As New Orleans prepares to host Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, Feb. 9, we caught up with New Orleans & Co. President and CEO Walt Leger and VP Convention Sales and Strategies Stephanie Turner to find out what’s new and trending in the Crescent City for meetings and trade shows. 

The city of San Diego recently heralded the extended residency of an iconic pop-culture event while a meetings resort in Las Vegas is celebrating a new state-of-the-art transportation option benefitting leisure and business guests alike. 

With a mission of encompassing the future of building through leadership and education, integrating technology, solutions and partnerships, World of Concrete (WOC)--the annual commercial concrete trade show and conference--kicked off 2025 with a successful 51st addition bolstered by a strong convergence of construction and masonry professionals and a notable uptick in exhibitors. 

With 3,800 attendees registered for the in-person event and 4,500 total registrants, PCMA Convening Leaders (CL25) landed in Houston for the first time in its 70-year history of gathering convention and business events industry professionals at its annual meeting held this year from Jan. 12-15. By comparison, the 2024 Convening Leaders drew more than 4,200 industry professionals to San Diego. This year’s theme: Go beyond your orbit.   

An event solutions provider and a destination marketing organization (DMO) recently unveiled AI-powered tools to help trade show organizers and event planners increase exhibitor ROI and improve the in-destination planning experience, respectively. 

In the face of people’s changing perceptions toward alcohol consumption, fueled by an increasing focus on health and wellness, the growing “sober-curious” social moderation movement appears to be picking up steam as people are re-evaluating their relationship with alcohol.  

The New York Convention Center Operating Corporation (NYCCOC) has selected 30-year convention industry veteran Joyce Leveston as the new CEO of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, following a unanimous recommendation by the executive search committee and approval from the NYCCOC Board of Directors. Joining the Javits team on February 10, Leviston will officially take the helm on March 10. 

With the help of 4,500 exhibitors—1,400 of which were startups—in front of 141,000 attendees, the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show lived up to its reputation as one of the world’s leading tech events by underscoring AI's intersection with humanity, highlighting accessibility-focused tech, and debuting energy transition and quantum computing conference tracks.  

Cybersecurity threats are on the rise across all industries. In fact, almost 90% of organizations experienced a breach in the last year, according to data by the Centre for Cybersecurity that was published by the World Economic Forum.  

Inside Live Events, a new book by co-authors Freeman Board Member Bob Priest-Heck and Freeman Board Chair Carrie Freeman Parsons, debuted yesterday as a comprehensive playbook for creating and producing live events, including trade shows, corporate events, and exhibits.