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The Conversation Continues: Building the Blueprint, Together
Last year, we opened a national conversation that challenged the status quo and united event professionals across Canada around a simple but urgent truth: our industry requires greater structure, stronger standards, and a more sustainable path forward.
From pricing transparency to fair contracts, from burnout and role misalignment to the need for stronger leadership and client education, hundreds of voices came together to say enough. The response was immediate, honest, and powerful.
Since then, the conversation has not slowed down. It has evolved. Through industry surveys, working group discussions, white paper development, research into international models, and ongoing collaboration, Business of Events has become more than a forum. It has become a movement.
This year’s Forum, on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM at the Great Canadian Casino Resort Toronto, marks the transition from conversation to collective action.
Our industry is being reshaped in real time. Procurement practices, shrinking budgets, AI, changing client expectations, burnout, inconsistent pricing, and the absence of shared standards are affecting how event professionals work, compete, and deliver value.
This Forum is where we address those issues head-on.
Together, we’ll explore:
- The findings from Blueprint 1.0 and what has — and hasn’t — changed
- The biggest issues identified in the Business of Events White Paper
- Fair pricing, contracts, and RFP reform
- Burnout, role misalignment, and the pressure of unclear expectations
- Transparency, ethics, and professional accountability
- The need for unified standards and a path to standardization
- What we can learn from international models, including the UK
- A proposed framework for moving this work forward in Canada
- The real opportunities, weaknesses, barriers, and adoption challenges ahead
- How professionals across planning, supply, production, venues, education, and leadership can help shape what happens next
This is a room for people who care enough to move the industry forward.
Meet the Speakers
BUSINESS OF EVENTS FORUM
The Session Agenda
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 11:45 AM
From Awareness to Action: The Path to Standardization. This moderated session moves the industry beyond conversation and into implementation. By synthesizing research, global perspectives, and insights from industry leaders—coupled with live audience feedback—we will co-create a concrete, actionable framework for the Path to Standardization.
Opening the Conversation
We begin by reconnecting the room to the original Blueprint conversation and the urgency behind this work. This opening grounds the session in the reality of where the industry stands today and why this conversation has continued to grow.
The audience will be brought back to the original issues that sparked the movement — pricing, RFP reform, burnout, unclear standards, and the growing need for structure, accountability, and industry-wide leadership.
From Conversation to Strategy
We introduce the work that has taken place over the past year, including surveys, national dialogue, research, white paper development, and the creation of a strategic path forward.
Aaron Kaufman is introduced as co-collaborator on the next phase of the initiative, and together with Stacy he explores why this work must move beyond discussion and into implementation.
Conversation Hosts:
Stacy Wyatt
Founder & Creative Director, Canadian Special Events
Aaron Kaufman
President, Fifth Element Events
What Has Changed Since Blueprint 1.0?
Bringing back key voices from the original Business of Events conversation, we revisit the core issues identified in the white paper and examine whether meaningful change has occurred over the past year. Survey findings are brought forward to frame the current state of the industry. This section reinforces that the issues surfaced last year were not isolated frustrations, but recurring structural challenges experienced across the sector.
Unified standards, fair pricing, ethical practices, burnout, education gaps, and the role of associations will all be brought back into focus before moving into the framework for what comes next.
Panelists include:
Matt Byrne
Trish Knox
Keri Miller
Sebastien David
Alex Bickers
Global Perspective: Learning from International Models
Colja Dams joins Aaron and Stacy to bring a European perspective into the room, offering insight into how conversations around standardization, industry leadership, and professional structure are being approached internationally.
This segment also introduces the Business of Events UK model and opens the door to understanding what may be transferable, where the challenges lie, and what relevance this work has for Canada.
Colja Dams
CEO, VOK DAMS Worldwide
Q&A and Audience Response
The audience is invited into the conversation with questions, reactions, and observations following the panel and global perspective segment.
This is designed to bring the room up to speed, surface real-time insight, and ensure the conversation remains connected to the realities professionals are facing now.
Special Guest Feature: Digital Doppelganger
Colja Dams will also present a short 15-minute feature on Digital Doppelganger, offering a forward-looking perspective on innovation, technology, and the future-facing tools shaping live experience.
Short Break
A brief pause before the room transitions into the implementation and workshop portion of the Forum.
The Path to Standardization
Stacy Wyatt and Aaron Kaufman present a proposed framework and strategic Path to Standardization, outlining the thinking, structure, and implementation model developed over the past year.
This is not presented as a mandate, but as a viable plan to be tested, challenged, strengthened, and shaped by the voices in the room.
Audience Questions and Roundtable Working Session
The audience is invited to respond to the proposed framework, ask questions, and move directly into a structured working session.
Panelists act as table moderators and guide attendees through a workshop to test the proposed path forward.
Together, participants will pressure-test the model, surface obstacles to adoption, identify weaknesses, challenge assumptions, and help strengthen the plan through real feedback and lived experience.
Reporting Back, Discussion, and Next Steps
The room comes back together to report from the tables and surface the strongest ideas, concerns, and opportunities that emerged during the workshop.
This is where we gather the real voices in the room — the feedback, the friction points, the challenges to adoption, the weaknesses in the model, the questions still unanswered, and the ideas that can make the framework stronger.
Together, we will identify what feels viable, what feels difficult, what needs refinement, and what may be missing. The purpose of this segment is to ensure that the plan does not leave the room untouched, but instead leaves with deeper insight, broader ownership, and a more grounded path forward.
This final discussion will also outline what happens next: how attendees can remain involved, how the framework will continue to be shaped, and how this work can move toward a more credible and adoptable industry standard.
This is where the session moves from presentation to collective ownership — and where we begin to leave with real insight, real voices, and the foundation for adoption.
11:45 AM — SESSION CLOSE