The Power of Communities with Liz Lathan, CMP
<p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Institute of Virtual Lunch and Learn series. Very excited today to get to talk about community. There's been so much discussion about how digital events could lead to community. And today, we have the expert, Liz Lathan from the Community Factory. Liz, welcome to the show.</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Thank you so much, Jason. This is so exciting.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> I can't wait to dive in. So let's start with I know you've got experiences both on the client side and on the agency side. Share with us a little bit about your perspective and how you kind of approach things, then we can we can jump in.</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. Sure. So I really think that, well, from my perspective, from my background, from all the things, I think that my career started out in corporate on the brand side, Dell, IBM, lots of the Fortune five hundred types of worlds where we spent a lot of time, effort, and money creating experiences that people would come to. But we didn't spend a lot of time, effort, and money figuring out what the people would do once they got inside those experiences. And so the latter half of my career has really been helping people, once they walk through the doors that you've built for those events, actually meet each other, be each other's wingman, build community, and keep in contact after that one moment in time is over? So how do you just keep it rolling? That's what the community factory is all about and and offering communities of service to help people figure that out because we just wanna connect especially post pandemic. It's hard to go to an event and just sit and get for three days. You just wanna talk to the people, and a lot of folks have forgotten how to facilitate that.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright. So how did did the pandemic shape your perspective on developing community and did the influence and the influx of Event Tech shape kind of where you guys are these days or was this influence you know, were you guys doing this pre pandemic and then how did the pandemic maybe change their thinking, just to understand how you guys are approaching things?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. Sure. So, pre pandemic, we have been doing this. Actually, I would say it was an uphill battle pre pandemic. People saw the need but didn't wanna pay for the need. And then post pandemic, people are more willing to pay for it because they really, really get it. So I am in my twenty year corporate career, had go to industry events, had always gone to industry events. And after a while, when you become a little bit more senior in your career, you're going to the events less to learn from the people on stage and more to network with other folks. But the events weren't changing as our careers changed. And our industry was really go to this conference and sit and listen to some paid keynote speaker and then go to a few breakout sessions and then go to a party where the music's too loud to actually connect. So we, in twenty seventeen, some friends and I decided to try to change that and create an event that was purely peer to peer conversation. Let's take all these industry events that we're going to, learn from them, but then come to our event and actually talk. We call them spontaneous think tanks, where people get together and write on big sticky notes what the challenges are that they're trying to solve. And then take a look at those notes and start writing your name to the ones that are the challenges you've solved and can help someone else with. So the entire agenda and sessions are created by people trying to solve solve each other's problems. That was twenty seventeen, and we've been doing that ever since. So what the pandemic did for us was allow us to just learn how to do that virtually. So using Miro boards or Miro boards or things online, we can still use that sticky note construct to bring people together, solve each other's challenges, and supplement the education that they're getting in other avenues.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Very cool. I always enjoy talking to people that were playing in this world pre pandemic because I think it brings such a unique perspective as so many of us have caught up since the pandemic. How did so let me ask you. How did the influx of more event tech sort of facilitate developing communities, and what does that look like? Like, how did that change how you were implementing and utilizing the idea of community around events?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> I think the virtual event tech world has been really fascinating. We spent most of our time during the pandemic only using Zoom because it was very simple to execute, very simple to enter and exit, and very simple to create breakout rooms. But when the virtual event phenomenon happened and all of these companies started creating all their virtual platforms and and creating things, It was really cool, but then when people went back to in person, you saw nobody really wanted to just do that anymore. So those technologies have really turned into, kind of three sixty five communities. They felt that they were creating communities when the events happened, but there wasn't anything to keep people going. And at the time, people didn't need to keep going. There were plenty of Slack channels and and other opportunities. But now when you get into, quote, unquote, the real world post pandemic, those virtual events are fewer and farther between because people want to gather. But what a great equalizer to have virtual programs still. You can get people without having to travel. You can get people all over the world in all different time zones, and now how do you keep them in touch? So working with some of those virtual platforms that are trying to turn into community platforms has been really interesting. You know, companies like Six Connects, which were, primarily virtual trade show platforms, are really trying to figure out a way to keep that conversation alive. And sometimes it's a challenge because companies aren't really looking to invest in something year round. But when they do, I think there's a lot of value in keeping those communities together if you have a community manager to make it happen, and that's the failure point that happens a lot.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Alright. Interesting. I've got so many questions. Let me I just wanna parse something out for our audience because we're talking obviously about virtual and hybrid, and we're kinda thrown around this community. When you talk about community, and I think I know the answer, but I wanna just kinda make sure we're very clear. You're talking about community as a associated with any kind of event. It is not a digital only as a matter of fact, I mean, based on your start, which was IRL, I assume you're looking at producing community for all types of event modalities today. Is that accurate?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yes. So let me go through my little framework of community just to define what I think community is because it's not one or the other, and you don't have to pick, and you don't have to only be one thing. So the way that we view community, and this is a full funnel everything community, would be these five. I you can view it as a funnel. You can view it as five pillars. You can view it as a flywheel, and you'll see what I mean. So the top one, top of funnel for me is the show. And that is if you have a podcast, a YouTube channel, a a video training classes, you know, recordings like this. If you've got anything that's gonna be top of funnel that allows people in your community to be featured, people outside of your community to stumble upon it or find it or have an entry point. So that's step one. The next one, I call the the site, and the site is not your company's website. It is the asynchronous communication place where community members can go. It could be a Slack channel, Facebook group. It could be a paid, like, Mighty Network, something where people are going to find anytime day or night they can jump in and ask a question. The next one is the series of gatherings, and this is where our events come in. They can be virtual, hybrid, in person. It doesn't matter what type of gathering you're creating. The people wanna meet the people, and you have to have a regular series of gatherings even if regular only means once a year. That's okay too. That's something that people can look forward to. The next one is the sounding board, and this is your small group. Could be five people. Could be twenty people, but these are the folks that you're going to leverage their insights as your target prospects within your community. And you're gonna find out what's happening, the pulse of the industry. These are the people you're going to start featuring on that top of funnel show. These are the people that will help inspire and answer questions in your site, in your asynchronous communications, but that sounding board are kind of like your founding members. They can change out every quarter. They can change out every year, but keep that group going and keep it fresh. And then the final one, the fifth one, is the shareable moment. So what are you doing within your community that allows those communities to show their pride, or to share content from in the community outside. Creating infographics, could be swag, but something that allows people to share it inside and outside the community. So the show, the site, the series of gatherings, the sounding board, and the shareable moment. You don't need all five to make a community, but if you have a community with all five, that is a flywheel of an amazing community. If you just wanna start with one, start with a sounding board. Get twenty people together. Start a really tight knit group who then invite other people in, who then grow it that way. So there's just so many places that you can start, stop, and define community.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Wow. So many so many questions. I love it. I love the the thoroughness of it. How do you find, what's, like, the best way for an organization to start? In other words, I think that as many organizations have returned to IRL, but now we have these tools such as virtual and hybrid in our in our back pocket. And we talk a lot on this show with different organizations about what the right strategy is and, you know, when is the timeline for identifying those. I guess the same question to you in terms of community. When do you decide to build a community? Is it pre event? Is it after the event? Is it you know, I'm sure there's a a best place, but, you know, as I think people look toward twenty four and beyond and think about how to leverage their efforts, what what's your recommendation is a is a good starting point if all of that flywheel kinda seems overwhelming to some that may be watching the program?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. I think it always just like when you're creating an event. Right? It comes back to your purpose. What are you trying to accomplish? If you are trying to just start out by creating a community because you already have customers and you want them to become an advisory council and kind of feed you information about your product, and then the more people that become customers, the more people are part of your community, then you can start it with that sounding board. Start it with an event of a small group of people, bring them together virtually or in person, and then grow it from there. If you want to create a community because you want a community of practice, you know, a bunch of people within your profession to come together and kind of share thought leadership and share with each other, but you don't intend to necessarily monetize that community in any other way than sharing offers with them, you know, then that could be a bigger one. It doesn't necessarily have have your company name as a part of it. So I think when you consider, do you want a community of practice, a community of products, or a community of purpose? Which one do you want to gel, and why are you going forward? Community of practice being let's say you sell HR software. So you wanna bring together some HR professionals, and they're gonna share practices around human resources and talent management and all these things, and maybe you have an offering that can go in that community. A community of product is truly customers that are buying that HR software that you're selling. Right? So who can give you guidance and advice and insights and problems and help problem solve all around your product. And there may be some practice stuff in there, but it's truly about helping your product. And then the last one, community and purpose. So maybe you are advocating for something or lobbying for something, and so you're bringing people together to actually serve a particular purpose in the greater world that's not necessarily related to your practice or your product. So determining the the reason that you need to exist and if you're trying to monetize it or if you're trying to get goodwill.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Amazing. Is there a is there a better time in other words, is this something that or an organization is best rolling out pre event? Are they better, rolling it out right after an event when there's a built up excitement? Is there something you found that works best?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> I truly, I don't think it matters. I think what really matters is how you've resourced it. So, if you've created an event to start the community in advance and get people to get to know each other by the time they get on-site to your actual event, then they're gonna feel like they've they've gelled. They're together. But it's harder. I would say, trying to get people excited, especially if you have a large amount, a couple thousand people. You've always you know, you've tried, oh, we launched the app two weeks early. Go in and start networking. No one does it because no one's thinking about your event until the day they get on the airplane to come to your event. So, I personally believe that you can tell them a community is going to be formed from the event and then design the program to let that face to face be the first time that they're really getting to know each other because now they've they've created a connection, and they really want to keep in touch. And now you say, hey. Guess what? We have a great way for you to keep in touch. Let's start with the site. Go here. It's a Slack channel. You can all stay in touch. Oh, by the way, we did a bunch of interviews on-site at the event, and that's the launch of our podcast. Wait till you see. You know? So I think that you can design it for that lightning bolt moment, lightning strike moment of the events, and then launch from there.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> I love it. I think there's there's so many different ways it can go. You mentioned the idea that, if you are launching at the event, you know, you're educating people that this is forthcoming. So I I also wonder how much does this impact the idea of having community? How much does it impact how you are programming and coordinating an event in terms of scheduling content? And I guess the answer the question the follow-up to that would be, like, does it affect the first event differently than subsequent events? So does the first event get programmed differently into subsequent events, get programmed based on feedback from the community or thoughts that come up? What what what's your take?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. I think that you absolutely have to program for community because the demand gen event is different than a thought leadership event, is different from a community event. But that doesn't mean that you can't do them all in in one thing. The problem is when you get formulaic with your keynote breakout expo party, then you didn't put any time in there for community building because we're we're all guilty of it. Right? You have our lineup of speakers, the executives that need to be on stage, your parade of presidents. You've got your breakout sessions that are the the people that didn't call for papers or your sponsors that you have to kiss the ring. And then you've got your expo. Everybody's out there doing their own thing, and then you got your concerts or your one big night. Everyone gets together. The music's really loud. The alcohol's flowing. Where did you build community? So one of the things that I love, love, love to do is, start the programming with a meal. And it's difficult to scale if you have a multi thousand person event, but if you're under the, you know, three hundred person mark and you can start with some sort of family style feeling meal where people come together and you almost seat them like doesn't matter. But when you start gelling them around food and they have the small group of ten people that they got to know before the program starts, that's a super, super cool way to really get them building community. And then making sure that you're doing some sort of peer to peer. So I mentioned when we first started my sticky note thing, these spontaneous think tanks. When people first come in, if you can hand them sticky notes and have a big blank wall and just say write every challenge that you're trying to solve, one per sticky note, and just fill that wall of woes with your challenges. Now people start connecting over, oh my gosh. That's mine. And they see it. Same problem, different logo, and they're really having conversations while they're looking at the board. It's not something to do and just have up throughout the event. It's something to do in that, kind of catalyzing moment. You get thirty minutes, everyone together, make it loud, make it fun, and have people start talking. These are the little things that you just need to put inside your programming to start getting people talking to each other.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> How do you blend that idea? I mean, I love that idea of around the meal. It gets people talking. They now have the space of people they can connect with, figuring that they're using some sort of event tech, some sort of software. We don't have to talk about names. We can, but how do you transition that experience in person? The sticky note idea, the family style meal, that sense of ownership of being a part of this community. How do you what's the secret sauce to transitioning that into the digital world and and getting people to engage digitally and then connect in that community on an ongoing basis?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. I think that there's so many sticky note tools that exist. You know, we tend to use MURAL, but we've used MURAL as well for that same sticky note feeling. So you bring everybody together virtually. You start with your, kind of direction setting keynote conversation, and then you ask people to click this link, jump into the board, and you, you know, have it nicely designed and built out to ask specific questions and move your attendees through the questions. And as the question is up there, they're adding sticky notes to it. So a very targeted specific question, and you're getting insights and answers. And so all of those insights that you're getting can either feed peer to peer conversations that will happen later in your event, or they feed your editorial calendar for all of your future round tables and sounding board discussions and content that you're going to create. So really just view it as content creation but leveraging the people instead of leveraging just the brains inside your company.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Oh, okay. That's I love it. I think probably people that are listening and watching this are probably they'll go through their mind. They're They're saying, wow. This sounds like a lot of work. It it's gonna require more resources and more team members to manage. I you know, I don't wanna we don't have to get specific on budget, but can you shed a little light on, is this something that does require a lot of resources? Does it not? Can it be self managed? Is it best with a third party? Does it even present revenue opportunities for those that are creating these communities? So does it become something that pays for itself? I'm I'm curious.</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. I think it, again, depends on those goals and objectives. If you're really just trying to test out creating community at one of your events, you've got a hundred person event, Just either doing it yourself and bringing in some of the sticky notes and Sharpies and, you know, we can just show you what that process is like and you can do it, get some insights. Doesn't have to cost you anything. You don't have to do anything with it. It's just a feeling that you created the event all the way to bringing in facilitators like us. You know, you can spend fifteen, twenty fifth twenty five thousand dollars and have us come in and help create the program and design it, facilitate it, keep the energy up, and see it, take all those sticky notes and turn them into your editorial calendar for you and feed that back to you. And then afterwards, there's community as a service. Right? So either you put one community manager internally to manage that Slack channel and to keep people engaged and to let people know when the next webinar is or when the next online roundtable is or outsource that to a community as a service provider that can just put an admin toward it. You have to have someone inside your company as the leader. It doesn't work to have a leaderless, faceless community. Absolutely, someone must be the talent. But that doesn't mean that that person has to administer the community. So whether it's a virtual assistant, a cast company like ours, or, you know, a a marketing manager that is able to dedicate half their time to just doing the administrative stuff. You have to onboard the community members, welcome them in. Maybe you're sending them a welcome gift or maybe it's just a postcard, but there's that administrative part. I do feel like ninety percent of community management is administrative, and ten percent is really that talent energizing, catalyzing moment. So figuring out what your budget is, what you can afford, and just how big you wanna go. I think that there are solutions from zero to a million dollars a year. You know?</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Absolutely. Yeah. I wanna get to some some DIY tips here just to to close out. But before we do, can you share an example of where you guys have done this? I'm curious, like, you know, we've talked theoretically here, and we've talked about the Event Tech and and the possibilities. But can you give us a real concrete example of a project that you guys have done? Again, feel free to mention or not mention client name. For me, it's less about that, but more about what the experience was that you created and so that our audience can picture this holistically.</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Sure. Absolutely. We just had a client a couple weeks ago that wanted to create their very first advisory council. So they had sixty five people. They were partners and customers and employees that they brought together, and they invited us in to help facilitate that experience. And so it was helping them manage the the event logistics portion of it. Right? Getting people invited and making sure the venue was the right type of venue for collaboration and not just a windowless ballroom. It's really a place that has actually lots of windows and lots of natural light, and the ability to feel like it's an open environment is the first thing. So helping figure that out. Then once you get the people in the room, starting it out with that breakfast as they first come in, and really doing the sticky note thing of everyone putting their challenges up and asking specific questions along those beautiful windows to get insights for the company. So once we figured all of that out, then they have their, executives coming in and sharing road map discussions and having some panel discussions with partners. And then the afternoon is taking what we found on those sticky notes and creating peer to peer sessions led by the partners and by the internal clients with the customers being able to contribute and solve problems for each other. The interesting thing is our client did not they're a technology company, but they did not direct all of the challenges to be technology challenges they needed to solve. They let the customers share what challenges they were truly trying to solve, and they were all at a business level, which was extremely surprising to the client. But they didn't stop it. They didn't try to go put a tech solution into it. They let the customers actually have these really high level business conversations. And afterwards, they kinda said, you know, we we didn't know that that would work. That was really scary for us. But now that we've seen all of our competitors are going after every single person with a technology solution to their problems, but we were able to get in at a really high level conversation. We can change how we talk to these customers. We can change what our messaging is, and we can have a more peer to peer conversation and a less of a sales conversation knowing the sales will come later. So that first advisory council not only gave them the insights they needed, created loyalty with the customers, but gave them a new direction of how to talk talk to their customers and how to roll out more content. So from there, we're helping them put together those quarterly gatherings virtually of how to keep this group together. And then how do you expand the advisory council and make it a little bit larger without crossing the bridge and making it just a big giant conference? So now working with them on the strategy of what's an advisory council, what's a kind of quarterly meetup, and then what's now a new conference that they didn't think they needed but they could grow.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Very cool. I mean, it establishes the trust. It builds the relationship. It makes a lot of sense. When you think about an event like that from the Event Tech side, if we've got people that are you know, their ears are perking up, they're realizing this is something they should start exploring. What are some tips you can offer them both on the event tech side? What should they be thinking about? But also strategically, what are some you know, they're they're looking to take either an existing hybrid or virtual or or IRL event, and they wanna start developing this community. What are those baby steps they should take? Because, obviously, you know, it seems like that might be the right way to start this slowly. So what would you recommend?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. So I think you take this example that we just went through, and they have choices now. They've had an in person event. And so their choice now is, do we just do something in Slack and let people talk? Or do we go invest in a virtual solution that will allow our quarterly events that we now wanna have to be inside a community platform? And so if you go look, there's there's community tools and then there's virtual event tools that offer community. And so how big and robust do you wanna grow, and are you going towards, I wanna focus more on it being an event platform where people stay in touch, or I wanna focus on it being a community platform where events are part of the community. So this is a a pricing and a a strategy decision to go make. But now these virtual programs can really feel like they have a wrapper around them and feel like part of the community, so you get that community hug. I think separate from that, if you're just creating the event, so now we start to think about, oh, they wanna create a real conference, and while they have sixty five people in the advisory council, the real conference could probably have this first one, three hundred people to it. And if we're going to go hybrid with it, is that hybrid now just a live stream of the main sessions, or is it a true hybrid event where the online folks are having kind of their own separate community building experience while the in person folks are having their own community building experience? And I often think about, like, the Oscars. You know, that's I I view that as the ultimate hybrid event because you and your home viewing audience can just sit on the couch and watch the Academy Awards happen, or you can go to a viewing party where people get dressed up just like they were there, watch the whole thing, and celebrate. Or you can be on-site having that red carpet experience and going to all the parties and getting your swag bag. And so figuring out really what tech you want and what experience you want is is kind of the sixty four thousand dollar question. Right?</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Yeah. No. Absolutely. I I think I love that analogy I often use if I put on my production half for a second. I usually use the sports analogy of the Super Bowl can can be consumed so many different ways, and I think you're right with the award shows. My my last question for you is thinking about creating community and thinking about the different modalities that you might do that and the looks and feels of that. How important? Because there's obviously been so much discussion, especially in the event professional community around event tech and the different feature sets and the different options that are out there. But when you start talking about this, how import how do you balance the idea of creating something that is a resource, that's a branded experience, that brings people together and keeps you in touch and creates that three sixty five community versus meeting where they already are, and you've mentioned a few times here the idea of Slack. Obviously, it's a different thing, but it might be where they're already active for their for work. So Yeah. You know, how do you decide which direction to go? Do you use a platform that specifically has a certain feature set, or do you meet them where they are? Maybe it's a little less branded, a little bit less feature rich, but it keeps you in front of them. How do you determine what the right approach is?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> I'll say for most of our clients, it's budget. You know, at the moment, they're they're not paying for Slack because they're just starting their community. So they're doing the free version of Slack, which means that everything gets erased after ninety days. And so you cannot keep that going, but you just want a place for people to meet almost in in asynchronous but in short periods of time, and you're you're not trying to make an archive out of it. Once they hit that tipping point and they realize, oh, people are looking for conversations that happened more than three months ago, Now you have to consider either paying for Slack because they're there or moving to a community platform. I think that if your clients are corporate clients, Slack is very easy for them. They've already got it in, you know, as a tool that they're using. If your clients are not corporate, maybe their association, or people that aren't regularly using something like Slack, moving them to a platform might be an easier switch because it doesn't feel like a switch. It's just a, oh, I'm in this thing now. And I think that that's a solid option, but all of the platforms have a cost to them once you start to move into a fully contained thing. So you have to have the money for it, and some of them, you know, are upwards of fifteen thousand dollars a year. So really starting with what you can invest, what you're willing to invest, and how much time and effort you want to invest in getting the people over to it. I love I I'm part of some communities that are Mighty Network, that are Circle, and a couple of others. And they're great, but I don't often think to go there. Whereas Slack, I have up all the time, and all my Slack communities I'm really active in, all my ones that I have to go to, I think about it maybe once a week, once every two weeks. And so that's also something to manage.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Yeah. No. Absolutely. It's exactly what I was thinking. And I think you're right. You just gotta figure all that out and balance it depending on the use case. I said that was the last question, but I lied because I had one follow-up from earlier. We I I mentioned this in the question. I don't know if we really address it, but is there the opportunity for these communities to actually become sources of revenue? So does that and, you know, one the first question is, is that possible? And the second question is, does that then change how you think about these things strategically?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Yeah. So I think three ways to monetize your community is to consider, and one of them is just straight up charging membership fees. It's probably the hardest way to monetize unless you've already proven value, but it's, definitely a way to monetize. I think the the second one is to have a free community but then sell sponsorships into your community, and that allows you to actually make the community run. But if you want it to be your own proprietary community where you're not doing those things, then investing your own company money into the community and using it to run campaigns in there and offer community members discounts, first available opportunities to get into things, VIP access to certain events. But managing those campaigns within the community allows you to see that you will probably get significantly higher revenue from the members of your community than just from gen pop, right, the general population that you're marketing to. And so building that community creates loyalty and reminds them that you exist and continues to give them opportunity to buy more things from you. So I think those are the three paths I would consider.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Awesome. Liz, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. I I it's just so interesting to me what, you know, what we can do. And I love that you guys are doing this in twenty seventeen, and now you've got these digital tools that are helping usher further along. If people wanna learn more about you, your work, connect with you, how can they do so?</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Absolutely. So I'm on LinkedIn. I live and breathe it. Liz Lathan on LinkedIn. And then the community factory .com Is our site. We do run two of our own proprietary communities as well. So if you're in the event profession, we have Club Ichi, which you can find on our Community Factory website. And if you're in more broad marketing or head of marketing, we have team CMO. The free version is for all marketers, and then the paid version is just for heads of marketing. But so that kinda gives you the opportunity not only to connect with other folks, but see how this year round community should be run.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Awesome. Awesome. Thank you again, Liz, for your time. We really appreciate it on behalf of our members that are watching and learning so much from you today. Really appreciate it.</p> <p><strong>Liz Lathan, CMP</strong><br /> Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.</p> <p><strong>Jason Cohen</strong><br /> Absolutely. If you're working on something in the event space, whether you're event tech or if you're marketing or if you're planning for twenty twenty four, you wanna share your experiences, maybe you've learned some important lessons over the last year or two. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email. We'd love to have you on the show because we're really looking here to build our community to use Liz's, vernacular so that we can share more with everybody out there as everybody marches forward, and we continue reinventing the industry. So thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you again real soon here on another episode of the Institute of Virtual Lunch and Learn series. Have a great day.<br /> </p>
