IMEX 2026

IMEX America kicks off with a full day of education on Tuesday, October 13, 2026. PCMA will be at booth B4694. Check back regularly for education and networking updates!

Smarter by Design: What the PCMA Outlook 2026 Means for Corporate & Association Planners
10:00am-10:30 am | Chantal Sturk-Nadeau

Corporate and association planners are being asked to deliver more value, demonstrate greater impact and adapt more quickly, often with flat or shrinking budgets and teams. Drawing on insights from the PCMA Outlook 2026 product in collaboration with MCI, this session explores what planners across both sectors reported about volatility, readiness gaps, event formats, audience engagement, data and measurement. Organized around four themes; Plan, Design, Grow and Lead Smarter, the session will translate these insights into practical actions planners can apply to their teams and events. Attendees will leave with a prioritized set of actionable moves and four questions to help guide conversations and decision-making within their organization. 

You Get the Proposals You Request: What to Ask Before You Write the RFP
10:45am-11:15 am | Tammy Moore

You send an RFP with dates, room block, space and budget. Four proposals come back, all describing world-class service and flexible meeting space, and none of them describing your event. So the decision comes down to rate, and the shortlist is hard to defend upward. 

That is not a supplier problem. The gap is in what you asked for, and it is the one part of the process you fully control. 

In 30 minutes you will learn a four-question framework, borrowed from consultative selling and turned around, to use on your own stakeholders before you write the RFP. Ask these four questions internally and you will get proposals you can actually compare, and give partners enough to bring you ideas instead of rate sheets. 

What you will take away: 

• Four questions to ask your own sponsors and stakeholders before you write the RFP 
• Three sentences of purpose to put at the top of your next RFP 
• A pocket card with the framework, to use on your next sourcing project 

Future–Proofing Your Career in a World With AI
11:30 am-12:00 pm | Nick Borelli 

As AI integrates deeper into our daily workflows, event professionals face a critical question: how do we ensure our roles remain essential? In this interactive 30-minute session, we’re skipping the basic tool tutorials to focus on the ultimate survival strategy: defining truly human work. Facilitated by PCMA’s Enhancing Events with AI course instructor, this session is an open floor to discuss the candid realities of automation’s impact on content, experience design, and our professional lives. 

The Agentic Planner: What AI Does on Its Own Now, and What It Still Can’t
12:15pm – 12:45pm | Vamshi Velmajala

AI has moved from answering prompts to running whole tasks. In this live session, an AI agent in Spark takes a real event brief and works through a destination shortlist, RFP draft, budget and run of show. The audience changes the constraints midway and watches it adapt. You’ll leave with a clear picture of which planning tasks you can hand off today, which still need you, and how to tell the difference. 

The Architect’s House: Using an Intentional Event Design Framework
1:00 pm-1:30 pm | Devon Montgomery Pasha

Are you the planner, or the strategist? The builder, or the architect? Most events are executed well and still fall flat, not from a lack of effort, but because no one stopped to design the experience on purpose. In this live 30-minute session, watch a real event take shape on screen using the Event House™, a visual framework that makes the difference between building to spec and designing with intention impossible to miss. Come for 30 minutes, leave seeing your own events differently. 

S.H.A.PE. the Future: 4.0 Leadership in the Gen-AI Economy – When AI Can Do Everything, What Makes You Essential?
1:45 pm-2:15 pm | Amy Blackman 

AI is changing how work gets done, but leadership has never mattered more. Meet the five human capabilities that technology cannot replace, drawn from new PCMA Insights research publishing in 2027. You will get a preview of the research, score yourself live, and leave knowing which capability is your strongest and which one to build first. Amy Blackman (Fruition Co.) is the researcher behind PCMA’s 2026 Feature Study, The Human Advantage: 4.0 Leadership, launching at CL27. 

Learner Outcomes: 

• Name the five capabilities that keep a person essential once AI handles the execution. 
• Score yourself live and locate your own gap. 
• Leave with one practice for the capability you choose to build first. 

Your Boss Is Tracking The Wrong Number. Here Is How To Fix That
10:00am-10:30 am | Vinnu Deshetty 

Plenty of planners have built the dashboard at midnight, then sat in the boardroom watching leadership nod along to an attendance slide that proved absolutely nothing. Leadership does not resist better metrics because they are difficult. They resist them because nobody ever showed them a better question to ask. 

The Mindset of Influence: How Event Profs Can Lead with Flexible Focus
10:45am-11:15 am | Anthony Vade 

Ready to take your seat at the executive table?  

Moving from logistics to leadership requires a profound mindset shift. In this 30-minute session, you will learn to pivot from delivering outcomes to directing bold possibilities. We will explore how to cultivate a flexible focus that shifts easily between daily execution and strategic thought. 

Drawing from the PCMA Institute’s Lead with Strategic Influence and Strategic Analysis to Action courses, this session previews the modern strategist’s toolkit. You will discover how to uncover stakeholder needs, apply systems thinking, and foster innovation. You will leave with a blueprint for building trust with leadership and see exactly how enrolling in these full PCMA courses can transform your career. 

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to: 

• Cultivate a Strategic Mindset: Balance data and intuition to successfully transition from a tactical planner to a strategic leader. 
• Translate Creativity to Business Value: Reframe event concepts into business language that resonates with executives and earns their trust. 
• Turn Analysis into Action: Use frameworks like the PDCA cycle and Iceberg Model to diagnose challenges and design actionable solutions. 

Bridging the Design Gap: Aligning Business Objectives with Human Experience 
11:30 am-12:00 pm | Devon Montgomery Pasha 

Many events are well-executed yet strategically misaligned. When business objectives and human experience are designed separately, events miss opportunities for deeper impact and measurable outcomes. In this fast-paced 30-minute session, participants will learn how to identify disconnects between intention and experience and apply a practical alignment framework to elevate both ROI and audience engagement.

From Survey to Strategy: Turning Post-Event Data into Next Year’s Program with AI
12:15pm – 12:45pm | Vamshi Velmajala 

Most post-event surveys get read once and filed. This session shows how to turn that data into decisions. Using Spark, we take real survey and registration data and build attendee personas, surface what worked and what didn’t, and test next year’s session titles, formats, and pricing against them. Bring your own survey results if you want to see it run at your event. 

Faster, Sharper, Together: What PCMA Outlook 2026 Reveals About How Destinations Win Next
1:00 pm-1:30 pm | Chantal Sturk-Nadeau 

Destination organizations are under growing pressure to prove their value, navigate uncertainty, and deliver more with limited resources. What separates those that struggle from those that find a way to win? Drawing on the PCMA Outlook 2026 research with MCI, this session reveals what DMO leaders told us and where the biggest opportunities lie to rethink how destination organizations create value. Discover four critical shifts that can help your organization gain an edge: navigating uncertainty, reforming the system, competing on intelligence, and leading the ecosystem. Leave with practical, prioritized actions to strengthen your strategy, sharpen your competitive advantage, and position your organization to win.  

Digital as the Strategy: How to Create Value Beyond the Event
1:45 pm-2:15 pm | Brian Zambotti 

What if the event was only one part of the experience?

Too often, organizations invest heavily in a few live days and then let the value disappear when the event ends. This session looks at how digital can extend content, reach new audiences, create more value from the work you are already producing, and keep people engaged before, during, and after the event.

You’ll leave with a practical way to think about digital as part of your overall event strategy.

Networking Receptions

Tuesday, October 13 & Wednesday, October 14 
PCMA & CEMA Member Reception
3:00pm-4:00pm | Booth B4694
Connect with fellow members during IMEX and enjoy networking and industry camaraderie.

Tuesday, October 13
CEMA Happy Hour
6:00pm–8:00pm | Pinky’s by Vanderpump, Flamingo Las Vegas 
Enjoy an intimate setting to exchange ideas, meet new peers, and strengthen industry relationships while celebrating IMEX week in style. Register here »