Sorry, Zoom: Real magic happens in a real room

Key points:

• • In-person events create relationships, opportunities, and momentum that technology cannot replicate.
• • Strong communities are built when leaders, investors, and decision-makers gather in the same room.
• • As trust in institutions shifts, convening people has become both a business advantage and a civic responsibility.

June 2026 — A couple weeks ago, I was moderating a fireside chat at our Invest: Greater Fort Lauderdale 8th Annual Leadership Summit when something happened that I won’t soon forget.

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Over and over, Shane Strum, CEO of Broward Health, kept calling out the people in the room — by name, by title, by significance. He wasn’t padding his remarks. He was making a point: The room was extraordinary. Eight mayors. Top executives. Civic leaders. Investors. All of them, together, in the same space, at the same time.

One attendee told me he had never — not once in his career — been in a room with a mayor on his left and a mayor on his right.

Another guest, a busy executive who told me he had calls to take and meetings to get to, said he simply could not leave the room.

That’s not a conference. That’s a movement. And you cannot replicate it on a computer screen.

Remembering what we never forgot

The research is unambiguous. In-person events in 2026 are no longer about delivering information — webinars and AI handle that. They exist to deliver something technology categorically cannot: the experience of being in a room where something is happening. Where a relationship forms in a handshake. Where a deal starts in a hallway. Where a mayor looks an entrepreneur in the eye and says, “Let’s talk.”

At caa, we never needed the data to tell us this. We’ve known it for nearly two decades across 19 U.S. markets. We were relieved — genuinely, deeply relieved — to leave the virtual era behind. Because virtual was never a substitute. It was a workaround. And workarounds don’t move cities forward.

Zoom call? Don’t fool yourself

I’ll say it plainly because someone has to.

Leaders who believe that a LinkedIn post, a virtual panel, or a well-produced webinar can substitute for putting the right people in the same room are making a costly mistake. Not just for their business but for their communities.

There is a reason Strum kept pointing around that room. There is a reason the executive couldn’t leave. There is a reason our Fort Lauderdale summit — our first full day, from breakfast through happy hour, every seat filled, every conversation electric — was the best one we’ve ever produced. It wasn’t the agenda. It was the energy. The friction of real people, with real stakes, in real proximity to one another.

That energy doesn’t travel through fiber optic cables. It doesn’t live in a chat box. It exists in a room, and only in a room.

What we do — and why it matters

People come to our events because they trust us. Not just the format, not just the speakers — us. caa has spent years earning the right to know which conversations need to happen, which questions need to be asked, and which problem-solvers need to be in the room together. That institutional knowledge is not something you can scale on Zoom. It is built face-to-face, market by market, year after year.

Eight mayors don’t show up because of a flyer. They show up because the platform has proven, repeatedly, that the room will be worth their time. That the dialogue will be substantive. That the people around them will be the right people. That something will actually happen as a result of being there.

That is not an event. That is infrastructure.

A civic responsibility

We are more divided than we have ever been. Not just politically — socially, professionally, physically. Remote work isolated us. Social media flattened us. AI is now threatening to replace us. And through all of it, the one thing that has never lost its power is a room full of people who showed up.

The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer tells us that “my employer” is now the most trusted institution on Earth — more trusted than government, media, or organized religion. That is not a trophy for business leaders. That is an obligation. And one of the most powerful ways to fulfill that obligation is to convene. To gather. To put people in a room and let something real happen.

If we want to rise as communities, as industries, as a country — we have to meet each other. We have to do it together. And the only way to authentically move the needle is in person.

The executive who couldn’t leave that room? He wasn’t trapped. He was exactly where he needed to be.

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