In an industry that rarely pauses, where decisions are constant, and expectations run high, the greatest power is the ability to remain steady within the storm. This session invites you to return to that steadiness.

Led by mindfulness teacher and leadership trainer Michael Apollo, you will be guided through a science-backed approach to navigating pressure with clarity and intention. Through his Relax, Reflect, Respond framework, you will learn how to regulate your nervous system, shift your perspective, and move from reaction to response.

This is not about slowing down the pace of your world. It is about changing how you meet it.

Walk away with practical tools to think more clearly, lead more intentionally, and access a deeper sense of calm, even in the moments that demand the most of you.

Why We’re Here: A New Leadership Era

Before the pace begins, we pause. In this opening moment, founders Stacy, Sam, Connie, and Carly step forward to share the deeper why behind SANCTUARY. An honest reflection on the pressure, pace, and expectations that have long defined our industry.

This is a call to lead differently. To move beyond burnout as a badge of honour, and toward a more intentional, human-centred way of working, creating, and showing up.

Not just as event professionals, but as people first.

Together, we set the tone for the day ahead, grounded in clarity, connection, and a shared understanding.

That to lead at a higher level, we must first learn how to take care of ourselves within it.

A playful exploration of personality, communication, and connection. Before we can lead others, we have to understand what drives us and what quietly triggers us.

In this interactive, high-energy session, you will step into a live exploration of personality through the lens of the Maxwell Leadership DISK framework. Not from a seat, but from within the room itself. You will move. You will choose. You will see yourself reflected in real time.

As we split the room, patterns begin to emerge. How we communicate, how we react under pressure, what motivates us, and what pushes us to the edge. Through humour, storytelling, and sharp insight, each personality style is brought to life in a way that is both relatable and revealing.

There will be laughter.
There will be recognition.
There will be a few that is so me moments.

And beneath it all, a deeper shift begins.

From judgment to understanding.
From friction to traction.
From simply communicating to truly connecting.

Experience a clearer sense of yourself, a new appreciation for how others operate, and the tools to navigate everyday dynamics with more ease, awareness, and intention.

What if the shift you are searching for is not more discipline, but a different frequency?

In this immersive session, we explore music as a powerful, science-backed tool for regulating energy, sharpening focus, and elevating performance in real time. Because productivity is not about doing more. It is about learning how to lead your internal state. Together, we move through three distinct modalities.

First, a reframing. An invitation to release the constant pressure of output and instead understand the role of energy, rhythm, and internal alignment in sustaining true performance. Then, awareness. A deeper look at how music interacts with the brain. How it can calm the nervous system, heighten attention, and shift your state within seconds, giving you access to clarity when you need it most. And finally, application. Simple, repeatable practices using music as a tool. Microbreaks you can integrate into your day to reset, reenergize, and return with intention, even in the most demanding environments.

This is not just something you will understand. It is something you will experience. Through curated sound, rhythm-based exercises, and live classical guitar, you will feel the shift happen in real time.

A pause.
A pattern.
A reset.

You will leave with a new relationship to motivation, one that feels less like force and more like flow.

Before you lead the room, you have to lead yourself.

This expert panel brings together voices in sleep, nutrition, and movement to unpack the real drivers of performance in high-pressure environments. Because this is not optional. It is foundational.

When you sleep better, you think more clearly.
When you fuel properly, your energy sustains.
When you move, your body resets.

Together, this trifecta creates a powerful domino effect. You feel better, you show up stronger, you perform at a higher level. Built for the realities of event life, this session delivers practical, immediate shifts you can implement to refuel, regulate, and sustain your edge. Timed intentionally before lunch, this conversation extends into experience. Through a thoughtfully designed food program and a guided post-meal walk to support energy, digestion, and focus.

This is how you optimize performance. From the inside out.

Curated Nourishment Experience

What if the thing you keep pushing aside is actually the thing everything depends on?

In this powerful keynote experience, Joy Lapps blends storytelling, lived experience, and the vibrant energy of steelpan music to challenge how we define success in high-performance industries.

Because burnout is not a badge of honour. It is a signal. Drawing from her work as an artist, educator, and complex care mother, Joy shares a deeply human perspective on what it means to lead, create, and sustain energy over time. This is a reframe.

Wellness is not something you squeeze in when there is time.
It is the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Through themes of gratitude, community, and self-awareness, this session invites you to reconnect with your own rhythm and redefine success in a way that actually supports your life.

You will leave with a renewed perspective on performance.
One rooted not in depletion, but in alignment.

What if the tool you use to move faster could also help you slow down?

AI is often framed as a productivity tool. But in the right hands, it becomes something more powerful. A way to create space. In this session, Marli Lichtman explores how AI can support your well-being by reducing mental load, calming the constant stream of thoughts, and helping you move through your day with greater clarity.

Because the real pressure is not always in the workload.
It is in holding everything in your head.

Through simple, practical applications, you will learn how to capture ideas as they come, organize your thinking, and release the mental clutter that keeps you in a constant state of doing.

This is not about mastering technology.
It is about using it with intention.

So you can reclaim your time, your energy, and your attention for what actually matters.

We’re often taught how to pursue success, but rarely how to navigate the moments when things aren’t working. The messy middle is where momentum slows, doubt gets louder, and even the most capable leaders begin to question their next move.

In this interactive session, founder and author Brandi Leifso shares her lived experience and guides participants through her signature Failure Party framework. You’ll bring a real challenge, something stuck or avoided, and work through it in real time.

What feels heavy becomes clearer.
What feels stuck begins to move.

You’ll leave with practical tools to navigate setbacks with greater clarity, confidence, and forward momentum.

Key Takeaways:
• Move through setbacks without losing momentum
• Manage self-doubt in the moment
• Gain clarity on what you’ve been avoiding and define your next step
• Build a steadier, more reliable sense of confidence
• Reframe failure as information, not identity
*Each attendee will receive a thoughtful take-home to continue the work beyond the
room.

We don’t end the day quietly.
We raise the frequency.

DJ RAE takes over the room with a high-energy, feel-good set packed with classics that get your heart beating and your voice singing.

This is your release. Your reset. Your moment to move.

A dance floor rooted in connection, not alcohol. In presence, not pressure.

Because the best connections are not forced. They are felt.

Connections are formed on the dancefloor.

No overthinking. No expectations. Just music, movement, and pure energy.

You’ve done the work. Now you get to feel it.

We close SANCTUARY fully alive, fully expressed, and ready for what’s next.

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 remarkable event, every standout agency, and every enduring brand is a series of decisions most people never hear about.

Million Dollar Minutes brings together three of the Canadian event industry’s most accomplished success stories for a fast-paced, high-value conversation designed for senior leaders, business owners, creatives, independents, and entrepreneurs who want a sharper edge in how they think, lead, sell, and grow.

Join Lara McCulloch, Global Marketing Strategist & Founder of the growth agency Start Some Shift; Corey Mandell, Producer to the stars and President and CEO of Mandell Entertainment Group; and Sebastien David, President of Senik Group, Canada’s first multi-agency event conglomerate and mega business leader, for an unplugged, candid conversation on what it takes to operate at the intersection of success and pressure.

From winning major clients to producing high-stakes experiences to building and sustaining uber-successful businesses, this conversation offers rare access to the thinking, instincts, risks, mistakes, and breakthroughs that shaped these leaders’ journeys.

Featuring three conversations:

• Winning the Multi-Million-Dollar Client
• Producing the Multi-Million-Dollar Event
• Running the Multi-Million-Dollar Event Business

Event organizers are sitting on one of their most valuable assets, and most are still underutilizing it.

Content is no longer a nice-to-have. It is how your event gets discovered, experienced in real time, and remembered long after it ends.

In this session, Dori Adams, Founder of shutterb, shares the new rules of event content, grounded in what is actually working across hundreds of live events. The shift is clear. The most impactful events are no longer thinking about content as a recap, but as a before, during, and after strategy that drives visibility, community, and ongoing growth.

This is not about capturing more. It is about capturing with intention.

You’ll learn:

• The top content trends shaping live events right now
• How to plan ahead, so you actually get the content you need onsite
• How to approach posting and distributing content so it continues working after the event ends, and alleviate overwhelm

Whether you are producing a conference, brand activation, or community experience, you will leave with a clear framework to turn your event into something that lives far beyond the room.

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.