On July 9, 2026, Omaha hosted its first HETMA Roadshow at Creighton University.

For many people, that might sound like just another stop on the Roadshow calendar. For those of us in this part of the Midwest, it was something different. Prior to Omaha, the closest Roadshow to Creighton had been in Chicago, more than seven hours away by car and not necessarily a realistic option for many institutions in the region.

When I started planning this event, the goal wasn’t simply to bring a Roadshow to Omaha. It was to create an opportunity for people who may never have attended one before.

In that regard, the Roadshow exceeded my expectations.

We welcomed attendees from around a dozen institutions, and many of them were experiencing their first Roadshow. As someone who has now attended Roadshows across the country, watching people make new connections, engage with sponsors, and meet peers from other institutions is always one of the most rewarding parts of the experience. That’s exactly why I wanted to bring a Roadshow here in the first place.

The Event Started Before the Event

Anyone who has been to a Roadshow knows the conversations on the show floor are only a small part of the experience.

The night before the event, Forte, Sony, and Peerless AV coordinated a gathering at Joe’s Karting for Forte customers. Several members of the HETMA community and a couple Creighton staff attended. It was a fun experience and unlike any pre-Roadshow event I had attended before.

Following the racing, a few of us had the opportunity to spend some time with Kevin Schornhorst from AVI-SPL over dinner. As often happens at Roadshows, nobody seemed particularly interested in calling it a night early. The group shifted to the Moxy, where sponsors and attendees continued conversations over board games, shuffleboard, drinks, and community-building.

But that’s part of what makes these events special.

Attendees often come for the technology, but the relationships are what they remember. The conversations that happen over dinner or during a game of shuffleboard are often just as valuable as anything that happens on the show floor. Looking back, one of the lessons reinforced by Omaha was the importance of creating even more intentional opportunities for attendees and sponsors to connect before and after the formal event.

Showing the Reality of Higher Education

The Roadshow itself featured many of the things people have come to expect. Breakfast kicked off the morning, followed by a brief introduction to Creighton and campus tours through the Mike and Josie Harper Center and the Law School.

The show floor remained active throughout the day. After a provided lunch, attendees had the opportunity to board a shuttle to the Werner Health Sciences building for an additional round of campus tours and discussions.

What I wanted attendees to see wasn’t simply the newest or most impressive spaces on campus. I wanted them to see reality.

We toured spaces built around DTP and others built around NAV. We discussed converged network architectures and spaces where Dante remains isolated to local switching. Some rooms relied on Python-based Global Scripter programming while others utilized Global Configurator. We visited active learning spaces, health sciences environments, assessment areas, simulation labs, and traditional classrooms. We even stepped into one of our IDFs.

More importantly, we talked about challenges. We discussed digital signage issues. We talked about inconsistent standards. We talked about projects where technology decisions were made with limited input from our team. We talked about designs we would absolutely repeat and a few we would probably approach differently if given another chance.

Every institution has those stories.

The resulting conversations may have been the most valuable part of the tour. Attendees could see pieces of their own campuses reflected in what we shared. The goal wasn’t to present a highlight reel. It was to show a campus that, like every campus, is continually evolving.

My hope was that everyone found something familiar and something different enough to take home and think about.

It Took a Community to Make It Happen

Like many successful events, attendees saw the finished product. What they didn’t necessarily see was everything happening behind the scenes.

Creighton’s events support team, led by Minh Vu, played a tremendous role in making the day successful. Their team helped with setup, coordinated presentation support, assisted with logistics, and even joined portions of the campus tours to help answer questions about various spaces. Their support became even more important because the HETMA team on-site ended up significantly smaller than originally anticipated.

Normally, a larger group of volunteers helps coordinate registration, setup, teardown, logistics, and all the little things attendees never notice. Due to a variety of circumstances, the primary HETMA support crew for Omaha became myself, Jon Youse, and Dustin Myers.

That’s not a criticism. Life happens. Projects happen. Vacations happen.

What it did highlight was just how important local support can be. Without the assistance of numerous Creighton staff members, the Roadshow would not have looked the same. It was a reminder that while HETMA brings the framework, the host institution and local volunteers often become the difference-makers behind the scenes.

Sponsors Made It Possible

One thing nobody can say about Omaha is that attendees lacked people to talk to. We had 27 sponsors on the show floor representing a wide variety of products, services, and expertise. To encourage interaction, attendees collected sponsor stamps throughout the day. Anyone who gathered at least 12 stamps became eligible for raffle prizes.

That sounds easy until you realize just how much time it took to make your way around the room.

The system worked exactly as intended. People moved around, had conversations, asked questions, and engaged with sponsors rather than simply walking through the space collecting business cards. One of the unexpected benefits was seeing a number of Creighton staff who don’t work directly in AV stop by and comment on technologies they found interesting. Those conversations often brought different perspectives, new use cases, and ideas that might not have come up in discussions among AV professionals alone.

The raffle drawings took place shortly before the show floor closed, and thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, everyone went home with something.

There was plenty of swag as well. Shirts, hats, stickers, bags, charging blocks, cables, phone stands, pens, stuffed pandas, and probably several things I’m forgetting. But as always, the real value wasn’t what people put in their bags. It was the conversations they had throughout the day.

Ending the Day the HETMA Way

After teardown, everyone gathered again, this time at Blatt Beer and Table.

For visitors from outside Omaha, the location provided a nice introduction to part of the city. The venue sits across from Charles Schwab Field, home of the College World Series and Creighton Baseball, and within view of the CHI Health Center, where Creighton men’s basketball plays and many of Omaha’s largest events take place.

For a few hours, sponsors, end users, and friends shared food, drinks, stories, and plenty of laughs before many eventually found themselves back at the Moxy for another round of networking and games.

That felt fitting. The day started with connections and ended with connections. Technology was certainly part of the story, but community was the common thread.

Looking Ahead

By the numbers, Omaha’s first Roadshow was successful. Nearly 100 people registered. Attendees represented institutions from across the region. Many were experiencing their first Roadshow.

More importantly, it proved something I suspected but couldn’t fully know until we tried it. The model works here.

Since the event, I’ve lost track of how many people have approached me asking when Omaha will host another Roadshow. Those conversations have come from both the sponsor side and the end-user side, which is probably the strongest endorsement an event can receive.

There are certainly lessons to carry forward. I would like to explore a different time of year, create even more opportunities for networking before the event, and continue looking at ways to help people attend. Summer projects, vacations, and staffing challenges are real considerations for everyone in higher education.

But those challenges don’t overshadow the bigger takeaway.

Omaha isn’t typically the type of market people think of when they think about national technology events. In fact, with the exception of Marshall University, Omaha was the smallest community to host a HETMA Roadshow by a considerable margin. That’s part of what made the event so rewarding. It demonstrated that meaningful opportunities for the higher education AV community don’t have to be limited to major metropolitan areas. When events like this are brought closer to the institutions they serve, they create opportunities for people who might not otherwise be able to participate.

For me, the most encouraging part wasn’t the attendance count, the sponsor participation, or the raffle prizes. It was seeing people experience their first Roadshow.

That’s why we brought one to Omaha. And if the enthusiasm from attendees and sponsors is any indication, I have a feeling this won’t be the last one.

Interested in learning more about Creighton? Read my spotlight article on Creighton.