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Date: Tuesday 20 – Wednesday 21 October 2026
Venue: Aanuka Beach House, Coffs Harbour NSW 2450
Time: 8:30am – 5:00pm
Dress: Business
Check back here for the latest 2026 Symposium Program updates, including new sessions and speaker announcements.
Register early to secure your place.
Please note: Program details, sessions and speakers are subject to change.
In an industry known for flawless execution, this powerful session challenges a critical question: what do our events actually change? Moving beyond logistics, aesthetics, and “running a great show,” this presentation reframes events as strategic tools for influence, alignment, and lasting impact.
Through real-world examples and honest reflections, the session explores how to shift from simply delivering events to intentionally designing outcomes. Attendees will be guided through a practical framework centred on clarity, connection, creativity, and conversion. David carefully ensures every event has purpose, resonates emotionally, and drives meaningful results, and wants to share this with you.
The presentation also highlights the importance of cultural context, human experience, and energy design, demonstrating how inclusive, thoughtful approaches deepen engagement and extend impact beyond the room. It challenges common industry habits, like prioritising theme over purpose, and replaces them with sharper, more strategic thinking.
Delegates will leave with a renewed perspective on their role as event designers, not just organisers, along with actionable questions and tools to elevate their next project. More than inspiration, David’s session equips attendees to create events that influence decisions, shift behaviour, and leave a lasting legacy.
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What makes an event accessible?
Awareness of accessibility and inclusivity within the event industry continues to evolve and grow, challenging outdated perspectives and reshaping how events are designed and delivered.
This session explores the evolving and broad nature of accessibility through the lens of one of Australia’s fastest-growing major events. Although only in its sixth year, Illuminate Adelaide has expanded its accessibility program exponentially since launching in 2021. By identifying barriers, targeting opportunities for improvement, and collaborating with disability-led organisations, Illuminate has prioritised more inclusive ways for mass audiences to participate in and engage with its program.
Delegates will leave this session with insight into making meaningful progress toward more inclusive events, whether you are just starting out or building on existing accessibility initiatives.
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Great events do not rely on logistics alone. As the industry grows more complex, the most valuable event professionals are those who can move beyond task management and into confident leadership. In this session, Stephanie Cassimatis explores the shift from delivering event components to leading outcomes – through stronger decision making, stakeholder confidence, team direction and strategic thinking.
Designed for professionals working in high-pressure environments, this presentation unpacks what is really takes to lead events and expectations with greater authority, clarity and commercial awareness.
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Beef Australia’s story began as a one-off event for Australia’s Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. Nearly four decades later, it has evolved into the premier beef industry event in the Southern Hemisphere — attracting more than 120,000 attendees, generating over $110 million in direct economic impact for Central Queensland, and placing Rockhampton firmly on the global stage every three years.
From producers and international trade delegations to industry leaders, innovators and consumers, Beef Australia has become far more than an agricultural event. It is a case study in regional ambition, destination impact and the power of building a global event outside a capital city.
This session explores how a regional Queensland city became home to one of the world’s most significant agricultural events, the strategic decisions behind its long-term growth, and why staying deeply connected to industry — without being constrained by it — has been critical to its success.
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From small local activations to major signature festivals, successful community events are built on the same underlying principles of human behaviour, movement, identity, connection and place. This presentation introduces the concept of “Community Event Science” — a practical framework exploring how understanding community identity and event ecosystems can transform the way events are planned, delivered and experienced.
Using Canterbury-Bankstown Council’s award-winning signature event Lakemba Nights During Ramadan as a real-world case study, this session will explore how culturally significant community events operate as complex social systems that require more than logistics and programming alone. Through operational insights, behavioural observations and community-centred design principles, attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how events can strengthen belonging, social cohesion and place identity while successfully managing large-scale operational complexity.
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Someone with half your experience is about to outpace you.
Not because they’re better – because they’ve learned to use AI to move faster, think clearer, and execute at scale.
While they’re copying the output, you can clone the thinking.
This session shows you how to build your own AI ‘clone’ – one that sounds like you, thinks like you, protects your brand voice, and creates like you. Even when you’re not at your desk.
You’ve earned your expertise. The instincts. the reputation. The way you read a room, a client, a brief. That took years.
But here’s what’s already happening:
Copilot. ChatGPT. Gemini. these tools are already in the building. The question is whether they’re working for your brand, or against it.
This isn’t about keeping up – Your expertise, multiplied.
Key Takeaways:
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In Leading Through Chaos, Prue Simson shares practical lessons from a career spent leading large-scale events and venues where no two days are ever the same. Drawing on her experience across major sporting, equestrian, and multi-stakeholder environments, she explores what it really takes to stay steady when pressure is high, priorities shift quickly, and the unexpected becomes the norm.
This session is grounded in real-world leadership, not theory. Prue talks about how to make clear decisions under pressure, keep teams aligned in fast-moving situations, and maintain momentum when plans change. She also reflects on the importance of preparation, trust, communication, and adaptability when leading people through uncertainty.
Rather than treating chaos as something to avoid, Prue reframes it as something leaders can learn to navigate with confidence. Delegates will come away with practical ideas they can apply immediately in their own roles, whether they are managing teams, projects, events, or broader organisational change.
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In an industry often dominated by large agencies with big teams and bigger budgets, We Are Gather has carved out a remarkable niche, delivering some of Australia’s most celebrated food, wine and tourism events with a lean, passionate team.
This session pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to compete at the highest level as a small agency, from landing government partnerships and major brand sponsors to building events that win national awards and keep coming back year after year.
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Every major event, activation and industry innovation starts as an idea, but turning ideas into reality often requires perspective, refinement, collaboration and the right conversations.
The Pitch Room is an interactive workshop session designed to give delegates the opportunity to present their ideas directly to a panel of industry mentors, leaders and collaborators, while receiving live feedback, insight and strategic advice in real time.
Selected delegates will have five minutes to present their idea, followed by ten minutes of panel feedback and discussion. Ideas can be at any stage of development and may include new event concepts, sponsorship or partnership opportunities, tourism and destination activations, audience engagement strategies, community initiatives, immersive experiences, sustainability initiatives, accessibility ideas, industry technology solutions, regional event concepts or existing events seeking growth and evolution.
Delegates may choose to pitch concepts such as a new festival or community event, a sponsorship activation idea, a strategy to increase visitation or audience engagement, a creative use of public space, an initiative designed to support regional tourism, or a new approach to solving a challenge currently facing the events industry.
This session is designed to create an open and supportive environment focused on collaboration, problem solving and fresh industry thinking. Delegates interested in pitching will be invited to register their interest and submit their presentation ahead of the Symposium, allowing presentations to be reviewed and pre-loaded by the event technical team prior to the session.
Each participant will receive a personalised feedback summary completed by the panel during the workshop, providing practical ideas and strategic insights to take away beyond the Symposium.
At the conclusion of the session, one presentation will be recognised with The Pitch Room Prize, awarded to the idea or initiative that most resonates with the panel.
Skills and Outcomes:
Judges:
This practical two-hour workshops will show event professionals how to secure right-fit sponsors who genuinely align with your event and keep them coming back year after year. Delegates will explore how to move beyond traditional sponsorship models to build aligned, long-term partnerships that expand reach, enhance the attendee experience, and generate measurable return on investment – creating partnerships that deliver genuine, lasting value for both the event and the sponsor.
Key Takeaways:
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We welcome input from the industry – if there’s a topic you’d like to see on the program, or you’d like to contribute through presentation of a session, get in touch with us: [email protected]
Living Smart Festival 2017 raises awareness of environmental issues and encourages residents to gain ideas and inspiration to live more sustainably. National Winner 2018
Good times on tap at the Feral Bigger Bar with Bronte O'Donohue. Perth Craft Beer Festival, National Finalist 2021
Abby Clemence from Infinity Sponsorship drives a Sponsorship Masterclass at the 2016 Australian Event Awards and Symposium on the Sunshine Coast.
TEDxSydney 2017, Belle Laide Events
2017 National Winner - CIM Magazine Best Meeting or Conference
Life's a juggling act on a trip to Aussie World as part of the social program at the Australian Event Symposium 2017 on the Sunshine Coast.
Peter Milne explored projection mapping applications at Australian Event Awards and Symposium 2017. His company, The Electric Canvas, has been a National Winner and Finalist at several Event Awards.