What can AI actually do in field marketing?

Episode · Field & Event Marketing

AI, Trust, and the Art of the Room — with Kayla Drake

You're a field marketer. Your job happens in physical rooms, with real people, and your company wants to know how you're using AI this quarter. This episode is about holding both.

Kayla Drake is back on the show. She has spent 13 years in field and event marketing at companies like IBM, Autodesk, and Udemy, building event strategies from the ground up and leading global teams through IPOs and acquisitions. Our first conversation covered the foundations: what field marketing is, how to measure ROI, sales alignment. This one goes where every marketing conversation has gone in the past year, and where field marketing sits in it.

Kayla's framing is the most usable one I've heard: treat AI like an intern. It's there to learn, you hand it tasks in doses, and you stay responsible for the judgment. From there we get into what that judgment looks like in practice: how she curates a 20-person executive dinner (four sales reps max, spread out), why registration should take 60 seconds, how she designs events for the 75% of the room that's introverted, and the three locations technique that keeps people lingering past the scheduled end.

We close with news: Kayla is launching The Event Career Coach, a group coaching business for event and field marketers who want to move from executing events to owning strategy and pipeline.

What you'll take away

• The intern rule for AI. Offload tasks you'd trust an intern with: low critical-thinking load, low cost of error, high time savings. Event briefs, vendor logistics, schedule drafts.
• Seating is strategy. Cap sales reps at three or four per 20-person dinner, split up coworkers, seat like-minded titles together, and use shared interests (kids, baseball) as connective tissue.
• The 60-second registration rule. Check-in to in-the-room in under a minute, printed badges only, magnetic sleeves over safety pins, and a printer on site for the last-48-hours registrants who almost always show up.
• Design for introverts. Give people a to-do on arrival, and use a "mandatory" gamified prompt like bingo cards so the awkwardness lives on the card instead of on them.
• The three locations technique. Cocktail hour, seated dinner, then a dessert reseat at a new table. Energy resets, new conversations start, and introverts get an organic exit.
• Backup plans are the job. Interrogate every event plan with "what if": speaker misses the flight, swag doesn't arrive, 40 registered and 10 show. Vent after the event, at the debrief.
• Trust lives in people. Kayla stopped trusting brands for their ad budgets and started trusting them for the teams behind them. Her Splash and Goldcast stories show what that looks like from the customer side.

Chapters

• 0:00Welcome back, Kayla — and why this episode is about AI
• 1:43Living in San Francisco, where AI is on the cereal box
• 2:43Treat AI like an intern
• 3:25From proofreading emails to building workflows
• 5:42Curating an executive dinner: seating charts and sales rep caps
• 8:17Where the hospitality instinct comes from: Texas roots and fine-dining shifts
• 12:29When events go wrong: the professional fire-putter-outer
• 14:47Vent after the event: debriefs, mentors, and community
• 18:04The 60-second registration rule and other details people miss
• 22:04Designing for introverts: to-dos and bingo cards
• 25:08The three locations technique
• 29:23Trust and brands: it's the people behind the curtain
• 32:43What AI can't do in field marketing
• 34:56Creativity, design, and the human touch
• 37:21Where AI genuinely helps: agents, admin, and Claude credits
• 41:09The event tech gap: integrations, pricing, and feedback loops
• 46:44AI note-takers and keeping the human side
• 48:32Announcement: The Event Career Coach
• 52:28Closing advice: find where you land with AI

Full transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

Anusha: Welcome back to The 360° Marketing Show. Today's guest is Kayla Drake, and we've had her on the show before. Kayla has spent about 13 years in field and event marketing at companies like IBM, Autodesk, and Udemy, building event strategies from the ground up and leading global teams through IPOs and acquisitions. If you're anywhere near field marketing on LinkedIn, you've probably seen her show up on your feed. She's one of the top voices in the field, a founding member of her industry collective, and a regular speaker at industry events and podcasts. To know more about what she's up to nowadays and some interesting perspectives from her experience, make sure to stick around until the end. Hey, Kayla, welcome back.

Anusha: I was watching our last episode and it did so well. People loved that episode and I loved it as well. It was filled with tactical stuff — we talked a lot about what field marketing is, how to measure ROI, sales alignment, all of that good stuff. We touched a little bit on AI, but over the last year AI has basically become the main elephant in the room. Everybody's talking about AI, so we have to talk about AI. And field marketing is one of those roles where you're in the room with people, but you're also supposed to use AI. So we have to talk about this blend and this weirdness here. How do you feel about that?

Kayla: So delighted to be back. I love getting to chat with you, and I think that last episode we did was so foundational — I've still had people reach out to me asking about it, asking for advice. I think it's just real conversations like this that help. And also, you're a great host, so I just want to go on record with that too.

Kayla: Gosh, AI. I know. I live in San Francisco. I eat, sleep, and breathe it. Everything's AI. I think there's AI mentioned on my cereal box, for goodness' sake. But I think we have to remember that AI is new, it's improving, it's becoming extremely efficient, and people are excited about it — and that's okay. Let people be excited. What's happening is the pendulum is swinging pretty hard into it because of its newness, and that's okay. It's going to balance out.

Kayla: When it comes to AI and field marketing — field marketing is an incredibly physically demanding job. You can't use AI to physically set up your booth, or arrange the seating chart based on the way the light shines in when the sun sets in a way you didn't expect. These are all very in-the-moment, gut-feeling, intentional ways of working with event marketing. But with AI, you have to remember: it's like an intern. Think of it like an intern. It's there to learn. So take it slowly, take it in doses, take classes, ask people what different workstreams and GPTs they've set up, and learn from others. And remember — you're not supposed to be an expert overnight. That's the one mistake we're making: expecting people to be experts overnight. AI is supposed to learn, and we need to slowly learn with AI too.

Anusha: Oh yeah, 100%. The minute you think you're a pro at this, the next minute something else comes out and you're a student again. You've got to learn from scratch.

Kayla: I remember last year being so excited about ChatGPT because I could proofread my LinkedIn posts, my Slack messages, my emails. Especially as a woman with ADHD, I think we tend to overthink what we're writing because we're worried about getting it wrong. So it felt like a superpower having AI double-check my email flow and catch a common mistake of mine — I get really excited at the beginning and then forget to add the details and context. And then by the end of the year, the question became: what are you doing to create GPTs that streamline your full organization? It was this huge jump, and I remember feeling overwhelmed by it. But what I realized is: people are learning and we're picking up the pace. So what can I do beyond proofreading my email? Take care of the admin work of event marketing. Create the event brief for me. Curate a schedule I can then check and brainstorm on, versus starting from scratch. Take care of admin tasks like sending my logo and company description to all the trade show vendors. That's where it can really help you — it takes away the busy time you're wasting and expedites your work process.

Anusha: I love this. We have to get into the nitty-gritty of all of this, step by step, because there's a whole range here. Like you said, we start with emails and Slack, then move to "wait, I can create my own website," then "wait, I can create an agent that talks to someone at the booth." There's variety here. And I also overthink emails and details — what if the comma is wrong, what if I use an em dash and people think I'm using AI? At least with AI we're behind a screen and can make changes. In person, you can't make stuff up. When you're talking to somebody, you have to be really careful about what you're saying. So I want to learn from you: when you're arranging a dinner, you have to take into account what kind of people are attending, who's going to be there, what they'd want to talk about, who sits next to whom. How do you think these things through?

Kayla: That's such a great question. That really comes down to your critical thinking skills. AI tends to take things at face value — very black and white, just data. You feed in exacts and it gives you exact output. Whereas the experience of curating the layout of a room, an agenda, where people sit — that comes from experience and a gut check.

Kayla: Here's what I mean. I'm hosting an executive dinner with 20 people. I know from experience that I want four sales reps max in the room. Any more than that and it feels like your company's happy hour. It's not going to feel like an executive dinner — it gets too sales-pitchy, and it's not fun for the attendees because they want to network with each other. So there's the cap: three, four account executives max. I also need to spread them out, because if they get too cliquey — they're coworkers, they know each other — they'll only talk to each other and not the prospects and clients. Second: who are the top prospects in the room, what's their account history, which like-minded titles or companies need to sit next to each other because it will facilitate the conversation. And the rest is fun common sense. Are there diehard Giants fans in the room? Sit them next to each other, they'll get to talking. Where are the parents in the room? They'll want to reminisce about what it's like being a professional with a two-year-old at home. Can they sit together? And I coordinate all of that with my sales team, through actual conversations. It has to be logical, realistic, based on your interaction with that person. It has to be human, quite frankly. That's how you curate a room that facilitates organic conversation that flows just right. Then the rest is curating an agenda that creates those conversations in a natural way. That's the power behind real critical thinking skills.

Anusha: Wow. Do you have any memory of learning this — from childhood, from college? This whole skill of "this is how I'm going to present myself, this is how I'm going to organize things." Can you remember anything about yourself like that?

Kayla: Oh man, what a lovely question. Two things come to mind. From childhood, from my core: I grew up with a Southern family. My mom is from Texas, and hospitality is a big one in our family. Being a good host, presenting yourself with your best foot forward — that was ingrained in me as a kid, and it's why I'm so hospitable in the way that I am.

Kayla: On a more tangible level: through college I was a server, and I did bartending and catering to pay my way. I worked down in Del Mar in San Diego, next to the horse races, at really nice places — fine dining with high-end clientele and expensive wine, where everything was attention to detail. How the silverware is placed, the lighting just so, how we serve the dishes. It taught me the art of hospitality and hosting — how to make a person feel like a VIP in a luxury environment, because it's their money and I want them to feel it was well spent. It wasn't just "here's some food." It's: I went to a restaurant and enjoyed the entire experience, from the appetizer and cocktail down to the dessert and nightcap, the music playing, the fireplace in the corner, the gorgeous sunset. All of it curated on purpose, with intention. I consider myself a very intentional person in general, but that planted the seed.

Kayla: I remember my very first marketing role, at a biotech company. Our first trade show was in Germany, and I ran the booth. It felt like second nature. I felt comfortable and at ease. It was a three-day show and I just knew how to set everything up, how to greet each person who came over. Someone said, "You're such a natural — it feels like you've done this for years." And I thought: I've done catering for years, I've been a bartender, I know customer service. All my little jobs leading up to it made it comfortable. And the rest was history. I was hooked on event marketing after that.

Anusha: I could see that — that's why I asked. It doesn't come naturally for a lot of people. Some people do the job because it's their title. And some people — I don't want to say born with it, because you still had to hone the skill — but you're a natural for sure.

Kayla: Thank you. You can learn it though — I do want to preface that, it's really important to me. Most event and field marketers don't get into event and field marketing to start with. I think 90% of them, if you ask how they built a career in it, will say: I did something totally different, I somehow made my way into it, and I realized I loved it. It was addicting, it was fun, it was a combination of creativity and business. I got to work with the sales team without having a sales quota — which is the best part.

Anusha: All the good stuff, not the pressure.

Kayla: Exactly. It's easy to fall into it and a lot of it can be learned. But most event and field marketers have some background like that — hospitality, customer service. They're detail-oriented, they're organized. Some little tidbit landed perfectly in event marketing and they made a career out of it.

Anusha: I'm sure you have moments where it's like: I wanted this to go right, and it went wrong. Say you wanted someone to sit next to somebody and they switch places, and your whole seating chart is gone. How do you deal with those situations?

Kayla: That's the fun part about event marketing: you are a professional fire-putter-outer. You're constantly dealing with last-minute changes you weren't expecting. Your confirmed speaker's flight got delayed. Your CEO was supposed to lead the roundtable and their kid is home sick. Your swag didn't arrive on time. Your brochures were printed the wrong size and you can't hand them out. There's always going to be something. The golden rule is: keep a cool head. You are the orchestrator of that event's success. Nobody needs to know the chaos going on in the background — you handle it with grace, keep a smile on your face, figure out a way to pivot. And you always, always prepare a backup plan.

Kayla: It's a big thing I do with the event and field marketers I manage. They walk through their entire event setup, everything looks good, and I go: okay, great. What are your backup plans? What's your backup plan for the swag not arriving? For the name tags printed in the wrong font? What happens if the speaker isn't there — do you have a backup speaker? What happens if 40 people registered and only 10 show up? How are you going to pivot? There's always a solution, but it's about keeping a calm head and asking: what can I do to make this still work in a way that keeps the event successful?

Anusha: But think about field marketers just getting started who are in charge of something like this. What we'd naturally want to do is vent to somebody — "oh my god, this went wrong." Saying "be calm" is easy, but in the moment you really want to vent. How do you collect yourself?

Kayla: Well, there's a time and a place. Always have a debrief after your event, because you do need to talk about what didn't go right. But the one thing that's true about event marketing is: the show must go on. You still need to execute. A speaker didn't show up? Cool — what's your backup plan? What's the end goal? The event still needs to happen. People still need to talk to each other and network. Can that happen without the speaker who missed their flight? Yes. So what are you doing to still hit that end result? Some things are just out of your control. You accept it — and then you vent. But vent after the event, when the dinner's over, because you have a job to do. Keep your professional hat on and execute.

Kayla: That's why you always schedule a debrief call — not just with your marketing team but with the sales team, the people who were there. What worked? What didn't? Be transparent. The speaker didn't show because they were late to the airport — do we want to remember that next time we consider them? The restaurant ran out of half the menu items — maybe we don't host there again. Nothing's personal. So what are you going to do to pivot, still make it a successful experience, and learn from it for next time? And then later, when you have drinks with your coworkers — complain then. Get it out.

Kayla: I also strongly encourage working with a coach, a mentor, and a community. Rely on your community big time, because what you're experiencing is not new — it's part of the job. It's good to connect with your peers and commiserate a little, blow off some steam together, because it's a tough job. It really is.

Anusha: Totally. I believe in having a good mentor, because it's not always possible to ask your boss — you might feel like it's a stupid question. So get a mentor. Or reach out to Kayla.

Kayla: Absolutely. Your manager is there to support you and alleviate bottlenecks, but they have a job to do too. They can't be your go-to therapist or your venting crutch. Having a mentor or a career coach to lean on is so pivotal for that reason — a person who speaks your language, understands where you're coming from, and gives you a safe space.

Anusha: What's the smallest detail most people don't notice that really changes how the entire day goes?

Kayla: Oh yeah — especially with hosted events, the devil's in the details. Registration is a big one. When a person shows up for your executive dinner or happy hour, they need to check in, get their name badge, and be in the event ideally within 60 seconds. Set up your registration desk right at the entrance with good flow. Have your name badges organized efficiently, facing the attendees so they can grab them quickly, check in, and be on their way.

Kayla: And always have a backup plan. A lot of people don't know this: name badges should always be printed — do not handwrite name badges — but you usually have to send them to a printing vendor two days before the event. People inevitably register within 48 hours of the event, and the people who register last minute are almost guaranteed to show up. So prioritize them; don't minimize them with a handwritten badge. That means figuring out how to print badges inside that 48-hour window. Have a little printer at your registration desk. When they say "I just registered two hours ago" — no problem, come over here, I'll print your badge, be on your way.

Kayla: If you don't have lanyards and you're doing badges in a sleeve, do the magnetic sleeves, not the ones with the safety pin. Most people showing up are wearing a blazer, and a lot of women are wearing silk blouses. You don't want to put a safety pin in that. These are tiny details, but they create efficiency so you don't have a line out the door and frustrated people. And remember the anxiety people feel when they first walk in. You want to alleviate that. They've checked in, they know where to go — coat check over there, grab your drink at the bar — and they're in the door, starting the networking process. Also, please iron or steam your tablecloth. I know that's silly, but first impressions set the tone. Little details, but they make all the difference.

Anusha: For sure. I went to an event in January, and everything you're describing, I can picture myself going through it. It was nerve-wracking — where's my card, where's the lanyard, where's this, where's that. All I wanted was to get into the room for the speaker, and it took ten minutes to get through the process. So I understand how important it is to set these things up the right way.

Kayla: You've also got to think about the natural flow of an event. If you host in winter, where's your coat check, and is it efficient? Then they want to set their bag down — do you have name cards at the table so they can quickly find their seat, put their purse down, and get to talking? There's the human admin stuff you need to make efficient and get out of the way, so they can get to the event instead of standing in a ten-minute coat check line — so they can walk up, hang their coat, and go talk to the John Smith they've been dying to meet. Event flow is also the physical flow of people.

Anusha: Absolutely. But let's go to the next step: I've done all these things, I'm going to go meet somebody, but I'm socially awkward. I don't know how to talk to someone. Is there any role you play in this process?

Kayla: Oh, I love that — the good introvert question. Everyone assumes that when people go to an event and network, it's a room full of extroverts. The truth is 75% of the room is introverts. They just know they need to be there, whether for their career or because they're excited about the event. And I always keep them in mind.

Kayla: First: give them a to-do. When that introvert checks in and you can tell they're shy, walk them through it. Hey — grab your drink at this bar, appetizers are back there, make sure you grab swag from this table. It's even better if you add a gamified component and make it seem mandatory. That way, when they feel awkward and don't know how to talk to anybody, they can default to it. "We're handing out these bingo cards — make sure you ask people these questions to play. Everybody's playing." Then they can go: "Hey, I have to do this bingo thing. Do you mind telling me where you're from? I have to ask." They put the awkwardness on the bingo card instead of on themselves, and it takes the heat off. And giving them something to do — get a drink, get an appetizer, set my stuff down — gives them a map, so they're not standing in a room thinking "I'm just going to talk to people now, this is so awkward." You want less stress and less pressure, and then the conversation gets created organically.

Anusha: I love that bingo card. I don't think that's ever happened to me at an event — I would have loved it. "Hey, I want to ask you this question because I'm supposed to ask you this question." And then it opens up.

Kayla: And if conversation comes from it naturally — bonus.

Anusha: Exactly. It's a great opener, because that's the problem for most people — the cold start. They don't know how to navigate the situation. Most corporate events are honestly sometimes boring. So when people take the time to be there in person, from your experience, what makes people feel "time's up, but we don't want to leave because it's really fun to hang out with these people"? Have you seen that happen, and what did you create to make it happen?

Kayla: Well, first of all, my events are always fun. They're never boring. Let's make sure we know that. But I learned this tactic pretty early in my career from one of my mentors — she taught me the art of three locations. When you're hosting, say, a dinner, create three different locations for people to naturally talk to one another.

Kayla: A lot of people make the mistake of hosting a dinner where it's: here's the dinner, here's your seat, sit there. And then you're stuck there all night — two, maybe three long hours with the same two or three people next to you. It doesn't matter if you're the most extroverted person in the world. I consider myself an extrovert, and after three hours next to the same two people, I'm going to run out of things to say. So you've got to mix up the energy.

Kayla: Location one: the networking hour. For the first 45 minutes, while people check in — cocktails, standing appetizers at the bar. It gets them to mingle and make first connections, and you can guide them: make sure you go say hello to every single person in the room. Location two: the dinner. They sit down at your curated seating map — you've placed them with intention — and they have their appetizer and dinner. When dinner's over, clear the plates. That's when your CEO can stand up and say a few words, or you do your roundtable, your panel, whatever content you have. Then you say: okay everybody, grab your drink, stand up, find a new table and a new seat for dessert. They all move, they sit down, and then you drop the desserts. It helps to have the same dessert for everyone, or at least mark dietary restrictions to keep it streamlined. Now they can go talk to somebody they've been dying to talk to, or meet someone new. And the conversation usually goes well — you've got a little booze in them, or at least dessert and sugar — so the energy picks back up.

Kayla: If you're really ambitious and it's a good night, you can move to a fourth location: "We're opening up the patio for nightcaps. If you want to join us for a last round, please do — keep the conversation going." If people still have that lively energy, they'll go. But I'm telling you, the dessert location picks the energy back up and people will linger. And what's nice is it gives an organic exit for the introverts — "I can give you two hours and my social battery is done." They did the dinner, they knocked it out, they're off the hook. You set the stage and you let them chat.

Anusha: The way you describe this whole thing — it's so detail-oriented and well planned that it makes me feel calm. And I think it increases trust in a brand. When you attend an event that's so streamlined, you know exactly what you're supposed to do, you never have to overthink, there's no anxiety on your side — I think it makes you want to come back and trust the brand more, because they're so thoughtful. So I want to ask: in your career, is there something you believed about earning trust as a brand — from customers or prospects — where you later realized, wait, that's not how this works?

Kayla: I almost want to say I'm not customer-oriented, I'm human-oriented. The way I think about my events is: what is the human experience going to be? Something as simple as having appetizers ready the moment a person walks in the door, because they're hungry. Don't throw content at me or pitch-slap me as soon as I walk in — I'm going to get grumpy, I need food. Those micro-moments are crucial.

Kayla: Now, on brands I trust: I used to think that companies with a lot of money, who spent on advertising and branding so you saw their name everywhere, were important — the end-all be-all. There's a reason their name is everywhere, so you should trust them. The truth is, it comes down to the people who work there. The people make the product. The people make the company successful. I'll give you a good example: Splash, one of my favorite event tech platforms, which I've onboarded at a few companies for building event landing pages. The team at Splash — some of my favorite people in the whole world, to the point that when they hosted events in San Francisco, I would clear my schedule so fast, because I was excited to see them and talk to them. I loved the product, but the people made me love it more. And I think that's the nuance that's changed. A million-dollar advertising budget is great, but who are the people behind the curtain? Who's running the show? Who are the engineers keeping the product running with the user in mind? Who's the content marketer writing the blog posts, and do they actually care about the industry? I've learned that when brands think about people first, that matters more than a brand solely focused on revenue — a machine that just wants to make more money with a billion-dollar ad budget. It really is the people behind the brand.

Anusha: Imagine saying that to AI. "Explain human one more time."

Kayla: "It's made up of tissues and fat." No, no — not that.

Anusha: I love thinking about trust, and I think AI makes everything seem like rainbows and sunshine — no matter what happens, it's all going to be okay. But there are things AI can't provide value with, especially in a role like this. Can you think of instances where you'd say AI is not going to do this as well as we do?

Kayla: For the most part, AI isn't going to help with the obvious things — physically setting up a booth, like I mentioned. It's not going to personalize an entire ABM campaign toward a specific company and its buying committee; it may have the channels, but you know the people personally. And on a simple level, I find it not useful for finding event venues. If I say, "I want to host a happy hour in San Francisco for 100 people," it gives me the most erroneous list. It's not there yet — because there's a sense check involved in finding a venue. I can sense it in the way the menu is curated, the way the room is laid out, the lighting, where it sits in San Francisco. A lot of that is my 13 years of experience. AI generalizes. It gives you the mean of the answer, the summary, the average — but you know the intricacies and the details. I'm not slamming AI, because there's a lot of positive use in it, and it's imperative that event and field marketers learn and pick up the pace on incorporating it. But please don't underestimate your natural critical thinking skills and your ability to gut-check your events. Trust yourself on that.

Anusha: Is there anywhere else you think "I can do this a lot better than AI," but it gets in the way because we're expected to use AI for it?

Kayla: I think AI is not quite there on creativity — especially innovation and newness around creativity, which I correlate to the world of art. AI can innovate a new process, a new system, a playbook. But when I think of designing a new advertisement, or creative brand concepts, I need a person to bring the creative mind to the forefront. All the AI-generated flyers and artwork we see — it's so obviously AI. It does a fine job, sure. But when I want to invent a new brand or a new campaign, I'm going to a designer. When I'm thinking about booth graphics for a trade show — how do they match the campaign across email marketing and website design, how does it all ladder up to the booth? Events are a vehicle for every marketing team to use and take advantage of, and that creative drive has to have a human touch. AI doesn't quite know how to create something new when it comes to creativity.

Anusha: Totally. When I was writing my book, I wanted to create a cover for it and gave that job to AI — it did such a terrible job that I became the designer myself. People say you can give it your past campaigns and designs and it'll know what to do, but it still misses. You need someone with creativity to make something on-theme but also different, something that can speak to someone. A lot of people learn visually, so it has to land in a way they can understand.

Kayla: I've definitely tried using AI to generate a new logo or concept, and the lines don't match, it's awkward and misplaced. It's not quite there. But I do want to acknowledge the positive side of AI, because it's important. Going into this year, it felt like on January 1st all the tech companies started aggressively leaning into AI. KPIs need AI included. Company goals, objectives. Hiring now requires an "expert in AI" — nobody's an expert in AI, so can we stop doing that, first of all? But AI is meant to learn. One thing I'm noticing, especially in tech, that up-and-coming event marketers need to be aware of: companies are going to start counting your Claude credits used, for example, on a weekly basis. They'll encourage you to manage tasks through AI and check whether you're actually incorporating it. And there's a way to do that so it benefits you. Enabling agents so they can execute their own tasks — say you've got 20 trade shows in H2. Where can you use an agent to take care of sending the logo and company description to all those vendors? It's all time-consuming stuff. Event marketing isn't exceptionally difficult at its core in terms of individual tasks — it's that you have a million tasks all due at the same time, because you can't change the date of an event. So where can we offload to AI to make your job more efficient, so you have more time for creativity, the campaign, the flow of the event, the curated experience — the live demo, the fun swag, the interactive moments — while AI takes care of the repetitive admin tasks? That's where AI benefits the event and field marketer.

Anusha: A lot of people are confused about what they should be learning beyond drafting emails and the basics. For such a physically demanding, on-the-field job, what would you recommend people learn with regard to AI?

Kayla: There are too many things to list. So first: understand the basics. Understand ChatGPT, understand Claude. Take some really basic courses, then start asking your peers questions — how do you incorporate it, what tips and tricks can I pick up? Start small. Take inventory of the tedious tasks where you'd say, "I'd save two hours a day if I didn't have to do this," that don't require much critical thinking and don't have much chance of error if you offloaded them. Think: what would I feel comfortable giving an intern, where I might provide a little guidance, and if it doesn't go right it's not the end of the world? Treat AI like that — an intern that wants to learn and take on more. As it improves, add more on. Take courses, jump into webinars and podcasts, educate yourself — but do it small. Don't overwhelm yourself. You're not going to be an expert overnight, despite what everybody on your executive team says. But you never know when that one little trick saves you a full day of work in a single week. That's such a cool win. A little bit at a time.

Anusha: You've mentioned before, off camera, that event tech is a real gap — you often have to piecemeal a tech stack together. It's like how streaming works: your favorite shows aren't on one platform, so you hop around with multiple subscriptions, and it costs more than you want to pay. What do you think would actually solve that? What are you hoping AI enables for field marketers in the next couple of years?

Kayla: With event tech — which I'm very passionate about — there's not enough strong event technology that also works at scale. A lot of times a tech company will say, "I see this field marketer has this need, I'll solve it with this tool," and then forget to go back and check in with the individual marketer: does this actually help you, where's the nuance, what's not working? I'll give you a good example: Goldcast is really great about having an advisory council. Their product advisors are everyday event marketers, and they'll literally have an engineer sit with an event marketer who says, "This is great, this is great — by the way, you have a bug here, this search bar doesn't work, and why is the setup like this? I don't use it that way." Real-time feedback, which is so imperative.

Kayla: But a lot of event tech products hit the market and then think profit — they raise the price to an amount that's not realistic, and then say, "Well, clearly you don't see the value." It's not about value — I only have so much budget. It doesn't matter if there's value when I'm spending more on your event tech than my entire event budget for the quarter. That's a miss. I also want to see event tech talk to each other more. You see a lot of lead capture tools popping up — fantastic. Do they integrate with Salesforce? With HubSpot or Marketo, the tools I'm actually using? Or do I still have to scan on your app, download a CSV, and upload it into Salesforce manually? That's obnoxious and misses the whole point — I'll just rent the scanner at the show floor if I'm doing that manual process anyway. That's where AI can jump in: understanding the streamlined process from start to finish. What am I trying to accomplish, and what additional products have to queue in to make it work? If I'm scanning a badge and it needs to go to HubSpot, and HubSpot syncs to Salesforce — where is your product thinking that through? That's where AI can find the efficiencies and inefficiencies, and where I want to see it move into the event tech world. I used to cringe when companies said "we're AI-powered, we're AI-infused." Now when I see it I think: good — you're thinking tactically about how to constantly improve, because that's what AI is meant to do.

Anusha: Feedback loops are really important, and a lot of companies don't have them. I remember when Goldcast started out, I used to piece together a Google Doc and send it to them, and they'd have an engineer on it immediately. Not everybody has the same need, and customizing to your customer is really important — especially with AI in place.

Kayla: I think AI is going to be really good at figuring out the bottlenecks we don't think about — the inefficiencies we can't see because we're so accustomed to doing things the way we've always done them. It's a world of "you don't know what you don't know," and AI can unblock workflows we didn't realize were costing us time and money. "I always use Google Docs, I always use Sheets, it's just easier." Okay — why? I see what your miss is; you need to connect this, that, and this. AI can fix the puzzle pieces we didn't even realize were in the way.

Anusha: We're getting better at building systems, connecting one thing to another so there's a streamlined process — so we never have to wonder, "I wrote it somewhere, I just don't know where it is anymore."

Kayla: As an event marketer, you're managing a million tasks at once with so many things living in your head. One of the most helpful tools I ever started using was Granola, which takes AI notes on your calls without being disruptive. You know when you jump on a call and "this AI notetaker will be recording" pops up? It's so awkward, and now you're hyper-aware you're being recorded. Granola is this efficient background notetaker that summarizes things the way I'd write my own notes. This is not a plug — I don't work for Granola. As a person with ADHD, I just found it really helpful. Do you know how many calls I've been on with post-its everywhere, or where I've had to say, "I'm not answering an email, I really am taking notes"? If I don't write it down, I'll forget — I have a thousand things in my head. AI note-taking? Love it.

Anusha: The only reason I still take notes by hand is that when someone's talking and I want to ask them something, I'll forget it otherwise — and I can't exactly ask AI for that in the moment. Otherwise the transcript handles it. Also, my handwriting is getting horrible, so I want to keep the practice up. I miss my cursive.

Kayla: I hear you. And again — that's the human side we need to keep.

Anusha: I saved the best piece for last. I'm so excited for you — you told me off camera that you're starting your own event and field marketing coaching business. I want to know all about it. Where did the idea come from? Why are you doing it?

Kayla: Yes! Breaking news. I'm launching my own event and field marketing group coaching business. I've been doing this for 13 years, I'm incredibly passionate about it, and I've had so many wonderful event professionals reach out who are early in their careers and just need to speak with someone who speaks their language — someone who can help move them from event executor, just executing events, to event marketing strategist: someone who can tangibly show how their events tie to ROI, how they drive pipeline, and how imperative they are to the business infrastructure at their organization.

Kayla: I didn't get this when I was starting out. It took years before I found my first mentor who taught me the ropes — probably not until my third role, three or four years in. I want to give back to the community. I'm heavily involved in the event and field marketing community as a whole, I'm a founding member of my collective, I host meetups as often as I can, and this feels like my calling. It's fulfilling to guide and educate people who are maybe the only field marketer at their company, or who report to a manager who isn't a field marketing leader, or who are ready for that next role, that promotion, that raise, and just need someone to guide them. So consider me The Event Career Coach — newly certified. I'm taking all my tactics and learnings from the last 13 years and bringing them to the professionals in my industry, to keep elevating this industry I love and know so well.

Anusha: I've had you on this podcast twice and people loved hearing you talk. That should tell people how you play this whole game. They should definitely get in touch with you.

Kayla: I hope everyone listening reaches out — let's schedule a call, let's chat, let's get you there. One big takeaway from being in this industry: you learn so much from your peers, from mentors, from people in the space who can guide you based on their experience. That's where I'm at in my career — ready to give back. I'm thrilled to launch The Event Career Coach, and I hope I get to work with anyone listening to this podcast.

Anusha: Does it have a name? Do we get the name drop?

Kayla: I actually said it — The Event Career Coach. I wanted to keep it simple and show that I am the coach to work with. I've been building it in the background for a while, and now it's time to move into high gear, lock in, and be there for the people ready to level up. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Anusha: That's really all I had to ask. Anything you want to talk about that I didn't ask?

Kayla: The last thing I'd say: the event industry is adjusting and adapting to AI, so find out where you land in it. Ask questions, learn from your peers, be part of the community, and stay ahead of innovation — but don't overwhelm yourself. You're not meant to be an AI expert overnight; you're meant to learn in real time, as it works for you. If something doesn't work, don't use it just because everyone says you have to. It's going to be oversaturated this next year, then the pendulum will level out into more normal use. Take your time with it — you'll get there. And otherwise, follow me on LinkedIn, where I love to talk about event tech and share all the trends, tips, and tricks I can offer. Hopefully we can learn from each other.

Anusha: Awesome. So good to have you. Thank you so much for doing this.

Kayla: Thank you, Anusha. I appreciate your time, and thank you for having me back. It's one of my favorite shows, so have me back anytime.

One question before you go: what's the smallest event detail that ever made you trust a brand more? Comment and tell me — I read every one.