The Conference
Running USA is the annual running industry conference held at different venues around the USA. The conference brings events and vendors content and connections that help ramp up business and realize goals. As always, we had a great time and got to catch up with some old friends. We are truly honored to be even a small part of the team that helps make this conference happen.
This year, the conference took place right in our backyard, Denver, Colorado. With that in mind, we knew we needed to show up bigger than we had in the past, and boy did we!
What We Do
We have been helping on the A/V side of things at Running USA for 8 years now. Our role, traditionally, is as an A/V consultant, helping our client get the best deal and the right tech from the hotel housing the conference for the year. We send a two-person team on-site to make sure everything is setup on time and in the correct locations, we help run the main room and instruct the A/V technicians on how we want the show to go. One of the greatest parts of this job is we get to be part of the event. We work so much in the running industry – it is awesome to be onsite with the people bringing life to the events we love. We get to learn, meet, and play.
The Setup
This year was a little bit different. This year, we brought our own equipment for the main stage and ran the show ourselves. We still managed the hotel A/V for the breakout rooms and expo, but we took the main ballroom over to bring our own special sauce to the event. We set up two large 11’ by 17’ screens flanking the stage, a laptop running presentations, and a laptop “mixing” the show. We brought in our brand new Behringer X32 digital mixer that allowed us to mix off an iPad when needed to make sure the sound was perfect throughout the room. For sound, we brought in our best. We used 4 JBL VRX speakers and 2 subs that filled the space beautifully. There was no spot in the room where the sound wasn’t loud and clear! For our presenters, we actually tried out a new piece of tech, the Interspace Industries MicroCue3. This device connects to the laptop running the slideshow presentation and has a remote for the presenter. The presenter can then advance the slide from the stage at their own pace. There are smaller and cheaper options out there, but what makes this special is you can click the slide from literally anywhere in the room. I won’t go into too much detail on this device here, there’s an entire post dedicated to that one coming soon, but I will say that it was awesome!
The Experience
That’s enough business talk. Let’s talk about the event! What a great three days! We got to hear wonderful keynote presentations from people like Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic; Chris Nikic, the first person with Down Syndrome to complete an IRONMAN; Victoria Brumfield, CEO of USA Triathlon; Ted Metellus; Race Director of the New York City Marathon and SVP of Events for the NY Road Runners; and so many more wonderful speakers with valuable information to share. We all gathered together to watch the Super Bowl with an awesome kickoff party. All the breakout room sessions were awesome and helped to drill down deeper on some of the questions and concerns facing the running industry. Overall we could not be more proud to be part of the great event put on by truly awesome people.
