We’ve run well over 3,000 events in the past decade. We are also, occasionally, attendees. Attending other organisations’ events is one of the best ways to stay sharp about our own work, and last year we made it a deliberate practice. The most useful trip of the year was MWC Barcelona. At one of the world’s largest connectivity events, the conversations that mattered most happened in rooms of twelve, not halls of twelve thousand.
Tucked away from the massive halls, Mobile World Capital (MWC) hosted private roundtables, structured similarly to how we have been running our own executive networking events. VIP lounges, conference booths, and after-hours sessions provided spaces for genuine conversations and relationships to thrive.
As our co-founder, Sam Adcock, and client directors Christina Foran and Andrea Paolacci represented The Ortus Club, the rest of our team immersed themselves in various discussions. Over two days, we sat in on roughly 50 conversations with B2B marketers and business development leaders.
The main halls were where the agenda was set. The keynotes told us what the industry was thinking about, the demonstrations showed where the budgets were heading, and the speaker lineup made clear which themes were going to dominate every executive’s planning conversations for the next year. But the main halls were not where the actual thinking happened. For that, we had to go further in.
MWC25, a global benchmark for cross-industry tech innovations, was centered around the theme “Living in Tech,” delving into how people and technology coexist. With 48 keynote presenters and over 1,200 other assorted speakers, there was an overabundance of insights and takeaways from the conference. As leaders had their fill of the innovations displayed on the main stage and the wide array of speakers in the main halls, they would retire to secluded corners to take a breather. In those small, quiet moments away from the action, the most productive discussions occurred.
Predictably, AI implementation and governance were front and center for nearly every keynote, speaker, and private discussion. It is arguably the most influential development this decade, and organisations want to explore ways to monetise AI-augmented products and services while avoiding the governance and legal pitfalls that come with it.
Within the private conversations our teams were part of, the main concern was: How do leaders know who’s accountable? One CMO from a telecommunications company brought up the issue of AI-generated content incorporating copyrighted media and unknowingly publishing the product.
The resiliency of AI can be questionable when handling a large volume of problems. AI, like all computer programs, does exactly what you tell it to, but it will not deviate. When exceptions or outliers inevitably arise, AI will not compensate for them immediately, whereas a human would. The tradeoff is that it can handle straightforward tasks with rigid parameters hundreds, if not thousands, of times faster than a human. Personnel can then be freed up to prioritise complex problems that require a more creative approach and remain available when those outliers occur.
Data banks before AI were already difficult to work with, but with the deluge of data that AI can collect, they are overloaded, and new systems and processes are required to sort them out. Part of this is due to a lack of AI literacy. Several executives from IT, cybersecurity, and telecom companies had stories of teams generating mountains of data, only to later discover that most of it was redundant, misrepresented, or entirely meaningless. One CTO of a telecom firm proposed solutions based in training and defining a proper SOP to prevent the generation of “garbage” data and correctly categorising the produced information.
Then come the physical issues and tangible costs. A ton of data requires a ton of storage, and certain enterprises were not prepared for that reality. While larger organisations could quickly procure and implement the necessary equipment, smaller enterprises handling proportionally more data had to shoulder higher-than-expected costs. Some IT executives turned to cloud storage as a solution, but the costs for securing space in the cloud were rising quickly in response to demand, and it was becoming unsustainable in terms of pricing.
The MWC trip changed how we think about the relationship between mega-conferences and the work we do at The Ortus Club. Our 2026 client conversations now start from a different place: we ask clients earlier in the planning process where their executives are already going, and what they are coming home with that they have no good way to process. The answer often points us toward the small-format programmes that work best when they sit alongside, rather than instead of, the conference circuit.
We have also tightened how we brief our moderators on AI governance topics specifically. The themes we saw dominating private MWC conversations (accountability, copyright exposure, the question of where to draw the line on AI in security operations) have become a standing context for any 2026 roundtable that touches AI. Our briefing documents now include the framing questions executives at MWC were already asking, so attendees in our rooms do not have to start the conversation from scratch.
The Big Data observations have shaped a similar shift. Several 2026 client briefs around data infrastructure now include the integration and storage cost themes we heard surfacing at MWC, because those are the conversations our attendees want to have but rarely see on agendas.
The main stage is where the information is. The smaller rooms are where it gets processed into decisions. A keynote will tell an executive what is happening in AI governance. A roundtable with seven peers will tell them what to do about it on Monday morning.
If your 2026 events strategy is built around mega-conferences alone, you are giving your executives the information half of that equation and leaving the decision-making half to chance. The organisations getting the most out of this year are the ones investing in both: the visibility of the big stage and the depth of the private room.
The Ortus Club has run more than 3,000 executive events across 40+ countries, and last year reminded us why. We build every campaign around the small-format B2B networking events where executives actually make decisions. If you want your organisation in the rooms where your customers are working out what to do next, talk to us.