XLIVE is proud to present its second annual list of Emerging Leaders. Our group of 2022 winners includes young event professionals — across both B2B and Fan Experience — whose innovation, creativity, and drive are pushing the industry forward. We will be featuring all of the winners on XLIVE over the coming weeks, so be sure to check back!
Kyle Santen first discovered his passion for AV at the age of 12 when he volunteered at his local church and helped page cable for one of the camera operators. By the time he graduated high school, he was working there part-time and acting as the technical producer for the youth ministry’s weekly services, which included creating print and digital graphics, editing promos, and recording services for podcasting — all with no budget.
“This experience created such an incredible foundation for my professional career and a lot of the skills I picked up during my time in that environment were pivotal during the transition into digital events,” says Santen. While studying Business Management in college, Santen also got hands-on training working part-time for St. Louis based production company ITC.
Following graduation, Santen started his freelance career and eventually started his own event technology and production company, PixelForge, in December of 2016 — but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that he really came into his own. “I had always intended to find a way to create more value and do more than ‘just be a tech,’” he shares. “I hadn’t really found a space I could call mine until the pandemic.”
While he was initially hesitant to get into the virtual event space and even briefly considered leaving the events industry altogether, his friend and colleague Scot Richardson pushed him to experiment, and he learned to embrace digital. “A couple of months into the pandemic was when it sort of clicked, and I realized that my journey to this point had set me up to do digital events,” he says. “I knew how to run a business and I knew how to do just enough of everything to really be able to make an impact in the digital events space.”
Another industry professional that Santen draws inspiration from is Tim Kerbavaz, Founder of Talon Audio Visual. Santen shares that the two spent a lot of time on Zoom calls during the pandemic with a third friend, Drew Patterson, discussing ideas and inspiring each other.
“One thing that’s really cool about Tim is that he’s really embraced event accessibility and equity and emphasizes that there's a huge component to equity and access of having digital events that maybe people don't talk enough about,” says Santen. “Another part of why Tim and I have such a good friendship is that we are both gay men in the production industry and have shared experiences in that sense. Still today, we spend hours on the phone just bouncing ideas off of each other and taking similar but different journeys together.”
Santen shares that he particularly enjoys working on hybrid events and applying all his learnings from digital events to bridge the gap between virtual and in-person. One of the events he recently worked on was Zoom Perspectives, which aimed to demonstrate how an effective hybrid event could be produced.
“It was certainly a challenge to create something that hasn't necessarily been seen by a lot of people and that isn’t truly defined yet, but that’s what made it exciting,” he says. The event featured a virtual emcee to engage both the virtual and in-person audiences and ensure equity between them, as well as a remote house band that played from a different state.
“A lot of the challenge with this event was using Zoom but making it not look like Zoom — we aimed to repackage it in a way that was creative and interesting,” notes Santen. For example, remote speakers appeared on separate screens that were situated across the stage as opposed to the traditional Zoom gallery view.
As his business has grown, Santen has started to move into more of a leadership and strategic role and has learned how to manage and direct others, which is a trajectory he hopes to continue. He also looks forward to exploring ways to add efficiencies and more automation to his workflows, particularly as the industry faces an ongoing labor shortage.
When it comes to the future of events, Santen believes that the industry will eventually settle into a balance between in-person and digital events, even though many events are shunning virtual now that in-person is back. “I think it will be driven around what actually generates value rather than what’s gimmicky or a fad, particularly as we talk about a recession and companies start tightening their belts,” he says.
Outside of events, Santen spends a lot of his free time working on home improvement and interior design projects around his house, and he also enjoys learning about planes