Exhibit City News (ECN) Founder and Publisher Don Svehla moves through an IMEX week filled with sales calls, a website crisis, event setup and the routines that start long before most of Las Vegas wakes up.
Before the Party Starts
Day in the Life usually follows the executives, organizers and other industry figures who keep the tradeshow world moving. For this issue, ECN turned the feature inward.
Over the course of the week leading up to Throw 2026, and throughout the day itself, ECN observed Publisher Don Svehla moving through the routines, interruptions and obligations that make up his work. He was interviewed afterward about what had unfolded.
At around 4 or 5 a.m., Svehla is usually already awake.
Long before most of Las Vegas starts moving, the publisher of ECN heads out for coffee, rotating among Starbucks, Dunkin’ and McDonald’s. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, it was McDonald’s.
Then he sits in his car with his iPad and reads the news.
“We have perfectly good coffee at the office,” Svehla says. “That is not really the point. It is just something I have done for years.”
Afterward comes another regular part of the morning: a walk through the neighborhood with Haha, his poodle. Haha occasionally makes the short trip to the ECN office, but not this Tuesday.
“That is probably the quietest part of my day,” Svehla says. “Once I get to the office, you never really know what is going to come up.”
THEN THE DAY STARTS MOVING
Svehla has spent more than four decades in the tradeshow business, first working for an exhibit builder while also specializing in installation and dismantle before founding and publishing ECN. Before the magazine, he traveled around 34 weeks per year supervising projects in the industry. ECN will mark its 34th year in 2027.
The work has changed. The unpredictability has not.
“You have things you plan to do, and then the phone rings or somebody walks in with something else,” he says. “That is publishing. You deal with what needs attention and keep moving.”
There was plenty needing attention Oct. 13.
ECN was in the middle of IMEX week and preparing to host Throw 2026, a darts and networking party at its Desert Inn Road headquarters. Svehla was handling advertising work and event sponsorships while staff and others worked through the setup.
At the same time, ECN had a much bigger problem online.
The publication’s website had been infected with malware, disrupting public access for roughly two days. Staff were investigating the attack, removing malicious files and restoring the site while the rest of the operation continued around it.
“Something is always going to go wrong,” Svehla says. “You hope it is not your website, but when it happens, you deal with it. People had jobs to do, and everybody kept working on their part of it.”
The party was still coming. Advertisers still needed attention. The magazine still had to move forward.
“Some days you get pulled in five directions,” Svehla says. “You just try to make sure nothing gets dropped.”
NOTHING STAYS PUT
By about 2 p.m., there was still a lot to keep from dropping.
Chairs remained stacked. The dartboards were lying on the ground. Wind had scattered palm debris across the backyard. The bar was still sitting on a furniture mover on the concrete pad directly outside the glass doors leading from the office.
The wind had also been taking repeated shots at the party’s step-and-repeat backdrop.
“That backdrop went over a few times,” Svehla says. “You put it back up, figure out what is not working and keep going. By the time people got here, it was standing.”
Svehla made a last-minute Costco run for wine and other supplies while others kept working on the yard.
“You never want to run out of something when you have people coming over,” he says. “I probably went a little heavy on the wine, but I would rather have some left over than not have enough.”
The party grew from an idea by Paco Collazo, managing owner of Happy Projects and an international director and board member of the Experiential Designers & Producers Association (EDPA). A smaller version had been held the year before, and Throw 2026 expanded on that gathering.
Collazo worked with Svehla and the ECN team while ECN staffers Tanvi Bhagat, Editorial Advisor Lisa Abrams, Managing Editor Marlena Sullivan, 4P’s Melissa Skipworth and others handled pieces of the preparation. Blaine, the shaggy-haired handyman Svehla calls when something around the property needs fixing, was there, too.
Furniture had to be moved. Dartboards had to go up. Food and drinks had to be set out. The small jobs multiplied.
“These things always look easy once everybody gets there,” Svehla says. “Before that, there are 50 little things that have to get done.”
For someone who spent years in installation and dismantle, that part is familiar. People remember the finished show floor. They rarely see what it took to get there.
“Everybody had something they were working on,” Svehla says. “That is how it gets done. Nobody does one of these things by themselves.”
MORE THAN ONE KIND OF OBLIGATION
But not everything weighing on Svehla that week could be fixed, moved or crossed off a list.
Days earlier, he learned that longtime industry friend Mike Drobick had died.
Their history stretched back decades. Svehla’s father, Don Sr., had helped bring Drobick into the tradeshow industry from Brink’s, and Svehla later worked alongside him for years at 18th Street and Western Avenue in Chicago.
“My father brought Mike into the industry, and I worked with him every day for years,” Svehla says. “We went back a long way. It was very sad news.”
ECN published an obituary Oct. 9. Svehla had also hoped to return home for a celebration of life for long-time friend Tom Bacha who passed earlier in the year but ultimately could not make the trip.
“Sometimes you get pulled in two directions and you cannot do both,” he says. “I wanted to be there. I didn’t like missing it.”
BY THE TIME THE DOORS OPEN
Several hours after the backyard still held stacked chairs, loose dartboards and a bar on a furniture mover, it looked very different.
The chairs were out. The dartboards were up. Pizza, soft pretzels, charcuterie, vegetables, beer and plenty of wine were ready. Guests moved through the yard, talked and threw darts.
Approximately 100 people attended.
And the backdrop stayed up.
“Once people started coming in, you could stop worrying about whether every little thing was perfect,” Svehla says. “People were talking, eating, playing darts and having a good time. That was the point.”
The darts eventually produced a champion, too. Kalon Welch, executive vice president of business development and co-owner of FastSensor, won the tournament and took home $200 in cash. Happy Projects sponsored the prize.
Welch later joked that the victory came with more luck than skill, saying he was “shockingly” the winner and was still laughing about it afterward.
By the time the last guests were gone, Svehla was still there.
He was the last to leave, shutting off the lights and setting the alarm before heading home.
A few hours later, the routine started again.
Coffee. The news. A walk with Haha.
Then Svehla was back on sales calls.
“It was a busy day, but it was not some extraordinary thing,” he says. “You had problems, you had people coming over, you had work that needed to get done. So, you did the work.”
