AI on Stage, Humans in the Lobby: The 2026 Conference Opportunity

Conference season is here. Are your LinkedIn notifications popping off like mine? The "who's going" messages and stock promotional infographics.

For the lucky ones who survived the "Great Rebalancing" of 2025, everything is basically business as usual. Hopefully, you've already booked your flights to Vegas, Palm Springs, and Miami. You are starting to skim the panel agendas and making sure you RSVP to every "invite-only" happy hour.

But what about the more than 15,000 folks that were released this year? For them (us) things feel a bit different this year.

They aren't booking flights. They're refreshing job boards, hourly.

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It is important to note that I, too, am a member of the advertising community currently searching for my next role. Thankfully, I have an amazing network of clients, colleagues, and friends in the business that have rallied behind me.

It has been a truly humbling few days. Thank you to all of the beautiful humans who have already reached out to help.

That said, I'm writing this to benefit those in the community who perhaps do not have the network that I enjoy.

My LinkedIn 🔗

I've spent the last few days engaged in my own career search, but I also took the time to see if any of the Q1 conferences have something to help this crowd. Specifically, I looked at CES, IAB ALM, Marketecture Live, and POSSIBLE.

There are countless "Next Gen AI" tracks and "Commerce Media Fireside Chats." But there's no human track.

Despite the massive movement in talent across the industry, arguably the largest since 2008, the industry is gathering to discuss efficiency while ignoring the casualties of that efficiency.

Here is what I found. Plus, at the end...a big idea.

Recruiting silence

If you flip through the event agendas, you would think that the last year was a banner year for stability. The disconnect is surprising.

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Note: It is unfair to put these event organizers on the spot like this. I get it. This is not "their problem" by any means. Additionally, I do not believe that any of these events are deliberately attempting to exclude people.

Instead, this is a call to action to take advantage of this unique moment in our collective industry. If they move swiftly, think of the amazing agent for change these events could be.

CES: Las Vegas (Jan 6-9)

CES has always been, well, a circus. The media industry shoved its way into the Consumer Electronics Expo well over a decade ago and made it our own. So much so that the event created a separate space for us called C-Space, over at the Aria resort.