What Exchange Taught Me About the Family We Keep Saying We Are!
Updated: Sep 24
I'm lucky. I get to spend my days talking about how the DMC Network works, how our partners look out for each other, how "we're here for you" isn't just something we put on a slide. I've said it so many times it started to feel like a line I knew well rather than something I'd actually watched happen in real time. Then I went to my first Exchange, and I got to see it.
The moment I walked through the door, before anything official had even started, I felt it. People hugging like they meant it. Congratulating each other on wins. Laughing. And just as easily, sharing the hard stuff too, the good and the bad, without anyone performing for the room. These are people who actually show up for one another. I'd been saying that for a while. Now I'd seen it.
Then Exchange itself kicked off, and it went up another level entirely. Seattle didn't just host us, they gave us the city. Josh, Michelle, Heather, Holly and the whole Event Experience team showed up in a way that made the whole network shine right along with them. Seattle felt walkable and welcoming from the first morning, and that wasn't an accident. It was a team working together the way independently owned DMCs do, because their name is on it and they're proud of that.
But the part that stayed with me wasn't logistics. It was the small stuff. Holly's daughter babysitting Heather's kids so the team could keep working. Josh slipping out one evening to coach his own kid's soccer game, because that mattered too, and nobody blinked. That's not something you can fake for a conference. That's just how this network actually lives, family first, work built around it rather than the other way round.
That's what makes DMC Network partners different. Nobody on that team was doing this for a faceless head office somewhere. They were doing it for a company they're proud to stand next to, in a city they clearly love. Event Experience showed me what independently owned, locally rooted DMCs can really do when they get the chance, they show off their city with real pride, and they want you and your guests to feel every bit of it.
You can read the press release for what actually happened at Exchange this year. This is the bit that doesn't fit in a press release. For me, Exchange was getting to see the real foundation of this network up close: the friendships, the hugs nobody staged for a photo, the way everyone showed up for each other before they even had to.
I can't wait for the next one….. which just so happens to be in my own hometown of Dublin!
Written by Gráinne Ní Ghiollagáin,, Marketing and Communications, DMC Network
Comments