The ESCA Summer Educational Conference Successfully Brought Together
On June 29th in Cour d’Alene, Idaho, the Exhibition Services & Contractors Association (ESCA) hosted their Summer Education Conference. ESCA boasts that this year the conference had the highest attendance they’ve ever recorded. Additionally, attendees were eligible for 8.25 hours Certified in Exhibitions Management (CEM) qualified hours that could be applied towards CEM recertification.
From golf and fishing to whitewater rafting and karaoke, attendees enjoyed all that Coeur d’Alene had to offer while networking and reconnecting with colleagues and new faces from across the industry. Despite the fun and the huckleberries, a tart-sweet wild berry native to the region, industry leaders flew in from across the country to tackle the pressing topics on everyone’s mind.
This year’s conversation highlights included:
- Multiple conversations on AI and it’s growing impact on the industry.
- The need to grab the attention of an audience and what that looks like in an evolving world where the window of engagement is increasingly shortening.
- The need to investigate and continue to push for safety within our tradeshows and events.
- The changes that industry economists are expecting from the latest developments in the White House and beyond.
- Experts suggest there will be a small drop in the economy that will impact events, but the drop will not be a major concern
- CEIR Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) reports that small shows are not set to recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2028 at the earliest
- Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA) reported that all of their initiatives were in the Big Beautiful Bill passed earlier this month.
- Sustainability is a continued conversation of importance for the industry to push and investigate at all aspects of the tradeshow ecosystem.
- Workforce development is at the front of everyone’s minds
The resonating theme across the event was that the tradeshow community first and foremost is one that “loves humans.” From the everyday conversations that are head on the show floor to those on the phone, everyone was set to discover ways to use advancing technologies to allow for communication to flow easy. When it came to asking how to get younger people invested the answer was clear: center on the personal connection. This industry is centered on the individual and experiences. The life blood of tradeshows are, truly, humans.
Goals for the remainder of the year and early next year were set by the Exhibitions Industry Collective (EIC):
- Cut down on the sustainability guideline overload by creating a single set of sustainability guidelines or promoting the consolidation of sustainability guidelines that can be followed by all.
- Creation of an awareness campaign or awareness assets that can be used to help promote the industry to an audience that may not otherwise know the industry exists in order to bolster the workforce and drive interest in tradeshows.
- Create awareness campaigns to get younger people to attend tradeshow specific shows and events similar to the Summer Educational Conference, Expo!Expo!, ExhibitorLive, SISO, and more.
- The implementation of a single job board for the industry that all companies within the industry can push.
The next Summer Educational Conference will be begin on Sunday, June 28th and conclude on Wednesday, July 1st, 2026. It will be hosted in Banff Springs, Banff, Canada, so get your passports ready.
For more information on the Summer Educational Conference for next year, visit their website. Check out what you missed in the ESCA SEC Gallery: here. For more information on ESCA, please visit their website.
