Planning Your 2027 Healthtech Events Calendar: What to Keep, What to Cut, and How to Stand Out

0:00Robin Moritz: If we didn't get good results from it, then we cut it. If sometimes there's certain events that really increase their cost to sponsor, you know, some of them have doubled or tripled. So we definitely look at that, the cost factor. And, you know, what were the results? You know, did we get to speak to a lot of CIOs at the conference?

0:21Amy Hamilton: You cannot judge an event two days after, but you can understand if it created momentum and created meaningful conversations. if it created one meaningful conversation to me, it's a success.

0:38Liat Kozuch: Welcome to the award-winning Health Tech Marketing Show. I'm Adam Turinas. Before we get started, thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, please follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. And by the way, check out our library. We've got almost 150 episodes now. A big thank you to our sponsor and syndication partner, Healthcare Now Radio, the 24-7 radio network dedicated entirely to healthcare. And a special shout out to Carol and Roberta for all your support. Really appreciate you. So hey, it's that time of the year. And if you run events in health tech, you're trying to wrap up 2026 and planning 2027 at the same time, which is basically like two full-time jobs.

1:29Liat Kozuch: So today we're talking events, how to build a calendar, what to keep, what to cut, and how to make a booth people actually want to walk into. I'm joined by two people who live this every single week, Robin Moritz, who is a senior event manager at InterSystems, where she spent 37 years there and has run the trade show and conference program for close to two decades. Her team handles around 60 events a year, including a 7 ,000 square foot booth at HIMS. And also we're joined by Liat Kosuch, who leads field marketing at Jairo. IRO AI. They are the agentic AI company for healthcare, running more than 40 activations a year, including an award-winning booth game at Vive that you're going to hear about and you'll love.

2:28Liat Kozuch: And for the first time, my Health Launchpad colleagues, Amy Hamilton, joins me as co-host. Amy spent 20 years in health IT and has run event programs herself. So she's leading most of today's conversation. So let's get into it and meet Liat, Robin, and Amy. Liat, Robin, and Amy, welcome to the show. I'm so delighted to have you on today to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is events. And we're going to get into planning. I mean, it's that time of year where everybody in your world is heads down planning for 2027, as well as wrapping up 2026 events. So you've got to be doing two full-time jobs at the same time.

3:18Liat Kozuch: So I really appreciate you taking the time. And I also want to welcome my colleague, Amy, to the show. And Amy will introduce herself. And actually, Amy is going to be doing a lot of this interview today. So you'll get to know her a little bit over the course of it. But Liat, start with yourself. Tell us a little bit about you and Hiro and what you do.

3:38Amy Hamilton: Sure. And thanks for having me. And I just told you this offline, but I just want to repeat that it's an honor to be here. Literally on my way back from work every day, I try to find time to log in and listen to one of your episodes because it's so on point, right? So I hope to be on point as well for the listeners today. So thank you for putting together such an awesome and relevant podcast. My name is Liat. So I lead field marketing at Hiro. I'm actually, I've just celebrated five years in the company. which feels like nothing. And I'm still in honeymoon phase. So I do recommend that to anyone who works where they work.

4:10Amy Hamilton: Try to make it a place that you are still in honeymoon phase with. It's very unique. We focus on agentic AI agents for healthcare specifically. And I lead our field marketing. So everything from big industry events like the Vibes, the Beckers, Chime, and smaller executive experiences that we own, as well as our own virtual summit, which is coming up very soon. And how many events do you do a year? So I didn't have time to count. That's how busy us event marketers are, actually. But like, I think north of 40, I'd say. Big and small. So definitely not 40 huge, huge industry events, but like 40 activations.

4:42Amy Hamilton: Unbelievable.

4:43Liat Kozuch: Yeah. Robin, so great to have you on the show. We've known each other for a while. And I literally, I don't think there's an event where I go to where I don't see you. So Robin, please tell us about yourself and also how many events you do a year.

4:57Robin Moritz: So I also am very excited that you invited me to participate in your call today. I have been with InterSystems for many years. I've been managing all of the trade shows and conferences that we sponsor at for the past 20 years of my career at InterSystems. Not to date or age myself, but I have been there for 37 years. And yes, I'm sometimes still in that honeymoon stage. Very happy to be there. Very exciting. We're always keeping things moving very quickly and fast. The shows I do about, it was up to about 85 shows per year. We have scaled down to 60 shows. So we're currently, this year 2025 is at the 60 count.

5:44Robin Moritz: And it's all flavors of the different events. events our largest of course is hymns that's where we have a 7 000 square foot booth but we also go to a lot of events where it's just one-on-one meetings and you send a sales team but every every event still you put the same amount of work and into a lot of them even though

6:03Liat Kozuch: there are a lot of smaller ones that's unbelievable i mean between the two of you i'm i'm just i'm exhausted hearing this is both of you i might figure out at the end of it how many what your Your airline miles must be incredible. And Amy, you've been a part of Health Launchpad for a while now, but you also have been in the same seat as Liat and Robin. And so tell us a bit about yourself and your event experience.

6:28Robin Moritz: Yeah, great. Well, I'm really excited to be here co-hosting for the first time. Thanks for having me, Adam. Currently, I'm an account director here at Health Launchpad, but I've been in health IT for my entire career, about 20 years. And the beginning of it, I actually used to do interviews at the different health industry events where we would go around and interview leadership at different EHR companies at the time. And that was my first four-way into events. And it was amazing because I got to step into a lot of different booths and learn about a lot of different event strategies. And over the years, I've had the opportunity to run and own event planning at different organizations as well, including our customer summits, which I know both of you also run your customer summits, which we'll get into later.

7:18Robin Moritz: And managing large event budgets of up to 20 events a year, nothing at the scale that you ladies do. So I'm in awe and I feel really lucky that we get to have experience at this level here on the call today. So Robin, you and I had the pleasure of sitting down together in June at the InterSystems offices, and you shared a lot of what you just shared with us here, 37 years at InterSystems, which is so incredible, especially in today's day and age where it feels like a lot of us aren't staying places for very long. It's incredible to see that in almost 20 years running the events program. So you have so much to offer our listeners today, and we're going to dive into that.

7:56Robin Moritz: Liette. We had the opportunity to meet at Sway and Sway Live at a great event that we all have been to many times. And it was so exciting to hear you talk about your activations at Vive, see you win video of the year, hear about your awards that you've won across different events. And now you are co-hosting a podcast. So that's exciting. And I know you do it all with two little ones at home. So we really do appreciate your time today. Okay, before I dig in, I just want to bring attention to the scale at which you both do this. So Robin, you just mentioned you do over 60 events a year. Liet, you don't even have a number, but we're thinking somewhere around 40.

8:34Robin Moritz: And I think that's just so incredible to think about. That's almost an event a week. Robin, in your situation, that's more than an event a week. I'd love to know a little bit more about your team and how you pull off events at that scale. Liet, we'll start with you. What does your team look like? How are you managing this calendar?

8:55Amy Hamilton: Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'm at all with Robin. I mean, I'm wondering how many are on Robin's team to get that 80 marked covered of events. It's myself and Sydney, my amazing colleague. She started as a BDR and then we met and she she fell in love with me, as I like to joke, but we fell in love with each other. She says she found her soulmate and she wanted to work for events. So a year later, the company had agreed to move her over to events. And since then, she's really been like my I cannot move without her. She's like my COO. She is more of like the project management side and I'm more of the strategic relationships.

9:26Amy Hamilton: I'm overseeing, you know, and already talking about 2027, like the theme of this episode today. And so it's her and I kind of tag teaming on all events. It's not like we have tried to come up with different ways of how to split, divide and conquer. But really, we decided that the best way is to fly together on all events together so that we're both in the know and we both know what's going on. Just, you know, handling different layers of the same event.

9:51Robin Moritz: Nice. And Robin, how about you? I think I had the pleasure of meeting one of your teammates, but how many are on your team helping you run the 60 plus event calendar? Well, approximately about three years ago when Ross moved into being the director of North American Marketing, he brought the team together more so that we're sharing some more, some of the responsibilities. So I have myself as the senior event manager and then my colleague, Connie Winterhalter, she's also an event manager now. So she has moved into the role. And then we have our program, healthcare program managers, a provider, Karen Waters, the payer.

10:28Robin Moritz: So we kind of, they each take a little piece of the event. So the program managers, they work with our thought leaders, get the messaging. You know, if we have speakers that will be speaking at the conference, they work with the speakers. So that takes that portion off of, you know, the event manager's shoulders. So that's how we kind of kind of just all jump in and help out to to get things done. Great. Wow. That's so much with such a, you know, lean and mean team. I'm really impressed. Are there tools that you ladies lean into to help keep track of all this? Are you using a project management tool?

11:05Robin Moritz: Are you all living in a big Excel spreadsheet? How do you manage it at the scale? Do you want me to jump in first? Go ahead. Yeah. You know, probably about five years ago, we introduced the Monday platform. It's a project management platform. And that's been great because everyone can see what's happening, what events are we going to, you know, what stuff is next, you know, for that event planning. So that's been really a great help because before it was just, you know, the old white notebook, inserting pages to, you know, and then tracking your events. So the manual process has gone away with the project management system.

11:42Amy Hamilton: And for me, I'm actually kind of in like Claude overload right now where I'm having a complicated relationship with Claude lately. I almost feel like for 2027, one of my goals is to pause and think critically before I go to Claude or as I like to call her Claudette. my bestie. I feel very overloaded and it almost gets me into these rabbit holes that like sometimes I just have to force myself to stop and zoom out of it and just think for myself, right? Because like you're trying to make the best messaging and the sharpest and make sure that it's crawling your slack and that it's crawling your Monday and that it's crawling.

12:15Amy Hamilton: So, okay, back to your question. What I use as a zoom out is a Miro board and I will never ditch it because it's Claude has been telling me to try to go on to Monday so that we have it all in one consolidated place. But my Miro board, which is for those who don't know, it's kind of like a visual map where you could just copy paste people's pictures and headshots into each event so that I have this visual map of the calendar of 2027, for example, and we're going to start plugging in logos of each event where they are, put like a bar on the dates and the names and the photos of people going from the company so that it could really help you visualize.

12:47Amy Hamilton: I'm a visual person, so I love that. And so Miro is my main kind of Bible that I go by to oversee our event planning.

12:55Robin Moritz: Well, first of all, I can relate. Adam was probably shaking his head laughing saying this is am I talking to Amy? Am I talking to Liette right now about Claude? And I also call mine Claudette, which I think is hilarious. And I can totally agree. I think the tools are so wonderful, but sometimes the tools themselves can become time sucks. So it's where do you pause the tool and actually start thinking critically and not overcomplicating things. I love this idea of a visual calendar as well, because so many of us are visual learners. And I think with the events, with the sheer number that you all do, having a visual place to look must be really helpful for a lot of people to keep track of it.

13:32Robin Moritz: Who's going to what? So that's a really cool. I haven't heard that one before. So Robin, I'm a big Monday user, so I can definitely see the value in that as well. So, Robin, I feel like we have such an incredible opportunity to talk about where events have been and where they are today with you. With over two decades of experience running these large-scale health IT events, in your mind, what is the one biggest thing that you've seen change over the years? You know, I would say, you know, digital marketing and new apps that help us all do our jobs better, streamline information a lot easier. You know, at HIMSS, we host 250 meetings over the three days.

14:17Robin Moritz: And, you know, I've made changes over the years to the design of our booth. You know, we used to have a large booth, but a smaller large booth. And I was like, we really need to put the meeting rooms within the booth so that when people come to visit, they have that one place, but they're coming and we're not walking them off down the hallways. And also, you know, how do you track the meetings and book the meetings? So there's new tools out there like Jiffel Now. It's a funny name for a company, but it's Jiffel Now. and that is integrated into your sales force or your HubSpot so that you can book your meetings, track your meetings, follow up with them.

14:56Robin Moritz: So things have really changed where it's with all these new tools out there, it just helps us event managers do our jobs more efficient and get rid of a lot of manual processes. So that has really changed over the years. That's amazing. So we're hearing Miro, we're hearing Monday, now we're hearing GIFL now. I think we need in the comments on this event when the show goes live on what are all of the tools that our friends out there are using. I'll just chime in there.

15:25Liat Kozuch: We will make sure that there's links to all of these in the show notes.

15:29Amy Hamilton: And I do want to add one thing about the whole Claude relationship. By the way, I have found myself double dating. So I've gone back to chat GPT a bit. Amy, you and I could probably talk about this for nine hours. But I am double dating. I have both tabs open. And yes, Claude is on as like a desktop app and chat's just kind of there supporting. But I find myself gravitating to GPT. It's quicker to answer. And like you need quick when you're managing events, you just just give me this whole email campaign. You know what I mean? Like you just really need it spitting out quickly. So I just shout out to GPT.

15:58Amy Hamilton: It hasn't lost its magic at all. And we shouldn't underestimate it. And then one more little like tactic that I'd love to shout out to event marketers looking to really up their game on automation is connecting your Claude to your Monday board. if you have that MCP available in your company. When you're talking to Claude about, and by the way, I use record to text. I'm like, I can't type anymore. I just need to like talk it out. So I record to text to Claude about an upcoming project. And then what it does is it auto creates all the Monday tasks for all the stakeholders on my team, what they need to be doing.

16:28Amy Hamilton: So like design will probably have 13 tasks for the upcoming Triumphal forum that I need them to create assets for. And it comes with a brief as well. So really, I love the beauty of seeing that magic come to play. So just wanted to add that.

16:40Robin Moritz: So, Liette, when I was researching your previous experience, it looks like you've also worked on the organizer side from an event planning perspective. So what do you think you have that's unique from that experience of sitting on the organizer side and now sitting on the vendor side planning events? What's something that you brought to the table here that you think really helps that you would share with your colleagues?

17:03Amy Hamilton: Yeah, so I want to humbly share to all those out there who feel like they have imposter syndrome or just not where they need to be as an event marketer, just not like up to date yet with all the tools and seeing everyone else as if they're kind of like way light years ahead of you. It's a long journey. And so for a long time, I was in event production working for my father's company. And my goal was really and it's not a small goal, right? It's just to get the event like happening and on its two feet successfully and flawlessly executed, making sure that the speakers arrive, the venues book. like all those operations and logistics pieces, which are endless.

17:35Amy Hamilton: And so that was how I checked my box off that I've done my job for this event. The event took place. Now the question is, you know, this isn't just a date on a calendar that needs to get done. It's actually how I see it now, like at Hiro, it's an ecosystem of touch points that I am designing both before, during, and after whichever event I have coming up. So I almost see it as part of like an overall holistic plan rather than just one more event that I need to execute. And so just an example of this is like online and offline. So I forgot to mention, I also host a podcast, I'm not as good as as your guys, but a podcast called patient journey pioneers at Hyrule, where we have CIOs come talk about how they're better in patient access and you know, roadmaps for digital healthcare leaders.

18:19Amy Hamilton: And so I now don't even separate online and offline touch points anymore. It's more of just like this continuum. So I met like top CIOs at Becker's in person, gave them a big hug, they came on the podcast. They're now my virtual besties. And then I see them again at the next offline or in-person event. And this is how you really cultivate an ecosystem around Hyro. And so online starts a relationship, you know, the offline kind of deepens it and then online keeps it alive until the next big hug that we have at our vibe booth. So really, again, just to sum my answer up is that I'm no longer just executing.

18:52Amy Hamilton: I'm now trying to see how we create this, cultivate this event as the room to be in with your prospects and customers at the right time, in the right place, with the right vibe and connecting the dots throughout the entire year of how we create these touch points.

19:04Robin Moritz: Wow, I think it just speaks to how an event manager, an event planner's job is so outside of the operational aspect of it all. You guys are on the showroom floor, you're at the events. Like you said, you're giving the hugs, you're creating the relationships and your sales team must be so hugely appreciative of that. Robin, I know you go to so many events every single year And can you talk a little bit about what Liet was talking about, which is the power of the event planner, the event manager, actually being in the booth, being in the room, being at the event? And what's the bonus to having you actually physically there as opposed to just managing from afar?

19:48Robin Moritz: You know, I think being there as the event manager to see the flow of the actual event, working with the sales teams. I mean, because I've been with InterSystem so long, I can talk about our products. I can get that conversation started with people walking by. I am the relationship builder. I am the link between the attendees, our salespeople, the event organizers themselves. So I think my own knowledge, and I like to go, especially if it's the first time we're going to an event, the first couple of times we go to that event just to make sure it's flowing and it's working and we're getting the results or we can see what did we do wrong at this show versus what can we make change for the next time we go back to the show.

20:37Robin Moritz: So it's definitely, I think, a good idea for the event manager to participate on the show floor and be part of that team. Yeah, I'm so glad that this topic came up because I think for any marketer, especially any event marketer, they've heard the pushback of the sales team goes to the events. You plan it, you get it all ready to go and then flip it over to them and let them be, you know, the ones in the booth. And I've always advocated to having a marketer, many marketers in the booth. And I think the power of having, you know, you two at the events is so clear here. And I hope our listeners really hear that and take that into account when they approach their calendar for 2027 and who's going to be at those events.

21:18Robin Moritz: Let's make sure some some faces of our marketers are on that Miro board and I know they're definitely there for you Liet. So I think this is a good transition to start talking about planning and when do we sit down and start thinking about 2027? You know we've talked about you guys are still wrapping up you've got health you've got Chime you've got lots you know with 60 on the calendar there's probably even you know way more than those that are coming still in the rest of the year.

21:44Liat Kozuch: okay quick break to tell you about something a lot of people don't know we do so health launch but actually does help health tech companies with event marketing and design our team has hands-on experience in every part of event marketing from strategy event selection planning your events executing your events and all the way through to designing big booths small booths, and everything in between. So whether you're planning a 10 by 10 at a regional show or a flagship presence at HIMSS, we can help you get more out of every dollar you put on the show floor. And if you're building your 2027 events calendar right now, hey, let's have a chat.

22:33Liat Kozuch: And you can visit healthlaunchpad.com to learn more about what we do.

22:39Robin Moritz: So when you actually sit down and start thinking about 2027, Where do you start? And Robin, I'd love to hear how you got from 85 to 60, because a big part of planning the event calendar for the year is thinking about what do we keep and what do we cut? So I'll break it up into two parts. Maybe we start with you, Robin. When do you start looking at next year's calendar? And when do you know it's time to cut a show? And when do you know it's time to really fight for that show and give it one more chance? I would say we normally start the real diving into it September, October. But throughout the whole year, as you're going to those events and then you're running your reports, you know, even six months after the events, you run your reports and you see, you know, what's the ROI from or what was the engagement at the event?

23:27Robin Moritz: And then if there is any ROI with us, it does take a lot longer. It takes more of a year. It could be a year and a half before we actually lock in or finalize any sales that come from, you know, being out there at a show. You know, what we did yesterday, we reviewed all 60 shows that we've gone to. Well, not all because we haven't finished the year, but a majority of the shows that we've gone to, you know, them put the yay or nay and reasons why we wouldn't go back to it. And so that's how we kind of just look at the numbers and look at the results. And then also, you know, some of them may not do as well the first time around.

24:05Robin Moritz: So we'll give that opportunity to go back to it the following year. And Robin, who's in the room when you're looking through and saying yay or nay? You know, we start off with our North America marketing team. So it would be the director of North America marketing, which is Ross, and then our health care program managers and our non-health care program managers. You know, we sit down, we'll have like kind of a, you know, the group of us all get together and talk about each event. So it's a group effort. But after we get to where we want to be, then we'll go to, you know, the head of sales and other sales reps and we'll sit with them and go over and say, you know, this is where we're seeing us going to our next year's calendar.

24:49Robin Moritz: You know, do you guys have any input or, you know, do you want to say, hey, we really need to be here versus the other two shows that we went to? So we do engage with the sales team, too. And what typically results in a show getting cut? You said, you know, maybe it was one bad year. I know a lot of times where the show is hosted, you know, you want to give it another chance in a different city. But what ultimately, you know, leads to a show getting cut? And I think that question is probably best for you, Robin, since you've had to cut down from 85 to 60. If we didn't get good results from it, then we cut it.

25:22Robin Moritz: If sometimes there's certain events that really increase their cost to sponsor, you know, some of them have doubled or tripled. So we definitely look at that, the cost factor. And, you know, what were the results? You know, did we get to speak to a lot of CIOs at the conference? You know, if they sold us, hey, you're going to be able to meet with CIOs and, you know, these are the expectations. And then if we don't, if they don't meet those, then we would cut it. Leigh-Anne, how about you? How do you approach planning?

25:52Amy Hamilton: So first of all, I just want to, I'm listening to Robin and I'm like, Robin, I'm going to have to pick your brain after because I'm sorry. if you're doing twice as many events as I am, I need to learn from your Bible and your book. But when I'm thinking about events, that sums up that I try to get from people on a debrief call two days after the event when everyone's still fresh. I almost, no offense, don't really take that seriously. It does take a few months to understand the actual effect of an event. However, you do at this point, after 132 events at HIRO, I'm proud to say, I know in my gut what event really created momentum for us and which one was a bit, eh, you know, like there are those events where we have to humbly just kind of wait year after year to cultivate relationships at those events.

26:33Amy Hamilton: But for one, my biggest kind of red flag is like there was zero traffic at our booth. That's when I know that I have to shift to a different strategy. And I'm lucky enough to be in a company where we really are approached at this point by conference organizers to speak on stage. And it's usually, and this is my winning sauce, it has to be alongside a health system customer or else you're just a product pitch on stage that people will look down at our phone at their phones during that session so we are lucky enough to be approached we actually just got accepted into hymns for a main stage session with two of our health system customers and so that's like a different strategy that i like to consider and to move away from a booth and just go on stage and then perhaps like a dinner or hosted regional event while everyone's already at that event and so that just that red flag of like the traffic it lowers morale as well like You want your salespeople to want to be excited to attend the events that you're putting together.

27:26Amy Hamilton: And so if they have that sour experience of like we were kind of at the booth and there was no I honestly have to say like I don't think that has anything to do with Pyro. I think it has to do with the event itself and how relevant the vendors are that they bring in to interact with that audience that's kind of captured there. So but again you cannot judge an event two days after but you can understand if it created momentum and created meaningful conversations. If it created one meaningful conversation, to me, that's a success.

27:54Liat Kozuch: I'd like to just ask a thought here because HIMSS, you mentioned HIMSS. You guys, I don't think you exhibited at HIMSS in 26. And I'm curious, is that, you know, I'm curious about why and is that changing?

28:08Amy Hamilton: Yeah. So we don't like to be in a sea of vendors. We like to stand out. And that's what my event strategy, that's kind of my North Star is just not getting swallowed into that sea of vendors, though it is important to be in that a part of that sea when you feel the event is right so for hymns we kind of went booth yes booth no booth yes booth no booth sometimes just sending two sales folks but it's so big that i do think we will have booth presence this year we always just take a look back at the year prior and if so if we sent two sales folks who came back and said you know it was just we need a house like hyro needs a home and that's what i believe in like hyro always needs a certain home to send folks to at a large industry event and so that is where i am a big believer in booths.

28:48Amy Hamilton: So I'm not shying away from booth strategy completely in 2027. I think the small room doesn't mean that the big room stopped mattering, but we are seeing a trend towards more like intimate hosted events where you have those meaningful conversations and you post the agenda. So 2027 for us will be a mix. And I just want to say as far as planning, it's funny how my Miro board already has all those anchor like must attend events for Hyrule plugged in. And so there's actually little room to plug in like our own kind of conferences with a two-person team. But as we grow, we'll definitely see a hybrid approach.

29:21Liat Kozuch: Thank you. And Robin, you guys, I mean, you go all in on HIMSS. I'm always just blown away by what you guys do. Do you mind talking a little bit about kind of a whole approach to HIMSS, including the pre-event?

29:33Robin Moritz: Well, our whole approach, you know, years ago when I first moved into the marketing department to start managing our events, our booth was, I think, a 20 by 40 or 20 by 60. And the reason we really grew that floor space was because of the meetings. You know, it's really a place where you can meet your existing customers, you know, your prospects. So moving those meeting rooms into the booth has expanded our floor print.

30:03Liat Kozuch: Yeah. Well, also you guys have got a, I mean, your booth at HIMSS is always stands out, not just because of the size of it, but I think the way that you use, like the digital display it's really stands out and it's tough because you're you know you're right next to or close by the epic booth and the phillips booth is sort of like the big mega booths but you guys do a great job of standing out the other thing that i've always been impressed with what you guys do at hymns is the and it's you know it's not a small investment is the sphere

30:35Robin Moritz: event the day before hymns right and i just i'll step back a little bit for the booth not just the meeting rooms with having our big digital presence, you know, and we have so much going on and we're trying to support all our different, you know, teams. So we have that large, you know, media wall where we host our speaking opportunities. We have people come in and thought leaders in the industry present in our booth. We also share our space with our startup customers and our integration partners. We give them a kiosk within the booth. So we just have so many things happening within that booth.

31:11Robin Moritz: Talk about the sphere. You know, years ago, you know, started off with just hosting a dinner at one of the restaurants. So we'd always have something going on. You know, Orlando, we're at the Bahama Breeze. Las Vegas, we had the Aquanox. You know, and other shows that are smaller shows that we were kind of going to year after year, but not really getting any traction from it. I'll use Civitas as an example. The booth traffic was always very, very light. We're like, oh, what could we do to get some attention here? So what I planned is a reception at the College Football Hall of Fame. So because we were one of the main sponsors, we could do the welcome reception on the first night.

31:56Robin Moritz: So then I started hosting, you know, experience events within the event. Invited everybody to the College Football Hall of Fame. That put us on the map of that event. They remembered us. The next day, they actually came by our booth and said hello or stopped my colleagues in the hallways. So that's the reason to do those type of experiences. The sphere, of course, that's amazing. You know, you have to have a large budget to throw that type of an event. But if you don't have a large budget, there's other things that you could invite people to and give them the experience. because the attendees, just like even ourselves, you don't really get to go out and visit the city or see anything that city is known for because you're too busy going to the event.

32:43Robin Moritz: But if you create an experience so that they can go to a museum or go to a show at the sphere or come for a nice networking dinner and make sure you have the best food possible, those are the things that people are actually going to remember you by, I believe. Yeah, that's such great advice. It sounds like if you're going to invest in a show where maybe you are a small fish in a big sea or even another big fish, but in just such a big sea, that sounds like Robin, what you guys have done is you've actually taken your booth and created your own mini event inside of your booth in HEMS. You have your own speaking sessions in there.

33:22Robin Moritz: You're having your meetings in there, kind of giving so many people so many reasons to come into that space, even though there's so many other places they could go at HIMSS. And I think, Liet, you do a great job, too, of creating these activations inside of your booths that create buzz and give reasons for people to come. And, of course, I'm thinking about the Call Dropper event at Vive, which definitely went viral in the health tech marketing world. give us some you know tips and tricks on how to think about creating an experience inside of your booth that draws that traffic but also doesn't just create a bunch of booth scans that don't mean anything to your sales at the end of the show yeah so first of all I want to comment on

34:04Amy Hamilton: what Robin was sharing like I'm so proud to be part of Hyrule because for me once you get people hooked in and meeting our folks that's when I know like my job is done because I trust the sales people on site. I trust our team camaraderie. I trust the vibes. I trust our knowledge and our product that once you have folks captured, that's it. Like that's our job is to just get like, as long as you met the Hyro team, everyone loves Hyro and it's a known thing. And I'm proud to say it. And I wouldn't have said this if I didn't feel like I could back it up a hundred percent. And I want to believe that our events also contribute to that love that we have in that community that comes by our booths and comes and looks for folks at Hyro.

34:40Amy Hamilton: And it's just a great thing to design through events. And so Vive is our flagship event. Shout out to the Vive folks who actually this previous show, they always give us this kind of like early choice of booths. And we got the first row and I was so proud to see that we were not only in the first row as you enter the show floor, but we stopped traffic and we held them there. And the way to get there is by, this is what I love, kind of like turning your booth into a carnival of areas and micro events happening within the booth. And I always love at Vibe to kind of step out and just look at what's going on because, and you have to make it smart, right?

35:15Amy Hamilton: It has to be intentional and not just a lot of buzz happening with freebies and folks who aren't relevant to your ICP, you know, hanging around. You really want to make it tailored to your audience. And so on one side of the booth, I've got an in-booth theater taking place with, as I mentioned, us and Health Systems, a series of sessions that they present on-site in the booth theater. We actually had Matt Cull, like CIO of Anova, one of our raving fan customers. He was speaking on the main stage at Vive and then walked down and walked onto our little booth at Vive to deliver a session around how Anova is succeeding in what they do while on site Hyro.

35:48Amy Hamilton: Then you've got a popcorn machine and some fun gimmick going on to get people fed. Then I've got Israel, our CEO, and his little nook with his investors and high impact meetings. Then I've got an area for the call dropper, which is an interactive game. And it's not just a game. It's a game that really connects you to the pain of that our product solves. So this, and thanks to Sway, we actually won an award for this kind of like best interactive idea at Vive. It was admittedly me scrolling on Pinterest on my couch. My manager always likes, you know, three years ago we had a whack-a-task, almost like that whack-a-mole game with the hammer, where I tried to represent every little thing that popped out was a patient request.

36:28Amy Hamilton: And that is, those are overwhelming patient requests that health system call centers are trying to handle manually these days. And when you have Hyro in as the AI agent layer, it relieves the burden off your staff and answers those questions end to end with the patient so that your staff can actually focus on, you know, intricate tasks that patients need. And so that was whack a task. And then we thought for 2026, what could we do that's fun? And Pinterest showed me all these like gimmicky, like awkward, like not interesting games. And And then I saw Formula One had this like drop the baton machine that you have to just catch them all before they fall into the ground.

37:03Amy Hamilton: And naturally, most people lose. And I thought, what fun would it be to show how, you know, these batons could represent incoming patient requests? So schedule my appointment, pay my bill, FAQ, all these incoming routine questions that the health system today tries to manage manually, pun intended. And so we had the call dropper where, you know, you're losing patience by trying to manage everything manually. They experience the pain on their own skin. It's a fun photographic experience. It's memorable. Everyone's inner child kind of comes out, their competitive edge comes out. And you've got CEOs and CIOs with their, you know, suits popping on and standing in that machine and trying to catch all the batons.

37:42Amy Hamilton: And then it's kind of like, all right, now you've experienced the pain of trying to manually handle all these tasks. Come into HIRO's booth to see how we can really alleviate that off your health system. And also for the patients, right? Because through HIRO, your patients get this kind of Amazon experience of like self-serving digital access to your health care that you would, without HIRO, have to wait on hold for 40 minutes just to get someone to reschedule your appointment. So sorry for that mouthful of kind of its description. And I hope that kind of explains what our college operate.

38:11Robin Moritz: Yeah, that's great. And if I summarize what you both have said here, it's that you're trying to create multiple experiences within each event. Robin's talking about, you know, making sure that you can bring all of the most important things that are happening at an event into the booth. And Liet, you're doing that as well with your dedicated meeting space for your CEO and those high value meetings. You've got spots for your sales team to meet. Robin, you've got all of your meeting rooms there with 250 meetings flowing through. You're supporting your partners. You're having fun in the booth. I know InterSystems is known also for having great snacks in the booth.

38:48Robin Moritz: You both do a great job of that. For those of us who are listening who maybe don't have the event budget that you guys have, I think we've learned a lot about what we're trying to achieve inside of the booth, many things at once. And if you can't do it in the booth, Robin, you've got great examples of how to do it outside of the booth at events and things like that. Little food for thought here, things that I've done with a much smaller budget, trying to achieve all of that at the same place is having really low cost games in your booth, especially during those hours that are happy hour cocktail times.

39:21Robin Moritz: We've had cornhole in the booth. We've had caricature painter, just something to get people to come in and stay, like you were saying, Liette, something to keep them there. And you can always serve people really good food at a decent price at these events. So I think those are such great little tidbits.

39:40Amy Hamilton: A strategic way that's super budget-friendly, literally all it costs is a roll-up banner and two tall chairs and a mic and maybe a videographer where you invite your top prospects and customers and thought leaders to just talk about, ask one question. So how are you bettering patient access in 2027? They're on a roll, they're talking, then you've got a videographer, the lights, and your prospect in your booth who is now in a non-salesy way understanding what your product offers. So that's just one more area I had in the booth that was cool.

40:11Robin Moritz: That's such a great thing to say because I think we should just try to bring people into the booth every chance we can get. And if you're going to do those interviews, you're going to try to capture those sound bites at the show anyway, do it in the booth. I totally agree. So for the close, I put together a quick little rapid fire where you both can answer. I will say one quick question and you both just throw out your quick answer and you can both just answer as it comes up. So rapid fire health IT marketing events. Booth or suite? Booth. Booth. Vegas or Orlando? Vegas. Orlando. Swag or snacks?

40:53Robin Moritz: Both. Both. Booth uniforms or dress as you please? Dress as you please. uniforms all the way oh i love those conflicting responses okay keynote or a happy hour keynote

41:09Amy Hamilton: like i want to be greedy and say both but keynote badge scan or business card

41:15Robin Moritz: neither selfie this is kaskill i love it robin we know you're a fan of the app so i'm going to guess that you're a badge scan girl i am a badge scan girl and there's actually a new tool out the POPL, P-O-P-L, that everyone should be aware of. I love that. You both already answered this one, but I asked marketing representation in the booth or just sales. We can all collectively say marketing. Marketing, yep. Okay, early flight or the red eye? Early flight. I do take the red eye a lot.

41:47Liat Kozuch: That's great. That's how I'm working in Boston.

41:49Amy Hamilton: Depends if you have little kids at home that you try to leave at your husband from having to deal with.

41:55Robin Moritz: Yeah, I've definitely taken that red eye to get home that one day earlier many, many times.

42:00Liat Kozuch: What's the one thing that you think you'll do differently in 2027? You know, maybe it could be a start doing or stop doing.

42:09Amy Hamilton: The one thing I want to do differently is something I want to stop. Stop thinking about each event as its own little, you know, and I spoke about this, but orchestrating events as like not just individual moments, but get more intentional about connecting them. so I don't want to meet someone at Vive, have a great conversation, then we just like don't talk anymore. I want to think about it as like a journey. So someone here is one of our customers like rave about us at the booth and then I have that person that just heard about us from a customer on my podcast and then I want to invite them on a webinar and then I want to see them at a Becker's dinner that we host.

42:39Amy Hamilton: So really as I mentioned, touch points on every event to hand the relationship to the next experience. It's hard to track and if there's a tool out there that could track each and every of these interactions. That would be cool, but yeah.

42:51Robin Moritz: I mean, that is one thing that we do. We have many touch points. It's not just all about the event because you have the event, you have webinars, you have email campaigns, if people are still doing that, but there's all these other touch points where you may meet somebody at one event, you may see them at another event coming down the road, but then you also have the touch points in between. So keeping that information rolling and that relationship that you built, keep that going by making sure that you have more than one touch point with them.

43:23Liat Kozuch: That's so important.

43:25Amy Hamilton: I think it's not about building more moments. It's about building on the momentum. And that's where you really get the results and not just doing the event just to do it.

43:34Liat Kozuch: Well, Leah, Robin and Amy, I want to thank you so much for the time today. It's been actually it's been great for me not to be doing the interview and listening. is that I've taken away a lot from this and I'm looking forward to sharing that with everybody. So thank you, everybody.

43:49Robin Moritz: Thank you so much, guys. Thank you all. Thank you.

43:53Liat Kozuch: Well, that was a masterclass. Thank you, Robin, Leah, and Amy. So here are my five takeaways. Number one, plan all year, decide in the fall. Robin's team pulls reports for months after every show, then reviews the full calendar in September and October. starting with marketing then bringing in sales shows get cut for weak results big sponsorship price jumps or not delivering the audience they promise and a first year show often gets a second chance takeaway number two don't judge an event two days later liat doesn't put much weight on the debrief thumbs up. Real impact takes months, but zero booth traffic is a red flag.

44:41Liat Kozuch: And the answer might be a different play entirely. A stage session alongside a health system customer or a hosted dinner while everybody's already in town. Takeaway three, turn your booth into a mini event. Meeting rooms inside the booth and in-booth theater with customers, partner kiosks and games that make visitors feel the exact pain your product solves. Those are the kinds of things that really make an impact. And on a small budget, a roll-up banner, two chairs, a mic, and a videographer can do an awful lot. Number four, create experiences beyond the show floor. Attendees rarely get to see much of the city they're in.

45:25Liat Kozuch: Robin turned a quiet show into a stand out by hosting a reception at the College Football Hall of Fame. You don't need the sphere to be remembered. You need an experience. Number five, put marketers on the floor and connect every touch point. Both Robin and Liat are in the booth building relationships and both see events as one part of a continuous journey of podcasts, webinars, dinners, and the next show. As Liat That put it, it's not about building more moments. It's about building on the momentum. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe. Leave us a rating or review and share it with your events team.

46:11Liat Kozuch: We'd also love to hear which tools you use to run your event program. So drop them in the comments. We'll have links to all the tools mentioned in the show notes, along with LinkedIn profiles for Robin, Leah, and Amy, so you can connect with them directly. Before you go, one more thing. On Thursday, October 22nd, HIRO is hosting its third annual Care on Q Summit, a free one-day virtual event for health system leaders shaping the future of patient access and operations. So across 20 sessions, more than 50 speakers from leading US health systems, including AdventHealth, SutterHealth, InnovaHealth, UPMC and Kaiser Permanente will share what's working now and the practical lessons to carry into 2027 planning.

47:04Liat Kozuch: So you can book your appointment through a link in the show notes down below. And even if you can't attend, you might as well register because you'll be able to get the recording. Okay. With that, I want to thank you for listening and we'll see you next time on the Health Tech Marketing Show.

47:25Yeah.