A Book That Asked a Better Question
We’ve all written book reviews. We’ve all read strategy books. But what if a book made you want to sing? I am also thinking of making this a regular feature on my new media experiment - Gathering Point, a newsletter for the creative and business side of the events industry at large.
That’s what happened when I read Tahira Endean’s Our KPI is Joy: How Live Events Catalyze Happiness, Productivity and Trust. I didn’t just want to write about it—I wanted to feel it, internalize it, and share it in a completely new way.
So I did something I’d never done before: I turned the review into a song.
With help from Suno, an astonishing AI music tool that lets anyone turn words and ideas into music, I created a 3.5-minute anthem that distills the heart of the book. It’s part rally cry, part musical theatre, and part event industry manifesto.
Yes, I know some people hate anything to do with AI especially in the arts, , but I think it’s going to be a great tool for personalization especially in the events industry. Creating a song with the help of AI as your under lord is not just a blind task, it takes hours of tinkering and massaging to get it right and it’s a very creative endeavor.
Now let me go into Tahira Endean’s book, Our KPI is Joy:
Who Is Tahira Endean?
To know why this book matters, you need to know Tahira.
She’s a creative force in the global event space—part producer, part academic, part futurist—with a career that bridges the practical and the poetic.
She’s currently Head of Programme for the IMEX Group, where she’s leading the content revolution at one of the most important global marketplaces for meetings and events.
She holds a Master of Science in Creativity and Change Leadership—training that informs her radical, human-centered design approach.
Her 2018 book, Intentional Event Design: Our Professional Opportunity, offered one of the earliest frameworks for merging neuroscience, belonging, and event strategy—years before the industry caught up.
She has worked across complex productions for decades: from corporate meetings to incentive travel, from government summits to event tech leadership.
But more than anything, Tahira believes in events as catalysts for transformation—not just as logistics machines or marketing touchpoints.
Her philosophy?
We are not in the event industry. We are in the human potential business.
About the Book:
Our KPI Is Joy
Tahira’s new book doesn’t ask how we can make events more efficient. It asks how we can make them more meaningful. And she delivers that vision with insight, warmth, and urgency.
She explores:
Joy as a measurable, designable outcome
The difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self
How to intentionally build psychological safety, ritual, play, and reflection into your format
Why small details (like surprise ice cream cones, pop-up music, or postcard-writing moments) are not frivolous—they’re strategic
How belonging, biophilia, and brain science are the real power tools of our time
It’s one part strategy guide, one part emotional playbook. A new standard for what leadership looks like in our space.
Why I Chose to Sing the Review
Our KPI is Joy isn’t just something you read—it’s something you experience. So it made perfect sense to translate the message into music.
Suno’s AI engine let me turn the core themes into a lyrical format that planners, designers, and creatives can carry with them—literally. It’s joy you can hum. It’s design you can dance to. Go to the top of this post to experience.
Where to Get the Book
You can (and should) buy Our KPI Is Joy on Amazon: Click here to get it →
It’s the kind of book you read with a highlighter… then hand to someone on your team.
A New Way to Be Inspired
This project—the book, the song, the experiment—is a small glimpse into what I believe is next:
Ideas that move through culture, not just binders
Tools like Suno that let us translate meaning into music
Planners not as logistics managers, but as facilitators of memory and trust
So yes, I turned a book review into a song. But what I really did was try to practice what the book preaches: Lead with joy.
Design with soul. And share in a way that sticks.
Let me know what you think.
—David
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