Brian Gates, SVP of Industry Strategy at next-generation event platform RainFocus, is James Dickson’s guest for the first Event Industry News podcast of 2025.   Founded in 2013, RainFocus made a fast mark on heavyweight shows like Oracle CloudWorld, VMworld, Cisco Live, and it’s gone on to have similar impact for the smallest events.   Speaking live from Utah, Brian, who joined RainFocus nearly 10 years ago, details the company’s journey from a data focus to all-encompassing event management.   Brian looks at the platform’s effect on marketing, highlighting key points in the customer journey, who’s engaging and how, and refining the pathways/campaigns as a result. He goes on to discuss evolving the onboarding process, accommodating shrinking budgets, best practices, integrating tech stacks, leveraging data and, particularly poignantly, the AI potential.