Explore the unexpected epicenter of innovation with Brian Wallace and Margaret Bedelian as we illuminate how Owensboro, Kentucky, is challenging the status quo of where breakthrough ideas are born. This episode promises to broaden your horizons on the economic and lifestyle advantages of smaller cities and reveal how events like the Innovate Summit are pioneering a new landscape for innovation across diverse sectors. From Owensboro's remarkable riverfront to the summit's mission of idea cross-pollination, get ready for a conversation that will shift your perspective on where and how innovation thrives.
Venture behind the scenes of the Innovate Summit with us, where networking reigns supreme in our post-pandemic world. Discover the intricate dance of organizing a conference that captivates with back-to-back speakers and meshes local culture with global insights. With 25 industry heavyweights sharing their expertise on everything from AI to the future of work, we're stirring the pot of convention. Tune in to hear how we're crafting an event that's not just a gathering but the beginning of a movement—all while keeping it affordable and packed with value, ensuring you walk away with more than just memories, but a toolkit for change.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Explore the unexpected epicenter of innovation with Brian Wallace and Margaret Bedelian as we illuminate how Owensboro, Kentucky, is challenging the status quo of where breakthrough ideas are born. This episode promises to broaden your horizons on the economic and lifestyle advantages of smaller cities and reveal how events like the Innovate Summit are pioneering a new landscape for innovation across diverse sectors. From Owensboro's remarkable riverfront to the summit's mission of idea cross-pollination, get ready for a conversation that will shift your perspective on where and how innovation thrives.
Venture behind the scenes of the Innovate Summit with us, where networking reigns supreme in our post-pandemic world. Discover the intricate dance of organizing a conference that captivates with back-to-back speakers and meshes local culture with global insights. With 25 industry heavyweights sharing their expertise on everything from AI to the future of work, we're stirring the pot of convention. Tune in to hear how we're crafting an event that's not just a gathering but the beginning of a movement—all while keeping it affordable and packed with value, ensuring you walk away with more than just memories, but a toolkit for change.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, super exciting chat around innovation, one of my favorite topics, and we have the Innovate Summit coming up, led by one of my favorite people on social media, brian Wallace, and team. Brian Margaret, how are you?
Speaker 2:Good Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Evan, for the opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for being here, and I've been watching your upcoming event, brian, with great interest. We're going to dive into that. Maybe introduce yourself, introduce Margaret and the team and the Innovate Summit, that's coming up in very short order.
Speaker 2:For sure, I am more known for my marketing stuff with infographics and press, but apparently that wasn't enough stuff to do in the world and I got tucked into creating an innovation summit for a small, rather remote town called Owensboro, kentucky. It's Western Kentucky, just barely in the central time zone, and I would not even dream to do it without having a wonderful operational person, and that is Margaret Bedelian, who is usually not as loud and on all the cameras and live streams. But we're here today and we're excited to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and I'm excited to have you both.
Speaker 3:Yay, so yeah, I'm a seasoned event planner with over 20 years experience and working with people in Owensboro. Before I said you've got a great facility, great riverfront, let's bring them and they're like all right, here's Brian Wallace. Work together and use your magic and come up with something fun and exciting. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1:And it looks very fun, very exciting. And let's start with the premise here. One, you know why does the world need an Innovate Summit? Aren't we all innovating anyway? And two, I thought all innovation happened in New York and San Francisco.
Speaker 2:Why aren't you in New Yorkork or san francisco? Uh, brian and team, well, let me get on the stove. Let me try to calm down and not get as soapbox as possible and choose my words carefully. As a former new yorker, I understand what new york thinks and, having been to california plenty and working with all the world's great technology companies and whatnot, all of the world's innovation does not just happen in New York and San Francisco. There are many other great places that there's incredible amounts of stuff going on that is often overlooked, even gigantic cities. Evan, aren't you in Boston, right? That's like one of the biggest parts of deal flow and innovation. You've got incredible universities over there, probably more PhDs per thousand people anywhere on the planet, so I'm pretty sure it holds its own too.
Speaker 2:Mantra, I guess you could say in a whole roadshow where he talks about the rise of the rest. So if you haven't noticed and this didn't just start during the pandemic a lot of people have been leaving New York and leaving San Francisco. They've become very expensive. A lot of them have not become the most wonderful place to live, and again, I'm going to get in a whole soapbox. Needless to say, there are many wonderful places to live and work and innovate, that it makes a lot more financial sense. What if you have an incredible tech job in the Valley or New York City and you could move to the interior of the United States and live like a king and buy a house and have a nice life for yourself and not sit in traffic? That sounds like a pretty good deal. So it's just I feel like there's lots of different companies, different personality types, different avatars, different profiles, different pedigrees, different people, that there are just different specializations in the world, and for the global economy to keep on running, you need all these different types. So it isn't just East Coast versus West Coast or even just within America. There's incredible global stuff happening everywhere on the planet, including places that people don't think about.
Speaker 2:So I think this lends to that where people can see hey, we just said this is a tiny little town that's very remote. You know, sometimes I say jokingly, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, but what people are starting to notice over the past few years? The flyover places might actually be fly to places, because one thing that some of these places do that people miss out on is that they're living well right, so for an MSA of maybe 80 to 100,000 people. They built a $200 million waterfront from scratch and it's beautiful. It's like a contiguous mile, mile and a half. We've got all these like Bellagio style fountains and hotels and a giant conference center, one of the largest children's parks in the world, the Kentucky Bluegrass Hall of Fame one of the big brands in bourbon. So all it needs is a little bit more innovation and, with my background in some of the world's largest events being behind the scenes and some of their advisory work, I know a ton of very cool speakers and innovators. So it's almost more of the cross-pollination of bringing together a lot of people in this locale, in this region, in the greater broader region and throughout the nation where people are craving experiences.
Speaker 2:I know tons of people that haven't really been out since the pandemic and sorry to say, but a lot of the trillion plus event industry has been hit hard, mainly because of the pandemic, but a lot of other problems that were bubbling up anyway. Look at E3, right, the largest gaming conference on the planet shut its doors. Guys, do you think gaming wasn't popular during the pandemic? People played more. So how is it that a fast food industry that prints money went out.
Speaker 2:A lot of the big conferences are struggling. A lot of the small conferences aren't really conferences. So you need something that's in the middle that people can wrap their mind around, and when you have something that's and I'm sure we'll dive into this more that's multidimensional of different thoughts. So it's not just New Yorkers, or it's not just real estate, or it's not just tech. It's a lot of innovators that may be technologists and might not be technologists. They might be marketers, they might be creatives, they might be HR people, and when you bring this many people together intentionally in a remote place for two and a half days, you have access to them and ideas can percolate. So you're not just listening to the live streams and the talking heads, you're getting to be a part of it, and that's where we think the magic is going to be behold.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds magical indeed. And talk about the format. I mean you talk a lot about convergence. It's not a one topic summit. I mean I saw references to cybersecurity and IoT and digital health and AI, and it really is the convergence of different sectors and industries where the magic happens. But maybe talk about the agenda what people can look forward to look forward to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, as you already alluded to, it's wildly variant. We have one of the longest time, harlem Globetrotters. We have several deans that are going to talk about disrupting the future of education Right, did you hear what I just said? Like, people who run schools are going to talk about how schools are going to completely change. So, even within their own industry, it's almost like a radical, the kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:And I think when you have this creative, forward thinking mindset in whatever your industry is, when you see in all these other industries oh wow, they're struggling with the same kinds of things I am that's going to make you pay more attention to something that you didn't really think was going to be on your music playlist that morning, if you will.
Speaker 2:So a lot of it is going to be fireside chats, solo speeches. There's going to be some different panels. We're going to try to do some pretty innovative things in terms of networking. What I mean by that is I feel like a lot of events are good at taking your money and getting your sponsorship and they don't really care if you're going to have a good time at the event, and then they'll ask you how did you do? And don't forget, register for next year. Here's a discount code and it's like when was the last time they operated more like the Ritz-Carlton and tried to have a concierge and hospitality? So we're going to go out of our way to have a few key concierge type of people to try to foster conversations and match people up, so you're not wasting your time or just counting on serendipity or whatever the heck people think is going to cash in in today's world, which it isn't.
Speaker 1:I love that A concierge service. You go to so many events and kind of you end up a bit lost or looking at your phone sitting in a corner somewhere not a good use of time, margaret. Talk about the as an event organizer the event organizer here. Talk about the venue and the agenda that you've kind of crafted together with Brian and the rest of the team.
Speaker 3:For sure. Sure, we know that relationships are key to success in life, in business. So our big thing was you can create a relationship over the phone or, you know, over. It means nothing like being in person and having that one connection. So when we looked at the event, we decided let's rent out the entire convention center, which overlooks the entire Ohio River. It's fantastic, floor to ceiling windows. You're not going to get a better venue, so the venue is key to that because it's a talking point. So some of these people haven't been to a conference since 2019, so you need to be awkward in person if you haven't been out in, you know public doing things.
Speaker 3:So we let's pick a venue that is going to automatically have a conversation. So we decided to run dinner conventions there. They've got a patio area there. They're off the convention. We're going to do a cocktail party.
Speaker 3:So Brian and I talked about networking. People want to network. People want to talk to others about their business, about life, and the relationships culminate over time. So every day we have at least an hour set aside for networking, where they're going to have cocktail and you know nice past hors d'oeuvres and they can enjoy themselves, which was huge.
Speaker 3:We have pretty back-to-back speakers so that we can make the most of the day. You know people are coming to owensburg, people from california, we have people, we have someone from brazil coming, um, coming from all over the us, and we want them to make the most of their time. We're not there to take their money or their sponsorship, as brian said. We want to make them feel it's about them and so we built this timeframe. We're like we want to use a lot of time, but we also can't keep them away from their jobs and their families too long. So you'll see it's back. We have 25 speakers lined up for the event, so all day we're from 8 am to 6 am the first day and then 8 am to 3 am on the second full day.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And, Brian, I see you have some amazing guests and speakers Bobby Carlton, one of my favorites. Jason Falls he's fun, hilarious, so interesting. You have musical guests Wow, that looks cool. What was bluegrass? I mean, you couldn't be in Kentucky without having bluegrass, one of my favorite. You got whiskey, of course, in the green blue hills of Kentucky, you got to have your whiskey. Talk to us about some of the sponsors and some of the curated speakers that you put together.
Speaker 2:Sure, and, by the way, I do see a few people are commenting. I'm not sure if I'm seeing that on my stream or your stream. Evan, just wanted a quick shout out here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the beauty of live streaming. You got, we've got Mike.
Speaker 2:We've got Mike, who's in global marketing at Lexmark. He's actually part of our corporate innovation panel, so that's going to be really interesting. He's going to be on with sorry with Rachel Schwartz, who leads innovation for GE Appliance Division. So GE has like thousands of engineers in Louisville. She's over there and she actually used to be in Boston too for GE Appliance Division. So GE has like thousands of engineers in Louisville, kentucky. She's over there and she actually used to be in Boston too. She did some stuff for O's and Ninja Friars. And then I see we have Stephen J Austin, who's in South Carolina. We've got Helen coming in from Jerusalem. Very cool. Helen actually helped us.
Speaker 2:We had a pre-event that was all virtual several months ago as well. So, like you have on the screen, you've got Lexmark over there. Visit Owensboro is the partner that we're doing the event with. Mac and Bella is Margaret's company. Mac and Bella are the names of her kids, which is her ethos of why she does the event. You guys know me, that's now sourcing.
Speaker 2:Green River is one of the oldest bourbons on the planet and it's actually how we actually got to this event in the first place, because we were going to do some marketing work for them. And then we heard about the city and we got matched up. Loud Capital is a venture capital firm that is going to have several representatives coming in and also they're going to be talking about the future of venture capital. Redhawk, run by Matt Stropoff, is going to be talking on our AI panel. Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame is probably going to greet people on the riverfront playing the banjo, and that sounds cool and actually is. They love to brighten things up.
Speaker 2:If we scroll down just a little bit, I think that is Blackbird, if I am seeing that correctly. Yep, we have Blackbird Recruiting, ruined by Tully Krause. He's going to be talking all about leveraging social media to grow your business. S3m stands for Season 3 Media, so we have two MCs Troy Sandage and and Christina Kay are co-owners in season three, and they actually are the co-emcees of Boston's very large conference called Inbound, which is HubSpot's huge conference, which I think is up to 70,000 people, or something wild like that, Unbelievable.
Speaker 1:And you know, maybe we'll be part of Google one day. We'll see.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's very likely to happen. I mean, I feel like, yeah, whether they went public or not, I felt like that was an inevitability, that it's going to be part of some very large tech machine. I don't know, that might change the way Boston runs things, but we could talk about that later. West of Perfection, one of our local friends in Owensboro, mary Kay Walton, is going to be speaking all about burnout and the future of work. Speaking of the future of work, we also have the Guide app started by my Nigerian-American friend, tim Salau, who lives in Houston and he's amazing. He's known online as Mr or Dr Future of Work. I think he's gotten up to his doctorate now. I think he has like a quarter of a million LinkedIn followers and we have a lot of regional friends as well.
Speaker 2:So Talk, which is the technology association of Louisville, kentucky, is run by Dawn Yankulov out of Louisville. She is going to be on, I believe, the AI panel. I'm trying to do all this from memory. The Slingshot Guys is a wonderful friend and videographer that's based in the Metro New York region, so they're our official videographer of the event. They've already done a promo video and they're going to be capturing all of the assets there. Loudx is part of Loud Capital. It is more or less their consulting arm. Nexogen is some really interesting folks headed by John Salisbury, who's in the Northern Cincinnati region. They are doing amazing stuff where they're basically working on like cyber defense for AI, which is just mind blowing and you have to hear him say it, but I'm not going to do it justice, so we'll let him talk about that.
Speaker 2:We amazingly have the Israeli consulate coming that runs the whole district of economic development in the United States and they are bringing a cohort of primarily smart cities and mobility startups, so that's going to be really fun. Wolfpack Engagement is a firm out of the Detroit area. Imagine we're all playing like a trivia game, like we're all on Jeopardy and all the contestants have physical clicker things that you can use for real-time consumer behavior. Big Black Tea is also co-owned by Tim Salau and is a tea brand that we started out of the pandemic. Curious Elixirs is going to be, I believe, our VIP drink sponsor of non-alcoholic beverages. Gulfstream is a very large conglomerate of all commercial real estate in the greater Owensboro region. Yeshiva University and YU Global are coming in from New York talking about the disruption of future education. Yu Global is their upskilling and micro-credentialing arm, and Enterprise Technology Association is a new association that John Salisbury and crew are all going to be a part of. There's a whole bunch of media partners. They all do different things. We're glad.
Speaker 1:I count myself in that category, so as a one-man media company, that would be me.
Speaker 2:Give us your one-man.
Speaker 1:What a thing to bring together. And, wow, what a wonderful idea of not going to Vegas again for yet another conference where I'm off to almost every month, sadly, right. It's the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want to gamble, Great. But like, why does everybody always have to go to Vegas and the Javits Center? It's just, it's's boring, right? This is unexpected. I think that place matters and Margaret said it very well. When you look at this convention center, it's almost like they watched Field of Dreams on repeat for a few months. They just built this giant place for a small place and they're like the big brother of like a 10 or 15 county radius of stuff. So if you want something in this region, you look at it. You look at the InnovateSummitcom and you watch the flyover video and you get a feel. But when you go to it it's like a whole other level. Place matters and I think people are craving a better experience where you bring a good quality of people in an enjoyable environment. That's the magic.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. We have such a great country with so many incredible destinations. How do you see the Innovate Summit evolving over the year, next year or two, assuming it's the smash it that it looks like it will be? Do you see this taking on the road, going into other cool destinations and areas that are maybe under-served, underrepresented?
Speaker 2:in tech. Yeah, we talk about this a lot and I think I'm going to need something stronger than coffee to do it justice. But I don't know, like I think we don't know how good it's going to be. It's year zero right now. It's theoretical. It's me running my mouth on a live stream with Evan and Margaret, with some people listening, right, like I think it's going to go well.
Speaker 2:I don't like throwing my time and resources at nothing, but we don't know, you don't know, until people actually come and it's a resounding success, hopefully, god willing, but for people, yes, please, yeah. So I'm saying so. I think it has all the markings of being successful. I think that people will enjoy the venue and the company and the crowd and, equally, I could see it serving either underrepresented or not obvious things in the nation and even the world, because I think this is something that isn't specific to Owensboro, right, I think it's the beginning of a movement. And, to your point, evan, like, how about? Just it's almost like let's have a support group of not another event in New York, la, san Francisco, vegas and Miami and Austin, right, like there's six cities that everybody's been to, like crazy, maybe give everybody else a chance, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, talk to us about this new hybrid world of online and digital, something you know a thing or two about as one of the you know most innovative digital marketers, content creators out there, and in person. How do you plan on blending these two worlds? What are some of the best practices now, as we're back in the real world? But there's still this hybrid feel to everything, with streaming and video and live and social and everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think there's been limited demand for a streaming option of it. I think there's been limited demand for a streaming option of it and I've been on the fence. I'm not sure that everybody really wants it. A few people have said it, but unless there's like a mass audience that wants to do it, I'm not sure that it's the thing. I've seen it where some people do it incredibly well.
Speaker 2:My hat's off to SEMrush. So SEMrush, for years, have done this program called 24 hours of content, literally 24 hours straight. Like 30, 40 minutes of people in panels talking and like two minutes off and just like clockwork around the clock for 24 hours. I mean it's like you need an army to do it. One year they had four different TV studios that they flew people into and then, like a couple of years later, they knocked it down to three. I've been to both and I'm like I don't know how you guys do it, but like they get like a legitimate, actual TV studio where they make shows and movies and stuff and everybody has makeup and it's like gorgeous set production quality. So if you're going to do that as live stream, wonderful, right, Cause sometimes people's internet and equipment's not very good, so this is all like pro and amazing, but they don't have an in-person crowd, which is kind of weird. And then you have all of the pure play internet events and I really feel like I've never had a wonderful experience that can be a hundred percent of what I've experienced in person. So I'm leaning in more on the in-person experience lately. I'm counting on that to be a thing. I think that, because we're a very social people and a very social world, I think that just all of the content that we're going to produce there, all of the user-generated content, micro content we're going to do leading up to it, during it and after it, that's going to be amazing, Something we actually didn't talk about on here, aside from, like, the main stage stuff there is.
Speaker 2:If you look at the agenda page at the beginning of the days of the agenda page, you'll actually notice that it says that all day long and it looks like that. How gorgeous. Right, All day long there's a podcast lounge. There's actually several very large podcasters. So Jason Falls has a big podcast. Troy has a big podcast on the HubSpot network.
Speaker 2:Jeff, who is heavily involved in the Shorty Awards, which is a big social media award and conference in New York City. He's bringing the Shorty Awards podcast, so there's an arsenal of podcasters. So, even if everything isn't going to be 100 live although I and many other people are pretty large audience live streamers even if the event itself doesn't have a live stream I feel like we'll probably have quite a number of different people's povs and perspectives on their live stream. But I feel like the amount of content we'll get will kind of nudge everybody's brain and make them FOMO out where they're like oh wow, I really should have booked that ticket and not just gone to Vegas again. Right, Like you can have your gambling addiction 24 seven. Maybe just come to some events once in a while, guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's, it's affordable. I see here, looking at the tickets page, I mean a lot of these events I attend, you know, into thousands of dollars. It's really gotten out of control, right, and I don't know how sustainable that is. So you clearly want to attract a wider audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean it's a major pet peeve of mine, because if you're a person, if you're a brand, if you're a small business or you're a large business, all of these events are asking you for so much money. Right? Because what if the ticket is a thousand two thousand dollars and you have to fly and hotel and all the incidentals and all the meals and all the side events? You can spend unlimited money at these events and then every year it's like they ask you for more money. Do they ever ask what was your return on investment before they just send you another sponsorship deck? Probably not, right? So we're intentionally making it low cost.
Speaker 2:Like I got chastised by somebody the other day saying that the live stream ticket should be more than the ticket. I'm like thanks, and I copy and paste a thousand of you and have you all done? I mean, that's not the world. We understand that it's probably going to be relatively small in number as compared to the world's large events and we are making you go a bit out of your way. Unless you happen to be in Louisville or Lexington or Nashville or a string, a ring of maybe six cities, you're probably going to be going a fair amount of distance. So we want to be cognizant of that. So there's trade-offs on it, but there's gorgeous hotels. They don't cost a lot. So it's a pretty cheap ticket to get potentially more out of it than more established larger events. That's our bet.
Speaker 1:And it's a nice time of year. It's still chilly. A bit chilly today here in Boston, maybe 50 max. I'm suspecting the weather will be a little nicer down in Kentucky. Any final call to actions, final thoughts before we wrap today, folks, Margaret and or Brian we hope to see you, um, and everyone out there may 21st through may 23rd.
Speaker 3:It's going to be great. We've, like I said, we've got a fantastic venue, fantastic speakers, so and there isn't a more beautiful state than kentucky.
Speaker 1:I've been a couple times. If you haven't been, like you know it's one of those places that's magical those, the rolling Hills and the horses and the and the farms. It's a. It's a gorgeous state. So thanks everyone, thanks for watching. You know, reach out, support the event and we must do a recap post event and talk about what's next. Brian and Margaret.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thanks again, evan, for everything. You've been a great supporter and we're looking forward to seeing everybody on the waterfront, and if you don't come this year, you sure better come next year.
Speaker 1:I look forward to it. All right, thanks everyone. Take care.