At the same time everyone is talking about artificial intelligence replacing, accelerating, summarizing, generating, automating, or reshaping knowledge work, a global business-events company is being sold for about $1.8 billion. That is worth sitting with for a moment. The Financial Times reported that Hyve, a major organizer of business events, is being sold to Hellman…
The 2026 World Cup has not yet begun, and already one of its stories is about what it costs to be there. Reuters reported that the attorneys general of New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA over ticketing practices for matches at MetLife Stadium, including concerns about seat categories, high prices, and dynamic pricing. The…
The London Festival of Architecture chose a deceptively simple word for its 2026 theme: belonging. Not skyline. Not innovation. Not resilience. Not density, sustainability, mobility, or growth. Belonging. That choice matters because architecture is one of the places where abstract human needs become concrete. A doorway can invite or intimidate. A plaza can linger or…
One of the more interesting stories in the future-of-work conversation is not that older executives want people back in the office. That story has been told so often it has become predictable. The more interesting story is that some younger workers may want, or at least need, more of the office than we expected. Recent…
At Taipei’s Bangka Longshan Temple, some BTS fans recently did what people have done for centuries when something mattered more than logic could comfortably hold. They brought offerings. They made wishes. They asked for help. In this case, the help they wanted was not a marriage, a cure, a child, or a safer passage across…
For anyone who has ever seen the classic film The Graduate, there is one image that never leaves you: Dustin Hoffman pounding on the glass of a church during a wedding. He wasn’t on the guest list. He wasn’t there to toast the happy couple. He was there because that room contained the one person…
Kai Ryssdal, host of Marketplace — one of my favorite programs — got stopped by a number. On a recent episode, Ryssdal and Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz discussed Fritz’s article, “The $50 Movie Ticket Has Arrived.” The example was Regal charging $50 for advance seats to Dune: Part Three in 70mm IMAX —…
ANNOUNCEMENT My book Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events will be released in August 2026. Pre-release orders are open now at your favorite bookseller (links here) or at www.actsofhumanitythebook.com. (There is even a Limited Edition available from the web site.) Overview:Human beings are not just social creatures—we are relational creatures. Events – large…
LinkedIn recently noted that job postings mentioning “storytellers” have doubled over the last year. Around the same time, its 2026 skills analysis for media and communications listed “Brand Storytelling” among the fastest-growing skills in that field. That is interesting not because storytelling is suddenly new, but because organizations are now naming it more directly. …
Recent coverage highlighted a Barbie-themed immersive experience in Florida where families arrived to find something very different from what had been advertised. Reporting from the BBC and others focused less on any single misstep and more on the difference between what people expected and what they encountered once they got there.