I’m exhausted. The good kind.

The kind you feel after winning a three-set singles match. Legs heavy. Heart racing. Brain buzzing with triumphant fatigue.

Four Cities, One Throughline

Four cities. Four Strategy Labs. Four 4-hour workshops followed by 2-hour dinners. Dozens of honest conversations about the biggest challenge of our collective careers: how we adapt as leaders in the AI era.

And the weather tried to take us out.

Boston was supposed to be fully in person. Enter the Bomb Cyclone. Flights cancelled. Snow everywhere. City travel bans. We pivoted to virtual in less than 24 hours, and 10 marketing leaders still showed up and stayed fully engaged for four hours. That alone felt like a small miracle.

New York was next, and we went hybrid because one moderator and one speaker were still stuck in Boston. Two of the thirteen registered CMOs could not make it into the city. Eleven braved the cold anyway and leaned in hard.

Hybrid is never simple, but the energy of the participants carried the day.

On Wednesday morning, light snow delayed our departure by three hours. We landed and went straight to Relias (our host that day), arriving just in time to join nine leaders who were already deep in conversation. No drama, just focus.

Getting to Atlanta was easy peasy. By then, it felt like the universe had decided we had earned a smooth flight.

Why This Worked

Across every stop, what struck me most was this: nothing beats a well-structured, well-moderated discussion among peers. No panels. No posturing. Our sponsors were in the room, sharing invaluable insights, not pitches. [Okay, maybe there were a few moments of pitching, but not the "ooh ick, can we write it up?" variety.]

You can consume endless content about AI org design, copilots, agents, AEO, automation, and positioning. But put 10 to 12 curious CMOs around a table with a real problem and give them space to think together? That is rocket fuel.

Then you break bread. Old friends. New friends. Shared scars. Shared ambition. Laughter that only comes from people who know the weight of the role. And of course, the occasional, "Wow, you're taller than you look on Zoom."

Right now, I am too tired to distill the big insights from 22 hours of conversations. All I know is that the lingering joy is real. Bringing over 40 marketing leaders together to exchange solutions in real time is energizing in a way that is hard to explain unless you have felt it.

A big highlight for me was the final stop in Atlanta. The selfies tell the story better than I can. Big smiles. Smart people. Gratifying exhaustion. [And regrets that I didn't take selfies in the other markets!]

Flocking awesome.

Special thanks to our insight-rich sponsors HG Insights, 1mind, Webflow, Firebrick, Inc., and their awesome representatives Scott Gordon, Nik Koutsoukos, Amanda Kahlow, Guy Yalif and Bob Wright (I'd hit the road with y'all anytime!)

Written by Drew Neisser