EventAboutItPodcast.com⁠ • Newsletter (Step and Repeat): ⁠msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup⁠ • Consulting and strategy: ⁠msquareddynamics.com⁠ • LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/⁠ • Instagram: ⁠@m2dynamics⁠ and ⁠@eventaboutit⁠ • TikTok: ⁠@eventaboutit⁠

Most event teams are sitting on a goldmine of buyer intent data and handing sales a lead list instead. Aleksandra Panyukhina has spent twelve years figuring out how to close that gap — and today, she's putting it to the test. Aleksandra Panyukhina is the Experience Marketing Director at Pixelz, where she leads FLOW, one of the most intentional event-led growth motions in B2B marketing today. She has driven millions in pipeline and closed-won revenue across five continents — and she has a very specific framework for what event attendee behavior actually tells your sales team versus what it doesn't. We put her to the test with Signal or Noise — our game where she has to call it: is this behavioral intent signal worth acting on, or is it just noise? Then she vents about the targeting mistakes that are quietly embarrassing the event industry — including one she lived through personally. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: • What actually separates a behavioral intent signal from event noise — and why context is the only variable that changes the answer • Why a cold prospect who shows up to your event and stays all day is one of the strongest re-engagement signals in your pipeline • What it means in 2026 when an existing customer brings their CFO to your owned event without telling you — and why it's almost never just a coincidence • The event targeting mistake that's making your outreach look amateur — and the exact scenario Aleksandra experienced that proves it's still everywhere • Why "thanks for stopping by" emails are quietly eroding your brand credibility with people who were never at your event ABOUT ALEKSANDRA: Aleksandra Panyukhina is the Experience Marketing Director at Pixelz, where she leads FLOW — a strategic marketing initiative combining owned flagship events, a local meetup series, community, and a podcast under one umbrella. With twelve years of experience driving event-led growth programs across five continents, she has generated millions in pipeline and closed-won revenue through experiences that go well beyond logistics. She is also a professional salsa dancer and teacher, which means she understands better than most that in any good partnership, someone has to lead. Follow Aleksandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apanyukhina/ Communities mentioned: Edge of Five — B2B marketing community Event Marketers Club — search LinkedIn Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. In the Aftershow, Aleksandra breaks down how she actually measures event attribution across a 12-month window, why she removed the word "events" from her job title, and what event teams that thrive in the next five years are already doing differently right now. Send this episode to the event marketer on your team who's been handing sales a lead list and calling it attribution. They need this one. ABOUT YOUR HOST: Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. CONNECT WITH MEGAN AND M SQUARED DYNAMICS: • Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com • Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup • Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ • Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit • TikTok: @eventaboutit

Innovation isn't invention. It's the question you stopped letting yourself ask. That's the reframe Diana Kander brings to this Event About It Aftershow, and it changes the entire game for event marketers, sales leaders, and growth teams chasing the next big idea. In this deeper-than-the-main conversation, New York Times bestselling author Diana Kander joins host Megan Martin to translate her curiosity methodology into something an event-led growth strategy team can actually implement Monday morning. If you've felt the lukewarm warning signs in your role, watched your experiment runway stretch to a full fiscal year, or quietly accepted "we've always done it this way" as a strategic direction, this Aftershow is for you. What You'll Learn Why innovation isn't a thing, it's a mindset, and how to spot the difference between real innovation and same-hat-new-box Why cameras feel scarier than comedy clubs (and what it reveals about how leaders connect) The "7 chapters" theory of career reinvention and how to use it inside an org that won't let you leave Diana's $500,000 software failure at 29 and the iteration habit she'd install in every event team today How to run event experiments year-round when your conference is twelve months away The "closet of old ideas" test that reveals whether your team is actually innovating or just relabeling The Calendar Test for curiosity (your meeting calendar reveals exactly how curious your business is) The 3 questions to ask attendees who DIDN'T come back, and why nobody on your own team should make the call The 10-emotional-moments framework for designing event experiences attendees actually remember The Curiosity Muscle (Diana Kander) - the methodology behind asking the people who left, not just the people who showed up Curious Like It's Hot - Megan Martin's question-first diagnostic for stagnant industry symptoms Reinvention Math - translating Stanford's "Designing Your Life" research into event marketing and sales leadership About Diana Kander Diana Kander is a New York Times bestselling author of All In Startup, The Curiosity Muscle, and Get Curious and Grow. A serial entrepreneur and former senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, she's spent her career helping organizations turn curiosity from a corporate value into a daily habit. She came to the U.S. as a refugee from the Soviet Union at age eight, is a Georgetown-trained attorney, and is one of the most-booked innovation and curiosity keynote speakers in the country. Connect with Diana: Website: dianakander.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianakander/ Instagram: @dianakander Diana and her husband Jason support Veterans Community Project, which builds tiny houses and wraparound services for homeless veterans. Learn more at veteranscommunityproject.org. About Your Host Keep Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit The best conversations start after the show ends, and the best ones keep going in your inbox. Subscribe to Event About It wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for the Step and Repeat newsletter at msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup. Until next time, stay curious.

The events industry has a curiosity problem. Attendees changed. Buyers changed. Metrics changed. And most of us rebooked the same hotel. This week on Event About It, New York Times bestselling author and innovation keynote speaker Diana Kander joins host Megan Martin to diagnose five stagnant event strategy problems nobody in the industry is naming out loud, and the curiosity question that breaks each one open. If you're building an event-led growth strategy, leading a marketing team, or running B2B events that need to drive measurable pipeline, this is the diagnostic you didn't know you needed. What You'll Learn Why "the biggest threat to your event isn't failure. It's the success you stopped questioning." The one question that turns flat sponsor renewals into new logo growth Why an attendee NPS of 72 every single year isn't a win, it's a warning sign How to design a day-three draw before you lose the room Why a 4.5-out-of-5 session score is the worst feedback you can get What Snoop Dogg's business model teaches the events industry about staying relevant decade after decade About Diana Kander Diana Kander is a New York Times bestselling author of All In Startup and The Curiosity Muscle, with her new book Get Curious and Grow available now. She came to the U.S. as a refugee from the Soviet Union at age eight, became a Georgetown-trained attorney, founded around ten companies, served as a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, and is one of the most-booked innovation and curiosity keynote speakers in the country. Connect with Diana: Website: dianakander.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianakander/ Instagram: @dianakander About Your Host Megan Martin is the founder of M Squared Dynamics, a consulting, facilitation, and content strategy firm helping event leaders, marketers, and sales teams turn live experiences into measurable business growth. She's the host and executive producer of Event About It, co-founder of Opportunity Hunters, and a two-time PCMA Visionary Award nominee (2022 winner). With nearly 20 years in the industry, Megan operates at the intersection of event strategy, marketing alignment, and behavioral intent signals, turning events from line items into pipeline drivers. Connect with Megan and M Squared Dynamics: Podcast: EventAboutItPodcast.com Newsletter (Step and Repeat): msquareddynamics.com/stepandrepeatsignup Consulting and strategy: msquareddynamics.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganmartincmp/ Instagram: @m2dynamics and @eventaboutit TikTok: @eventaboutit Keep the Conversation Going Subscribe to Event About It so the Aftershow lands in your feed the second it drops. Diana and Megan go deeper on why innovation isn't invention, the curiosity practice every leadership team should install tomorrow, and the three questions to actually ask the people who didn't come to your last event. Send this episode to the marketer, sales leader, or event strategist who keeps telling you their last event "went great."