“Our Work Has Meaning Because of Relationships”: RainFocus Executives Kick Off INSIGHT 2025 With Inspiring Keynote

What will define INSIGHT each year? Traditionally, the official event theme and the eagerly anticipated opening keynote delivered by founder Doug Baird and CEO JR Sherman set the tone for the entire event. 

Our INSIGHT 2025 theme is ”Elevating Relationships.” As artificial intelligence and related technological advances rapidly transform the events industry — and shape our careers and daily lives — what happens to old-fashioned human-to-human relationships? 

If there ever was any doubt that these relationships remain vital, consider how Sherman described INSIGHT as he and Baird took to the stage: “INSIGHT is like a family reunion!” he exclaimed. 

In fact, as the seasoned executives’ presentation made clear, building and strengthening relationships will be even more central to any event. They’re not in competition with technology and automation; at events, each enhances the other. 

“RainFocus captures behavioral data to stream and drive personalization and recommendations. That’s the journey, and it evolves into relationships,” Sherman explained. “Events represent trust and understanding. Clicks, opens, and downloads are pieces of data about an individual. But experiences are where relationships are formed. You have face-to-face interaction and can truly understand people.”

Enter agentic AI

On the AI front specifically, Baird highlighted the exciting shift in the events industry from discussion to widespread adoption and expansion. Thoughtfully deployed AI applications free up team members to focus on the relationship-driven work at events. 

“AI is becoming agentic,” he said, citing Salesforce’s Agentforce offering at its Dreamforce event as an example. “It’s less about just collecting information and more about taking actions with content. Agents are purpose-built with a specific set of content, user profiles, and actions.”

These applications become even more powerful once agents can talk to other agents, pull centralized data, and understand attendees’ event preferences, he added. Integrations might even allow them to book event travel and purchase needed items for the trip, making the pre-event experience quick and seamless. 

“It will have a massive impact on the events world,” Baird predicted. “These agents need to be trained, and people will need to get the data right. This phase is the actions we want the machines to take for us.”

Getting the data right also means everything should be centralized, clean, and easily accessible. “If your data is sitting in multiple places, your AI is less effective,” Sherman pointed out. 

De-siloing event data and ensuring all teams — within events and across the organization — can use it to refine their strategies will sound familiar to anyone who’s discovered the benefits of RainFocus over the years. Now, this priority takes on additional importance with the rise of generative AI. 

ROI, sales, and your customers

INSIGHT attendees already know how effective events are. In recent years, RainFocus’ increasingly powerful integrations with tech stalwarts like Adobe and Salesforce have helped ensure that value resonates across the organization. 

“We believe you are the relationship catalysts, and you can prove it through the data you are collecting,” Sherman said. “We are seeing our customers measure events not just by metrics like the number of attendees, but by the real impact on the pipeline. That’s fully integrated data.”

As event ROI is redefined and amplified, sales engagement will rank as a continued RainFocus priority this year. The RainFocus for Salesforce app and dashboard — providing convenient capabilities for sales reps right in their mainstay application — is continuing to gain momentum. 

Finally, both sales engagement and customer-centric relationship-building also got another boost last year, when RainFocus acquired WebEvents Global (WEG), led by founder and principal architect Karis Takiya. 

“WEG built a unique process for building event data into the sales process,” Baird said. “They were a pioneer, and Karis is one of the best thinkers in this area.” Takiya, whose extensive career accomplishments show that customer-centricity and data integration are far more than passing industry trends, now continues to innovate within RainFocus as principal integrations architect.

A packed INSIGHT agenda

The executives’ keynote marked the official start of a busy conference schedule. From technical-minded platform updates to peer panel conversations about the biggest industry challenges, every session offered a chance to learn, grow, and — most importantly — connect. 

Stay tuned for more recaps of the hottest INSIGHT happenings. We’ll also add selected sessions available in RainFocus On Demand so you can revisit your favorites!