I had the honor of attending TED 2025 earlier in April in Vancouver. Since I fully recognize what a privilege it is to attend this IRL, I’m recapping my first-time attendance experience from 3 angles:

1. Event Producer Point-of-View

2. Entrepreneur Point-of-View

3. First-Time Attendee Point-of-View

First, I want to call out ALL of the folks I got to personally reconnect with or newly meet over the last week. To my out-of-town friends, THANK YOU for making the time to catch up when you visited Austin (it really does feel like time never passes since we last caught up at SXSW). And this year, I get to recognize my longest traveled friend James (Kayliang) Ong who flew in from Singapore and came back to Austin to speak about his book - AI for Humanity. We had the pleasure of working together at Trilogy in the late 90’s. For all the new connections, it was so nice to meet you and get to know you better. I hope we can find ways to keep in touch across the miles/ocean as that’s my favorite part of SXSW.

When do you know that you’ve found the right career?

When do you know you’ve found the right partner in life?

When do you know it’s a good time to change careers?

When do you know to leave a safe job?

The list goes on…

Our third episode of Coming Clean with Cindy featured Corey McCarthy, Chief Marketing Officer of Socio Events. Corey shared her learning lessons from planning and executing EventHacks Hybrid Games, what to expect when dealing with streaming technology, and terms every CMO and Marketer should know!⁠

Our second episode of Coming Clean with Cindy featured Megan Lueders, Chief Marketing Officer of Silicon Labs. Megan shared her biggest successes and learning lessons when it came to leading her team in transitioning the inaugural Silicon Labs Works With Conference from live to digital with only three months out.

It’s been officially six months since the pandemic has been in full swing in the United States, and I’d be lying if I said I’ve not been holding onto EVERY little and big win our team has achieved. So allow me to humble brag that we have recently received an award for our building – yes I’m talking about RED VELVET’s forever home at 7121 N Lamar in Austin, TX.

I feel like with the rise in COVID cases in the US, it’s very easy for the media to focus on the “superspreader” events when contact tracing is available but is anyone actually talking about the event professionals that are proactively going above and beyond to safely produce a live event that minimizes the spread?