Webinar
Work smart: how AI saves your event team time
30th Sept 2026 | 4pm UK | 11am ET | 8am PT
Who you'll learn from
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Rikki Bhachu Exhibitions Marketing, CloserStill Media |
Samy Shafeeq Group Director, Data & Business Systems, Mash Media
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Event teams are delivering more each year. This includes more growth, shows, sponsor commitments, onsite experiences, etc. All this is happening with the same number of people, thanks to AI.
But how are organizers saving time with AI tools? This session with CloserStill Media and Mash Media covers the operations work AI can take on for your team, and what your team does with the time it gets back.
This webinar will detail what AI can automate for your event team today and what stays with your team because judgment or 'taste' is required.
We will hear how our panel made those calls at their own events, what they automated first, what they tried and pulled back, and how they got their teams comfortable with the change.
🔍 What we’ll cover:
🗺️ Where the hours actually go. A stage-by-stage map of the event production cycle and the tasks that consume the most team time in each phase.
⚙️ The build phase. Configuring an event, checking settings across a portfolio, and getting answers about your own setup without clicking through dashboards.
💬 The repetitive question load. What an AI assistant handles for attendees, sponsors and exhibitors, and what that means for how you staff the support desk.
📊 Reporting without the rebuild. Getting the post-event numbers sponsors ask for without a week of manual assembly.
🧭 What to keep human. The judgment calls, relationships and creative decisions that should stay with your team, and how to tell the difference.
🚀 What the time buys. How our panel spent the capacity they got back, and how they built the case internally.
🧭 Who should join:
Event directors, operations leads and event technology teams at commercial B2B organizers. If your portfolio is growing faster than your headcount, this session is about the work you can hand over and the work you should keep.
Register now
🎤 Panelists:
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Rikki Bhachu, Exhibitions Marketing, CloserStill Media
Rikki is a strategic and creative marketing leader with a decade and a half of experience driving growth for high-profile conferences, exhibitions, awards, and events. Passionate about the industry and the people within it, he is widely recognised as a valued contributor, earning multiple award wins, leadership appointments, and industry judging roles.
He has a proven track record of delivering successful event launches, rebrands, digital transformation initiatives, and audience growth across global markets. His experience spans the public sector, energy, education, healthcare, design, and a wide range of professional industries.
Samy Shafeeq, Group Director, Data & Business Systems at Mash Media
Samy Shafeeq is Group Director of Data and Business Systems at Mash Media, the UK media and events business behind International Confex, the Event Production Show, The PA Show, Exhibition News and Conference News.
He came up through the business, moving from the finance team into business reporting, then CRM and now leads data and systems across the group. That route gives him an unusually complete view of where an events team's hours actually go.
Over the past few months he has been building and shipping automations across finance, data and marketing, taking out manual work that used to absorb a large part of the week. He'll walk through a couple of them in this session.
Hosted by:
Hew Leith, SVP of Marketing, Grip