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An event planner for 26 years, Beth Surmont has seen and felt the power of what happens when you intentionally design events. 

“Events are where two people meet by chance in a hallway and a world-changing breakthrough idea is sparked,” says Surmont, FASAE, CMP-Fellow, CAE (MPI New Jersey Chapter), head of strategy and design for 360 Live Media. “Or where someone who is thinking about giving up on their career is inspired to continue. Or where you make a professional friend that you will call on at a key moment later when you need some help.”

Surmont, who is presenting “A Simple Framework to Create Meaningful Events: A Live Hackathon for a Local Charity” at MPI’s 2026 World Education Congress (WEC) in San Antonio, has seen all these situations happen.

“And I really believe that if we approach our events through the lens of creating meaning, we will energize our participants and make real impact,” she says.

Surmont’s work designing events includes an audience-centered process with interviews, focus groups and audience observation.

“Every year, I talk directly with hundreds of attendees and exhibitors about their experiences, across all sectors and industries,” she says. “Coming back from 2020, the patterns of what we hear get stronger every year: ‘I want high-quality conversations with the right people,’ ‘I need something that is worth my time that gives me practical takeaways for my work,’ ‘I need to prove to my boss that it is worth our time and money investment to go’ and ‘I don’t want to just listen to someone talking on a stage—I’m here to connect with people.’”

Surmont watches people skip sessions to hang out in the hallways and talk.

“I hear exhibitors asking for hard evidence of the quality leads they will walk away with before their boss will let them sign,” she says. “And I have people say to me, and this is a direct quote: ‘We are spending all this time and money here, what is the point? What are we doing with this?’”

While we assume we understand event audiences and know what they want, that’s often not the case, according to Surmont.

“We assume that the same models we’ve been using for more than 100 years are going to hold up as the world changes,” she says. “The first thing to do is to really get to know your audience. Everyone is going to find something different, but you are going to develop an understanding for how they like to connect, and how much. What the right balance of content vs. show floor is. The information that matters the most to them, and how they want to receive it. Every person will tell you they want more structured connection. It’s not just breaks and receptions for the organic networking. We need to be weaving it into our content for both more meaningful, brain-based learning and to add more value for our people.”

The framework Surmont is presenting at WEC is the intersection of what your audience is good at, what your organizational mission is and what the community needs. 

“The magic of the session is that we don’t just talk about this, we actually use the framework in real time. We will use our event planning brains to do rapid ideation to help a local charity in San Antonio with event-related needs,” she says. “Events are, ironically, individual experiences. I come as an attendee with my goals, I attend my sessions and I leave with my takeaways.” 

While we bring smart people together in one place for individual development, Surmont says, we don’t often connect them and their expertise together in an intentional and meaningful way. 

“I’ve had the wonderful gift of being able to run this type of session a few times and each time we’ve given real, actionable advice to an organization that needs help; energized the planners and reconnected them to their personal ‘why;’ and helped people feel like they are part of a bigger community of like-minded people,” she says. “I hope people walk away thinking that we have to do better with our events, feeling like they have fallen back in love with their work and that they use the simple framework to make local impact at their next event.”