Latest / PCMA Convene Podcast / Convene Talk: The Stories We Loved in 2025: Fast Tracks, Inclusive Awards, Accessibility Wins and Everyday Work Joy
Transcript
- Convene Talk, ep. 88/November 28, 2025 *Note: the transcript is AI generated, excuse typos and inaccuracies Magdalina Atanassova: This is the Convene Podcast. Welcome to another Convene Talk. Jen, go ahead and introduce today's topic, please. Jennifer N. Dienst: Thanks, Maggie. Sure. So I thought it would be kind of fun and interesting, now that we're getting towards the end of the year, to just kind of look back at some of our favorite story that we've written in 2025. Would love to. What you all are particularly proud of, or maybe it was a story that was illuminating for you or unexpectedly interesting for you. I'm just curious to know what stood out to y' all in this past year in terms of the stories that you've worked on. So I'll kick it off with two of mine. I kind of couldn't choose between these two, so I'm just gonna highlight both of them. The first was a story I wrote. It was an innovative meetings column and it was about Fast annual event. So they have a festival that they do every year in New York and they do something called Fast Tracks. And I just think it's a really cool. Sorry, this is Fast Company's Innovation Festival. That's the official name. And they do something called Fast Tracks, which I heard about through a good friend of mine who is an event professional. She owns her own events company here in Charleston and she raved about this. She goes every year, she like Scottish schedules it, puts it in her calendar, puts aside money in her budget because she thinks it's just one of the coolest events that she's ever been to. And she goes to a lot of them and plans a lot of them. So I was like, all right, well, tell me more. So basically, these Fast Tracks are kind of like a choose your own adventure type of a deal, which, if any, all. Remember those books? I was a kid when those were around and I really, really loved them. So immediately when she said choose your own adventure or sorry, this is actually Kristen Mooney's, the senior vice president of events for AM and Fast Company. That was the way she described Fast Tracks is choose your own adventure. And I was like, okay, that's perfect. So basically they have for the Fast Tracks, which are more than 60 educational sessions, workshops and experiences that are kind of sprinkled throughout New York City over this four day festival. So attendees essentially can choose their own adventure for their schedule and choose from all these educational sessions. And basically New York City becomes their convention center in a way. These Fast Tracks are hosted by companies in their own spaces. So a few examples of those that I think are pretty cool. Brompton Bikes, which is this very high End high design foldable bike company. Attendees had a chance to do bike tour around Manhattan and go to the store. The idea behind these Fast Tracks is to kind of expose attendees to companies that are doing interesting and cool things. Because if you're familiar with Fast Company, that's kind of what their brand and their magazine is all about. Another cool example was Diane von Furstenberg, which, if you're familiar with a fashion designer who kind of was famous in the 70s for her wrap dresses, she held a Q and A in the Meatpacking District. And then another one was Tony's Chocoloney, which was a company that makes candy bars. And they had a food truck and brought attendees into their Canal street offices for a conversation with the chief branding officer and members of their team. And I think that's kind of what's interesting about these Fast tracks is part of. Part of it is that, you know, these companies have to be willing to bring in their own staff and offer up their own spaces to host these events. And it's a way for attendees to experience the brand, but also get up close to the brand and hear from the people that, you know, maybe they've followed throughout their career or have heard about. Like, you know, in Diana Van Furstenberg's case, you know, she's pretty famous, and that's, I think, a big part of the draw of this event. So, anyway, give this story a read. I had a really great time talking to Kristen Mooney, who kind of explained how they bring that together and how logistically they plan this, because there's a lot that goes into it. But I just thought it was such an interesting and cool example of an event, especially for a media company. Media companies right now aren't always doing very well. I think every other day I see or hear about another magazine seen that's folding. But this is a great example of a media company that has diversified the ways that it gets income, and it's been really successful. The event has been a really successful extension of their brand. And I'll quickly just touch on another story that was also my favorite. Another cool brand, REI. I got to write about how their internal employee events are doing some really cool things when it comes to DEI and inclusivity and how they're kind of really doubling down on DEI. They're not shying away from it like a lot of companies are right now. Just with the atmosphere that we've seen come about in the past year with the new administration, I had the chance to interview Deanna Nwasu, who is Program manager of the Employee Events and communications at REI, along with Beth Cohen, who is REI's senior project manager of Employee events. And they shared some of the cool things that they're doing at their annual Awards event, which is like their big employee recognition event that they do every year. So I just thought there were some really great ideas that were shared in this story. They were really forthcoming about, you know, how they're recognizing employees at their events. Some cool ways they're bringing kind of those that brand ethos. If you know rei, you know that, you know, they're big on sustainability, they're big on inclusivity, and they really, really try to walk the talk. So anyways, we'll link those stories in the show notes, but I'll stop talking because I've been going on. But I'm curious to know what were Y’alls favorite stories. Michelle, let's kick it off with you. Michelle Russell: Oh, thanks, Jen. What I love about the two examples you shared are how they're so on brand with their events. Right. And I think that's something that we try to do a lot in convene is to give ideas that show how certain organizations or companies execute on events in a way that is very aligned with their brand, their mission. So I love innovative meetings. That's a regular series in the magazine because I think those are really great opportunities to talk to planners, to ask them what initiatives they put in place at their events that I think all different kinds of events can get inspiration from. So two that I worked on that I really liked this year. One is how the American College of Lifestyle Medicine puts on their event, which is for physicians who are all about wellness and how that influences your health. So they do very simple things that I think can easily be replicated. One is to have a plant predominantly food menu because that's healthier for you. Also healthier for the environment. They are not big on drinking alcohol, so they have a lot of mocktails. Physical fitness is really important, so they make sure that they have activities to do, either like yoga sessions or my favorite thing is the walk with a doc, which is where they have a doctor who picks a topic and says, I'm walking around the campus or wherever the event is being held for a 20 minute walk on this topic. You're welcome to join me. And people just go outside and they have conversations. And time spent outdoors is very important to our health. So that is part of that. The other one that I really enjoyed working on was how one medical association, the American Society of Cataract and refractive surgery took a very kind of formal award ceremony and really took the stiffness out of it and made it more of a opportunity instead of sitting and listening to somebody get an award. And this somebody in this field would be a physician who has, you know, expertise in a particular area, who is recognized by the profession, and having them be in a more casual environment, like a. They call it a bar kind of situation on the exhibit floor at the Tap Room where people can come and actually talk to these people, these mentors in the industry. And this comes from research that Freeman has done which says that people, attendees want to have opportunities to talk to people they admire in the industry rather than just sit back passively and see them receive an award. A lot of them said that was just a boring experience for them. But to be able to actually talk to somebody and ask about their career path is much more interesting and obviously more interactive. So those are just two that I thought of. Obviously, I'm proud of all the work that we. We do throughout the year as a team and provide to the industry. But I particularly like when we have really concrete examples that other planners can learn from and hopefully get inspiration for their own events. Barbara, what are you thinking? Barbara Palmer: You know, I'm thinking about the last example you gave about how participants at meetings want opportunities to interact with the people that are speaking and who are bringing knowledge. And it made me think about a story that just recently was posted on our website and was in, I think, our newsletter today. And it was a conference about conferences. And it was put on by Jenny Sauerklein, who is an entrepreneur who created something called the Culture Conference. But she works with a lot of technology companies as a consultant. And she did this. This was the first time ever, and it was experimental. And what she endeavored to do is just reinvent sessions and like a main stage session. She said she wanted to bring the feeling of an experiential workshop onto the main stage. And some of the ways that she did it is everything was very short. The longest thing was 20 minutes. And she just tried to reinvent every format. So Chris Galabeau, who founded the World Domination Summit, which was extremely successful, and now went on to the Neurodiversion 2025, he was fireside chat with Jenny, and at the end of that, she had a bull. She played truth or dare with him. So she just had bowls of, you know, she said they were carefully curated to be professionally appropriate. Just ended with, you know, and he chose a different dare to spell out the Alphabet with his body is what he chose. And then he invited Jenny to join. But it was just. They just had lots of fun and the speakers were there all day and participated in the. In the events as like, fully participated in the workshops. And they also left their. They left technology. They just took a few steps back from technology. You know, I'm going to briefly talk about the story that for me, I love it when a story goes someplace different than you think. And Jen had alerted us to the fact that earlier this year there was a TikTok video that was very critical of the. The way that the. And I'm sorry, I'm going to pull this up. The National Federation of the Blind conference was going in New Orleans. The TikTok creator and friends had just happened by where they were, where the conference was going to begin the next day, and noticed long lines of people with white canes, blind people standing in line, and were pretty outraged that they didn't have enough assistance. And they posted that, you know, they just were posted very. They were outraged. There were no braille menus. They said there was nobody to help them to their rooms. There was somebody outside that seemed to be lost. And they felt like the. The conference organizer and the hotel were not doing a very good job taking care of their guests. And so I called Chris Danielson, who is the editor of their magazine and also a spokesperson for them. And I thought I was going to ask him. I thought we were going to be talking about social media management. I wanted to say, what did you do? Did you see this and what did you do? And I was really so impressed by the decision that they made, is really to just be really generous with the lack of education around what blind people need. Which he extended to the content creator, which I thought was really smart and effective, because he said, you know, it just shows that people. You don't really know what blind people need. And Chris himself is a blind person, so he could speak directly to this. And he just really, what I liked about it too, is it was an opportunity to just then say, well, what's the most important thing that organizers can do? And he said, the most important thing are the web content accessibility guidelines to make sure that the information about your event can be accessed by the technology that blind people use to. To understand what's on the Internet. And I also, I guess the. The last little kind of bow on the top of the story was that I asked him about our content and I said, you know, don't hold back. When I sent him a link to the story, I said, Please don't hold back. How are we doing? And he said, great, no problem. So I think the less some of the lessons to me where we're always talking about like, don't talk around people. Like if you want, you know, I do feel like this was maybe the first conversation I had with a blind person who organized conferences with other blind people for blind people. So that's the source of information. So I really learned a lot from him. Not just about accessibility, but kind of an attitude towards taking a beat and expanding the lens a little bit and understanding that, you know, this lack of education extends to lots of people. So Kate, what are you, what are you thinking about? Kate Mulcrone: I will close us out by talking about a story I wrote over the summer for the Raise newsletter, which in case you're not familiar, that's our newsletter for career development. And the title of the story is Can Work Be Fun? And it's an interview I did with a business consultant and speaker named Bree Groff. And she wrote a book. The title of the book is Today was Fun Book about Work. And it really was just infusing her personal story with all of her various stints as consultant for a big company, small company, really every kind of company. She was, she worked with Calvin Klein, she worked with the government. She really is one of those sort of like a meeting planner, someone who has experience working with all kinds of folks. The reason that this is my favorite story though is just that it speaks to the part of event planning that is the marathon before the event. Everything that is just the day to day that no one ever sees but you. And I feel like in this book and then in the article I wrote about it, I really able to pull out actionable strategies that are just little like work hacks. For one thing she talks about is finding a cozy teammate at work that's just like the person you can complain to or the person that you can be like, I'm really behind today, I don't know what I'm going to do. And they cheer you up. And I mean it's not something that speaks to the public facing side of event planning, which is what people think about an event planner doing, ordering food, telling people what to do, telling someone where to set up equipment. But the like 300 days a year when you're not on site at an event and that like you can kind of feel that the work you're doing isn't being seen. And I just think that all of us, whatever our job is, we need more strategies for just the normal days at work. Magdalina Atanassova: I love that. Well, thank you all for sharing some of, I can say some of your best work and some of the stories that you shared are definitely some of my favorite stories from the magazine this year. So yeah, yay two, great work. And I have to say we are not done. We still have the December issue coming. So for those of our listeners, you know, waiting for what's next, we have something very exciting coming. Very, very big issues. Wow. I have to say that we're really working through. So it's coming soon. Coming soon. Thank you. Barbara Palmer: Speaking of marathons. Yes. Magdalina Atanassova: We're also doing marathons. Barbara Palmer: Right. Thank you so much. It was fun to hear you all talk about your work. Magdalina Atanassova: Remember to subscribe to the Convene Podcast on your favorite listening platform to stay updated with our latest episodes. For further industry insights from the Convene team, head over to PCMA.org/convene. My name is Maggie. Stay inspired. Keep inspiring. And until next time.