There was a moment during the HETMA Roadshow at the University at Buffalo when I said something almost as a joke: “I think we have become an events company.” The more I thought about it, and the more I repeated it, the less it felt like a joke. It started to feel like a true statement.
HETMA was built as an advocacy organization. The mission has always been about elevating the higher ed AV community, creating a stronger voice for our vertical, building community, opening doors, and making sure the people actually responsible for technology on campus have a seat at the table. None of that has changed. If anything, it has become more important, more central to the everyday mission. But somewhere along the way, we discovered that one of the best ways to advocate for our community is to actually bring that community together in a very public-facing way.
And now we do that a lot. Between InfoComm, ISE, InfoComm America Latina, Educause, vendor collabs, the HETMA Education Summit, the virtual conference, HETMA Golf Classic, regional roadshows, Higher Ed AV Awards, networking opportunities, happy hours, lunch-and-learns, the online community, and the growing list of things we are planning every year, event production has become a very real part of what HETMA does. In fact, it really dominated most of our meeting conversations. Anyone who has been involved behind the scenes knows exactly what that means. There are hotels, swag, catering, contracts, shipping, swag, sponsorships, registration, programming, swag, signage, booth design, travel logistics, swag, tours, schedules, vendors, swag, communications, marketing, and about a thousand things nobody notices unless one of them goes wrong, and even swag.
That is a long way from simply saying, “Let’s get some higher ed AV people together and see what happens.” Well, that is how it started, with just the two-hour banquet at InfoComm. Wow, just think that was only 6 years ago, and now we average about 25 physical “events” per year alongside another 30ish virtual ones.
But here is the important part… The events are not a departure from the advocacy work. They are becoming one of the primary ways we accomplish it. Where the AV industry is, so will HETMA be. We ensure our people have voice and are known wherever the channel is.
At Buffalo, I watched our people sit down with manufacturers and talk about the problems they are actually trying to solve. I watched AV people connect with learning management system professionals, facilities teams, instructional designers, campus leadership, and others who increasingly influence the technology environment. I watched regional representatives meet institutions they may have never reached through a major national trade show. I watched schools compare approaches, ask questions about one another’s spaces, and build relationships that will almost certainly continue long after everyone left Buffalo.
That is advocacy. Advocacy is not only standing at a podium asking someone to recognize the value of us. Sometimes advocacy is creating an environment where that professional becomes impossible to overlook. When HETMA invites manufacturers, integrators, consultants, institutional leaders, and tech managers into the same room, the dynamic changes. End users are no longer standing at the edge of someone else’s event hoping to be heard. We build the event. We curate the conversations. We determined the outcome. We decide what’s relevant and what’s not based on our collective needs. We brought everyone into our environment.
There is something powerful about that. And there’s something unique about that. To this day I hear how crazy it is that it’s the “customer” driving the industry (btw, as it should be), rather than being guided. That voice, that directionality, is good not only for us, but the entire industry as a whole.
The roadshows may be the clearest example. Manufacturers and integrators have hosted regional events forever. They invite customers into experience centers, put products on tables, buy lunch, and explain what they do. There is absolutely value in those events. But the dynamic is different when an end-user organization is the host. Now the manufacturers are coming into the higher ed community instead of the higher ed community simply coming to them. That distinction matters.
The conversations at roadshows and/or our trade show booths are less about, “Here is the product I want to sell you,” and much more about, “What problem are you trying to solve?” Vendors openly talk about learning from institutions, bringing feedback back to product teams, understanding changing pedagogical needs, and even working alongside other manufacturers when another solution made sense. There is value in simply being able to listen to the customer in a setting that doesn’t feel like a traditional sales environment, but rather our living room.
That is the business value of an organization like HETMA becoming very good at events. Well, at least we’re trying. LOL. We know there is a responsibility in that too, and why we have that mindset change to curate events rather than plan, schedule, and pray.
We are creating our own marketplace of ideas. We are also creating access. And that’s all-encompassing from the major shows to the smaller regional ones. We know not everyone can attend InfoComm. Not everyone can travel internationally to an ISE. Travel budgets disappear. Campuses restrict travel. Teams are understaffed. However, regional events allow someone to drive an hour or two, walk through a neighboring university, talk directly to key manufacturers, shake hands with their actual sales rep, learn from peers, sit through education sessions, and build relationships without spending thousands of dollars or disappearing from campus for a week.
While regional events may sound smaller in purpose than a massive trade show, because they don’t get the same “splash” or attention, in many ways, the impact can be more personal. It is also why these events cannot become too corporate. We can’t lose the organic grassroots identity, even while we learn to manage the “business” of event production management. That growth is necessary, but there is something about the slightly ragtag nature of this community that we cannot afford to lose. The people hanging signs together, hanging and banging aluminum frames, eating pizza during setup, grabbing a microphone and pulling unsuspecting attendees into live conversations, and ending the day together at a local happy hour are not side effects of the event. They are part of the event. We say the event begins the second you leave your home and ends only once you’re back home.
As HETMA grows, our events are becoming more polished. Our booths are getting bigger. Our production is becoming more professional. Our influence becomes more impactful. There is more structure, more planning, and more responsibility. There is a responsibility to both our attendees and the paying vendor partners. We know that. The business challenge for HETMA now is learning how to scale without sterilizing the experience. Professional does not have to mean impersonal. Growth does not have to mean corporate. And becoming an events organization does not mean becoming a trade association that simply produces conferences. The opportunity is much bigger than that.
HETMA can use events as an extension of the mission. We can bring the industry to campuses. We can showcase what institutions are doing well. We can expose members to ideas outside their own environments. We can create direct conversations between people building products and people using them. We can give smaller institutions the same access to relationships that larger institutions often enjoy. We can introduce people who would otherwise never meet. And yes, sometimes we can do all of that over buffalo wings and a craft beer.
Maybe HETMA is becoming an events company. Maybe HETMA *is* an events company. I am actually pretty comfortable saying that now.
If events are the vehicle that allows us to advocate more effectively, by connecting more people across the entire industry, create more opportunities for professional growth, and strengthening the higher ed vertical as a whole, then producing great events is not something separate from the mission. It is the mission in action.
So, is HETMA an advocacy organization or an events company? Why not both?
