February 14, 2025
min read
Inside the Makings of Our Field Marketing Strategy
Behind the scenes of our partner-led dinner series—where event pros connect, share, and solve real challenges together.
Event strategy isn’t just about logistics. It’s about moments. The ones that stick. The ones that change how people think, plan, and connect. But too often, event professionals operate in silos—juggling deadlines, speakers, and stakeholders in isolation.
That’s why we started these dinners. No pitches, no fluff. Just real conversations with the people who live and breathe events, from the trenches to the boardroom.
A year in, and these gatherings have evolved beyond simple meetups. They’ve become a movement—a space where challenges get exposed, solutions get shaped, and event professionals finally feel like they aren’t figuring this out alone.
In this episode of our SESSIONS series, we're taking you backstage in NYC to explore the philosophy behind our partner-led dinner series for event professionals.
Here are just a few of the highlights from our this candid conversation...
Why We Started This Series
📍 [01:00] Huong Nguyen , CEO & Founder, Shiloh Event Management, Inc. :
“Event professionals are usually working in silos. They’re a team of one or two, and there aren’t a lot of resources they can truly lean on. We wanted to create a space where they could share their challenges and collectively build solutions.”
The truth is, event marketers, planners, and strategists are often flying blind. There’s no single blueprint for what works.
But there is collective wisdom—hidden inside conversations that don’t happen at typical networking events. That’s what these dinners unlock.
No slide decks. No sales pitches. Just peer-to-peer learning in its rawest form.
What We’ve Learned So Far
📍 [03:40] Bryan Funk , Event Marketing Executive In Residence, Sessionboard :
“We want to facilitate a space where deeper collaboration happens organically—where challenges surface naturally, and cross-industry solutions emerge.”
Across nine dinners in the last year, we’ve seen powerful themes emerge:
🔹 Empathy over transactions. The best solutions don’t come from selling—they come from truly understanding what event professionals face every day.
🔹 Live conversations surface the insights you won’t find anywhere else. There’s something powerful about a room full of event pros openly challenging each other’s ideas, sharing unfiltered experiences, and revealing the kinds of lessons only real conversations can unlock.
🔹 Community lasts beyond the event. Attendees have landed jobs, launched collaborations, and built lasting networks. With every dinner, the connections—and the impact—grow stronger.
How We’re Evolving the Series
📍 [05:42] Chris Carver , CEO & Co-Founder , Sessionboard :
“Last year was broad. This year, we’re going deep. Instead of general conversations, we’re tackling the entire cycle of event marketing—from narrative building to content syndication to post-event measurement.”
The goal isn’t just to talk about event challenges. It’s to extract tangible insights—insights that live beyond the dinner itself. That’s why we’re now:
✅ Refining the topics. Each dinner now dives into one critical aspect of event planning and marketing, giving attendees something truly actionable.
✅ Documenting the knowledge. We’re building an eBook series—turning these conversations into long-term resources that event professionals can access anytime.
✅ Designing for deeper connections. The guest list isn’t random. We’re intentional about who’s in the room, ensuring discussions don’t just scratch the surface.
Because these aren’t just dinners. They’re industry-shaping conversations.
The Future of Event Collaboration
📍 [09:04] Bryan Funk , Event Marketing Executive In Residence, Sessionboard :
"I’m not here to create marketing. I’m here to create value."
The event tech industry is full of loud voices. Everyone has a product. Everyone has a solution. But the real impact comes from the people doing the work, sitting down, and learning from each other.
That’s what this series is about.
When Disaster Strikes: The Conversations That Fix What Playbooks Can’t
📍 [10:00] Jonathan Kazarian , Founder & CEO , Accelevents :
“One organizer at our DC dinner shared how an intern accidentally deleted 4,000 registrants the night before their event. The whole room gasped.”
A terrifying proposition for an event organizer to deal with! But by sharing this horror story, the group was able to discuss how they tackled the challenge (manually importing all 4,000 on the fly😮) and brainstorm ways of how it could have been avoided, so that fellow organizers could be saved from such a traumatic event.
This is the power of real conversations.
Not theories. Not high-level strategy decks. The raw, unfiltered lessons from people who’ve been through it, fixed it, and are here to help others do the same.
And that's just scratching the surface of this backstage discussion!
Join the Conversation
We’re not just hosting these dinners. We’re building a learning model for the future of event strategy.
And we want you to be part of it.
💡 Want to learn more about upcoming event professional dinners in your city? Reach out to learn more: ian@sessionboard.com
📖 Want to dive deeper? Be sure to watch the full backstage discussion and stay tuned for the upcoming eBook based on these conversations.
Because the future of events doesn’t happen in silos—it happens when we bring the right people into the right room.
And we’re just getting started.😎
Special thanks to our incredible partners!
About Sessionboard
Sessionboard’s focus on continuous innovation in speaker and content management has resulted in saving organizers hundreds of hours per event while providing speakers with a streamlined, modern experience. From call for papers, abstract evaluation, awards, applications, agenda building, to speaker onboarding and communication, Sessionboard helps event organizers work smarter, move faster, and improve their ROI.
