The hope that live events would return in the fall is increasingly being replaced with the realization that many (if not most) conferences and trade shows in the U.S. will continue to be virtual or hybrids of online and in-person for the remainder of 2020 (last week Informa saw an 8 percent stock jump when it said select trade shows would resume in Asia but warned that live events in the U.S. won’t return until at least September). 

“We invest almost all the money back into our business.” That’s a line that trade reporters often hear, typically with a great deal of skepticism. When it is true, it typically means a certain group or technology within the organization is receiving the lion’s share of that investment (as a cub reporter I remember hearing a CEO give our B2B division a motivational speech that boiled down to pointing to the then red hot yet soon-to-crash consumer apartment guides and saying, “Be more like them”).  

Senator Joe Manchin recently told Politico that he changed his mind to vote against the confirmation of Bernard McNamee, President Trump’s nominee for the Federal Energy Commission after viewing a video obtained by IndustryDive that showed McNamee sharply criticizing renewable energy and environmental groups while calling for a unified campaign to support fossil fuels.