If you’re an event director, you know the questions that keep you up at night.
How do you prove the ROI of your virtual event to your CFO? How do you manage the crushing complexity of a multi-track conference when you’re already stretched thin?
And as you well know, the biggest challenge is creating an experience so compelling your attendees actually do something afterward, instead of just feeling “inspired” for a day.
For too long, you’ve had to navigate fragmented data, generic platforms, and a frustrating gap between beautiful production and actual business results.
This year, our team at We & Goliath won five major industry awards from Eventex and the Symbol Awards.
But these aren’t just trophies for our shelf.
They represent something more important: powerful, third-party validation that your biggest challenges are, in fact, solvable.
Each award we won highlights a specific solution to a broken part of the event industry.
>>For more tips like the ones below, read our free cheat sheet: “Top 10 Mistakes Companies Make with Virtual Events – and How to Fix Them Before Your Next Event Flops“
Let’s break down how we solve these challenges.
1. The ROI problem: How do you turn events into measurable growth engines?
The Award: GOLD, People’s Choice Virtual Event of the Year (Eventex) for the CodePath Emerging Engineers Summit.
For many organizations, event ROI is a black hole of fuzzy metrics. We get it. You struggle to connect event activity to tangible business outcomes like qualified leads and revenue.
Our work with CodePath for the second year in a row has provided a clear answer to this problem.
The 2024 Emerging Engineers Summit wasn’t just an event; it was a high-performance lead generation engine. By redesigning the virtual experience with interactive booths and a frictionless system for students to connect with companies, the results were staggering:
- 52,304 qualified leads were generated for sponsors.
- Booth visits skyrocketed by 600% year-over-year, from 17,000 to over 111,000.
- Sponsors, seeing a 10X increase in leads per sponsor, gave the event a perfect 100 NPS score.
These results drove unprecedented interest in CodePath’s programs and partnerships, directly impacting their business goals.
The Proof: This win wasn’t decided by a small panel but by your industry peers who recognized a truly effective event. As our client Geneva Scott, Senior Director at CodePath, noted:
“With our perfect 100 NPS from sponsors and a massive increase in qualified leads, we’ve seen unprecedented interest in both our company partnerships and our paid coaching services.”
Your Quick Win: Reduce friction in your lead capture. Instead of asking attendees to fill out a long form in a virtual booth, create a single-click "Express Interest" button that automatically shares their registration data with that sponsor.
You’ll see a dramatic increase in leads.
2. The complexity problem: How do you deliver excellence when juggling hundreds of details?
The Award: GOLD, Project Management Team (Symbol Awards).
You understand the challenge: a modern virtual event involves orchestrating hundreds of deliverables across marketing, production, and speaker support.
Our project management philosophy is built on a simple promise:
“On-Brand, On-Time, On-Budget. Guaranteed.”
How do we do this? We build intelligent project ecosystems, not just task lists. We provide custom client dashboards that streamline every deliverable, which has drastically reduced emails and allowed us to focus meeting time on deep strategic discussions rather than just status updates.
With this innovative system our 8-person core team can easily manage up to 10 concurrent clients and orchestrate three simultaneous live events in a single day!
The Proof: A juror for the Symbol Awards, Silvana Viana, Co-Founder of Casablack, summarized our team’s effectiveness perfectly:
“Delivering excellence in the creation and execution of their projects.”
Your Quick Win: Create a centralized "Source of Truth" for your next event. Use a tool like Asana, Monday, or even a detailed Google Sheet to create a master project plan with every task, owner, and due date.
Share it with all stakeholders and insist it’s the only place for updates. You’ll save dozens of hours lost to status-check emails.
3. The stagnation problem: How do you innovate and drive real growth in a crowded market?
The Award: SILVER, Rising Star Agency (Eventex).
You’ve seen the same event playbooks rehashed for years. A Rising Star award recognizes an agency that’s genuinely pushing the industry forward.
We were honored to receive this award because we’re committed to transforming the market with new models for success.
This is embodied by our proprietary SMART Event Method™—a five-part system designed to turn isolated events into strategic growth catalysts.
By integrating components like an AI-powered “Strategic Event Blueprint” and a “Marketing Multiplier” that consistently doubles or triples registration rates, we provide a comprehensive solution for growth that breaks from the old, ineffective models.
We were the only virtual event specialist to win this award, a testament to our unique and impactful approach.
The Proof: A director for the ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association) and an Eventex juror stated:
“A standout agency for anyone serious about turning events into engines for growth.”
Your Quick Win: Stop treating your event as a one-time occurrence. Before your next event, map out a three-month post-event content plan.
Decide in advance which sessions will be turned into blog posts, short video clips, or quotes for social media. For even greater impact, personalize some of that content for your different audience segments, sending targeted key takeaways to each group.
This turns a one-day event into a quarter-long marketing asset.
4. The scale problem: How can your small team deliver enterprise-level results?
The Award: SILVER, Boutique Agency (Symbol Awards).
As an event organizer, you often feel you must choose between the personalized care of a boutique agency and the robust capabilities of a large one. We were awarded Silver for Boutique Agency because we prove you don’t have to compromise.
Our “small but mighty” team of 8 full-time staff leverages smart workflows and AI automation to outperform agencies three times our size.
We seamlessly blend marketing, production, and deep AI innovation—a rare combination that allows us to provide Fortune 500-level results with the dedicated attention of a true partner. This approach is why we’ve maintained an 89% client retention rate for our conference clients.
The Proof: Juror Derrin Brown, Creative Alchemist at The Global Alchemy, captured this dynamic perfectly:
“We & Goliath are clearly punching well above their weight as a small team delivering enterprise-level results.”
Your Quick Win: Elevate your top sponsors from vendors to partners. Before they even sign a contract, schedule a 30-minute "Goals Alignment" call.
Ask them what a “home run” looks like for them and co-create one or two activation ideas together. They will become more invested promoters, effectively helping you scale your event’s reach and results without growing your team.
5. The production problem: How do you create a polished and human-centric virtual experience?
The Award: BRONZE, Production Agency (Symbol Awards).
In the world of virtual events, it’s easy to get lost in technical specs and forget the human element.
Our production philosophy? Technical excellence exists to serve human connection.
Our work stands out by blending television-level polish with a deep knowledge of what actually keeps an online audience engaged.
From our “Simulive Excellence”—a method for producing pre-recorded events that feel authentically live—to our expert speaker coaching that trains presenters to be dynamic in a virtual format, our focus is on creating a memorable and effective experience.
The Proof: As juror Lucas Nikitczuk, Founder & CEO of Estudio NK, put it:
“The team clearly knows how to push the boundaries of virtual and hybrid production, and they’ve turned technical complexity into an art form.”
Your Quick Win: Drastically improve your virtual event production quality with one simple rule: a mandatory 15-minute tech and framing check with every single speaker a week before the event. You can fix 90% of common issues—like bad lighting, poor audio, and awkward camera angles—long before you go live.
For virtual events, insist speakers connect via an ethernet cable instead of relying on Wi-Fi. A stable internet connection is non-negotiable and a common deal-breaker for high-quality live streaming.
From problems to partnerships
These five awards, backed by the words of our clients and industry judges, tell a clear story. The persistent challenges you face in the event world are not unsolvable.
They just need a new approach—one that’s strategic, systematic, and relentlessly focused on delivering measurable results.
If you’re tired of asking the same hard questions about your event strategy, maybe it’s time for a new set of answers.
Your next steps:
- Start with our free cheat sheet: The Top 10 Mistakes Companies Make with Virtual Events – and How to Fix Them Before Your Next Event Flops.
- When you’re ready for a deeper look, learn more about The SMART Event Method™ and schedule your free, no-obligation Smart Event Assessment to discover your event’s hidden potential.
