The first inControl Summit · Edition 01
At the inaugural inControl Summit, the events industry stopped asking which AI tool to buy and started asking a harder question: what happens when AI becomes the infrastructure everything else is built on? One day. A handpicked circle of leading minds. More than 15 sessions of unusually honest conversation. And the entire day, every badge, every match, every message, ran on run.events.
2026 
Before a single word was said about AI on stage, run.events was already making the case. The whole event ran on it: Smart Hub matchmaking, the mobile app, marketing campaigns, on-site badging and seamless check-in, all on one EU-hosted data model. This was the foundation the day was built on.
A room this curated only works if the right people actually find each other. Smart Hub profiled every guest, scored the connections worth making across the whole circle, and surfaced them as recommendations, so the introductions that mattered happened by design, not by luck.
Guests arrived to a QR scan and a smile, not a queue. Registration data flowed straight to the door, so the first impression was speed.
Professional name badges, printed on demand with a scannable code on every lanyard. Same data model, no separate badge tool, no re-keying.
The agenda, the matchmaking and the networking lived in every attendee’s pocket: meeting requests, schedules and updates, all in real time.
The invitations, landing pages and reminders that filled the room were built and sent from the same platform that ran the day. No exports, no hand-offs.
Backend and frontend never fell out of sync. Registration, badge, app, matchmaking and reporting all read from a single source of truth. The integration is the product.
Every record and every AI inference stayed on EU-hosted, GDPR-native infrastructure. When AI is the foundation, where it lives is the whole point.
No tracks on a dozen unrelated topics. No exhibition hall of vendors. One subject, taken seriously, by the people whose decisions will shape how the industry adopts it.
The continent’s first summit dedicated entirely to what AI means for events, convened in Düsseldorf, for European event professionals, on European, GDPR-native infrastructure. A sovereign conversation about a sovereign question.
Not another conference selling the next tool. No stage show, no sales decks, just a deliberately personal day of honest conversation between the people who decide where this industry goes.
The hard questions about risk, redlines, and what changes when AI becomes the foundation rather than a feature, asked out loud and on the record, instead of politely avoided.
Dams made the idea visible. From AI-enriched event data, a precise model of the audience takes shape, a digital twin that lets organizers predict behaviour, personalize the experience, and stress-test the programme budget before a single chair is set up.
AI not as a feature bolted onto the agenda, but as the planning foundation itself. The Pre-Data era, he argued, has begun.
The future belongs to those who stop experimenting and start creating measurable business impact with AI.
If the foundation changes, the old rules stop applying. Across the day, four ideas reset where the conversation goes next.
Nicole Deisenhofer and Markus Struppler (Proske) went a step further than vision. Infrastructure means real decisions, real risk, and real consequences in the client conversation. Not a pitch without substance, but a playbook for agencies ready to act now.
Prof. Stefan Luppold, Kai Opitz, Berry Medendorp and Jens Oliver Mayer debated what changes when AI isn’t just deployed but woven consistently into how an industry thinks and acts. The line that stuck, from Mayer:
Björn Sänger (VDVO) set the essential counterbalance. AI takes over organization, logistics and analysis, and in doing so frees the planner’s creativity. Not a replacement, a relief. Infrastructure in the best sense of the word.
The thread running through the day: the experimentation phase is ending. The events that win next will be the ones that treat AI as a foundation to build on, and hold it to the same standard as every other piece of infrastructure: measurable business impact.
Agency leaders, venue strategists, academics, association heads and platform builders. The Summit put them in one room, on one stage, for one honest day.
Colja Dams VOK DAMS 
Nicole Deisenhofer Proske 
Markus Struppler Proske 
Prof. Stefan Luppold DHBW Ravensburg 
Kai Opitz Düsseldorf Congress 
Berry Medendorp eventmanager.de 
Jens Oliver Mayer Jack Morton Worldwide 
Björn Sänger VDVO 
Adis Jugo run.events 
Maxi Nessmann LiveCom 
Ade Allenby Allenby Advisory 
Maria Kofidou Düsseldorf Congress 
Bernd Fritzges MICE DESK 
Peggy Reuter-Heinrich HeiReS 
Mustafa Toroman European AI & Cloud Summit 
Michael Tschakert knw. 
Saskia Klinder meetreet 
Raphael Köllner KöllnService 
Stephenie Lintl-McLean Beyond Branding Events 
We didn’t want another conference about AI in events. We wanted to start the conversation this industry really needs to have. The quality of the sessions, the honesty on stage, and the energy in the room showed us there’s something here. We’re coming back.
inControl was created by run.events to start the conversation the industry keeps circling. One day in Düsseldorf was enough to settle whether it was worth doing again.
The shift to AI isn’t a question of which app you adopt. It’s a question of the data foundation underneath every event. Decide that first, and the features take care of themselves.
Infrastructure, not featuresAI absorbs the organization, logistics and analysis so your team can do the one thing software can’t: create. Treated right, AI doesn’t replace the planner. It hands the creativity back.
Relief, not replacementinControl is run by run.events, an EU-hosted, GDPR-native event management platform. When AI becomes infrastructure, where that infrastructure lives is no longer a nice-to-have. For European audiences, it’s the whole point.
EU-hosted, GDPR-nativeScenes from the first inControl Summit, where the conversation got honest.
The opening keynote at the CCD Congress Center, Düsseldorf
Conversations that matter, on stage and off
Connections made between the people who decide
The AI conversation, made honest
Voices of the Summit at the microphone
The energy of the day, in the questions from the floor
Insights worth the trip, from across the industry
On the agenda: 15+ sessions in a single day
Ideas in the room, over coffee and between sessions
Exploring what’s next, together
A full house for every session
See you in 2027
A second inControl Summit is confirmed; date and format to follow. inControl is a community ecosystem for event professionals (Summit, webinar series, podcast, newsletter and community), built on one conviction: this industry deserves straight talk about the tools shaping its future, not the next glossy promise.
