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Every successful event eventually faces the same dangerous question:

“What should we add next year?”

In this episode of Destination Roadmapping, Vicky dives into the Expectation Escalation Problem, when communities stop focusing on creating a great experience and start chasing bigger, busier, and more complicated.

From overcrowded layouts and volunteer burnout to events losing their identity entirely, this episode explores why growth is not always improvement and why some festivals quietly collapse under the weight of their own success.

Importantly, Vicky doesn't just identify the problem she breaks down practical ways communities can avoid and mitigate the escalation trap by:

• improving comfort before complexity
• editing aggressively instead of endlessly expanding
• protecting the personality of the event
• building around realistic volunteer capacity
• and redefining what sustainable success actually looks like

Because sometimes the smartest thing an event can do is stop trying to outdo itself every single year.

Thanks for listening!

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