Rodney Hart: Hello and welcome into Event Perspectives. Another episode. I think this one is gonna be fun because we’ve been already talking. I think we started having this conversation before we even hit record. So I can’t wait for everyone to kind of get to know you and the work that you’re doing. Yush Sztalkoper, from NeuroSpark+. She’s the founder of NeuroSpark+ and focusing a ton on human capacity and what that means to really be taking that into account as you build and design your events. But Yush, before we get into that conversation, because I know already we’re gonna be talking a lot about that, I just want to ask, how are you feeling about being on an episode?
Yush Sztalkoper: Super excited. It’s funny because Rodney, I feel like you and I have these conversations all the time. Every time we talk, it’s these really deep and meaningful, sort of deep dives into what we’re really experiencing in the industry and personally as individuals, right? We’re just all navigating so much. So I’m excited to kind of share what I think is really relevant for all of what we’re all experiencing as individuals and in the industry.
Rodney Hart: I can’t wait either. I know at IMEX in Frankfurt when we kind of bumped into each other, the second we started talking, I was like, I definitely want you to be on an episode. Usually I have an icebreaker question here for you. I think our conversation’s already rolling, but let’s do this one — where do you get most of your inspiration right now?
Yush Sztalkoper: My children. I have two boys, they’re nine and five. And my older son, I would have to say, really kick-started my work that I’m focusing on now. His differences and the support that he needed really forced me to see how being human in a very different way and a much deeper level than I think I had ever been understanding in my whole life. And my second son, the younger one, actually now offers me a contrast to everything that I thought I understood about humans through my older son. So it’s really interesting within my own parenting experience. I have this sort of dichotomy of needs and personalities and how their nervous system functions. It’s kind of like a live experiment in my household on a daily basis. And I think it’s just so rewarding to be a parent, but also just to learn so much about myself and everybody else through this experience.
Rodney Hart: I think that’s an amazing answer. I don’t have children myself, but I have found even in just my babysitting duties, the amount of learning and human observation that I feel like I’ve done — I’m like, man, there is so much to see from that lens that I feel like we don’t necessarily always bring to work in the same capacity. I really love that answer. Let’s just jump right into events. This podcast always asks people, how’d you get here? Because I feel like the path is almost never linear. I have yet to come across someone who’s like, I studied events in college because I wanted to be an events professional, and here I am. You sure you’re gonna break that streak, or how did you get into events?
Yush Sztalkoper: Sorry, not breaking that streak. So I have spent 20 years in the event industry, corporate events mostly. I started off wanting to be a lawyer. I was working in a law firm in New York City, corporate law. It became pretty apparent that that was not the best fit for me. But I did have such a great experience at the law firm. I ended up moving to their events team. It was events and recruiting, and they said, we really need the help, and we think that your personality would be a great fit for this type of environment and role. And sure enough, I fell into it. And then I discovered events. At the time, this is pre-2008 in New York City. Planning events was just a spectacle. It was the best thing ever. And it was such a rewarding and meaningful experience. And the best part about it was it was a natural fit for my interests, my passions, my skills, my personality. It didn’t feel like I was forcing myself into a profession — it felt like it was organically meant for me.
Rodney Hart: Was there something in particular about it that you felt drawn to?
Yush Sztalkoper: For me — and you won’t be surprised by the work I do now — I studied sociology in college, so I’ve always been interested in human behavior. And I really care about other human beings. One of the things I noticed that events offered me that being in the legal industry did not was how happy people were when they came to my event. After all the hard work and all the planning and all the logistics, the payoff to me was worth all the effort. When you see the joy and the smiles and just the happiness on people’s faces when they come to an event. I was planning experiences and connections and networking. It was very clear the impact that I had on creating these experiences. And I think most of us are hooked in this industry because we’re like, my gosh, I created that. I was responsible for creating something so positive. That was such a contrast to my paralegal days that I couldn’t look back. This felt more purposeful and meaningful than the original track.
Rodney Hart: And we’re gonna hit on what led to NeuroSpark+ and the focus on human capacity design. Before we get there, what were some of the roles that you had in the event space ahead of becoming a founder?
Yush Sztalkoper: I pretty much held every role in the events industry. I was primarily in finance. I started off in the legal industry, and then about two years into that I moved to Hong Kong. I started working for UBS, in their investment bank, responsible for client events. Entertainment, hospitality, sponsorship, all the really fun stuff. I lived in Hong Kong, I traveled all over Asia. One of my favorite memories was planning an event at Tiananmen Square in China for UBS’s 250th anniversary. Super high touch — diplomats, politicians. And then I worked at JP Morgan after, and my most recent corporate role was at Gartner. I also did a stint in agencies and at a nonprofit where I built an events department from the ground up. My very last role was in event strategy. I went from planning and execution to really strategy and thinking about business outcomes. And honestly, every single event I ever planned felt like a longitudinal study of human behavior. I was planning for humans. Humans have evolved over those 20 years. Their needs have changed. And that is really part of my evolution.
Rodney Hart: I want to shift to your current role and the decision to get started as a founder. You talked about having a strategy role and seeing the tangible thing that you saw people leaving events with. When you thought about starting your journey as a founder, was it the strategy hat that said, there’s a better way to get more of these outcomes? Tell us a little about the founder journey, what made you decide to do it.
Yush Sztalkoper: It was my personal experience hat. I actually didn’t plan it. When I left my corporate career, I knew I was leaving. I knew I was not returning. I was burnt out — on so many different levels. With parenting, I have neurodivergent children, so I’ve been navigating that whole journey. And then just my role demands on top of that. It was not something humanly possible to sustain. And that’s why I made the decision that I did. I actually left because I needed to recover. From that recovery, all of these things started to surface. I started to notice all these different patterns, and then I started connecting the dots. My lived experience, my parenting journey, my work experience — everything that was coming together made me realize, at the end of the day, this is really all about understanding humans. It helped me understand my son to a deeper level so I could support all of his diverse needs. And then it started to help me understand myself. Why did I burn out? And why is this industry so hard for so many people? All these questions were pointing to the same thing. And this is what I do now. My work involves helping people understand the demands that humans are experiencing and carrying into any environment — family, workplace, events, organizations, communities. Wherever humans exist. If we start to understand that humans are carrying a lot more than we’ve ever had to carry before, what are we doing about it?
Rodney Hart: I think what you’re describing is your lived experience really helped you to unpack these things from both a neurodiverse way of thinking and also around overwhelm and burnout and how that impacts human capacity and capability. And ultimately I think what you’re saying is there is a lens with which we should be really evaluating the events that we’re pulling together. Because ultimately there are business outcomes, there’s cold hard logic as to why organizations spend the money to bring people together. But what you’re saying is we’re not necessarily thinking about who our audience is, what they’re carrying to our event, their capacity as they arrive. And as event designers, there is a cost to an attendee for presenting too many things. Am I on the right path?
Yush Sztalkoper: Yes, you’re spot on. There’s a core question I was asking: why doesn’t the same event create the same opportunities for everyone? We know some people walk away from an event and they’re like, that was the best thing ever. And that same event, somebody walks away and says, that was exhausting. It doesn’t mean something was necessarily wrong with the event. It just means those two people came with very different demand loads and they had different capacities to experience all the amazing things you put together. What worked before doesn’t work for the future — because AI has completely accelerated the pace of being human, the exchange of information. People are just feeling like they can’t keep up. Humans are carrying far more demands, layered on top of existing demands, than we’ve ever had to before. And with little time to recover in between. If you think about that, all the things we used to care about in events — content, experience, engagement — those things still really matter. But we need to integrate a lens of how we’re thinking differently about the content, the experience, and the engagement. And the way we do that is by understanding the very people you’re designing for. How are we understanding the humans? Because even the event itself is a demand. Not good or bad, it’s a demand. Learning is a demand, because learning means you have to use capacity to absorb information, retain it, apply it. And there are all these invisible demands happening that are taking away from the capacity we have as humans. When somebody arrives at the event, they’re not arriving with a blank slate. They’re carrying their individual load, their family load, their workload, their community load. We have no idea. So maybe we should start asking what those loads look like before we make any design decisions.
Rodney Hart: In the conversations that we’ve had — and for the audience, I have done the Know Your Audience assessment from NeuroSpark+ — there are so many questions in that assessment that forced me as an event organizer to really think about stuff that, when you see it, you’re right, I should be thinking about that. Things like: what does it mean to ask an audience to be traveling three different time zones over, but starting the conference earlier than normal? As someone running and planning events for people running and planning events, a lot of them are likely in the middle of an event cycle or just coming off a sales kickoff and trying to be present and learn. I found myself thinking, is there a shared language that allows an event to communicate with our attendees in a way that acknowledges what they’re carrying? We’re designing the schedule with that in mind. What would you say are the things we’re potentially most guilty of? What could we all infuse into our thought process as we plan events that has the most tangible benefit to our audiences?
Yush Sztalkoper: It depends on the event and the audience. It depends on where it’s located, all the factors you go through in the KYA. But if you have a baseline assumption that people are carrying far more demand to this event than you originally assumed, then you design from there. You think about how do we give people space back to recover, to consume and absorb information. How are we giving them the ability to participate in different ways? Not everybody shows up with the same capacity to network, not everybody shows up with the same capacity to absorb information or the same energy levels. Pacing is a big one. How are we pacing our content or agenda so that it doesn’t feel like it is constantly asking somebody to decide to show up? Because there’s a social cost, an opportunity cost, a learning cost. These are all costs that happen and they’re invisible. Let’s say somebody who is really tired pushes through to a networking event because they might seal the deal. And maybe they show up, but they just are not able to have a meaningful conversation. And then that opportunity no longer exists. We’re talking about a lot of costs if we’re not actually designing for what humans need.
Rodney Hart: Is there anything around the ideas of shared language, the ability to communicate with your audience that you also know somebody’s gonna be too tired for? Last year, for example, we had a quiet room that we communicated as a place to step away. Just a place to go sit, not a meeting room. But we had never really communicated it properly before because, truthfully, we want people there and engaged. Is there a language around, hey, we ultimately want the best possible outcomes for people leaving this experience?
Yush Sztalkoper: Absolutely. You should be transparent about what you’re intentionally designing for your audience. As a planner, there’s a duty of care in understanding that this experience I’m producing considers you first as a human before it considers my business outcome as the primary objective. There’s something about being able to articulate honesty and transparency with humans that creates a level of trust you can’t create in any other way. When I was doing neuroinclusion work, I found that just sharing language and communicating that I was making choices about neuroinclusive design created a level of trust with the audience that silence never could. You want to be transparent because you want to articulate your intention behind each choice. The second part is participation modes. There are some people who love a loud evening event, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But some people want to go to these events because they’re called networking. So they expect to have conversations. But then they’re overwhelmed by the sensory experience and can’t carry a coherent conversation. How can we think about different ways of offering attendees to participate? Maybe if somebody wants to have a conversation, there’s a quieter space available. And one last thing on this: a lot of my neuroinclusion work was understanding that when you design from the edges, you actually elevate the experience for everyone. That’s essentially universal design. If you design for somebody who has the least amount of capacity and is carrying the greatest demands, you’re going to actually help everybody else. Because everyone is going to go, that was such a relief. I didn’t even know I needed that relief. But now that you’ve given it to me, I realize I needed it.
Rodney Hart: If someone’s hearing this conversation and saying, I want to apply this lens to my events, how should they go about getting started?
Yush Sztalkoper: The KYA — I built it with that in mind because I found that whenever I would talk about this, sometimes it was so overwhelming and too much information at once that it didn’t feel tangible and practical to apply. Know Your Audience is an eight-section framework of questions that you go through. The first couple of sections are very logistical and basic information you already know about your event. And then it starts to get deeper into questioning the assumptions you might have made. Everything is grounded in understanding the demand and capacity relationship. What are the invisible demands you are layering on top of your audiences that you hadn’t considered? And if you now know those demands exist, how can you redesign the experience so that you give more capacity back? Your quiet room is a perfect example. Micro resets are real for humans. You don’t need to sit and meditate for 30 minutes to calm your nervous system. You can tap into your five senses. But if your demands are so intense, some people might not actually be able to access the very solutions you created. If somebody felt like there was a social cost or opportunity cost, they’re going to think, if I leave this session right now because I’m overwhelmed, I’m going to miss something. FOMO is huge in our industry. We literally create it. We condition people to feel FOMO. And so we’ve created the very condition, and then we’re telling people it’s okay to walk away. We haven’t given them permission because we’ve created value in all these other things we designed.
Rodney Hart: You’ve mentioned the demand-plus-capacity-equals-fit equation a few times. Can you break that down for us?
Yush Sztalkoper: You’re not alone, Rodney. I feel overwhelmed too. And I do have an equation: demand plus capacity equals fit. How you use that formula depends on you. You know your demand levels and your capacity levels better than anybody else. What you want to get to is fit, which is the space where your demand and capacity actually align. And it can look different every day. If you figured out today what your demand and capacity looks like, tomorrow you might have to reassess. That’s the reality of being human. Every day changes. That’s why one day you wake up and you feel great on eight hours of sleep, and the next morning you woke up and you feel terrible on the same eight hours. Something has changed, but we don’t always know what it is. And if we start to design events around these things, we’re essentially helping our attendees start to understand what their needs are. That will eventually show up in the NPS score. They might not be able to put their finger on exactly why, but their takeaway from your event was so much more positive than last year’s. And it looked like most of the things were the same, except you had more opportunities to feel like there was less of a cost to take care of what it means to be human. If you take nothing away, remember these two lines: some demands give more than they take, and some demands take more than they give.
Rodney Hart: And one question we like to ask all of our guests: what’s your favorite piece of advice to anyone who’s coming into this space, or something you’d like to share with anyone in this industry?
Yush Sztalkoper: Stay curious about outcomes, but even more about what created those outcomes. Because I think this is what takes us back to everything we talked about. The biggest opportunities are the conditions that are hiding in plain sight. Once we make those visible, we start to understand what we’re designing and what we’re responsible for very differently. And I honestly believe that the cost, if we as an industry do not start thinking about event design through this lens, is we’ll get to a point where people are going to start opting out. The events that are transparent about meeting human needs are going to be the ones that people select in the future because they will not have the capacity otherwise. The demands will far exceed what they have available. Yes, outcomes are important, but be curious about the things that are producing those outcomes. Because that is where the differentiator is.
Rodney Hart: Alright, lightning round. Who is your dream keynote speaker right now?
Yush Sztalkoper: Trevor Noah, without a doubt. I think he is the most insightful observer of human behavior than anybody else I know.
Rodney Hart: True or false, you prefer small intimate events over large scale ones.
Yush Sztalkoper: Actually neither. To me size isn’t really what matters because you can have a meaningful interaction in a 10-person event or a 10,000-person event. It’s really about the experience that are created and your capacity and demand that you bring into that event.
Rodney Hart: What matters more: who’s speaking or who’s attending?
Yush Sztalkoper: Who’s attending. That’s who shapes the program. That to me dictates everything the event stands for and the value it should bring.
Rodney Hart: If you could host an event anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Yush Sztalkoper: Tokyo, Japan.
Rodney Hart: What’s your go-to comfort food during event planning stress?
Yush Sztalkoper: I’m Chinese, I love noodle soups.
Rodney Hart: Keynote speaker or panel discussion?
Yush Sztalkoper: Panel discussions. I think conversations add far more value than just somebody speaking.
Rodney Hart: True or false, you pack gym clothes for an event you’re planning.
Yush Sztalkoper: I always pack gym clothes. It doesn’t mean I always use them, but to me it has to start with the intention.
Rodney Hart: Closing event party: live band, DJ, or — based on this conversation — neither?
Yush Sztalkoper: I love a good DJ. I think there’s a lot more variety for people, and different energy. That’s a personal preference, but I would say DJ.
Rodney Hart: Yush, thank you so much for the time today, for the conversation. I think for anyone who’s listening, this is something super valuable that they should be thinking about and bringing to the table. Is there a good place that people could get in touch with you?
Yush Sztalkoper: They can check out my LinkedIn. My website is NeurosparkPlus.com. Reach out to me — KYA is in early access right now, so you do have to email me, and I’m happy to work with everybody. I’m still making refinements, but it’s ready to use and there are some really useful insights in there.
Rodney Hart: Amazing. Thanks for joining, and I can’t wait to have you all for the next episode. Thank you.
Yush Sztalkoper: Thank you so much, Rodney. Have a nice day. Bye.
