Keynote: Sunjay Nath – Strength-Based Leadership – The 10-80-10 Principle®
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.
Money, Power & the Event Professional
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.
Keynote: Lara McCulloch – Binary Branding
What Happens When Your First Buyer Isn’t Human?
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 solo driver of brand selection. Purchase decisions are now being co-created with machines before a person ever enters the conversation. And the brands making the shortlist aren't necessarily the best ones. 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.
Key takeaways include:
- 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.
The Experiential Economy
At the heart of every great event is a story. This session explores how storytelling, emotional engagement, and sensory design shape perception, strengthen relationships, and create truly memorable experiences.
Join Kevin and Dave as they unpack how to intentionally design for human emotion, creating moments that connect, resonate, and move audiences in ways that traditional marketing cannot. When done well, events don’t just communicate a message; they make people feel something, and that feeling is what builds brand connection and loyalty. This is a powerhouse session you don't want to miss.
Million Dollar Minutes: Inside the Business of Big Events
High-stakes decisions. Real numbers. Zero fluff.
This is not a panel. It’s a live breakdown. In one of the most anticipated sessions at CSE Live, three industry leaders step into a rapid-fire series of tightly moderated interviews to unpack how million-dollar work is actually won, executed, and scaled.
In three powerful 12-minute conversations, speakers reveal the real stories behind major clients, complex productions, and high-revenue event businesses — including the risks they took, the pressure points they faced, the decisions that changed everything, and the lessons most people never get to hear.
No slides. No scripts. No safe answers. Just candid insight into what it really takes to operate at the highest level of the events industry.
Featuring three powerful conversations:
- Winning the Million-Dollar Client
- Producing the Million-Dollar Event
- Running the Million-Dollar Event Business
Producing Events in a World on Fire
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.
Venues Unplugged; Real-Time, Real Talk
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.
Design Is Power: Stop Decorating. Start Designing.
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, and deliver measurable impact beyond aesthetics.
State of the Industry 2026 – The Future of Live Experiences
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
The economic reality check
Growth zones and business models
Culture and conscious design
AI, automation, and tech
Designing for 2026
The evolving audience
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.
