As senior manager for trade shows and events at Adobe, Jennifer Heaton’s job is a mix of yin and yang. The 52-year-old leads of a team of five people that produces the tech company’s two flagship events, Adobe Max and Adobe Summit, each with about 12,000 attendees. Max is for the brand’s creative customers—web designers, illustrators, photographers, and videographers.
Summit is on the flip side, attracting an audience of digital marketers and data analysts.
Heaton draws from her early career experience in the arts—working for galleries, an opera company, and a film festival—to infuse creativity into both of the events. “These are very different audiences but we still try to approach them [thinking], ‘How do we infuse some unique experiences so it’s not your run-of-the-mill conference?’” she says.
At Max in November in San Diego, Heaton filled some of the walkways with artwork, turning them into pop-up galleries intended to inspire the attendees. At the lounges inside the vendor showcase, known as the community pavilion, guests could doodle on chalkboards and canvases or create digital fish to send into a virtual tank.
“We’re trying to offer an outlet for their creativity … and make it different and unique and a place where people really want to hang out,” she says.
For the closing party at Adobe Max, Heaton added a variety of experiences intended to catch guests by surprise, such as serving desserts on a conveyor belt that wound around the trees in Embarcadero Marina South Park and a display of large-scale colorful digital flowers that, when touched, pulsed to the beat of the guest’s heart.
“I try not to do a literal theme and have it be all the way through and obvious. I love the discovery of the attendee when they make their way through the event,” she says.
Heaton also works to build creative elements into Adobe Summit. At the 2017 event in March in Las Vegas, she created a park-like atmosphere to contrast the industrial setting of the convention center, using faux grass and large topiary elephants. Activities in the “park” offered entertainment tailored to the conference’s analytical audience.
“We do sporting-related activities, like a connected football that can read what the spin is and give data and analytics on how well you are throwing the ball,” she says. “Or a little miniature golf area where people could do putting, but then we also had putting analysis.”
Back to the Most Innovative People in Events and Meetings list
