THE CURATOR’S BRIEF
July 21, 2026 - Ideas, People and Curiosities To Help You Do Your Job and Have Fun Doing it.
The Curator’s Brief: what I am seeing, and the people I am putting in front of you.
First, yes, the world is nuts
The world is unhinged... a war with no off-ramp... a heat dome cooking Europe... the Pentagon reportedly ordering up testosterone tests... AI scrambling what we know. The World Cup and the 250th Anniversary done and gone… And yet we keep booking the rooms, which may be the sanest move going. Destinations International hits Portland this week, then August: ASAE, SISO, NACE, IBTM. Plans for Middle East Events up in the. air, Now, the people you should know if you don’t and some interesting ideas…
What About a Neutral Industry Scoreboard for B2C and B2B Events? I met Arturo Guillen, who found the hole in our industry-
Arturo Guillen runs WOW FC, the Madrid fight promotion. In DC for the cage matches, he named the thing I cannot stop repeating: our industry has no scoreboard. Broadway has one, movies have Comscore, concerts have Pollstar. We have nothing. He read box-office data for twenty-six years, backed WOW on the trend, and sees the hole. The kicker: as private equity floods in, it will demand real numbers, not vibes. Read my story →
The Scoreboard Nobody Built But Is Needed For The Event Industry to Prosper
Here is an idea that our industry needs: What a fight promoter who spent twenty-six years counting movie tickets taught me about the gap at the center of our industry
The GatheringPoint 100
Which is why I am building the GatheringPoint 100, a map of who actually drives the gathering economy. The consolidation proves the point... Apollo is fusing Emerald and Questex under Paul Miller. Who belongs in the hundred? Have ideas for companies to be included: send me a note: David@gatheringpoint.new
I have watched Exhibition Vet Martha Donato build something rare
Martha Donato built thirty-three worlds nobody asked for, mostly on her own dime, and made herself mayor of each. What I have watched up close is her magical network, the room where the industry’s next generation is quietly forming. Now UFI’s first North American regional director. The beginning of something.
Click below to read about Martha →
Event Entrepreneur Terry O’Dwyer built the thing he could not stop building
Terry O’Dwyer sold LSX to Informa, then refused the shiny next act. What he could not stop building instead was The Media Entrepreneur Meetup, a founders’ room now housed inside Collingwood. Today he backs Able, an AI platform for smaller media and events shops. A masterclass in building the room, not the empire.
Click below to read the story about Terry.
The GatheringPoint 100- I need your input?
Which is why I am building the GatheringPoint 100, a map of who actually drives the gathering economy. The consolidation proves the point... Apollo is fusing Emerald and Questex under Paul Miller. Who belongs in the hundred? Have ideas for companies to be included: send me a note: David@gatheringpoint.new
A second look at Freeman’s Janet Dell
Freeman does not rent four walls, it conjures them: a Toronto lot becomes a Live Nation stadium, an Iowa cornfield the Field of Dreams ballpark. On a third straight USA TODAY Top Workplace title, I reopened the Janet Dell file. Her move: run the company the way you run an event, the gospel she preaches at Camp Buck.
Let Socrates Plan (or give you ideas) For Your Next Event
The project I am most fired up about: advice on your next event from the greatest gatherers who ever lived. With AI, now you can, and I spent months capturing their wisdom
The full council: Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, Cleopatra, Leonardo da Vinci, Voltaire, Madame Geoffrin, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Dolley Madison, Prince Albert, Alexander von Humboldt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sam Rayburn, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., George Fox, Deganawida, Mamie Fish, and Dorothy Parker. Twenty-one hosts, each with a hard opinion about your room. Socrates goes first. Meet the council →
With all the talk about Ballrooms, I thought I would take a deeper dive. Ever wonder why we call it a ballroom?
P.S. July calls for the most fun thing in the archive: my romp through eight decades of event fashion, ballrooms to lanyards. Your beach read. Flip through it →
Decoding Event Fashion: Eight Decades of Style, Signal, and Showing Up
This is really a fun story. Do you relate?
That is the brief. The world is nuts; we gather anyway. See you on the floor in Portland, and back Monday.
GatheringPoint covers the people who build the gatherings. Subscribe at GatheringPoint.news/subcribe
Look for my 44 predictions for 2036 coming later this week.
