RevvedUP 2026
Coming off a packed 2 days in St. Pete, we ran the gamut from keynotes and panels to movement snacks and lawn games.
It was great to see so many clients in one place against a backdrop of gorgeous Florida weather. 175 execs came to discuss revenue and growth now that AI is mainstream. The old playbooks are out, and full throttle change is rewriting all the rules.
RevvedUP is the brainchild of Heather Holst-Knudsen, CEO of H2K Labs, an event launched last year and in collaboration this year when Outsell joined her on the proverbial formula track.
We started the day honoring women of the revenue room and those who make revenue happen with an interview by Heather with four amazing CROs. Wow to Karen Abramson who recently left Wolters Kluwer after a 25-year storied run. She is one of the most accomplished execs I have ever had the pleasure to know and interview.
Karen left us with lots to think about in this year of the Fire Horse from knowing when to step down, to her views on what’s around the corner in AI. She has been on the inside track in more ways than one! Learning from her was an honor for us all.
Opening remarks from hosts Heather and Kerry Gumas, founder and CEO of Metacomet Advisors set the tone. The opening keynote with Jessica Sibley, CEO of TIME, Inc. described the reinvention of TIME as “TIME 3.0” converging B2B and B2C into a new growth model built for speed, trust, and transformation. What an amazing story.
Other key highlights and takeaways:
1) AI is well past experimentation and deep into operations, in products and events, with licensing to LLMs pulling up the rear. Six amazing case studies, including one from Josh Jarrett of Wiley and Alphonse Hardel of Thomson Reuters, took us thru execution stories in each of these areas all built around the Outsell Accelerate A! Framework™.
We announced early results of the assessment built off the framework that measures a company’s AI maturity across 5 pillars over 130 questions. Take your assessment today. The investment: about an hour of your time and the outcome is priceless.
2) Two CEO panels — one with established CEOs and one with founders gave us the compare and contrast about the future. My vote is the best of both. There is goodness when creatives and operators come together to innovate and when multiple generations work together.
3) AI Native and AI Fluent firms was a great frame shared by Matt Yorke of The Channel Company. Four takeaways: Design AI around the job-to-be-done (not the model), measure product or efficiency impact like a growth operator, make AI sponsorable; measure and incent adoption and use agents to remove friction where users quit or can be more efficient.
4) Amanda Kahlow CEO & Founder of 1Mind showed us what the future of sales with super humans at the helm looks like — a firm to watch and who is focused on solving what I’ve come to call the sales as a disservice (SAAD) problem and the ridiculous sales model Silicon Valley technocrats created. Thankfully she is working to take that down and rebuild from the bottom up. Amazing demo.
5) Gil Ozir and Scott Peters gave us an amazing investor panel at the steady hands of Kerry Gumas. Gil challenged us to relook at our business from the ground up to drive efficiency with AI (what I call going down to the studs) and then focus on one thing and do it amazingly well.
Scott Peters focused on the importance of data about reader and attendee buying and intent signals as the central key asset and glue for companies with events, media and research — and that CEOs must weed out employees unwilling to get behind the data and analytics story. Both felt that event data is being squandered and producers have to get real about collecting and using it better.
6) Phil Thomas, Chief Creative Officer of Informa and Liz Irving, CEO of Clarion gave us a great lens on the future of experiences. Phil painted an amazing picture of conferences and festivals and the art of the possible in an inspiring keynote. Liz showed how they use AI to reinvent data-driven solutions for marketers and sponsors. While we still believe events are not a moat, we love them. They take place IRL which may be their lasting impact. This week’s event drove that home.
7) Jonathan Weiner brilliant thinker and event innovator gave us a serious discussion about job displacement and the realities of what comes after full deployment of the AI tectonic plates that are shifting and shifting fast. His belief: it will not be pretty and it’s a conversation we have to have. He discussed the pace of growth of the ‘big 7’ and revenue per employee these companies possess and the haves/have-nots that may result when major classes of jobs disappear.
8) Laura Molen, former President, Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal demonstrated that today’s leaders must be visionary and transformative and get comfortable being uncomfortable. Once again we see tech cycles bringing around the uncomfortable truths we keep avoiding.
We discussed the future of SAAS and why it’s so at risk. And got a taste of workout training from renown Kira Stokes who taught us to take movement snacks throughout the day so working out didn’t have to be a thing but a way of life. It was an important message for so many of us who sit at desks all day. Brilliant!
Another important theme: FOCUS.
– On the one thing a firm does alongside using AI and Agentics to execute that focus.
– On going deep in a vertical; vertical depth wins the race.
– On agentics now the new highway running alongside the open web now purported to have more bot traffic than human by a two-thirds /one-third ratio. This is the next frontier and it’s here now. How many agents work for you and your company?
The workshops were great and the breakouts good opportunities to roll up our sleeves. We especially loved time with Lia Bliss and her Ignition Intensive workshop on getting the most out of our time and use of LinkedIn.
She shed important light on the rapidly changing ways to best use LinkedIn with the algorithm and policy changes shifting as quickly as the world of search. Spoiler alert, Wednesday and Friday afternoons are the best days to post! She alone was worth the price of admission!
So much more to think about and follow up to do. It is so fun being out in industry with the people who are making it happen and to see so many old friends while making new ones. Special thanks to all the vendors in the room too. You represent an amazing array of tech and service providers who power the industry and make innovation happen.
Up next week: more on my remarks at the event including an important sneak peek at Outsell Accelerate A! Assessment™ results.
Shoutout again to Heather and Kerry for the collaboration. It was a great lap around the track. RevvedUP is on the podium. Pop the champagne! Heather, you did an amazing job!