Meeting planners are being asked to do something almost impossible right now, according to Carolina Panoff: Prove that their events create lasting impact.

“Justify the budget with real business outcomes. Compete with virtual alternatives that cost a fraction of what an in-person event costs,” says Panoff, founder of Be You Disco, an experiential team building and event experience company. “And do all of that while attendee expectations keep rising every year.”

The line between team building and wellness is quickly dissolving, according to Panoff, with the old wellness offerings—a quiet meditation room in the corner or a smoothie station in the lobby—not delivering the kind of ROI planners are being asked to justify.

“The best planners I work with are choosing experiences that create both at once. Team building and nervous system regulation. Connection and presence. Culture and felt experience. All in the same room, in the same moment,” she says. “Attendees are craving connection over content. After years of Zoom fatigue and networking small talk, people show up to in-person events wanting to feel something real, not receive more information. Feel something.”

Vulnerability is not weakness

Panoff believes the most powerful experiences go one level deeper than connection by creating real vulnerability.

“Not the ‘share one fun fact about yourself’ version we have all sat through,” she says. “[Rather], the kind where two colleagues who have worked together for years suddenly see each other as full human beings for the first time.”

This is where the work of Brené Brown—who shares insights on shame, vulnerability and leadership as an academic, author and podcaster—becomes so relevant to the event industry, according to Panoff.

“Vulnerability is not weakness—it is the foundation of trust, belonging and real leadership,” she says. “The meeting planners doing the most interesting work right now are choosing experiences that create space for their attendees to be authentic and vulnerable together. Because that is what generates the memories the loyalty, and the culture shifts they are actually being paid to create.”

Connection itself is a form of wellness, according to Panoff, and vulnerability is the fastest path to that connection.

“And an experiential team-building moment that creates both is one of the smartest investments you can make right now,” she says. “Everything else is decoration.”

Stop perfuming and feel something

Be You Disco designs immersive, facilitated experiences for corporate events, conferences and brand activations. Think music, movement and mindfulness. Silent disco headphones. A trained facilitator who knows how to hold the room. But the technical description is not really the point, according to Panoff.

“The point is what happens when people stop performing for each other and actually feel something together,” she says. “That is what I built this for. That is what meeting planners keep bringing us back for. And that is what we have brought to Virgin Voyages, American Express Global Business Travel, Aetna and Cigna, guiding over 8,000 people across more than 200 experiences.”

While most team building is intended to break the ice, Panoff says Be You Disco is there to “melt the armor,” at which point true team building and wellness become possible.

Panoff worked for years as a life coach with high-functioning and high-achieving clients who were quietly disconnected from themselves, their bodies and the people they loved most.

“I was not that different from them,” she says. “I built a career helping other people show up fully while I was still terrified of doing it myself. The fear of being seen. The fear of taking up space. The fear of not belonging. The fear of saying the wrong thing. Some social anxiety on top of all of it.”

Self-expression was not something that came naturally to Panoff, who describes herself as a “recovering tomboy,” and it felt safer to stay small, quiet and unnoticed.

“Dance is where that started to change,” she says. “Not the choreographed kind. The unstructured kind. The kind where I was not being watched or graded. What dance actually gave me was not a skill or a hobby. It was a connection to myself. To my body. To my own self expression. That was the thing that had been missing my entire life, and movement was the practice that finally let me feel it.”

Panoff trained as a healing dance facilitator and combined it with everything she learned as a coach—nervous system regulation; somatic awareness; the “aliveness” that comes from music, movement and mirroring another human being—and turned it into an experience she could bring into rooms full of people who had never done anything like it before.

“Brené Brown has been saying it for years: Vulnerability is the foundation of trust, belonging and real leadership,” she says. “I have watched that play out in every single room I have facilitated. When people are given permission to drop the mask, even for 25 minutes, something profound happens. They see each other differently. They speak to each other differently. They lead differently. That is what I am passionate about. Not wellness in the smoothies and yoga mat sense—wellness as in what happens when a room of humans finally exhales together.”

Shared humanity is the point

One event wellness activation that will stay with Panoff forever is an experience Be You Disco designed for Virgin Voyages during its annual global team gathering in Sicily.

“Hundreds of Virgin Voyages team members flown in from every corner of the world,” she says. Engineers from India who work in the belly of the ship. Entertainers from Australia. Housekeeping staff. Officers. People whose paths would rarely cross in daily operations. Different languages, roles, cultures, everything.”

The Virgin Voyages brand/communications team wanted a moment during a multi-day event where the crew could stop being their job titles and be present with each other, Panoff says.

“We designed an experience customized around Virgin Voyages’ brand campaign, ‘Epic Sea Change,’ with music, guided movement and mindfulness woven throughout,” she says. “I watched the room transform in real time. A shared experience that transcended every one of those differences. The armor came off. The masks dropped. Nobody’s language was a barrier anymore because the language became movement.”

Leaders told Panoff that team communication shifted noticeably in the days that followed, with bonds formed on the dance floor showing up back in daily operations.

“And more importantly, they showed up in how people felt about working for Virgin Voyages,” she says. “Sicily reminded me exactly why I do this work. Real connection does not happen in a crowd. It happens in a circle. And when you get hundreds of people to genuinely feel together, you get something no team-building activity can manufacture: shared humanity. And shared humanity is the whole point.”

A moment to be human again

Be You Disco is partnering with Caesars Entertainment to offer an intimate, high-touch IMEX America booth experience designed to ensure every hosted buyer participant leaves feeling something real.

“Anyone who has worked IMEX knows what day two feels like,” says Carolina Panoff, founder of Be Your Disco, an experiential team building and event experience company. “Coffee is not helping anymore. You have pitched your event a dozen times already. You have absorbed more information in 36 hours than most people do in a month. Your face hurts from smiling. Your body is starting to tell you it needs something you cannot give it in a networking lounge.”

That is exactly what the Caesars booth is going to solve, she says.

“The moment they put on the wireless headphones, the trade show floor disappears,” she says. “What follows is a journey through arrival and presence, guided mirroring and connection with the strangers around them, a collective energy peak where the room becomes a community and a closing reflection that sends them back to the floor grounded and reset.” 

There will be six 25-minute sessions—each accommodating 10 to 12 people—per day across all three days, plus a dedicated media session, so instead of a “mass activation,” it’s a more intentional experience, according to Panoff.

“What I love about this partnership with Caesars is that they get it,” she says. “Meeting professionals do not need another logo tote bag. They need a moment to be human again in the middle of one of the most intense environments in the industry. A moment to drop the pitch face. Connect authentically with the strangers in the room. Feel the kind of energy shift you can only feel when a group of people finally lets each other in.”