Event Success

Acknowledgments

When we set out to write this book at the end of 2020, we were thrilled to explore the future of the industry but were also still in shock. Event professionals had done it; we'd done it: Somehow we as an industry had managed to get through one of the most difficult professional and personal years of our lives. We had seen first-hand the toll taken on our customers, our employees, and our peers. We had seen event leaders lose headcount and budget when in-person events were canceled at the beginning of the year and then fight tooth-and-claw battles to prove the value of their programs in a virtual and hybrid world.

If we're being honest, we also saw event technology companies like ours implode from a dwindling customer base or simply not innovating quickly enough to meet the demands of an unprecedented event landscape. And while we were proud that Bizzabo had weathered the transition to a hybrid world so well, we felt a bit of survivor's guilt for the companies, the teams, the vendors, and the event professionals who didn't.

Writing this book—speaking to our friends in the industry, consulting with our team members, squeezing in time amid the hustle of C-suite life to talk through a chapter, a datapoint, a trend—was a kind of therapy. It was a process of reminding ourselves of just how much opportunity there is and will be in this industry we call professional events.

With that said, we owe our most sincere thanks to Nicola Kastner, Colleen Bisconti, Monique Ruff-Bell, ...