Make Your Event Great
Conferences, offsites, leadership retreats, fundraisers, festivals & more
“If you need an event done, I can recommend Misha…it's obvious he has a special talent here.”
Emmett Shear,
Former interim CEO of OpenAI,
Co-Founder and Former CEO of Twitch
Amazing events don’t just happen by chance.
You can intentionally design your event to maximize real connection, inspiration, and effectiveness.
A few small changes can make an enormous difference.
Done right, events can be a tremendous source of inspiration, learning and connection. Done wrong, they can be soul-crushing.
There are a million little decisions that go into running an event. Taken together they can make the difference between an event that’s amazing and an event that’s just so-so. I’ve worked on hundreds of events of all kinds and I’ve learned about what you can do to make your event great.
"We ran a 500 person conference in Berkeley. Misha was amazing: I was in awe of how he got all of our attendees participating and sharing thoughts. I would highly recommend Misha to anyone looking to run a memorable event.”
Austin Chen, Co-Founder, Manifold Markets
How I help clients make their events great.
What I do is make sure your event actually does what it needs to do, and does it in a way that’s inspiring and creates real connection. How I do that varies from client to client, but here are some of the things I typically help with
✓ Clarify your goals: You can’t run a successful event if you don’t have a clear sense of what success looks like. A shocking number of event organizers don’t actually have a sense of what they want their event to accomplish, or have unsurfaced internal disagreements about what the goals are. I can help.
✓ Build your agenda/schedule: It matters enormously what happens when, how long all the different parts of the event are. I have decades of experience getting all these details right
✓ Design your social interactions: Most events spend way too little time and energy designing how people interact. I can help you implement networking exercises that don’t suck, plan meals and parties so that people really get to meet and make your event a place where people form real connection
✓ Advise on a million little details and decisions: Everything from how you communicate your event to how you do ticketing to how you set up the chairs in the room: All these details add up to big differences. I can help make sure all the choices you make support you actual goals.
✓ Hosting and facilitating: I’ve hosted and facilitated hundred of events.
Ready to see how I can help your event?
“We brought Misha in to help us plan an ambitious series of events to celebrate our 25th anniversary. He quickly helped us recognize obstacles we hadn’t seen. He did an amazing job getting different stakeholders talking to each other and understanding issues that had previously been undiscussed. Misha has tremendous expertise on how to make events dynamic and meaningful, and I’d recommend him wholeheartedly to anyone who wants to put on a great event.”
Mark Healy, The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Planning an offsite or leadership retreat?
I’ll make sure the real work gets done.
Some events are about getting work done, about bringing a group together to make strategic decisions, solve a problem, or build something new.
For these events, you need clarity and alignment on goals, a well-designed work process, and mechanisms to ensure follow-up on decisions. If you don’t have these things, the result is wasted time and frustration. I can help you design a process to make sure that your work gets done.
I’ve seen all the very human obstacles to effective communication that typically block progress. I can bring the emotional intelligence you need to ensure that the real issues get talked about and that people can hear each other.
Ready to see how I can help your event?
“I ran a conference in Berkeley that brought together people working on AI in tech, academia, government, and elsewhere. Our goal was to build understanding between various groups that see things very differently and don't always get along well. Misha brought great insight into how to structure the event to actually achieve our goals, and facilitated fantastic sessions and conversations day-of. I cannot overstate Misha’s ability to engage an audience. If you want to help people really connect, I highly recommend getting Misha to help.”
Rachel Weinberg, The Curve AI Conference
Planning a Conference? Fundraiser? Festival?
I’ll make it great! (Hint: It’s about people)
The most common problem I see when I help clients plan conferences is this: They say the goal of the conference is to help people connect, but all their design choices are as if the goal were to disseminate information.
If you had 200 people in a room, and wanted to *stop* them from meeting each other, a great way to do it would be to give one of them a mic, and put the other 199 in chairs. Yet organizers put tons of priority on speakers, and almost none into designing interactions between attendees. You can read my rant about this here: ”Everything You Did to Make Your Conference Better Actually Made it Worse”.
It doesn’t have to be like this. There are lots of ways to make your event great. There are a thousand little design choices along the way that make all the difference, that I’ve learned about through lots of trial and error and experience. Let me help you make your event great.
The Trampoline Hall Lectures
Misha hosts Trampoline Hall, a barroom lecture series in Toronto, SF, and NYC.
The Trampoline Hall Lecture Series has been running monthly in Toronto since before forever, and has sold out every show since its inception. The talks range from serious to ridiculous, with the one rule being that speakers cannot be professionally expert on their topic (though they are often very knowledgeable).
After every lecture, Misha runs a Q+A between the audience and the speaker. His overly-detailed instructions for the Trampoline Hall Q+A were published in The New York Times.
“Eccentricity and do-it-yourself inventiveness”
The New Yorker
“[Misha] turns a Q&A session into a surprisingly sincere collaboration“
The Globe and Mail.
“We love it”
The Village Voice
“I run an intellectual talent agency representing people like Steven Pinker, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushie. I go to hundreds of events, have been going to TED for over 25 years. Misha has an uncanny ability to elevate a conference. He gets involved in the planning, the organization, the networking, and is the best host I’ve ever seen. He gets people connect with each other in ways they haven’t anticipated, and people leave feeling “this is the best conference I’ve been to.””
David Lavin, CEO & Founder The Lavin Agency
About Misha
For over 20 years, I've been mastering the art of creating events where people genuinely connect. From hosting the acclaimed Trampoline Hall lecture series to designing high-stakes conferences for tech companies and research institutions, I've developed a unique approach to making events work. You can read more about me and how I work here, or hear more about people I’ve helped.
Do you have an event you need help with?
I’d love to talk!
I can also help with…
Find Calm in Your Calendar
Does it seem impossible to find the time and mental space to focus on the big picture things that really matter? It’s not impossible!
Transform Your Team into Independent Problem-Solvers
Stop putting out other peoples’ fires. Free up your time and mental space to focus on the big picture things that really matter.
Giving & Getting Feedback
You can’t solve problems if you can’t talk about them. There is a cost to conflict avoidance, and it's killing your team's potential.
Leadership Coaching
Leadership is challenging. You don’t have to go it alone. I can help you get where you’re going faster.
