#EventProfs Community Manifesto

✍️ Dear event industry,

🧓 For the last 15 years, I’ve grown from being a high school DJ to being one of the most influential people in the events industry. I’ve done almost everything from catering to production to entertainment to design to marketing. I’ve felt a massive shift in the events industry coming and I wanted to do something about it.

👋 My name is Will Curran and I’m the founder of the #EventProfs Community. I want to give you a bit of background into why I built this community.

😰 I don’t know about you but every single time I log into social media, I feel anxious. I’m not a particularly anxious person and in fact, I grew my businesses using social media. So I am very fond of social media and very confident when I log into a social media site. However, if I am feeling inadequate, less confident, and feeling like I am not “doing enough”. I am sure when others log in, this feeling must feel even more intense.

🔒 Over the years I’ve started to grow even more conscious of my data and privacy. I was once quoted saying “Give all my data to Google! They make my life even better!” but as the years have gone on, I have realized that giving up my privacy and data might not be the best idea. They say “if you don’t know how the company makes money, then you are the product”. I think others across the world are realizing that they want more control over their data and privacy too.

🧼 I see people leaving social media networks in larger quantities than ever. Taking a social media detox is more common than doing a juice cleanse than ever before. However, the desire to learn from each other, stay connected, and be a part of a community is greater than ever before.

🤔 That’s not it though…

📣 Marketing is changing. In fact, it’s always going to be changing. What used to be about content marketing or running digital ads isn’t working anymore. Companies are looking for a new way to reach their target audience. I believe one solution is events, however, I think you can see where I am going with another potential solution.

📵 However, if you’re using an event as a way to market to people, how do you stay in touch with those people after the event? Are you seriously going to give them one more email to read? Are you going to invade their personal text message inbox?

🙅 No.

🪫 For years as an industry, we’ve been trying to figure out the solution for pre-event and post-event engagement. We know events are extremely powerful tools for engagement, but for years we’ve said pre and post event engagement is a total myth. I thought so too! Why can’t we take all of the energy we build at an event and continue that energy year round? Why do we just let it fizzle or worse, that energy is harnessed outside of a place where we can help it foster?

🎉 The problem is that event professionals don’t know HOW this could be done. So I wanted to create the ideal example.

😬 Now this might get really controversial.

☠️ I think the traditional in-person association model is dying.

🔫 Shots fired…. I know.

📉 You can see this across the board in the entire events industry. Membership is down in every since association. Why?

🧑‍💻 During the pandemic, we saw a change of leadership. Those who weren’t tech savvy retired or moved into different careers and those who knew how to use technology to create great experiences, knew how to use technology to communicate, and knew how to use technology to grow their businesses, thrived.

🤓 The problem is those that know how to use technology for all of these purposes also know how to network and to learn online. They don’t need to attend an association event to learn & network.

🏡 Better yet, everyone wants to work from home. So how are you going to convince someone who eats at home, entertains themselves at home, works out at home, plans events at home to get out of their comfy sweatpants to go to a local chapter meetings to learn something they could watch on YouTube on their own time. You’re not.

🏙️ Now don’t get me started on the fact that we’re all about diversity, equity and inclusion yet, you can only really get the value of the community if you attend the in-person annual conference or if you’re lucky enough to have a chapter in your city.

🌎 Look, I love associations as much as the next person, but the problem is unless they transition to being online first, the new generation of event professionals aren’t going to be wanting to spend money to be a part of them.

🥽 I’ve tried to help associations move towards this future, but honestly, I’m tired of waiting from the sidelines.

🎲 So what am I putting all of my chips on?

📲 That community is the solution to all of this. Better yet, I think a private and online-first community is what people of the events industry need. They need it as their place to collaborate, and learn. They need it as their example for how to foster year long pre and post event engagement.

💥 I am taking all my learnings from the last 15 years and I built #EventProfs Community to be the solution.

🫵 In the past 2 years I’ve been doing small scale tests to see if others feel this way, and what it’s showing me is that people agree with me. So if you at all agree with this, I hope you come and join us.