Collect your badge and join us as we welcome you to the event. Use this time to connect with fellow in-house event leaders, exchange ideas and get to know the community.

Welcome and Introduction

In an era of AI noise, misinformation, and collapsing trust, live events are becoming one of the last places where truth can be felt in real time. This keynote exposes why event leaders must break free from the “event bunny” stereotype and step into a far more powerful role: strategic influencers who shape decisions, not just deliver logistics.

Drawing on the Trust Equation, we’ll show how credibility, reliability, and intimacy build influence that no budget line can buy. And drawing on a personal story of being dismissed as an “event bunny” while stewarding £1m+ in spend, we’ll explore how easily our profession is underestimated, and how strategically indispensable it can be. This is a call to shift from task‑takers to thought‑partners. It’s time to build events that prove your strategic value and earn trust, not just applause.

Climate Week NYC is one of the clearest examples of how live events can move beyond content and networking to become a platform for action, influence and change.

In this session, we will explore how events can convene the right people, create urgency, build trust and turn conversation into momentum. For corporate event leaders, the challenge is no longer simply how to deliver a great event, but how to design experiences that shift thinking, support business goals and leave a lasting impact.

In this keynote, EY’s Global Alliances & Ecosystems Marketing Leader Sarah Alspach explores why events are rarely discussed at boardroom level — and what needs to change. She will unpack the language and positioning that can unintentionally reduce events to logistics, rather than business growth levers, and show how to frame them in terms that resonate with senior marketing and commercial leaders.

Take a break and enjoy lunch while connecting with fellow attendees. This is a chance to continue conversations, meet new people and share ideas in a relaxed setting.

In this interactive one-hour workshop, participants will work in groups of ten through a collaborative exercise exploring one of the biggest challenges facing corporate event teams: how to prove that events are not a nice to have, but a business-critical tool.

Participants will identify the barriers that stop events being valued at board level, examine why traditional event language often fails to land with senior stakeholders, and work together on how to translate event activity into business outcomes such as trust, influence, behaviour change, revenue and reputation.

This session forms part of ICENetwork’s Big Experiment, running across the UK, US and Germany. The insights gathered will contribute to a global white paper highlighting the barriers facing event teams and the practical solutions needed to make events essential.

Delegates will split into two groups, with one attending the Global Heads Connect Live session and the other taking part in the Campfire Sessions.

Stop Calling It Events: Future-Proofing the Role of the Event Leader

There is an elephant in the room: some senior event roles are being reduced as businesses cut headcount and demand clearer value. This closed-door Global Heads Connect session asks how event leaders can future-proof their role by moving beyond delivery and proving their impact on communication, growth, culture, influence, trust and business performance.

Emma Duncan will open the conversation by challenging how we describe, measure and position the function inside the business.

Join us for a series of interactive campfire sessions designed to spark fresh ideas, tackle industry challenges, and explore the latest innovations in event planning. These discussions will cover AI and event technology, attendee experience and branding, strategic influence and career growth, and event measurement and analytics.

From corporate “helper” to strategic partner, this session shares practical ways events managers can shift perception.

Expect tools for stakeholder communication, boundary setting, and influence - plus strategies on how to use data, frame decisions, and make impact visible. Attendees will leave with usable ideas they can implement immediately to elevate their strategic credibility.

Internal events are under pressure to do more than inspire on the day.

Using ScottishPower’s Digital Summit as a starting point, this campfire explores how in-house teams can design events that build capability, shift culture, and create action afterwards.
A practical discussion on experience design, leadership, hybrid choices, measurement and impact.

In a noisy world, events that leave a lasting impact have one thing in common: they appeal to certain core truths of behavioural psychology.

Giles will give practical insights into how event leaders can unlock the human desire to connect, influence and experience by understanding points of subconscious bias and how ‘memorable’ is defined by the brain, informed by insights from acclaimed behavioural science consultancy, Mindscope.

This campfire explores how to grow thriving communities from the inside out.

We’ll unpack how ambassador programmes, local leadership, and IRL engagement drive trust, adoption, and long-term ecosystem growth; moving beyond campaigns to build communities that sustain and scale.

In this campfire chat, we’ll explore how one flagship conference became a catalyst for change.

Following the hybrid event in 2023, the UK Wealth Investors Forum was reimagined for 2024 - from format and flow, audience prioritisation to the experience - with connection intentionally designed into every moment, setting a new benchmark for the years ahead.

The session reflects on the challenges faced, how the planning team reshaped the experience, navigated stakeholder management, and the key lessons learned along the way.

Most events still treat audiences as headcount. The strongest events treat them as a living dataset.

This session explores how audience intelligence is reshaping the way we design, target, and prove the value of what we put on.

Bring your war stories, your wins, and your unanswered questions.

This interactive session explores how trust drives B2B growth. We’ll focus on the imbalance between the 5% of buyers actively in-market and the 95% who will buy in the future. We’ll discuss using live experiences to create "mental availability" and debate how to measure long-term brand impact beyond short-term, lead-based metrics. Share insights and redefine ROI.

Event managers are trusted to deliver complex, high-pressure programmes, but many still struggle to gain the visibility, influence and recognition needed to progress into more senior, strategic and business-critical roles.

This campfire explores the realities of career progression within the events industry, including the barriers that can keep professionals stuck in delivery mode, how individuals navigate their own career journeys, and how senior leaders can better empower younger members of their teams to explore different areas of the industry, build confidence in their strengths, and create pathways for long-term growth.

We are drowning in AI-generated content, predictive algorithms, and information designed to optimise rather than connect. Behind the scenes in companies, the challenge isn’t getting more data it’s cutting through the noise to find what’s real, what’s trustworthy, and what actually matters.

This is where flagship events become strategically indispensable. In this campfire, I’ll explore how B2B buying has fundamentally shifted, why events are becoming essential infrastructure in an AI-saturated world, and how companies are positioning them as antidotes to digital overwhelm places where trust is tangible and decisions get shaped by genuine human exchange.

I’ll share what I’m seeing from the inside: how marketing and product teams are rethinking events as trust infrastructure, and practical ways to measure and funnel that impact into your actual sales pipeline.

Beyond the hype, how are corporate event teams actually using AI in their day-to-day roles?

This campfire session will explore practical use cases, lessons learned and honest reflections from peers. Join the conversation to explore how AI can reduce admin, improve efficiency and create more time for high-value, creative, strategic work.

As attendee expectations continue to evolve, personalisation is no longer about collecting more data, it’s about creating experiences that feel relevant, responsive, and human.

This session explores how event leaders can balance AI, behavioural insights, and intentional design to create attendee-first experiences that drive stronger engagement, connection, and business outcomes.

Join Ollie Kettle for an insight into building influence and presence on TikTok. Drawing on experience generating over 40 million views and nearly 5 million likes in the past year, Ollie shares practical strategies for growing an engaged audience through authenticity, consistency, trust, personal branding, and content that genuinely connects.

High-performing event programs are built around customer needs, not event formats. This session will explore how organizations can use events strategically across the entire customer lifecycle—from attracting net-new prospects through flagship events and industry gatherings, to nurturing opportunities with smaller, topic-focused experiences, and strengthening customer relationships through exclusive retreats and executive engagement programs. Join peers to discuss how aligning event investments to audience maturity can increase engagement, generate stronger commercial outcomes, and create a more effective path from awareness to revenue.

A chance to pause, recharge and take it all in. Continue conversations and connect.

The evening begins with welcome drinks and canapés, giving you time to connect with others before dinner. We’ll then come together for the Awards ceremony to celebrate the work, creativity and impact of in-house event teams.