Lisa Plummer Savas

Stock.adobe.com Last year, the B2B media and events industry was concerned over tariffs. This year, the picture looks a tad steadier, but the worry has moved from politics to AI. In 2025, the divide ran along the industries an operator served. Those serving health care and life sciences were posting some of their best years, while anything tied to manufacturing and supply chains was stuck, hit by tariff whiplash that made it hard for advertisers to plan and budget.

Tom Merton/KOTO – stock.adobe.com How a 10-person Slack channel launched during the pandemic has grown into a more than 4,600-member professional community with a real events business—a model that media and event operators should be watching. When Gianna Whitver joined the cybersecurity industry in 2016 from the commercial real estate investment and development world, she felt, in her words, like she had been hit in the face.

Drobot Dean – stock.adobe.com When events organizer Eman Pulis surveyed the show floor at SiGMA World at Fiera Roma in Rome last November, he was looking at the largest crowd SiGMA had ever assembled—30,000 delegates in a city he had chosen strategically. Reflecting on that choice afterward, he put it simply: “All roads lead to Rome.