Expo Pass

10/16/2026

Planning a 2027 event? The venue search doesn't have to mean twelve browser tabs and a spreadsheet.

With VenueConnect you can search venues by location, dates and event size, narrow them down by capacity and amenities, and save your favorites to a shortlist your team can vote on.

When you're ready to reach out, your inquiry goes out with your event details already filled in. Venues with guest rooms even show live hotel rates.

It's free to inquire. Start your search here:

https://venues.expopass.com/venues

10/14/2026

You picked the platform, the budget's approved, and registration opens in six weeks. Then IT sends a 300-question spreadsheet and says nothing gets signed until it's reviewed.

If that sounds familiar, a few things make the security review a lot less painful:

1. Ask IT how intake works and how long the queue is before you pick a vendor.
2. Request the vendor's whole security packet in one email: questionnaire, SOC 2 report, accessibility report, and data processing agreement.
3. Start the review while you still have two vendors on the shortlist.
4. Count backward from your registration launch date, not your event date.

We wrote up the full process, including the six questions worth asking any vendor:

https://www.expopass.com/articles/event-tech-it-security-review

10/12/2026

Writing your 2027 event budget this month? Don't submit event tech as one number.

Procurement rarely objects to the amount. It objects to a lump sum it can't compare to anything, and the only thing a reviewer can do with a lump sum is ask you to cut it.

Break it into four lines instead:

1. Equipment, sized to your peak arrivals
2. Badges, including a reprint allowance
3. Software, which scales with registrants
4. Service and support for the days you're on site

Put a unit and a count next to each one and the conversation changes. Here's how to build it, plus what to unbundle in an all-in-one quote:

Split your event technology budget into four defensible lines, unbundle the all-in-one quote, and ask the RFP questions where vendors actually give different answers.

10/10/2026

Got an email offering "the verified attendee list" for your next show? It's a scam. No legitimate show sells its attendee list.

Event planner scams used to be easy to spot. Not anymore. AI has cleaned up the typos and the odd grammar, and the messages now mention your real show, your real dates and your real booth number.

A few habits stop most of them:

1. Confirm any vendor bank change by phone, using a number you already had.
2. Give attendees one official housing link and tell them you'll never call about rooms.
3. Don't pay an invoice nobody on your team ordered.

Here are the nine scams going around right now and how to shut each one down:

Event planner scams are getting harder to spot as AI removes the old warning signs. Here are the nine attacks hitting the events industry right now.

10/08/2026

Registration says 1,400. Check-in says 1,120. The exhibitor reports 400 leads but the scanner logged 260.

Three systems, three numbers, and the one that ends up in the board deck is usually whichever was easiest to export.

Your event ROI number probably isn't wrong because the formula is wrong. It's wrong because the data feeding it never agreed with itself. We wrote up the four places attendee data breaks between registration and the exhibitor report, which metrics survive messy data, and a reconciliation checklist you can run in an afternoon.

Learn how to measure event ROI when your attendee data is broken. The four places event data fails, the metrics that survive it, and how to reconcile after the show.

10/01/2026

Fall show season means a lot of you are on site right now or just got home. Before the crates ship, grab these four numbers. They're easy to pull on the last morning and nearly impossible to rebuild once everyone scatters.

1. Your busiest 15 minutes of check-in, per station. Nobody complains about the afternoon.
2. No-shows broken out by registration type, so you stop ordering catering off a blended average.
3. Badge reprints, with a reason noted for each one. The reasons tell you what to fix on next year's registration form.
4. Scans per exhibitor as a distribution, not an average. The bottom of that list is your renewal risk.

Each one ties straight to a line in next year's budget. Here's how to pull them and what each one should change:

https://www.expopass.com/articles/post-show-metrics-four-numbers-to-capture-before-teardown

09/25/2026

You've probably asked ChatGPT or Claude something about your event and gotten a confident answer that had nothing to do with your actual numbers. That's because the assistant couldn't see your data.

MCP is what changes that. It's an open standard that lets AI assistants connect straight to your event software, pull live registration numbers, and in some cases make changes for you.

Our new guide covers what MCP actually is in plain English, how event platforms are using it right now, and the five questions worth asking before you connect an AI agent to your registration.

MCP for events, explained. What the Model Context Protocol is, how event platforms use it, and what to ask before you let an AI agent touch your registration.

06/19/2026

Oops! You forgot to ask this one important question . The questions you forget to ask. We wrote them down. https://buff.ly/GaHxmu9

04/29/2026

Most run-of-show templates are just agendas pretending to be useful. A column for time and a column for task isn't a coordination system. It's a wish list with timestamps. Here's what a real one looks like -> https://buff.ly/pq3thQi

04/22/2026

Your registration page isn't where attendees begin. It's where your planning gets tested. If it's not ready, nothing downstream is either. https://buff.ly/tBH2YOU