The fastest way to lose your events budget is to keep funding shows on reputation. Somebody attended it in 2019, it felt important, and now it is a line item nobody questions. That is how EdTech companies end up spending real money to stand in rooms that stopped mattering three superintendent turnovers ago. We have sat in enough budget reviews with edtech clients to know exactly how this happens, and how avoidable it is.
Here is the harder line, and it is the right one: every event earns a written business case before it earns a dollar. Not a paragraph of enthusiasm. A case that maps the event to specific, measurable objectives and answers, in advance, what the show needs to produce to be worth it.
