Check out this recent Session with Lisa Day, Senior Event Marketing Manager, and Kate Vives, Event Tech Lead at Amazon Business.

Find out how event technology, strategy, and content curation all converge at one of the world's leading corporations. This session provides a unique behind-the-scenes look at the roles, challenges, and innovative strategies employed by Amazon Business to elevate their event experiences.

What You'll Discover:

• Introduction to Lisa Day and Kate Vives: Learn about their roles at Amazon Business and the journey that brought them to their current positions. [0:01]
• Inside Amazon Business Events: Get a comprehensive overview of Amazon Business's event portfolio, including the flagship event Amazon Business Reshape and how it's designed to foster smart business buying. [2:05]
• Synergy Between Event Content and Technology: Explore how Lisa and Kate collaborate to blend event content with cutting-edge technology, ensuring seamless and impactful attendee experiences. [8:56]
• Strategic Planning and Execution: Gain insights into the meticulous planning process, from postmortem reviews to strategy formulation and execution for year-on-year improvements. [18:04]
• KPIs and Measuring Success: Understand the key performance indicators that drive their decision-making process and how they measure the success of their events. [24:21]
• The Evolution of Event Roles: Discover the growing importance of specialized roles in event technology and content strategy within the broader context of marketing and organizational goals. [29:58]
• Future Trends in Event Marketing: Lisa and Kate share their thoughts on how events are becoming integral to marketing strategies and the evolution of event management as a critical component of business success. [34:15]

Whether you're an event professional, marketer, or a fan of innovative business strategies, this session offers valuable insights into the dynamic world of event management at Amazon Business.

Our Top 6 Takeaways

1) KPIs and Event Technology:

• We learned the importance of aligning event technology KPIs not just with direct engagement metrics but also with operational efficiency, customer experience improvements, and overall return on investment (ROI). Kate and Lisa highlighted the strategic role that event technology plays in supporting Amazon Business's event objectives, emphasizing the need for a holistic view that encompasses various departments' goals to ensure the events contribute significantly to the organization's success.

2) The Role of Event Tech In The Planning Process:

• Event technology is now at the forefront of the planning process, marking a significant shift from its historical supplemental role to a core component of event strategy.  An effective event tech lead must posses a comprehensive view of the event's workings, blending a deep understanding of technical aspects with strategic event management insights. This transformation underscores the nuanced and specialized skills required to navigate the complexities of modern event technology. Event technology now stands at the forefront of enhancing attendee experiences, operational efficiency, and the overall success of events, demonstrating its critical importance in contemporary event planning and execution.

3) Amazon's Bug Bash Process:

• Amazon's Bug Bash Process, as outlined by Kate, is a critical step in ensuring the success of their events by inviting team members to identify and resolve potential issues with event technology before public launch. This collaborative and detailed feedback loop is crucial for refining the user experience, demonstrating Amazon's commitment to operational excellence and customer satisfaction. By incorporating collective insights for iterative improvement, the Bug Bash Process embodies Amazon's strategy of meticulous preparation and perfection in event execution, underscoring its importance in organizing successful events.

4) The Future of Amazon Business Events:

• Lisa explained that by integrating stakeholder feedback, considering global trends, and aiming to stay ahead of industry developments, Amazon Business ensures its events, like it's flagship Amazon Business Reshape, remain at the cutting edge. This forward-looking approach, emphasizing adaptability and innovation, highlights the significance of evolving event themes and content to maintain engagement and provide value to attendees, illustrating the importance of foresight in planning successful future events.
  

5) Event Content Curation:

• In order to curate content for their events, the Amazon Business team considers feedback from current events, engages with speaker suggestions, and incorporates ideas from customers and advisory boards. The team actively plans and updates their speaker roster on a rolling basis, ensuring that the content is not only relevant but also forward-looking, aligning with the themes and strategic goals of the event.

6) Tapping Into The Value Of Your Speaker Network:

• Chris highlights the critical importance of understanding and utilizing the historical contributions of speakers.  He suggests that by recognizing speakers as valuable assets — influencers, champions, and subject matter experts — organizations can significantly enhance their events and overall marketing strategies. This approach not only enriches the event content but also strengthens the organization's ability to create meaningful and impactful connections across the board.

Full Interview Transcript: Sessions - Lisa Day and Kate Vives from Amazon Business Talk Event Content, Tech, and Strategy

Chris Carver: [00:00:00] Well, this is our first Sessionboard Session. So I'm excited to actually do this and we're going to get right to it today. We have 2 amazing individuals, Lisa Day and Kate Vives with us. On the note of just getting right to it, Kate and Lisa, do you mind just kind of giving your current role where you're at and what you're up to? Lisa, do you want to start?

Lisa Day: Sure. Hey, everyone. I'm Lisa. Thanks for being here. Excited to have this discussion today. So, I am a senior event marketing manager at Amazon Business, and Kate here is my colleague and partner in crime. She'll introduce herself, but come from a background of live events, virtual events, and B2B space from the promoter side, from the agency side, a little bit of everything. So that's how I landed in my role today at Amazon Business. And I lead our marquee event, Amazon Business Reshape, which I'm sure we'll share a little bit about today.

Chris Carver: Cool. Yeah. Lisa, when did we meet? We probably met like 10 years ago when you were at Superfly, right?

Lisa Day: Yeah. Working on Outside Lands for Superfly. Festival days. Good times. How about you, Kate? What's your current role?

Kate Vives: Yeah, I'm Kate. Like Lisa said, we work closely together. I'm the event tech lead for Amazon Business. I manage our event tech stack that serves all of our events, and have a lot of fun doing it. I also come from a background of the agency side as well as from the vendor technology vendor side as well. So putting a couple of those experiences together is what got me here at Amazon Business today and kind of handle the strategy, everything that is technology that touches events. So everything from registration, to batch printing on site, mobile app, and all of our integrations, all of that crosses my desk.

Chris Carver: That's awesome. Yeah, that's one of the big reasons why I wanted to bring you guys together just to hear really how the event strategy and event tech ops kind of work together. So I know we're going to dive into that, but that was really exciting for me to kind of dig into and just kind of share some of the learnings that you guys see along the way. But before we do that, can either of you kind of give me some perspective or context on the Amazon Business event portfolio or the areas that you guys cover as well?

Lisa Day: Sure, I can do that. And Kate, feel free to jump in. So if for anyone who's not familiar with Amazon Business, we are a part of Amazon.com. We are the B to B solution for, I guess what you use as a consumer using Amazon Prime. So businesses use Amazon Business as a partner and supplier. To purchase products for their offices, for their facilities, for whatever it might be. So think, Amazon Prime in bulk for your business. So, our customers are everyone. Our customers could be you. And so the events that I lead is Amazon Business Reshape. That's our marquee flagship event. If you will, we're going into our third year of this event as our business grows, and it is a customer event where we come together as Amazon Business, as our customers to meet, to network, to hear from thought leaders, to hear from customers and really just accelerate our path collectively, with smart business buying. So that's what Amazon Business Reshape is all about. Amazon Business also has a localized version, of a similar to Reshape called Amazon Business Exchange. Right now it's hosted in EU and in Japan. So, our EU event is in the UK. And then we also within my team, we sponsor events, I think like a third party portfolio. So, events in the procurement space and the business space, some events that are more industry-focused, so that we can meet our customers where they are. So that's a little bit about our team. We have webinars and more field events as well. But we really focus, and by we, I mean, Kate and I really focus on this flagship owned events.

Chris Carver: Awesome. And Kate, do you, I'm assuming you work across the portfolio, but is Reshape a big, kind of big area of focus for you?

Kate Vives: Oh, it sure is. We, we partnered together on Reshape. It's probably, it's where we take our, we try to bar raise our own events. You know, that's our model year over year. We try to raise the bar on that event. And then we try to use these learnings for all of our events across all of our events.

Chris Carver: Awesome. Awesome. Well, you've been using kind of Reshape as a good litmus. I'm curious. So Reshape ends. And what is the first little bit of your process, Lisa, and then how do you incorporate Kate into that and walk me through what this kind of annual cycle looks like then when it comes to reshaping?

Lisa Day: We're still figuring it out going into year three. If you look back at year one, it's your first time doing it. So you have nothing to benchmark again. You're totally inventing, you know, you're using your experience and other events we've done in our life, you know, using experience from other Amazonians and other events that Amazon has produced, and then year two, we just completed year two. And, our event was in November and this next event is going to be in September. So by the time we were done with our November event. We're two months into our planning cycle for our event this year. So, a little bit about like the way things end, you know, the event ends right now. This is just an in-person event. It's not a hybrid event, but we do have a bit of an on-demand experience from some of our, our main stage sessions that we launch once the event closes to keep our customers engaged and informed. And for anyone who wasn't able to make it to share some of the great content with our customers, then we're, you know, we're straight into planning for the next year. And we, it's a very Amazon thing, but we always kick off a project with a strategy review as a collective team where we call it for Reshape our steering committee. So our core project leads come together to build a strategy. We have a postmortem. We use that postmortem to inform our new strategy, revisit our goals and objectives and tenants and all of that good stuff to make sure that we're aligned as a team, make sure the right people are in place and that we're working towards the same, the same targets. So when it comes to kicking off with event technology. We need to get our contracts in place. We need to get our team members onboarded so that we can actually begin, begin the executional phase. So that's sort of a high-level view of how we begin to kick off.

Chris Carver: Cool. And then. I'm sure that content is intertwined, but specifically as we focus on content here, does that really begin at the steering committee and then it branches out or how are you kind of incorporating the rest of the organization in that beginning process of the content on the content side of things?

Lisa Day: Sure, I can say, I mean, like, while we're at the event, like, while we were in Chicago, we were already talking about content. People had great ideas. Our customers are there. People are listening in. They're excited. They want to participate in the future. They have ideas for the future. So we take a lot of that, like, anecdotal feedback. While the event is happening and even like leading up to the event, the form of the previous event, people who, you know, couldn't make it because of a scheduling conflict. We, we start planning and engaging, you know, our speaker rolodex, way, way in advance. It's something that's just done on a rolling basis.

Chris Carver: Got it. Got it. And, you know, something that really kind of intrigues me is how these events of this type take something like Reshape how that is should be in my mind. So correlated to the goals of the organization. How do you kind of think about KPIs? It doesn't have to be specific, but how do you guys think about KPIs in that initial steering committee meeting? And do you incorporate that throughout? What does that look like?

Lisa Day: Kate, do you want to share a little bit or do you want me to take it? Sure.

Kate Vives: We have, so obviously every group of stakeholders has their own set of KPIs. And what I could do is, I could speak to the event technology KPIs briefly. And then of course we have large, event-wide and even, org-wide KPIs for these events, as well, but for me, for event technology, there are some that are really easy right off the top that we kind of all know about. And a lot of those revolve around things like attendee engagement rate or technology adoption rate, and those are good. I don't want to take them for granted, but some that are more important to me, and I've taken just a vested interest, going along in this, in this position is really, truly, creating operational efficiency improvements. So one of my personal team goals is to reduce the time it takes to plan the event, reduce resources, reduce costs, and, and just basically lift the load for both the planners and the stakeholders, when it comes to doing their job. And then, in addition to that. We want to be able to measure like an approved customer experience. So whether it's through reduced registration completion time or reduced on-site check-in time, or even from a customer support standpoint, reduced issue resolution time, we want to see those incremental improvements year over year, so that we know that we're doing the best we can for our customer, whether our customer's internal. An internal stakeholder or the final attendee. And then last, of course, we want to be able to prove ROI. So not just ROI on the event technology investment, but ROI on the entire event. So how can I equip Lisa's team to have the data that they need and the data points that they need? To really arrive at those and like analyzed points and make conclusions and make decisions based on that data, improve the value of their event overall. So those are some of my big ones.

Chris Carver: And you guys chat, it sounds like on a daily basis, and I'm assuming this is one of those core things that you talk about quite a bit, or what does that conversation look like? At any given time. Yeah. I

Lisa Day: mean, so the way we sort of structure just from a structural standpoint and are going back to the KPIs. And then I'll get to that one is, we have like, we call them VP level goals at Amazon. And we have that, that basically expands to your entire team. So all of the stakeholders, different departments, so that we all are laddering up to that one goal. Well, Kate was just describing was more of a departmental level goal. So we have like our, you know, higher-level goals. Then we have event level goals that we as like a committee, collectively are aligned to. And then from there, we have these like basically. Smart goals that roll into those, those North star goals. And that's kind of what Kate just described. So how, how we stay in touch is, you know, we, we do standups, we do check-ins and we hold, we hold each other accountable, to those event level goals, because, you know, it's like kind of the trickle-down effect. Like, if those department level goals aren't, you know, aren't performing, they aren't helping the event level goals that ladder up then into those executive level goals. So we, we level set not to keep using the word level, on an often basis to make sure that there's, there's no blockers or anything that's standing in the way of the customer experience

Chris Carver: got it. And do you have anything similar when it comes to like content themes? It is the theme. This is, I know this is the third year. It sounds like, but have you evolved the theme? And then does that drive down to the different sessions? How does that kind of through line work, Lisa, when it comes to content strategy?

Lisa Day: It is hot off the press right now. We are working through that exercise right now. So it does evolve. While, you know, Amazon Business and our product and technology, you know. That stays consistent, but, you know, it evolves over time. And smart business buying as a category is something that's always weaved into our content. We really try to hear from customer voice on feedback from thematic, you know. Sessions from the year previous, we use our customer advisory boards to, you know, inform us about content. That's relevant to decision-makers. We look at macroeconomics, we look at what's happening in the world and we, we do adjust our theme to make sure that it's, it's relevant and helpful to our attendees year over year. And with our event being at the end of the year, it's often challenging because we're, we're actually looking to the next year. So in September, we're going to be talking about like tools for success in 2025. So, it has to be very, we have to be very forward-looking.

Chris Carver: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. A lot, you know, it seems so obvious, but having a customer advisory board that in and of itself leveraged right, can have a major impact even on a business like ours. So I can imagine. In the event world, that can be really useful. So kind of switching gears, Kate, one of the things I think is really interesting is this kind of your role, this like event internal in-house event tech ops role is somewhat of a new role, I think in, in the, the, in the scheme of things, are you seeing that kind of pop up more and more? And, and is that from, is there a particular reason why you think that is the case? Yeah, I'd love to hear your kind of thoughts on that.

Kate Vives: Sure. Sure. This is such a great topic. And it's obviously of high interest to me, but I think, one of the cool things about my position, well, let me take it back 10 years because I know that that were like back a decade, as you were saying, what were we doing then? And why, you know, where was this position back then? And I think, back then we were doing everything on paper. We were budgeting on paper, keeping our playbooks in three-ring binders and pre-printing and sorting badges, all that stuff, all that good stuff. And. And I think that there were really technology at that point event technology was supplemental and it's really shifted to be central now. And that is really in line with, how our expectations for. For interactions with technology have shifted as a consumer, like regardless of the use case. And I think in many cases we wore many hats and we may have been focusing on event technology, but our titles may not have reflected it. And so now we're kind of getting that, attention that we deserve. And, and it also goes, it goes a long way in saying that. It just kind of awakened the importance that the role tech plays and the focus on it has increased because it's been driven by a shift in stakeholder and attendee expectations around events. So we expect more out of events. We expect every touch point to be smoother. We expect to be able to get every last data point out. To make our decisions. And those are very complex. When we're tying into multiple systems, we're sorting through multiple different types of technology and someone has to have it all in view. They have to understand the way that events work, the why behind events. They have to have a little bit of technical knowledge to be able to tie those into existing systems. And it's really a nuanced and kind of niche. Set of knowledge and skills. And so I think that that continues to be identified more and more. And, people are, people know that there are people out there that fit that bill and they want them on their team.

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Chris Carver: Go ahead, please. Oh,

Lisa Day: I was just going to say like, you nailed it. Like your role is so critical and having you as a core stakeholder on our team is essential because like this role. So at the service level, you're like, Oh, event technology. It's like your tech, your back of house, you like, think of it that way. But like, you're truly like, you have to be a generalist with the experience. You wear a marketing hat and you wear an operations hat in that role. And I think that's, that's where there's still like a lot of education around your role, Kate. And I hope to see more, more of those types of roles popping up because. It's so needed to have, have that background in events because you're often having to make event level decisions on behalf of your stakeholders and you have to, you have to have a background.

Chris Carver: Yeah, I think as things become more digitized, it's an interesting combination. The skill set is an interesting combination of like. You know, an engineer mindset, but with the capabilities of a marketer and then being able to communicate across all, you know, all, all components of the organization. And so I, I think that's only going to get more critical. I also think, you know, to that degree, and I'd love, I'm going to put you guys on the spot here, but I'd love your thoughts. I think the, the, the content team, the event content team, whoever's really focused on that almost has that has to have a similar skill set in many ways, because. Again, content is not just now, about the in-person session. It's about what you do with that content. Now you're around, how does that, you know, correlate to the rest of the marketing team? So, you know, that's one of the things that I thought was unique about you both and how you work together, because I think it's a very similar skillset in some ways, and they are two. that quickly in the event marketing world, I think are going to continue to rise in need and favor because it's so critical to the rest of the marketing org. Am I, am I correct in that thinking? Do you guys have any thoughts on that?

Kate Vives: I think that for surviving and staying at the status quo and just getting by You maybe, you know, you don't invest in that position, but pushing yourself to the next level and wanting to not just do well, but do better and like, you know, set new benchmarks for yourself while you're while your guests, while your own internal stakeholders with, the way that their life got easier, that that's when you start evaluating, Hey, do we need this? Do we need this position? And by, by creating this position, how does it improve? If, our process for both, you know, our, our planners and, and our attendees. Yeah,

Chris Carver: do you, I'm curious, go ahead, Lisa. Oh, I was going

Lisa Day: to say, I think you're right with like the shift of digital that, you know, years back, like being an event content was more of like being an event talent buyer where you, You find someone to speak on a session, you let them be the expert. And that's like totally evolved, like event content and product marketing are like, it's sort of like an intersection of the, the two now being in events and being in product marketing, you have to be able to bring on the right talent. You need to be able to advise the talent. You need to be able to understand how it fits into your whole strategic picture. You need to understand. Writing, you need to understand communications. Like, I think every event content role is also an event communications role. There is just kind of buried in it, but there. They're synonymous in a way and, and that, and then of course, we need to have the background in the event, like the speaker logistics, that whole experience, the production, the production side, it's very multifaceted.

Chris Carver: Yeah, it's it's it's really because it seems like folks that are really focused on curating that content with. The actual speaker also have to be so knowledgeable of the distribution process and where it's going to go and all of those components. So, especially on some of our teams, which we know that teams are slimming, getting slimmer and slimmer these days. And so there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of expectations for these, these, you know, core team members to be able to carry, carry many, carry many bags, wear many hats, if you will, totally. So how much are you guys involving the rest of the organization in this process? So, and is that where the, that core team that you talked about Lisa in the beginning comes into play or how much are you reaching beyond the, the event team to involve the rest of the business?

Lisa Day: We involve the rest of the business in some of our like key decisions, like I said, like our overarching goals and tenants and objectives, anything that's like net new that we're adding to an experience that like is affects the customer, like a one way, we call them like one way decisions, anything that you can, you make this decision, you can't really turn back on it. There's like two way door decisions where, you know, you can pivot and iterate. Great. Those we can make, we can make more of those decisions on our own as the experts, but those, those bigger decisions, we involve the business, but we, we provide regular updates to the business just so that they're informed and in the loop. And, you know, proactive communication is key when you work at a large organization with, on an event that has a lot of eyes on it. For me, from the tech standpoint, we have, so we Lisa and I, and, you know, multiple team members, we work, for example, a landing page or an event app or a registration process up to, what we think is, is, is, is, is ready to go, and then we host internal bug bashes for all of those launches. And we invite the greater team. So we invite tech. Team members, we invite people who are not familiar with the registration process who who haven't been looking at it every day. And then we have a format for them submitting their feedback in real time. And then we spend the following we spend a few minutes on that call at the end to bring up any major. Major items. And then we spend the next couple of days cleaning up anything else that was found. And then we do what we call a walk the store, with leadership. So once everything's polished, we do that. They call out anything they see there. If we need to make changes from that call, we do. And then that's when it's ready for our customers. So, leading up to that many decisions have to be made, of course. And, and like Lisa said, we try to make the majority of the decisions. on our own and anything that significantly impacts the customer experience or the bottom line financially. That's when you really want to get signed up.

Chris Carver: Very cool. Yeah. So are you, and how much are you both interacting in that, in those products, in those programs that you just mentioned there, Kate? Are you guys talking quite a bit about. Those are Lisa. You involved in that process as well.

Kate Vives: Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's something I would leave those bug bashes, with the teams that have worked on this projects. And then Lisa's looped into everything, and our bug bash is unique to Amazon.

Chris Carver: Have you seen that use other places? It's a cool name.

Kate Vives: I think that it's, unique to people, to product, to product management. So, or anyone who's, you know, working on sprints and about to release a product or release a lot or launch the new product, would want to go through various, yeah.

Chris Carver: And do you see kind of that same concept happen throughout Lisa? Are you doing things like that beyond just tech or is that a feedback?

Lisa Day: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Things like, you know, selecting our keynote speakers, selecting entertainment. We go through a process of, you know, nominations and vetting and go through rounds of, you know, running it by diverse stakeholders to make sure we're on the right path and then ultimately present our recommendation to a core group of. Of leaders, to, to make a decision, make our offers. So that's one area that we, we do it with talent. Similarly with like session intake, we have a content committee that reviews all of the session intake that bar raises it, make sure that it's laddering up to our, our themes and that we have like the, the right speakers that can raise the bar at our events. So, everything from selecting talents, from selecting sessions, it all goes through similar processing. Processes. And in some cases, it's, it's different stakeholders. Especially when we're leaning into like the content side, we're, we're getting more in front of, our actual product marketers, portfolio marketers, the people that are closest to, our, our go to market, our go to market communications, et cetera.

Chris Carver: So in that, in that evaluation process, Lisa, how much are you having to prompt the, that group of people that is looking at. Those individuals to think about those things that you mentioned and what does that look like?

Lisa Day: So Similar to the strategy doc that I described we actually write write a content narrative That's also in another document. We're big big on docs at Amazon. That's that should be no surprise It's, it's one of our one of our unique our unique things But we have that content doc in place to really lay out the theme layout. you know, our, our session types, layout, potential abstracts and topics. And so that when we have these speakers that we're ready to nominate, it makes the process easier. Like, they look at them. They look at what the speaker is an expert on. They. Can sample their videos and they can make sure that it aligns to everything we've agreed upon from, I guess, the content narrative standpoint. so that's how we try to, to prepare ourselves and use these, these docs as our, as our safety nets almost to be like, well, this is what we agreed on. And. This person fits the bill. It like almost makes the decision. it's like, here's our recommendation and they should say yes, but it doesn't always work like that. Sometimes we get people that are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is totally off. And then like, why did we make this decision? Like, but that, that happens, especially when you work for an organization that's growing and changing and shifting and new leaders come in. So we have to, we have to be flexible. Yeah, both of our roles. So there's a, there's a lot of iterative thinking and that's like, that's core to our business. And that's what, I think keeps advancing us forward and makes us customer obsessed. Totally. Very cool. Well, one of the, one of the things that I see in the industry, I don't know how much you guys pay attention to, but I see that it feels like there's a lot of moment in the industry that is kind of evolving. How events are evolving in importance to the overall marketing entity of the organization. I'm curious, you know, as operators in a big organization, have you seen that within Amazon or within your world? Or do you see that amongst your peers? And what's your take on that side of things? Kate, do you, do you see that?

Kate Vives: Sure. I mean, I think that from an Amazon standpoint, we've been pushing the envelope, or we've seen the importance of events for a long time. especially on the, the AWS, our AWS counterparts. they have been perfecting this, the event product now for years and years. And even as the pandemic arose, like many others, Tech companies at the time, They pulled out every stop to pivot to to virtual to maintain the communication, Avenue or the communication channel to their customer via events. And I think that it's, you know, it's highly important. but us as an organism business, you kind of got to walk before you can run. And we are starting to pick up speed is what I would say. And, and it's a really fun thing to be a part of because, doc after doc or event after event, we, we, we're seeing that progress. Wouldn't you say Lisa?

Lisa Day: Absolutely. and I think like, well, we're, well, I sit on like a core events team. We're seeing other teams, you know, starting to have their own events. World that's not part of our core portfolio, like looking at field marketing, like they have their own portfolio. It's still events. And so we're seeing as this core event team that we're needing to be able to scale our operations and provide processes to our counterparts who might want to just host a webinar. But, you know, my. My team, we don't, we don't host webinars. that's, that's a more field marketing focused, program at Amazon Business in particular. or, you know, wanting to host customer advisory boards or executive briefings or, you know, just a dinner, like a dinner in a market with, with customers. And so, what our, our team is trying to do is, yeah, build out a scalable solution that can be shared with our counterparts that are also hosting events, including. on the sales side, like sales kickoffs, like those, those are events too. And they're, they're, they're huge events. so I think I answered your question, but yes, the answer is like events are blowing up, in every way, shape and form right now. Yeah, it seems like it, you know, if you kind of read the tea leaves going forward, it seems like that the roles that you both have just inherently become more important to the overall marketing org and if they, if you guys, The marketing org does a good job of tying that content through line as well as the kpis from tech Then it becomes a more obvious roi That only should elevate You know, event folks into those further decision-making, opportunities at the executive level, I would assume is, is if where, where it would go long term. do you, so the last question I have for you both and is, you know, as you kind of think about your current role or your current careers in this. Do you think, do you have any other ways that you think marketing teams, the general marketing team, can leverage what you both do, more effectively? And this doesn't have to be Amazon Business, but just continue ideas on how marketing can leverage the event marketing team more to, you know, hit their goals and things of that nature.

Kate Vives: Yeah, I mean, going back to what Lisa said earlier, just on the trickle down, or the value of all of this, all of our portfolio events, not just our tier 1, tier 2 events, I think that some of those other events could also leverage event technology. to kind of raise the bar on that. So again, you know, you got to walk before you run. But next thing, you know, maybe your executive cabs or your executive customer advisory boards, whatever that may be some smaller meetings, you may utilize registration and you may utilize badging and personalized emails. You may, I think the important thing is to keep a big picture on the customer level of everything they've attended. So we don't want to miss those data points that they've attended a cab, a customer advisory board that they've attended, a sales meeting that they, we, we want all of that to tie together so that we have the, you know, a high-level picture. Of how multiple touches with that individual customer, contributes to, to pipeline down the road. And if we're missing those touch points, then we don't have that big, beautiful picture, of how events play, play into everything. Absolutely. Yeah. I it's, it's interesting. I mean, of course, I would say this, but I say the same thing about your speaker network. You know, they're, I believe they're one of the most important. Assets that you have as an organization, you being other marketing teams out there and being able to see that historical contribution of those individuals and leverage them as influencer champion subject matter experts is just like the attendee side. So, I, I think that's an area that we're starting to talk to a lot of folks about how they can leverage, Lisa, any, any other thoughts.

Lisa Day: Yeah, I was, I was thinking through it. Mine's, mine's less tactical and more big picture, but Events are not just like a project or a campaign and, coming to Amazon Business and, and kind of starting this new big program. That was one of my biggest challenges is being able to explain the complexities and nuances of. A program of this size, even in its early phases when it's, you know, small, and now it's, you know, it's, it's, it's still not reinvent. Like it's, it's still not that size, but we're really like a mini business, you know? And, I think we have our business plan. We have, we have stakeholders cross-team. We have to come up with. Processes and bring on partners to really develop this business. And I think just from like an organizational standpoint, we have a lot to offer other teams that are working in squads and, you know, on sprints for more complex projects. I think that, any, any event marketer or, you know, event manager that's on the line. Feels the same way that, like, events are complex. We wear many hats. It's not just event management. It's business management, finance management, vendor management. It's marketing communication. It's it's all of those things. and so I think we. We really are experts in like, running a fully integrated, program and business in many ways, and we could share more of that with our, our team and those best practices.

Chris Carver: Yeah, it seems like you're, I mean, I'm going to state the obvious, but you're creating a unique experience for each of these customers or prospects or whatever they might be. And that experience is something that you're not going to get digitally, or very hard to get digitally. So, being able to connect the dots for the entire organization is something that you guys clearly do. I am curious what your, your map of your org, Lisa, looks like. And, and Kate, your map of the tech stack looks like. I'd love a glimpse at that someday, but. I really appreciate you guys taking the time, we can't thank you enough.

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