In April 2020, while working on a virtual event project for Jeff Cruttenden — founder of Acorns, Say and Treasury — I met fellow events entrepreneur Jim Wiandt. We hit it off right away. Jim was a pioneer in the ETF industry. He founded ETF.com and the Inside ETFs event series. I had been a part of the early team that built the Money20/20 conferences, serving as the first Chief Content Officer from 2014-2019. We had much in common in terms of our experience building successful financial industry events. But it was Jim’s new project that was most compelling.
After selling the ETF.com businesses, Jim was launching a new events and media company called Spark Network. While this new company would continue to produce content and events for the same community in the investment management industry that Jim had served at ETF.com, Spark also expanded that vision to include highlighting culture. Spark’s events would feature a signature curated lineup of musicians, chefs, and thought leaders from a variety of backgrounds.
Why this approach? Because the team at Spark believes that highlighting culture at its events is just as important as business analysis and insights. Bringing culture into business events helps inspires original thinking and more creative solutions. Further, shared cultural experiences encourage conversations and deepen connections within the community of the event.
This idea of combining cultural with business content resonated with me. Business events can so easily become stale — including the sleepy panels of industry experts talking to other industry leaders about content that everyone already knows. We often learn more by listening to experts from outside of our industry, and perhaps even outside of the business world.
It was a meeting of the minds. Jim invited me to join the team at Spark Network and I immediately accepted. Over the past year or so at Spark, we have worked together to produce the highly successful Fintech South 2021 virtual event and also develop a new event concept, NOW South Festival, that I had pitched to Jim prior to joining Spark.
I’ve enjoyed my collaboration with Jim and the team and Spark throughout 2021, and I look forward to continued partnership in 2022 and beyond as we work to bring new Spark to events through diversity of thought and beautiful and impactful cultural experiences.