How to Get Real Value From Conferences in 2026

Conference season is back. But, for enterprise leaders, the real challenge isn't finding events to attend; it's knowing whether the investment is actually worth it. On this episode of Pure Signal, hosts Kevin Erickson, Jake Carter, and Ryan Medellin break down how to build a smarter conference strategy in 2026, from choosing the right events to turning attendance into measurable outcomes.

The discussion opens with mapping the full conference landscape. From there, they dive into how the enterprise conference strategy has shifted over time and why traditional ROI thinking no longer holds. You'll also hear the team wrestle with some of the harder questions in conference investment: when does a curated client dinner outperform a floor pass, and how do you justify the spend when sales attribution is nearly impossible to pin down?

For C-suite leaders and senior executives deciding where to focus their conference investment this quarter, this episode offers a practical, experience-grounded framework on how to define your why before you book, set clear expectations for every attendee, and stop measuring success by presence alone.

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Quotes

 ”I view this for any training type environment. It's an opportunity for us to invest in our employees. Sometimes that is pure skill development, sometimes it's a thank you. We had a team at re:Invent that was there primarily to use a lot of the technologies, but for the most part, they were there as a thank you for the hard and amazing work that they did to serve their client. And they had a chance to spend time with their client together in that learning environment.” - Kevin Erickson

"The thing that always goes through my head on these is…can you afford not to be there?... The thing that's hard for us to quantify, but I think is very real, is if we're not there, our competitors are there. If we're not spending time with our clients, they are. And so, to some degree, there's the defensive play, and that’s much harder to quantify." - Jake Carter

"You have to kind of tailor the conference to your why and don't let what's not going on in the conference dictate what you're trying to do. It's kind of like you go in thinking about what's your value first versus the value that's being given at the conference, and then you can kind of work your way back into tailoring that value into what your value is." - Ryan Medellin

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Time Stamps

00:00 Intro

02:22 Today's topic: Creating a 2026 conference strategy 

03:52 Breaking down the conference landscape

07:58 How enterprise conference strategy has changed over time

13:23 Finding the real value of conference investment

18:07 When a curated dinner beats a floor pass

21:30 Matching the conference format to your client

29:53 Carrying conference momentum back into everyday work

32:48 Finding your why as a conference strategy framework

36:06 Closing thoughts

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Links 

Connect with the hosts on LinkedIn!

• Kevin Erickson

• Ryan Medellin

• Jake Carter

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