Conference News: Meeting in Morocco; Financial Times’ Forum Focus; SWE CFP
Out of Africa: Last year Bloomberg announced its New Economy Gateway series of events, hosting the first one in Panama during the spring of 2022. This year, they are expanding further with a Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Africa conference, in partnership with the Kingdom of Morocco. It will be held in Marrakesh on 13 – 14 June 2023. According to the official announcement, the event “will put a special focus on sustainability and resilience, issues critical to the future of every country.”
Time off of Work: Financial Times Live will not be holding its Future of Work Summits in 2023 as they found there were so many other conferences covering this important topic. FT will instead offer webinars and papers on with tips on how best to manage a workforce through these economic times. They will also include panels on this topic within their industry specific conferences such as Future of the Car and Future of Retail.
Submission Opportunity: As one of the larger events that convenes women in technology and engineering, Society of Women Engineers/SWE Annual Conference (26-28 October; Los Angeles & online) is currently accepting speaker and topic proposals. Roughly 16,000 professionals in engineering and tech attend across SWE’s in-person and virtual programs, seeking intermediate and advanced-level content that offers “information on how to apply session content to their work and lives.” To be considered for one of the three session formats – including 45- or 20-min presentations and 1-hour panels – interested speakers should review the guidelines and submit before the deadline on Tuesday 14 March.
Conference Manager Q&A: Jason Hasenberg is Director of Audience Development of Ascent Conference. As we mentioned in last week’s newsletter, Ascent is hosting a Summit in California for the first time this spring. We caught up with Jason to find out what else is new this year and to pick his brain on speakers and topics.
Speaker Strategies: Are you doing anything different with the conference format or agenda this year at Ascent Conference or Summit?
Due to significant demand from our most loyal attendees, we decided to add a Finance component to our in-person events this year. The first floor will consist of the Go-to-Market (GTM) stage for marketers and sales leaders. The Finance stage will be on the second floor of the event so that CFOs, VPs of Finance, and Directors of Finance can network together. This separation allows our audience to navigate the event efficiently and makes networking almost seamless.
Speaker Strategies: What is the most important trait of a good speaker and which topics resonate best with your audience?
The most important trait of a good speaker is the ability to tell a story. Audiences show up for insights, but they stay for the stories. Told well, stories can be the key to a compelling presentation that excites, energizes, and truly engages the people. We target very specific audience at Ascent events – attendees must be a Director, VP, or C-Level leader at a company doing 20m – 1bn ARR. So the topics that resonate the most with our audience are those focused on Efficiency, Growth, and SaaS.
Coming Up Next Week: The theme for this year’s DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit will be “The Long Game,” inviting the interactive entertainment audience to “create long lasting art and entertainment, nurture positive culture and communities, and always work toward a better tomorrow while making the most of today.” DICE 2023 runs 21-24 February at Resorts World Las Vegas. The Mobile Growth Association’s 2023 flagship event is also held in Las Vegas next week, scheduled for 22-25 February. Mobile Growth Summit covers such topics as monetization, UA, retention, ASO, fraud, payment processing, mWeb3, and NFTs. The 25th annual Vancouver International Privacy & Security Summit gets underway 22 February, an in-person summit for 750 security and privacy professionals from around the world to discuss important issues on how we securely live, work, and play as the move to digital platforms accelerates. The Association of National Advertisers/ANA, through the Global CMO Growth Council, will produce an online DEIB Day – A Global Day of Learning Event, for an industry-wide collective knowledge exchange around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging on 22 February. And last but not least, HCI’s Workforce Planning: Forecast Future Skills & Gaps virtual program also runs 22 February, featuring leaders from BNY Mellon, Kimberly-Clark, and Lockheed Martin.