by Nycole Walsh
I came home from Spryng with a full notes app, a drained social battery, and a lot of feelings I wasn’t entirely expecting.
That’s kind of the point of Spryng, I think. It’s a small, curated gathering of marketing leaders, no sprawling expo halls, no badge scanners, no vendor blitz. Just people who are good at their jobs, talking honestly about what’s actually going on. And what’s going on right now is…a lot.
Here’s what stuck with me.
- Everyone is tired of the AI arms race, even the people winning it
The range of AI adoption in that room was wide. Some people have gone all-in. Others are still testing the waters. But what was consistent across every conversation wasn’t enthusiasm or skepticism. It was exhaustion and wariness.
The exhaustion makes sense: there’s an unspoken pressure in every marketing org right now about who’s going to find the best hacks first, who’s going to unlock the efficiencies fastest, who’s going to figure out what this all means before it’s too late. But the wariness runs deeper. It’s the guardedness of people who aren’t entirely sure what they’re running toward or what it’s going to cost them when they get there.
And underneath all of it is something harder to say out loud: jobs are going away. Multiple people in that room acknowledged they’d already eliminated positions because of what AI made possible, or were quietly preparing to. Some feel like they’re ahead of it. Others feel left behind. But everyone is feeling it, and not just as a business problem. As a human one.
- LinkedIn is a highlight reel. Spryng is the blooper reel. (The good kind.)
When you only see people online, you see the wins. The polished takes. The “excited to announce” posts. Real struggles don’t make it to the feed.
But in a small, casual, intimate setting, the walls come down fast. People share what’s actually been challenging them. And there’s something genuinely cathartic about sitting across from someone you’ve quietly assumed has it all figured out and hearing them say, “Yeah, me too.” High-performing marketers tend to be hard on themselves. We assume everyone else is further ahead. Spryng has a way of snapping you out of that thought pattern, and it’s a relief every single time.
- The table talk format of Spryng is the event’s super power. Protect it.
Many networking events are built for extroverts. If you’re not the type to cold-walk up to a group of strangers and insert yourself into conversation, those events are working against you from minute one.
Spryng’s structured table talks solve for this in the best possible way. Assigned seating. Focused topics. 45-60 minutes of real discussion. You have a literal place at the table without having to fight for it. The result is that you actually hear from everyone, not just the loudest people in the room.
The honest feedback from this year? There were fewer table talks and more content-forward programming…and it was noticeable. My ask going back to the organizers: more table talks, not fewer. This is the format that keeps people coming back year after year, and they’ve confirmed they’re reworking things for next year. Good. Protect it.
- B2B is dead. Long live P2P.
One keynote in particular hit differently. Matthew Dicks made the case that “B2B” should be retired as a concept, swapped out instead for “P2P,” person to person. Because every business is made up of people, and the content that cuts through, the brands that get remembered, the leaders who build real influence are the ones who lead with personal stories and genuine personality. Not corporate-speak. Not category jargon. Actual human beings talking like actual human beings.
He proved his own point. The entire room was riveted. Not because of a framework or a stat, but because of the memorable, personal stories he told.
And it held true at the event level too. You don’t remember people’s titles when you leave Spryng. You remember the story they told at the table talk, the karaoke song they picked, the completely random thing you bonded over. That’s P2P. That’s what sticks.
- The follow-up is where relationships actually happen. And where most of us drop the ball.
Nobody goes to Spryng to get pitched. Nobody is hunting for vendors. People go to build real relationships with people they want to work with, learn from, and stay connected to professionally. The problem is what happens the moment you get home.
You’re wiped out from a week of nonstop socializing. You’ve traveled. Your social battery is at zero. And then work hits you like a truck. Emails and to-do’s pile up, and the people you met start to fade.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been guilty of this.
The sharpest people I observed at this event were already in inboxes before attendees even got home. Fast follow-up (before the grind swallows everyone whole) is the move. It can be the difference between a connection that lasts versus a business card that ends up in a junk drawer.
Spryng is a small event doing something quietly important: giving high-performing marketers a room where they can be honest. That’s rarer than it sounds. If you’re on the fence about going next year, I’d take the table talk format and the candid conversations over a lot of the big-stage productions I’ve attended. And if you go, learn from the best… send those follow ups before you even unpack your suitcase.
