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EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
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MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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Speed to registration is one of those event marketing moves that costs you nothing and can lift registration rates past 25% if you actually run it. Jay Schwedelson, founder of Eventastic and GURU Media Hub, hosts this solo episode, walking through the mechanics of incentivizing fast registration without leaning on discounts. He also gets into why most event marketers are leaving easy numbers on the table by sending event promos only during weekday business hours. If you run webinars, virtual events, or in-person conferences, and you're still rerunning last year's promo playbook with the year switched, queue it up.
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✅ The Topic
What's the registration-boosting move most event marketers are skipping, and why is your send schedule leaving population on the table?
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📌 What You'll Learn
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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AI can summarize your keynote in 30 seconds. So why would anyone spend four hours of their day to watch it live? On Episode 18 of Event Everything by Eventastic, host Kristin Nagle asks Brent Turner, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Solutions at Opus Agency, why participation is the answer. Brent comes at this from 15 years across digital, advertising, and live experience design. He breaks down the two questions every event leader needs to answer right now: why live, and why together. He also explains how voice interfaces and Google's AI Mode are shifting what audiences expect from a session, and what that means for the formats event leaders keep defaulting to.
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👤 Guest Bio
Brent Turner is Executive Vice President of Strategy and Solutions at Opus Agency, a global event and brand experience agency that works with companies including Salesforce, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Based in Boston, Brent moved into events about 15 years ago after a career across digital startups, advertising agencies including Ogilvy, and a stint as Chief Digital Officer at MIT. He writes about brand movements, dopamine culture, and AI's effect on event design.
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✅ The Event Question
Inspired by a recent Opus Agency post: why is the future of events participation, and why does that matter for event leaders right now?
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📌 What You'll Learn
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🎭 The Ridiculous Question
If you had to survive on one gas station food for a month, what are you choosing? Brent picks peanut M&Ms: sweet, salty, chocolate-as-dairy logic, and peanut protein. He has firmly never had the gas station hot dog.
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🔗 Links / Resources Mentioned
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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🔗 Links / Resources Mentioned
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The question driving this episode sits right at the intersection of events and revenue: where do most companies go wrong when trying to use events to generate inbound sales? Kristin Nagle brings in Stephanie Baiocchi to answer it, and the answer cuts straight to the root. Most teams, whether they're hosting, attending, or sponsoring, show up without a documented process. That means follow-up decisions get made on the spot, contacts fall through the cracks, and no one knows who to call or when.
Stephanie walks through exactly what a documented process looks like: how to label attendees, when to act, and how to tie everything from booth design to printed materials back to one clear call to action.
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👤 Guest Bio
Stephanie Baiocchi is Senior Director of Membership & Events at IMPACT, a sales and marketing coaching company built around the Endless Customers System™. She has nearly 20 years of experience in events, starting in campus activities and moving through HubSpot User Groups in Chicago to running IMPACT's sales and marketing training conference twice a year. She also serves on the Executive Board of the Ravinia Festival Associates Board.
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✅ The Event Question
Asked by Kristin Nagle.
Where do most companies go wrong when trying to use events to generate inbound sales?
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📌 What You'll Learn
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🎭 The Ridiculous Question
Kristin asked Stephanie to pick one for herself and her attendees: unlimited coffee, free snacks, or bottomless cocktails.
Stephanie chose snacks. Her reasoning: snacks keep you going, especially at a single-track, all-day event where everyone's in the same room. Kristin followed up with a tip from a previous guest: hors d'oeuvres should be two chews, max. At events, you're always mid-conversation.
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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🔗 Links / Resources Mentioned
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If you've ever been asked to host a panel or present at a conference for the first time and immediately felt the dread set in, this episode is for you. Kristin Nagle sits down with Courtney Stanley, global keynote speaker and executive presence coach, to answer the question first-time moderators wrestle with most: what's the one thing you need to know before you take the stage?
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Courtney's answer covers why nerves are completely normal (and what happens to them once you're actually up there), why memorizing every line is working against you, and how the best speakers think about their role before they ever open their mouths. It's part mental game, part preparation strategy, and part mindset shift.
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👤 Guest Bio
Courtney Stanley is a global keynote speaker, executive presence coach, and the creator and host of Dare to Interrupt, a podcast featuring influential women in the events, hospitality, and tourism industry. She is the youngest person ever elected to Meeting Professionals International's (MPI) International Board of Directors and co-founded #MeetingsToo, the industry movement to prevent sexual misconduct at events. As CEO of Courtney Stanley Consulting, LLC, she has spent over 15 years helping professionals lead more authentically and speak with genuine confidence from the stage.
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✅ The Event Question
Asked by: Kristin Nagle, Host
The question: With all of your experience, what's one tip that you'd give anyone hosting or moderating their first session?
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📌 What You'll Learn
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🎭 The Ridiculous Question
Kristin asks: What's your most hype walkout song if you could choose one every time you take the stage?
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Courtney's answer, without hesitation: "Countdown" by Beyoncé. It has a built-in countdown at the top that gets people pumped, and she loves it so much she also builds music cues into her sessions throughout. Her position: music changes everything in a live experience.
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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🔗 Links & Resources Mentioned
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Kristin Nagle sent her guest three different event questions before this episode. He said it didn't matter which one she asked, because they all have the same answer. That answer is attendee retention.
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Ken Holsinger, SVP of Industry Research & Insights at Freeman, breaks down what the data actually shows: the average year-over-year attendee retention rate across hundreds of events is 27%. Even on a three-year rolling cycle, it barely reaches the mid-thirties. Ken walks through exactly what that costs event organizers in customer acquisition dollars, why most teams don't even have retention on their dashboard, and why your post-event survey will never tell you the answer you need.
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👤 About Ken Holsinger
Ken Holsinger is the SVP of Industry Research & Insights at Freeman, the global event services and production company. He leads the teams behind the Freeman Trends Report, one of the most widely referenced research publications in the events industry. Ken sold his previous tech company to Freeman about 10 years ago, holds multiple hardware, software, and process patents, and is a frequent keynote speaker at major industry events including ECEF and PCMA Educon.
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✅ The Event Question
Kristin sent Ken three questions before recording. He said they all have the same answer. The questions: What separates events that grow consistently from the ones that plateau? What's one data point event organizers are ignoring that would completely change their strategy? How should event marketers actually be measuring success today?
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📌 What You'll Learn
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🎭 The Ridiculous Question
Would you rather have to dance every time you hear music, or sing everything you say? Ken picked singing without hesitation. Nobody wants to see him dance. What most people don't know: he was in bands in college and sang opera.
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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🔗 Links / Resources Mentioned
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Events are traditionally designed around content delivery and expected outcomes. But what happens to the actual human experience when attendees arrive stressed, overstimulated, and carrying the weight of their daily lives?
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Host Kristin Nagle tackles this exact disconnect with Yush Sztalkoper, CMP. Yush explains why attendees never arrive at an event as a blank slate.
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Listeners will hear how to shift their planning focus upstream. Yush details the high demands events place on nervous systems, from constant social interaction to context switching. By understanding the formula of demand plus capacity, event professionals can build gatherings that actually fit their audience.
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👤 Guest Bio
Yush Sztalkoper, CMP, spent 20 years directing global corporate events for Fortune 500 organizations. She recently left that career to found NeuroSpark+. Through Human Capacity Design™, Yush helps organizations recognize the invisible conditions that affect how people show up. She builds frameworks and tools, like Capacity Reflection™, that allow planners to see attendee strain clearly before making event decisions.
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✅ The Event Question
Kristin Nagle asks: "Events are often designed for content and outcomes. What gets missed about how people actually experience them?"
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📌 What You'll Learn
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🎭 The Ridiculous Question
Kristin asks: "Would you rather give up your favorite app or your favorite snack?"
Yush chooses to give up her favorite snack. She prefers keeping apps that enhance her life, specifically her own free tool, Capacity Reflection™, which helps users see their environmental demands and capacity levels.
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
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How do you design a trade show booth to actively pull people in instead of just waiting for passive foot traffic? Host Kristin Nagle asks Caitlin Book, Senior Events Manager at Backblaze, this critical question. They discuss why booth architecture is just as important as the swag on the tables. Caitlin explains the value of open floor plans and why putting up walls can subconsciously turn attendees away.
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The conversation covers specific tactics, such as pre-show sales outreach to secure meetings before the doors even open. Listeners will hear how to use gamification to encourage meaningful interactions rather than hit-and-run swag-grabbing. Caitlin also shares why training your booth staff to stay approachable is your ultimate secret weapon on the show floor.
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Guest Bio
Caitlin Book is the Senior Events Manager at Backblaze, a publicly traded cloud storage and computer backup provider. She manages all logistical aspects of global trade shows, tech conferences, and conventions with up to 50,000 attendees. With over 15 years of live production experience and an MFA in Theatre Management, Caitlin brings a highly orchestrated, audience-first approach to corporate event marketing and custom booth builds.
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The Event Question
Kristin Nagle asks: "How do you design a booth to pull people in instead of just waiting for foot traffic to go by the booths?"
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What You Will Learn
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The Ridiculous Question
The Question: What is a random skill you are weirdly proud of?
The Answer: Thanks to her background in theater and cosplay, Caitlin can fix almost any event disaster, including a collapsed booth wall, using just gaff tape, hot glue, and safety pins from her handy stage manager kit.
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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🔗 Links / Resources Mentioned
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What makes a global event community actually stick? Host Kristin Nagle asks exactly that to kick things off. Creating a space where people want to connect requires more than just launching a platform. Listeners will find out why forcing engagement never works and what organizers should do instead to build loyalty.
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Ksenija (Martinec) Polla, CMP, CICE, brings over three decades of international event experience to the conversation. She explains the essential elements required to build a group that lasts. Ksenija shares why associations are in a great position to facilitate knowledge sharing. She also details the importance of setting basic rules of engagement to keep digital and physical spaces respectful.
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👤 Guest Bio
Ksenija (Martinec) Polla, CMP, CICE, is the Director of International Development at Talley, an association management company and professional congress organizer. She holds nearly 30 years of global event experience. Ksenija started her career at a convention bureau in Croatia before spending 27 years with the International Congress and Convention Association in Amsterdam. She specializes in strategic partnerships, multicultural event management, and building long-lasting association communities globally.
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✅ The Event Question
Host Kristin Nagle asks: "You've been a major part of building global event communities. What do you think makes a community actually stick?"
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📌 What You'll Learn
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🎭 The Ridiculous Question
Question: "If you could live in any TV show or movie, what would it be?"
Answer: Ksenija chose the crime thriller The Blacklist because she is currently binge-watching it with her son, noting that the show's ridiculous premise makes it highly entertaining.
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
What is one event activation that every brand should be doing? Host Kristin Nagle asks this exact question to find out how to grab an audience's attention. David Adler shares a historical example involving a high society party designed exclusively for dogs. He explains why bringing pets into the picture creates the ultimate democratizing experience with massive retention rates.
Kristin and David also discuss the neuroscience behind event music. They explore why combining a DJ with a live drummer wakes up the brain and brings energy to a room. Finally, they cover the logistics of event food, including David's strict rules for hors d'oeuvres and his thoughts on the mashed potato bar.
David Adler is the Chairman and Founder of BizBash, the largest business-to-business media property for event professionals. He started the platform in 2000 to give event organizers a central hub for commerce, content, and community. Before his landmark venture into the event space, David held significant corporate communications roles at Primedia and Macmillan Inc. Today, he operates as an independent observer, keynote speaker, and the curator in chief of GatheringPoint.news. Connect with David on LinkedIn.
Check out the ‘People’ section from Small Bite Architecture to see some of your favorite Event Pros personalized as hors d'oeuvres! https://smallbitearchitectutr.lovable.app/people
Kristin Nagle asks: "What is one event activation you have seen recently that made you stop and say every brand should be doing this?"
Kristin asks: "If you had a theme song for your career or your life, what would it be?"
David says his song is "Life on the Other End of a Toothpick," a custom track he is writing on Suno. He also notes that his stage walk-on song would be "Eye of the Tiger."
EVENTASTIC Conference registration is now OPEN! The world's largest event about EVENTS!
Free + Virtual! Save your spot! https://www.eventastic.com/
ㅤ
MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Cvent!!
Cvent is an event marketing and management platform designed to help you plan, promote, and measure your events all in one place - whether they’re virtual, in-person, or hybrid.
Regardless of your size, check out Cvent today to get the tools you need to run smarter, more effective events.
Check out more at cvent.com/Jay
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Your email bounce database is actually gold, and ignoring it is a big mistake. Jay Schwedelson shares why bounced emails are not just contacts to remove, but a signal that a company still sees value in your event, even if the person behind that address is gone. The move is to take your bounce database, pull the domains and companies, and turn them into a targeting file for paid social media, prospect email, and direct mail campaigns. For sponsorships and exhibits, bounced addresses should go straight to your salespeople, BDRs, and SDRs so they can find who took that spot and who needs to be contacted now.
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📌 What You’ll Learn
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