XLIVE is proud to present its first-ever list of Emerging Leaders in Event Tech. Our group of 2021 winners includes young event professionals — in both B2B and live events — whose innovation, creativity, and drive are pushing the industry forward. We will be featuring all of the winners over the coming weeks, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for what they do next!
Will Curran got his start in events as a DJ when he was 17. He soon went from DJing backyard parties to working with production companies on larger high school dances, and eventually realized that there was a real business opportunity for him in production.
“A lot of our clients didn't like production companies because they spoke a totally different language,” he says. “So what thought, ‘why don't we make a better production company?’” And that’s exactly what he did — Curran founded Endless Events in 2007 with the goal of making it a production company that was extremely easy for clients to work with.
As the company grew, it naturally expanded into the areas of event technology, creative, and strategy. “While growing the company, we also tried to educate the whole industry on what production was and share all the dirty secrets that other production companies didn't necessarily want to share,” says Curran. As Chief Event Einstein, Curran’s role is essentially that of CEO, leading the company’s strategy, vision, and executive team.
He has successfully grown his client base over the years partly through thought leadership content, which he continued to produce throughout the pandemic to help educate the industry. That content turned out to be a huge advantage last year, as many organizations turned to Endless for its tech expertise. In fact, Curran shares that coping with the rapid growth that Endless experienced was one of last year’s biggest challenges — albeit a good challenge to have.
Curran and his team also had the advantage of being fully remote for seven years prior to the pandemic. “Because we were already remote, we already knew the event technologies, and we’ve been doing hybrid and virtual events for clients for a while, the transition was very smooth for us. I’m very grateful,” he says.
As the industry slowly moves past the pandemic, Curran shares that Endless will continue to prioritize content and educational resources for the event community. He and his team understand the value of their onsite experiences and share their learnings from the events they produce for other eventprofs to draw inspiration from.
In addition, he plans to continue to grow his company and expand into more event areas to be able to provide additional services to clients and make theirs easier. “Our mission at Endless is to take all of the variables of an event and distill it into a simple formula for clients,” he says.
Curran believes that the industry as a whole has a great opportunity post-pandemic to be truly diverse and inclusive of people at events. “The opportunity is for us to continue what we've done in 2020 and 2021 and not just go back to the way things were in 2019,” he says. “There are so many attendees out there who literally cannot attend our events, let alone those who can’t afford or don’t want to travel to them. We finally have another channel to reach more people and create memorable experiences for them.”
He continues, “I think the future of the industry is in the idea of not thinking about events as this long year-long buildup to one single thing that dissipates afterwards. We need to think about how we can maintain that energy, and I think that for the first time ever, we have this perfect storm that’s going to enable this new mindset and strategy.”
One of Curran’s favorite parts about working in events is the rush of being onsite and solving problems on the fly as things inevitably go wrong. “You get to see people smile and the experiences that you’re creating, and that’s a feeling I’ve never gotten building a website, or being in a sales meeting, or doing a marketing campaign,” he says.
Curran takes advantage of the small breaks and free time he has between working on events — he plays a lot of board games and makes a point to see all the new movies coming out every week. In addition, he enjoys playing around with technology and attending music festivals and events, which he also uses as an opportunity to see how other events are run and improve his own.