Your summit is exhausting your guests. Here's how to fix that.

We are deep in summit season over here — and I am loving it.

Clients convening their fields for connection, learning, and strategic alignment. Multi-day gatherings that bring communities together around work that matters. It is some of my favorite production to be a part of.

Which is why a conversation I had last week has been sitting with me.

A nonprofit leader — whose team produces several internal community gatherings every year — shared that she'd been getting consistent feedback: guests were leaving her summits feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Not energized. Not inspired. Depleted.

She asked how we think about balancing content with space — how to leave room for connection and absorption without sacrificing the learning that makes the gathering worthwhile.

My answer: it starts with editing. Ruthless, loving, necessary editing.

Distill content to only what is most critical.

This is harder than it sounds. When a community comes together — especially one that convenes rarely — the instinct is to pack it all in. Every update, every initiative, every idea that's been waiting for a room like this one.

I understand that instinct. And I want to gently push back on it.

Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve — one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science — tells us that within 24 hours of a conference, attendees have forgotten up to 70% of what they heard. Within a week, that figure climbs to 90%.

And that's assuming they were paying attention at all. Research on adult learning consistently shows that passive listening — the default mode of most conference sessions — produces the lowest retention of any learning format. Adults retain roughly 10% of what they hear in a lecture. Compare that to 75% of what they practice, and 90% of what they teach to others.

More content is not more value. It is often less.

Here's the reframe that changes everything: information transfer does not have to happen in person. Content can be shared virtually, asynchronously, in follow-up materials that people can absorb at their own pace.

What you cannot replicate remotely — what no Zoom call, Slack message, or email newsletter can reproduce — is everything else. And that everything else is exactly what your in-person gathering should be designed around.

What only in-person can do.

Connection, yes — but let's be specific about what that actually means. It's the hallway conversation that shifts someone's thinking. The moment of recognition between two people who didn't know they needed each other. The relationship that begins over dinner and deepens over the course of two days. These are not soft outcomes. They are the outcomes that compound over years.

But in-person also makes people feel celebrated. Seen as individuals. Honored as a team or group.

That feeling — of being truly cared for, of arriving somewhere that was designed with you in mind, that feeling of belonging — cannot be manufactured on a screen. It requires presence, intention, and thoughtful hospitality..

This is where the details do enormous work. A name badge that reflects how much thought went into who is in the room. A welcome that feels warm and personal, not logistical. A meal that goes beyond adequate. A moment of genuine surprise — something beautiful, unexpected, delightful — that tells your guests this wasn't just planned, it was crafted. Interstitial moments that reenergize.

Recognition matters here too. Celebrating individuals and teams — their contributions, their milestones, their growth — in front of their peers is one of the most powerful things a gathering can do. It's the kind of affirmation that lives in people long after the event ends. You cannot replicate the feeling of being seen and celebrated in a room full of people who know what that recognition means.

Special experiences — a behind-the-scenes moment, an awe-inspiring entertainment element, something that couldn't exist anywhere else — give people a shared memory. Shared memories are the architecture of community. They're what people reference months later.

Think about how energy actually works.

Tony Schwartz, founder of The Energy Project and author of The Power of Full Engagement, has spent decades making a case that applies directly here: energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. We have finite cognitive and emotional bandwidth — and when we exceed it, learning doesn't just plateau. It stops.

The classic conference model — session after session, panel after panel, a reception sandwiched between — treats human beings like vessels to be filled. It ignores the reality that attention is not renewable on demand.

You already know this. We've all left a conference unable to process what we just experienced, brilliant content lost to an overwhelmed brain.

What actually works.

When our clients build in movement, meaningful breaks, multimedia, a variety of session formats, and moments of genuine delight — something shifts. Research into adult learning shows that people retain information more effectively when they're involved in discussion, reflection, and active participation rather than passive listening. Even small moments of interaction can significantly increase engagement and retention.

But beyond the learning science — guests who have been given space, who have been treated with care, who have felt genuinely celebrated — absorb more. They connect more deeply. They leave lit up rather than wrung out. And they carry the gathering with them, because their whole selves — not just their intellects — were tended to.

The goal isn't a shorter, emptier summit. It's a more intentional one.

Select content sparingly and brilliantly. Build in rhythm. Design for connection, for celebration, for the kind of hospitality that makes people feel like they matter.

That's how you produce a gathering people actually carry with them — and can't wait to come back to.

If you're planning a summit or multi-day convening and want a thought partner on the design, we'd love to think through it with you.