Conference News: THIS Festival Music & Moves; HLTH CFP; Seramount Speaks
THIS Changes this Year: THIS is a Nordic media festival, taking place in the city of Aarhus, Denmark each autumn. The festival has made a few changes this year in order to stay relevant. In order to explore music’s role in storytelling across both games and film/TV, the organizers added a music conference to the film/production and game tracks. Also, the event moved to November – one week later than its typically last-week-in-October timing. The reason? The growing influence of Halloween in Norther Europe! The American-imported holiday has become so popular that both attendees and speakers have mentioned that they didn’t want to miss the chance to trick-or-treat with their children.
Community of Brands Expands: A couple of weeks ago, Brand Innovators announced that they would be expanding into Europe with new events including a Marketing Leadership Summit that will take place at SXSW London as well as Summits at Cannes Film Festival and Cannes Lions. Brand Innovators, which is a community of more than 50,000 senior brand marketers, has 10 events scheduled for the UK and Europe in 2025. To learn more about each gathering, check out their comprehensive list here.
Submission Opportunity: One of the healthcare ecosystem’s biggest events, HLTH USA will be held 19-22 October at the Venetian in Las Vegas. HLTH 2025 takes a nod from ancient Greece with its theme Heroes & Legends, which celebrates “big, bold thinkers with the willingness to step outside the box of conventional wisdom and cement their names in the history books.” Now until 12 June, interested speakers can submit to present on HLTH’s Mount Olympus Main Stage, Ethos, Kairos, Logos, Eros, Plutus, Holos, Pharmos Stages, brand new Diagnostics Zone, and returning AI Pavilion Theaters. A few important guidelines to note include: 1) Limit to one submission per executive, 2) No full panel submissions, and 3) Be mindful of the number of repeat years that a speaker has been involved.
Conference Manager Q&A: Seramount’s Lead with Ambition event kicks off 12 June in Chicago, reimagining the event formerly known as the Multicultural Women’s National Conference. We asked Jacqueline La Brocca, Senior Director at Seramount Events, how Lead with Ambition meets the needs of its attendees at this moment in time.
Speaker Strategies: With the Leading with Ambition event rebrand, how has the content expanded for 2025? This year, we’ve expanded with new programming on inclusive leadership, wellness, and community building – doing so while staying rooted in the allyship and in understanding the power of our differences, the hallmark of this conference. We’ve reimagined this event to be more expansive, welcoming all employees to engage deeply in appreciating and leveraging our differences, building allyship, and demonstrating inclusive leadership. We’ve added wellness and community-building programming because we know: when people feel supported, they lead and live better.
Speaker Strategies: What differentiates your events from others within the talent space? We’re first and foremost a research-based company. Our events are supported by 40+ years of insights into the employee experience and supported by a team of subject matter experts, many of whom have sat in the C-suite.
Speaker Strategies: Do you have any overarching themes across 2025 events? Successful organizations are thinking bigger about inclusion across this entire ecosystem, recognizing its direct impact on the bottom line. Demographic shifts are taking place in our workforce and talent pool, but also across our customer base, suppliers, vendors, and broader stakeholders. Impact beyond talent to employer brand, recruiting, innovation. But we also have to adjust our approach in the current environment around communications, metrics, goals, branding, etc. It’s a delicate balancing act.
Coming Up Next Week: Fortune’s inaugural Workplace Innovation Forum begins 19 May in Dana Point. This invitation-only event is designed to convene HR and business leaders, government, academia, investors & startups, to “imagine, debate, and design the bold future of work.” At Computex (20-23 May) in Taipei, attendees can expect an expo and program centered on the theme “AI Next.” The 5th edition of Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum runs 20-22 May and will examine how strategic investments made in the region are having global impact. Informa Connect Front End of Innovation/FEI – which takes place 19-21 May at the Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport – celebrates more than two decades bringing together innovation disciplinarians and corporate change makers to drive progress with human intelligence. Meanwhile, C2 Montréal (20-22 May) brings together “creative minds, leaders, and changemakers to spark collaboration, innovation, and business opportunities across industries.” And on 19 May, VentureBeat GamesBeat Summit kicks off in LA to navigate the next era of gaming.