Most events claim to be about business, but fewer than 10% of sessions actually deliver on it — and Julius Solaris has the research to prove it.

Julius Solaris is the founder of BoldPush, a newsletter, community, and consultancy focused on the events industry. He previously founded and sold EventMB (2019) and has worked inside major event-tech platforms including Hopin. In this episode, he and Tim Arthur dig into why business events keep drifting toward entertainment, what experience design research actually shows about connection vs. content, and how the smartest conferences are rethinking what happens after the room empties.

What You'll Learn

• Business-first design: The highest-revenue events (earning $40–50M) use wellness activations and community moments as wrapping, but intentional, facilitated business-making on the show floor remains the core.
• Content vs. connection: New research from BoldPush and Encore shows that connection now outranks content as the primary reason attendees value events, but content is rising again, specifically in the form of hands-on learning.
• The masterclass boom: Workshops and masterclasses are selling out immediately at events Julius advises, while traditional keynote formats are consistently failing to satisfy the demand for deep learning.
• Post-event content strategy: Salesforce attributes 32% of Dreamforce revenue to content generated at the event, and their on-site studio-and-host model is becoming a benchmark for how to turn sessions into durable assets.
• Consumption design: A five-and-a-half-hour online event Julius produced had attendees requesting the recording, but the real move was chopping it into per-session chapters so people could navigate to what they actually wanted.
• Hybrid's unfinished business: Post-2022 inflation and the return of in-person demand effectively killed the hybrid investment cycle, leaving PTZ camera deployments and remote-direction workflows underdeveloped before they could mature.
• Hallway track is a planning failure: Julius pushes back on the romanticized 'hallway track': when a conference builds no structured connection moments, the coffee-line serendipity it relies on is a symptom of poor planning, not a feature.
• Hopin's strategic miscalculation: When Hopin pivoted fully virtual and let go of in-person staff, Julius argues the company forfeited what could have been a viable hybrid integration path at exactly the wrong moment.

Time-Stamped Highlights

• (00:00) Julius's background: EventMB, Hopin, and BoldPush
• (02:43) Favorite conferences and what makes them work
• (05:10) Why business events drift toward entertainment
• (11:03) Content vs. connection: new research with Encore
• (12:20) The masterclass and workshop surge
• (13:35) Keynote rooms: why day-two attendance collapses
• (16:31) Post-event content: who's doing it well
• (19:02) Salesforce Plus and the 32% revenue figure
• (21:45) Making five hours of content consumable
• (24:01) Session booking, no-show rates, and overflow screens
• (27:58) The hybrid window: what got missed after 2022
• (28:19) PTZ cameras, remote direction, and what's still possible
• (29:59) Hopin's pivot and what it got wrong

Guest Bio
Julius Solaris is the founder of BoldPush, a newsletter, community, and consulting practice dedicated to the events industry. He previously founded and sold EventMB, a leading events-industry publication, in 2019, and held a senior role at Hopin during the pandemic-era virtual events surge. He speaks and consults globally at the intersection of event strategy, innovation, and technology.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliussolaris/ | Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tojulius/ | X: https://x.com/tojulius | BoldPush: https://boldpush.com/

About the Podcast
Eventapalooza is a podcast hosted by Tim Arthur covering the strategies, technologies, and people shaping the live events industry. Each episode features practitioners and industry analysts offering ground-level perspective on what's actually working.

Host Bio
Tim Arthur is a film and video production professional with 20+ years of experience producing content across global markets. He brings a background in marketing, technology, production, and event coordination to each conversation, with a focus on helping clients increase reach and value through creative production.

The best events don't fight the setting — they let it do the work.

Bill Mulligan is a Berlin-based tech professional, run club captain, and former research scientist with a master's from Oxford. In this episode, he shares his favorite event he's ever produced: a Harry Potter-themed ball at Oxford, planned while he was a student, complete with butterbeer, mandrake cakes, and 200 attendees in a former monastery. The conversation moves from Oxford to Berlin, covering how he applies the same location-first philosophy to weekly run club events and graffiti-themed experiences across the city.

What You'll Learn

• Venue as theme engine: The physical setting of your event should drive your concept, not the other way around.
• Built-in atmosphere: Spaces with existing character — a monastery, a Berlin club, a graffiti-covered street — reduce the decorative work you have to do.
• Stakeholder buy-in: When you give vendors and volunteers a clear theme, they often take initiative beyond your expectations, as the catering team did with Harry Potter food.
• The operator mindset: The event lead rarely gets to enjoy the event the way attendees do — lean into your backstage role rather than fighting it.
• Recurring events build community: Running a 200-person weekly event in Berlin has given Bill a living laboratory for what makes people show up consistently.
• Street art as event content: Integrating city history and public art into an event structure creates stops, conversations, and meaning that a venue alone cannot provide.
• Ephemeral moments have value: Not every event needs a highlight reel — some of the most memorable experiences exist only as personal memory.

Time-Stamped Highlights

• (00:00) Introduction: Bill Mulligan's background
• (00:47) Research scientist to tech: a nonlinear career
• (01:25) What it means to be a run club captain in Berlin
• (02:00) Favorite event: the Harry Potter ball at Oxford
• (03:04) The venue — a former Oxford monastery as a natural setting
• (03:35) Decorations, house colors, and the catering team's initiative
• (03:56) Butterbeer, mandrake cakes, and going all the way on a theme
• (04:27) Dressing as Dobby: the operator's relationship to their own event
• (05:10) "On the cusp of social media" — why there are almost no photos
• (06:02) The one photo that survived: Dobby, duct tape, and the college master
• (07:01) Berlin as a different kind of setting: graffiti, clubs, and grit
• (08:04) The graffiti run: integrating street art history into a movement event
• (09:03) Berlin's first street art museum and the living nature of public art
• (09:33) Wrap-up and Amsterdam meetup

Guest bio Bill Mulligan is a Berlin-based tech professional and run club captain with a background spanning social science research and event production. He holds a master's degree from Oxford, where he chaired the college ball. Connect with him on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bamulligan.

About the Podcast Eventapalooza is a podcast exploring what makes live events work — from production and logistics to the ideas, people, and places that bring them to life. Host Tim Arthur speaks with event stakeholders, producers, and creatives about the moments that define their craft.

Host bio Tim Arthur is a film and video production professional with 20+ years of experience producing content around the globe. His background spans marketing, technology, production, and event coordination. He hosts Eventapalooza to connect event professionals with stories and insights from across the industry.

Most events are planned. A few are designed — and the difference shows up in how people move through a room.

Mallory Gott — co-owner of a Las Vegas restaurant and newly appointed executive director of the Nevada Psychology Association — brings a background in adult education and event strategy to this conversation. We cover what separates experience design from execution-focused event planning, drawing on two case studies: a contemporary African art fair in Marrakesh that used the city itself as infrastructure, and a Chicago regional conference that treated a single open convention hall as a multi-session learning environment.

What You'll Learn

• Citywide programming: Using a city's distinct architecture and cultural history as event infrastructure — rather than a backdrop — creates experiences that aren't replicable in a generic hotel ballroom.
• Early-stage access: Emerging events at scale give attendees proximity to artists, speakers, and gallery owners that becomes structurally impossible once the event matures and prices out general attendees.
• Open-plan learning design: Placing concurrent sessions in a single open hall, with deliberate sound design and physical demarcation, can produce organic audience movement that forces-free interaction couldn't replicate.
• Sound as session boundary: Managing audio bleed in multi-session spaces requires more planning investment than vendors typically expect — and under-specifying it turns a creative concept into a disaster.
• Curiosity as a design outcome: Ambient energy from adjacent sessions — applause, laughter, a rising hum — pulls in attendees who would never have entered a closed session room.
• Content extension strategy: Short-form clips and soundbites extracted from recorded sessions are more effective marketing assets than full recordings that get uploaded and ignored.
• Recording ROI: When production costs are already paid, not extracting short-form social and email content from that footage is a missed monetization and engagement opportunity.
• Experience vs. execution: Large-scale conferences often optimize for efficient execution at lowest cost; the events that stay with attendees are the ones where the producer had latitude to design for the full sensory and learning experience.

Time-Stamped Highlights 

• (00:00) Introduction — Mallory's background: restaurant, new executive director role
• (00:46) Favorite attended event: 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Marrakesh
• (05:00) How 1-54 used the city — Yves Saint Laurent compound, local architecture
• (09:42) The access equation: why emerging events give you proximity big fairs don't
• (13:34) Photographer Hasan Hizaj — buying prints, meeting artists
• (16:40) How 1-54 could extend the experience: evergreen content and the Architectural Digest model
• (17:08) Pivot to: Mallory's favorite event produced — Chicago regional association conference
• (18:54) Open-hall multi-session design — physical space as learning architecture
• (23:21) Sound design as session boundary — advocating with vendors
• (24:29) Ambient curiosity: how laughter and applause pulled in unplanned attendees
• (26:34) Content extension: what she'd do differently today with shorts and AI-assisted editing
• (29:10) The difference between experience design and event planning
• (31:09) Closing and Vegas restaurant invitation

Guest bio Mallory Gott is co-owner and co-founder of Winnie & Ethel's, a restaurant in Las Vegas opened in October 2023 following a competition win. She recently began serving as executive director of the Nevada Psychology Association and holds a background in adult education and large-scale event strategy. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mallorygott | Restaurant: winnieandethels.com

About the podcast Eventapalooza is a podcast about what makes events memorable, featuring conversations with planners, producers, and attendees on the design decisions that separate forgettable gatherings from lasting experiences.

Host bio Tim Arthur is a film and video production professional with 20+ years of experience producing content around the globe. His background spans marketing, technology, production, and event coordination. He approaches each project with a focus on increasing reach and value through creative, discerning production work.

Face-to-face events are still the most powerful tool for trust-building in technical communities — but only if you design them that way.

Brandon Wick, head of marketing at NetActuate, has been running and attending technology events for 20 years — including large open source summits under the Linux Foundation umbrella. In this episode, he and host Tim Arthur dig into the specific choices that made the OPNFV Summit in Berlin a standout event, what it takes to welcome new community members at scale, and how recorded and streamed content extends the value of a live event long after the venue clears out.

What You'll Learn

• Hallway track design: The conversations between sessions are often the most valuable part of an event, and they require intentional setup from organizers, not just scheduling gaps.
• Welcome mat strategy: Open source communities become closed by default unless organizers actively communicate inclusivity — from registration copy to on-site accessibility and food options.
• Thematic coherence: Tying an event's branding, swag, and programming to a single theme (in this case, the Euro football championships) meaningfully increases attendee engagement and memorability.
• Content extension: Recording and archiving session videos turns a single event into an evergreen content pipeline for community onboarding and sponsor visibility.
• In-person trust compounding: Communities that hold excellent in-person events see measurable improvement in members' willingness to communicate and collaborate online in the months that follow.
• Competitor collaboration: Open source events bring competing companies together under a shared mission; that framing — the project logo, not the employer — is worth designing around explicitly.
• Incident response: Something will go wrong at every event; the professional response is calm acknowledgment and a process improvement, not visible panic.
• AV as infrastructure: High-quality audio and video support isn't a production luxury — it's what makes content reusable and makes attendees feel the event was worth their time.

Time-Stamped Highlights

• (00:01:06) Brandon Wick's background: 20 years of technology marketing and events
• (00:02:05) What NetActuate does and why edge infrastructure matters
• (00:03:18) Picking a favorite: the OPNFV Summit in Berlin
• (00:04:53) The Euro football championship tie-in and the scarf swag strategy
• (00:06:43) Heather's keynote and the "name on the front of the jersey" moment
• (00:08:27) Community composition: AT&T, Verizon, and competitors building together
• (00:11:11) How recording and streaming extended the summit's reach
• (00:12:26) Onboarding new community members: welcome guides, get-started paths, and event framing
• (00:13:54) The hallway track: making the in-between time work
• (00:15:31) Managing the slide deck glitch — calm under pressure
• (00:17:42) Why face-to-face still drives measurable community morale
• (00:18:24) The Linux Foundation founder's framing: "we're in the relationship business"

Guest bio Brandon Wick is Head of Marketing at NetActuate, a global edge infrastructure and networking services company operating in 45+ locations worldwide. He has spent 20 years in technology marketing with events — both attending and producing — as a core part of his work, including multiple years supporting Linux Foundation open source summits. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-wick | Company: netactuate.com

About the Podcast The Eventapalooza Podcast is a show for event professionals, producers, and community builders exploring what makes live and hybrid events work — from strategy and design to AV execution and content reuse. Hosted by Tim Arthur, produced with support from E3 Webcasting.

Host bio Tim Arthur is a film and video production professional with 20+ years of experience producing video across the globe. His background spans marketing, technology, production, and event coordination, with a focus on helping organizations increase reach and value through high-quality production. He is the founder of The Eventapalooza Podcast and works with clients including E3 Webcasting.

Most conferences are optimized for the wrong thing — and the people running them know it.

 Adam Cuppy is a technologist, speaker, and event organizer who has served on the organizing committees for RailsConf and RubyConf, planned franchise culture events at Dutch Bros Coffee, and currently works as a Chief Product and Technology Officer. This conversation covers what actually drives conference attendance, why over-scheduling kills engagement, and how AI is reshaping both the software industry and our relationship to screens.

What You'll Learn

• Hallway track: The networking and informal connection that happens between sessions is often the primary reason people attend conferences, not the content on stage.
• Over-scheduling: Filling every minute of a conference schedule creates the illusion of value while ignoring what attendees actually want from being in the room together.
• Post-lunch attendance: Roughly 10–20% of attendees skip sessions after lunch — placing critical content in that slot is a predictable failure mode.
• Speaker craft: A 30-minute talk can only implant one concrete idea effectively; trying to teach a broad skill in that window results in a spoken blog post.
• Physical activation: Getting attendees on their feet — even with a simple "stand up if" exercise — measurably improves engagement and post-event reviews.
• Sponsored tracks: Separating sponsor presentations into their own track creates a counterintuitive incentive for sponsors to produce higher-quality content.
• AI and thought workers: The surface-level impression that AI eliminates the need for skilled practitioners misses how deeply conceptual and experiential expertise still determines quality outcomes.
• AI and analog culture: Widespread AI-generated content is paradoxically driving a cultural pull back toward offline, analog experience — especially for parents concerned about what their children encounter online.

Time-Stamped Highlights

• (00:00:00) Introduction — Adam's background in events and acting
• (00:06:33) Dutch Bros franchise events and culture-driven gatherings
• (00:08:21) RailsConf, RubyConf, and organizing a track of 550 submissions
• (00:17:27) The Australian conference that closed down a theme park
• (00:12:27) Why the hallway track is the real conference
• (00:14:18) How much can you actually learn in 30 minutes?
• (00:20:04) The sponsored track model and why it produces better content
• (00:29:04) AI as a tool for understanding, not just generating
• (00:27:27) Why thought workers are the most at risk from AI displacement
• (00:30:10) Camera auto-tracking and AI quality control in event production
• (00:35:05) The physics of engagement: get people out of their chairs
• (00:36:42) The weakest slots in a conference schedule — and what to do about them
• (00:37:42) The "stand up if" technique from theater games
• (00:34:43) Closing thoughts: knowing why people are really there

Guest bio Adam Cuppy is a Chief Product and Technology Officer, speaker, and longtime open-source community organizer who served on the Ruby Central organizing committee for RailsConf and RubyConf, previously led marketing at Dutch Bros Coffee, and co-founded a design-for-developers conference in Medford, Oregon. Find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/adamcuppy and on Instagram at @onelungdown.

Sponsor: E3 Webcasting — E3 Webcasting helps event producers, associations, and organizations broadcast, stream, and record live events with professional-grade reliability. From hybrid conferences to virtual summits, they handle the technical production so your content reaches every attendee — in the room and online. Learn more at e3webcasting.com.

Host bio Tim Arthur is a film and video production professional with 20+ years of experience producing content globally, with a background spanning marketing, technology, production, and event coordination. He approaches each project with a focus on increasing client reach and value through creative, discerning production. Tim is the founder of E3 Webcasting (e3webcasting.com).