If there's one thing that came through loudest in the data, it's this: people want more genuine connection from events.
Not business cards. Not small talk over a glass of wine. Meaningful conversations, a sense of belonging, and the feeling of being in a room with people who actually get it.
More than half of event professionals surveyed - 56% -said a stronger desire for connection was the number one shift they'd seen in attendee behaviour over the past two years. It outranked price sensitivity, wellbeing, personalisation - everything.
And yet connection is still mostly treated as something that happens in the margins. The tea break. The cocktail function. The gap between sessions where people drift to their phones.
What the research describes and what I've seen many people in events already working toward - is a shift from accidental networking to something much more intentional. Not over-facilitated, not forced. Just thoughtful about who's in the room together and what conditions make real conversation more likely.
I've seen this done brilliantly in a couple of ways recently. At one event I attended, an app suggested specific people I should connect with based on how we could help each other. It was really clever; it broke down the usual barriers and people were curious to actually meet rather than just exchanging cards out of obligation.
At another event, attendees could put their business challenge up on the wall on post it notes with their contact details. People who could help would find them during the day and connect. I loved watching more experienced people sharing knowledge with others, it created a real exchange rather than just a room full of people hoping someone interesting would wander over.
There's also a trust dimension in the research I found really interesting. As digital channels get noisier and AI-generated content makes it harder to know what's real, face-to-face time carries a kind of weight it hasn't always had. The research describes events as becoming trust infrastructure - one of the last reliable spaces where you can have an unscripted conversation with someone who actually stands behind what they say.
The organisations that came up in our interviews as getting connection right weren't running elaborate networking programmes. They were just being more thoughtful about who meets whom, and what makes that more likely to go somewhere real.
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