Event report
Twenty-five years of ECEF: why this laser focused day still matters
The Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum( ECEF) marked its 25th anniversary this year. Iain Stirling reports on the key takeaways from Washington DC – and why the numbers say the exhibition sector is in rude health.
here are only a handful
T of dates I protect in the diary each year, and the Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum( ECEF) in Washington DC is one of them. One day, one room, no exhibition floor, no parallel tracks – just the leaders of North America’ s largest association and independent shows talking candidly about where the business is heading.
For those of us working across the Atlantic, ECEF serves a particular purpose. The US exhibition market is the world’ s largest, and what its organisers are worrying about in May tends to arrive on European desks in October. Sitting in that room is the closest thing our industry has to an early-warning system, and it is why Exhibition World keeps returning. It is also one of the best days of relationship-building on the circuit: the conversations over coffee between sessions are worth the airfare on their own.
This year, between the anniversary montages charting a quarter of a century of the forum’ s history, the programme delivered some of the sharpest thinking I have heard in years. Here is what stayed with me.
Data first, opinions second Sam Lippman, president of Lippman Connects, and event organiser, opened as he always does with his five key data points in five minutes – a rapid tour of the numbers that ought to shape organisers’ decisions over the next 12 months. It is a deceptively simple format, and it sets the tone for the whole day: at ECEF, assertions are expected to come with evidence. That discipline is something more of our industry events could borrow.
Think globally, even if you operate locally The keynote came from Edwina Kulego of Informa, who argued that a global mindset pays off even for organisers who never take a show outside their home market. Her point was not about geographic expansion for its own sake. It was about leadership perspective: understanding how buyers, exhibitors and competitors behave in other regions makes you sharper at home. International visibility is a commercial asset, not a vanity project.
The profitability of restraint The session that generated the most corridor conversation came from Bob Hughes, vice-president at NACS, who made the counterintuitive case for deliberately leaving money on the table. For 24 years, the NACS Show has declined revenue opportunities that would have compromised the attendee and exhibitor experience – and Hughes argued that this restraint is precisely why the show has compounded in value. In a market where rising exhibitor costs are under scrutiny
48 Issue 4 2026 www. exhibitionworld. co. uk