Tuesday, June 17, 2025

While you’re reading this, I’m likely somewhere in Pittsburgh; either racing down a hallway at the NS3 conference or standing in the back of a packed session trying to gauge the mood of the room. Maybe I’m helping with a panelist’s last-minute change or moderating a Q&A. If the timing is just right, I might even be having a quiet cup of coffee and thinking about how this whole thing came together…or a talking with a colleague over a glass of wine and wishing it would never end.

Conferences like NS3 often look seamless from the outside—panels start on time, coffee is hot, name badges are ready, and there’s always someone nearby to answer a question. But behind the curtain, there’s an entirely different rhythm. Months of planning, hundreds of emails, more than a few pivots. It’s logistics and spreadsheets, of course, but also late-night idea swaps, unexpected speaker substitutions, and small-but-significant choices about how the tone of a session will feel.

And then—just like that—it’s real. The doors open, the name badges get picked up, and the seats start filling. The audience arrives with their questions, their stressors, their hopes. The topics we’ve been obsessing over and over in planning meetings suddenly come alive and take flight in the room.

What’s always remarkable to me is how these gatherings shift our energy. The news cycle hasn’t slowed. The regulatory landscape remains as complex as ever. But somehow, being in the same place with people who are all trying to navigate it together creates clarity. It’s not magic—but it does feel like something close.

I won’t pretend it’s all inspiration and insight. It’s a lot of walking. A lot of note-taking. A lot of sweating of the smallest of details.  But when you pull back from the play-by-play, what we’re really doing is strengthening the ties that hold this industry together.

So this week, while I’m on site, I hope I get the chance to see you in person. And if you couldn’t make it to NS3 this year, go ahead and mark your calendar for next year—we’d love to have you in the room. Just know that whether we’re together in Pittsburgh or connecting from afar, I’m thinking of all of you—and grateful, as ever, that we get to keep doing this work, together.

Until Next Time,

Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC