Start the day connecting with peers as the room fills and energy builds.

This high-energy, opening keynote by Sunjay Nath delivers a clear framework to help individuals and teams focus on what drives the greatest results. The 10-80-10 Principle teaches how to identify and amplify high-impact behaviours while minimizing the actions that limit performance.

Designed for real-world application, this program helps professionals shift their energy toward what truly moves the needle—improving productivity, clarity, and overall effectiveness in fast-paced environments like events. Sunjay’s session gives you a real pathway to:

• Focus on high-value activities that drive results
• Improve team alignment and performance
• Build stronger, more engaged and resilient teams

For event professionals under constant pressure, with tight timelines and high expectations, this session offers a mindset shift to help lead more effectively, reduce stress, and operate at a higher level.

We’re talking about pricing, profit, and financial power in our industry. This is a candid, high-impact conversation using audience polling to drive the dialogue about building events and businesses that are not only creatively fulfilling but financially sustainable.

We’ll unpack the models, margins, and mindsets that shape how our work is valued, sold, and delivered — and explore why there is still so much disparity in pricing, pay, equity, and cost-per-service models that makes it almost impossible to compare apples to apples when selling and buying event services.

Expect honest perspective, practical insight, and a more empowering way to think about money, leverage, and long-term success in this business.

Experience the excitement as the CSE Live show floor comes to life! Explore innovative exhibits, sample fabulous catering by Toronto’s top chefs and pop-ups, network with industry pros, and discover game-changing solutions to elevate your event success.

Schedule: 10:30 am to 4:30 pm

One of the greatest shifts impacting brands and events today is underway. Most businesses haven’t caught up. But many of your consumers are already there.

Humans are no longer the sole drivers of brand selection. Purchase decisions are now being co-created with machines before a person ever enters the conversation. And the brands on the shortlist aren’t necessarily the best. They’re the ones built to be found.

The rules we used to play by will no longer work in this new world. We need to rethink how we position, communicate and promote ourselves.

That’s what this keynote is about. 

In it, Lara will introduce the Binary Branding framework – built for a world where your business is evaluated before it’s considered by a human. You’ll leave with a new lens on how business is won today… and a clear path to ensure you’re the one being chosen.

Actionable Takeaways 

• Understand the new buying sequence and where most brands and events are already losing – You’ll understand exactly how decisions are being shaped before a human makes a single judgment call, and what it means for how you show up in the market.
• Audit your business through both lenses: machine and human – Using the Binary Branding Framework, you’ll identify whether you’re structured to be found, and whether you’re compelling enough to be chosen.

From global conflicts and contentious leadership, to climate emergencies, economic whiplash and culture wars, we’re planning events amid constant volatility. This panel explores what it means to create gatherings that are safe, grounded, and meaningful when the world feels anything but. Senior producers dig into how to navigate current events and make real decisions about security planning, language choices, sponsorship ethics, and attendee care, offering practical strategies for reading the room, protecting your teams, navigating sensitive topics with integrity, and building events that can sustain most external disruptions.

Behind every major event is a story of risk, strategy, and decision-making that most people never hear.

In this fast-paced session, three industry leaders take the stage for a series of 12-minute rapid-fire interviews, sharing the real stories behind million-dollar moments in their careers.

From winning a major client, to producing a large-scale event, to building a sustainable event business, speakers will unpack the decisions, challenges, and lessons that shaped their success.

No long presentations. No rehearsed panels. Just honest insight into what it really takes to operate at the highest level in the events industry.

Featuring three conversations:
• Winning the Million-Dollar Client
• Producing the Million-Dollar Event
• Running the Million-Dollar Event Business

Event design isn’t just about how it looks; it’s about what it does.

From flow and layout to content, staging, and sensory moments, design has a direct impact on engagement, behaviour, and ultimately, results. Yet too often, it’s still treated as a layer, not a strategy.

This session brings together leading designers, producers, and planners to explore how design is being used at a higher level to:

• drive audience engagement and movement
• support content and storytelling
• influence perception and brand value
• solve operational challenges in real time
• deliver measurable impact beyond aesthetics

We’ll move beyond trends and talk about how design decisions are made, what actually works, and where it can fail.

From flexibility and negotiation to expectations, partnership, and what happens behind the scenes, this session opens up a conversation planners rarely get to have.

Venues Unplugged is a live, audience-driven forum featuring Toronto’s most premium venue voices responding in real time to the questions that matter most. Using live polling and audience submissions, the session creates a candid, insightful dialogue on how venues operate, what they value in planner relationships, and where the strongest opportunities for collaboration exist.

No presentations. No scripted talking points. Just honest perspective, practical insight, and a sharper understanding of how to build stronger, smarter venue partnerships.

Back again for the fourth year, this session is standing room only every year at CSE Live!

Where are we really at, and where are we going? This fast-paced, no-filter session breaks down the biggest shifts impacting the events industry today, from pricing pressures and burnout to innovation, AI, and the future of experience design. Honest, practical, and forward-looking, this is a reality check for anyone serious about staying ahead.

What We’re Talking About:

• The Real Drivers of Innovation: Internal pressures, cultural shifts, and creative sparks fuelling bold new ideas
• The Economic Reality Check: What planners should know about the next 12–24 months
• Growth Zones & Business Models: Where opportunity is rising — and how to harness it
• Culture & Conscious Design: How DEI, sustainability, wellness, and food trends are shaping smarter experiences
• AI, Automation & Tech: What’s hype, what’s happening, and how to integrate it with purpose
• Designing for 2026: Must-have elements for future-proofing your events
• The Evolving Audience: How personalization, community, and hybrid thinking are redefining what attendees expect

This is your opportunity to hear directly from industry trailblazers, gain practical insights, and connect with the movement shaping the future of events in Canada and beyond.

That’s a wrap on another fantastic CSE Live Eventfest. But is it? There’s always an after-party somewhere… ask at the CSE booth on the show floor for this year’s private pop-up party location.